Wild to the Bone (21 page)

24

O
n the porch in front
of the hotel, Raven fished out her pocket watch and flipped the lid. She still had more than an hour before the stage from Recluse rolled into town at nine. After returning the watch to her vest pocket, she placed a hand against an awning support porch and chewed her lip, considering her next move.

She half-hoped the stage wouldn't make it through. Or that it would make it to Spotted Horse late enough to indicate that it had been held up again. Of course, she didn't wish misfortune on the passengers or on Shirley's line, but likely the only way she was going to make any progress on her investigation of the holdups was if one of Shirley's coaches was held up once more.

That way, she'd have a fresh trail to follow.

She glanced to the north, the direction in which Shirley had said the Stoveville ranch lay. As she stared in that direction, she spied a large mass of gunmetal-gray clouds moving in from the west. They seemed to be angling northeast, swept along by the breeze, which was picking up and would probably grow into wind in an hour or so.

Apprehension rammed a cold finger against the base of Raven's spine. Why?

She stared at the cloud mass angling northeast, in the direction Haskell was headed. Did she sense trouble in that direction? Trouble beyond merely lousy weather?

Remembering her colleague's wild night, she wondered if he and Duke Shirley had left town yet. She wouldn't doubt Bear was still sawing logs over at the Spotted Horse Watering Trough. Sleeping off a miserable hangover and a chafed dick.

If he was, the stupid bastard could wait for the stage while Raven hauled the boy's body back to the Stoveville ranch.

She stepped down off the hotel's porch and strode south along the side street in the direction of the town's main drag. As she did, she glanced once more at the cloud mass, her eyes creased with a vague worry. When she turned her head forward, a small dust devil rose before her where the cross street intersected with the main street. The miniature cyclone picked up dust and a scrap of newspaper and hurled both toward her for a few feet before dying.

Slowly but surely, the breeze was picking up.

A couple of minutes later, Raven pushed through the batwings of the Spotted Horse Watering Trough. She stopped just inside the doors and blinked against the shadows. The air smelled of sawdust, stale beer, tobacco smoke, and cheap perfume. Through the ceiling above her, she could hear a girl moaning and a man grunting and the squawks of a bed getting a workout.

The girl's moans were a tad overdone for this early in the day, Raven vaguely thought as her vision cleared. The grunts she did not recognize as Haskell's. Besides, if it had been her colleague throwing the wood to the girl, she wouldn't be faking it.

Halfway down the long room, four men sat at a round table, playing cards. As their eyes found the pretty young woman standing in front of the batwings and acquired that dull, lusty cast Raven knew only too well, she gave a slow, dismissive blink and switched her gaze to the wheelchair-bound marshal, Roscoe Peete.

“There we go, that's it, nectar of the gods,” Peete said as the bartender leaned over the counter to hand a corked brown bottle down to the marshal with one hand while catching the coin the crippled man tossed him in the other hand. “Much obliged, Vernon, my good man . . .” Peete said, letting his voice trail off as he followed the barman's gaze to his new customer.

“Well, well, well. Agent York, ain't you lookin' fit as a fiddle today!”

Raven dipped her chin to the man. “Marshal.”

The old man's bulging eyes raked her up and down. He glanced at the bartender, a tall, one-eyed black man in armbands, and then turned back to Raven. “Buy ya a drink?”

The black man grinned. The other three men sitting near Marshal Peete had stopped playing cards to scrutinize the newcomer. Now they all smiled luridly.

One chuckled, and said softly, “Shee-it.”

Raven didn't customarily imbibe before noon. But if she didn't accept the marshal's challenge, she'd lose any shot she had of even a modicum of respect. Why she felt herself requiring respect here, among such depraved-looking tough nuts as those ogling her now, she had no idea.

Pride, maybe.

She smiled coolly at Marshal Peete. “Why not?”

Peete laughed. “Vernon, set the girl up. Best you got!” He flipped another coin to the barman.

“Comin' right up,” Vernon said, catching the coin against his chest and then crouching to reach for a bottle under the bar.

Raven sauntered up to the bar near the marshal. The eyes of every man in the place followed her. Vernon straightened, set a dusty bottle on the bar, popped the cork, and filled a shot glass. Smiling challengingly at Raven, he slid the glass to her.

Raven stared down at it and feigned a look of reluctance, only half-feigned though she was playing it up for her audience. “Well, it's rather early.”

“Ah, come on,” Peete encouraged. “A shot to start the day, Agent York.”

“Oh, well.” Raven picked up the shot glass between her thumb and index finger and sniffed it.

She arched a brow approvingly, though the stuff smelled like horse piss and gunpowder.

The men at the table watched her with dull, expectant smiles. They were expecting her to take one sip and either spit it out or crumple to the floor, choking.

It never ceased to amaze her what half-wits men were.

She tossed back the shot, swallowed, set the glass back down on the bar, and said, “Not bad. You got enough coinage for one more, Marshal? You're right—it's not a half-bad way to start the day. In fact, it makes you and all the other gents in here just a tad less hard on a girl's eyes. And that's a blessing.”

The four men at the table scowled. One curled a nostril.

Peete stared up at her, his own smile fading.

Vernon chuckled and turned his own toothy grin on the marshal.

Peete's grin suddenly appeared wooden, and then he glanced at the men at the table before turning to Vernon and saying haltingly, “Ah . . . well . . . sure, sure. Set her up again!”

Vernon caught another of the marshal's coins and then refilled the girl's shot glass delightedly.

This time, having proven her worth, Raven threw back only half of the rye, and then, holding the shot glass in her hand against her chest, she turned to Peete. “I was looking for my partner,” she said. “Any sign of him this morning?”

“Headed out,” Peete said. “I seen Duke Shirley on the street about an hour ago. He was just comin' back from the livery barn. Said Haskell rented a wagon and rode out before sunup. Alone. Didn't seem to want to wait for ol' Duke to ride along with him.”

“Yeah, well, that's Haskell,” Raven said, throwing back the last half of her rye. The foreboding she'd felt earlier nudged her again. It was like a cold finger pressed against her belly button.

“Well, I'd best get to work,” Peete said, tucking his fresh bottle back safely in his chair and then wheeling himself toward the batwings.

“More rats to kill over there, Marshal?” Vernon said, jeering.

“Fuck you, Vernon,” Peete said, wheeling himself through the batwings. “See you again soon, Agent York.”

Raven didn't respond, because she'd only half-heard the man. She was still standing sideways to the bar, staring down at the empty shot glass in her hand.

“I'll buy ya another one, miss.”

Distracted, Raven was slow to register the voice in her right ear. Then she looked up to see the one-eyed barman smiling at her. He'd enjoyed the way she'd handled the old marshal.

“I said I'd buy you another one, miss,” he repeated, holding up the bottle.

“No, thanks, Vernon,” Raven said, setting her shot glass upside down on the bar. “I reckon I'm burnin' daylight.”

She turned away from the bar, for a moment facing the card players. As she started walking toward the bat­wings, one of the men at the table said slowly, in a voice pitched with goatish desire and sneering, “You sure are one fine-lookin' little filly.”

His brown-eyed face was a hatch-work mess of old, knotted scars.

The others snickered.

Their cocks were dribbling.

“Thank you,” Raven said tonelessly, and pushed through the batwings.

She stopped on the saloon's front stoop. Peete was wheeling himself along the boards laid out in the street to make wheeled travel easier.

“Sonny!” he shouted, and the stocky lad came sprinting out of the livery barn to wheel the old marshal up onto the jailhouse stoop.

Peete muttered to the lad, dismissing him. Sonny leaped off the jailhouse stoop and jogged back to the barn, breathing hard.

Facing the street in his chair—a pudgy, unshaven, raggedy-heeled lord surveying his domain—Peete uncorked his bottle. He saw Raven standing on the saloon stoop across the street from him, raised the bottle to her, grinning, and took a long pull. He lowered the bottle, ran the grimy sleeve of his wash-worn shirt across his mouth, and rammed the cork back into the bottle's mouth with the heel of his hand.

Raven gave a wry snort, wondering how much the town was paying the drunken old fool to drink whiskey and shoot rats. Roscoe Peete was worthless as a crime fighter, but she supposed that a town wasn't really a town without a badge pinned to a man's vest, just as it wasn't a town without a mercantile and a hotel and a livery barn, a stage passing through now and then.

She looked around, checked the time once more—forty-five minutes before the stage was due—and then, having a few more questions for Duke Shirley, she dropped into the street and made her way over to the mercantile just east of the Watering Trough.

The mercantile's door had no sooner closed behind her than a little boy with curly sandy-blond hair came running up to her, howling and grinning and pointing a wet lollipop at her. The cute little tyke wasn't the same one Mrs. Shirley had been holding the night before, but he seemed the same age.

He wore wool knickers and a short-sleeved white cotton shirt with a little bow tie hanging askew.

“Well, hello there,” Raven said, smiling down at the child. “Is that for me?”

The little boy grinned, his blue eyes large and filled with joy, as he continued to extend the sucker to Raven. Raven started to move her hand to it, but then she saw how wet it and the boy's hand were, and she stayed the effort, feeling her lips growing tight.

“Don't mind him,” Mrs. Shirley said, walking along between an aisle of men's dungarees and the large front window paralleling the front porch. She ducked under several miner's picks and washtubs hanging from the ceiling and placed her hand on the boy's head. “This is Charles, and he's enjoying his sucker so much that he'd like to share it with you.”

Raven dropped to a knee before the smiling boy. “I see that's a very nice sucker, indeed, Charles,” she said. “But you know what, Charles? I just had breakfast, and my belly's packed so tight I don't think it could hold another bite!”

The boy gave another, louder howl, thrusting the sucker at Raven and craning his neck to grin up at his mother delightedly. Mrs. Shirley, dressed in a brown gingham housedress, with her hair coiled into a chignon behind her head and secured with a comb, managed to grab the boy's arm before he could ram it against Raven's pinstriped blouse.

With a startled, high-toned laugh, she said, “She's not hungry, Charles. Why don't you run into the back room and see what your brother's up to?” She turned his shoulders and gave his butt a playful swat, and he went scampering past Raven and down the center aisle toward the rear of the store, where sausages hung over the long main counter.

“He's a little darling!” Raven intoned, watching the boy duck under the counter, licking his lollipop.

“He's a handful, that one.”

“Twins?”

“Yes. The one you saw last night was James. James had a fever last night, but—” Just then, two sets of playful yells rose from the rear of the place. “But as you can hear, Miss York, he's fine today. They're a handful but a hardy pair, those two.”

Raven glanced at the clipboard the woman held in her hand. Mrs. Shirley had probably been taking inventory of the stock when Raven had walked in. “They—and the store—must keep you on your toes.”

By way of response, Mrs. Shirley blew a lock of disheveled hair out of her eyes. Roughly the same age as Raven, she looked a little drawn, as though she hadn't gotten a lot of sleep the night before. With twins, she probably rarely enjoyed a full night's worth.

“Sometimes my mother visits from St. Louis and takes care of the boys while I work in the store. She's a real help. Duke—he has so much to do with the stage line, he doesn't have much time for the store.” She held up a hand, palm out. “Not that I'm complaining, mind you, Miss York. We're surviving, and that's more than can be said for a lot of people out here.”