“Tryin’ to poach a bounty, eh, Ben?” Prophet said. “We took Savidge down fair an’ square. He’s ours.”
“Ah, shit,” Ryder said, grunting, “We been trackin’ that bastard for weeks. We couldn’t believe it when we seen you two ahead of us. We . . . we just couldn’t let him go. Goddamn you, Lou, you deafened me.” He brushed a hand toward his left ear. “I can only hear church bells tolling in that ear! Otherwise, nothin’!”
“They ain’t tollin’ for you, Ben.”
Ryder glared up at the big bounty hunter standing over him. “Look what you done—you went and killed your old pal, Ben Ryder, you ornery sonofabitch!”
“About one pull of a whore’s bell before you would have killed me, Ben.” Prophet glanced at Chaz Savidge looking on in grave distress. “And sawed ole Savidge’s ugly head off.”
Savidge made a sour expression. “Savage!” the outlaw wailed at Ryder. “Damn savages—fixin’ to hack a man’s head off for profit!”
“Ah, hell,” Ryder said, breathing heavily now, his face turning pale and sweat-bathed as he looked over at Savidge, “you’re just a child rapist and murderer.”
He gave a ragged sigh, and his body fell slack. His chest and belly stopped rising and falling. His hands fell to the ground. He turned his head to one side and half-closed his eyes.
Louisa had walked over to stand beside Prophet, staring down at Ryder.
She glanced at her partner. “You knew?”
“As soon as I saw them,” Prophet said. “None of those tinhorns has taken down their own bounty in years. When he made the mistake of sayin’ there were five in his group, I started looking around for Spider. He’s the best shot of the bunch, which ain’t sayin’ much.”
“Good on ya, Proph!” Savidge said, delighted, an enervated shine lingering in his gaze. “I knew you could do it. Two against five, and you took ’em all down quicker than a whore can blow a—”
Prophet cut him off with, “Don’t get any ideas.”
He’d spoken to Louisa, who was staring dubiously down at their prisoner.
“Yeah, don’t get any ideas!” Savidge echoed the bounty hunter.
“I’m not gonna cart a bloody ole head back to Denver. I’ve had to do that before, and it wasn’t purty or sweet-smellin’!”
Louisa narrowed a speculative eye at the sky. “It’s cool enough.” She looked at Savidge again. “He wouldn’t get to smelling too awful bad. Leastways, not any worse than he smells now.”
Savidge made a face, and shuddered.
Late that afternoon, Josephina Hawkins adjusted the powder-blue print dress she’d donned after her hot bath, and walked to her kitchen window.
Since she’d bathed in the kitchen, whose windows faced the bunkhouse on the other side of the yard, she’d pulled the flour sack curtains closed. When she and George Hawkins had first been married ten months ago, and Josephina had moved off her parents’ small farm and into Hawkins’s log cabin, she’d sewn little felt roses into the curtains, to lend them color.
Now, the little blood-red roses danced against the window fringed with frost and dusted with the snow that had been falling all day, foretelling another long—no, endless—Great Plains winter.
As Josephina stared out the window at the bunkhouse, which was a boxlike, one-room log cabin with a brush roof and a single ladder-back chair sitting against the wall just left of its plank-board door, the door itself opened. Josephina felt a flush rise in her cheeks as the hired man, Henry Otherday, stepped outside, smoothing his thick, coal-black hair back with one hand and then donning his Stetson hat with the other.
Josephina took two steps back away from the window, which was finely scraped waxed paper stretched between brittle sashes. The paper made annoying popping and wheezing sounds when the breeze blew it, which it was doing now.
Mr. Otherday stood looking around for a time, as though judging the weather. He wore blue denims and a corduroy jacket over a cream wool shirt and black neckerchief. His dark hair hung down over his ears. He held out one of his large, brown hands, as though to catch the downy flakes that were falling, and then brought his palm to his mouth, and licked it.
“Oh,” Josephina laughed. “Oh, my gosh. He’s eating snow!”
She wasn’t sure why that thrilled her, but it did. She couldn’t imagine her husband, Mr. Hawkins, ever doing such a thing. But then, Hawkins was eighteen years Josephina’s senior, and Mr. Otherday was probably right around Josephina’s age of nineteen.
He’d been working for Mr. Hawkins since just before the roundup. Mr. Hawkins wanted to carry the young half-breed over the winter, because his rheumatism was making it hard to keep up with even his less taxing winter chores, and then he’d have ready help in the spring for calving and branding.
At least, that’s what Mr. Hawkins had told Josephina. Josephina secretly opined that the real reason her husband wanted to keep a hired man on the place was so that he could spend more time at the woodcutters’ camp down on Mulberry Creek. There was a small saloon there, which employed three girls of various ages.
Josephina wasn’t sure why, but her ears did not burn at the notion of her husband as a whoremonger. Rumors about his infidelities to his first wife had circulated throughout the county, so Josephina had known what she’d been getting into when she’d accepted the man’s marriage proposal.
She hadn’t married him out of love, anyway. She’d married him because her parents couldn’t afford to support five daughters and two sons on their little dirt farm five miles from here, and she’d needed a place to live. Otherwise, she herself might have ended up working for room and board down at the woodcutters’ camp and enduring all manner of indignity just to feed herself.
Now she gave a little gasp of excitement as Henry Otherday began walking toward the cabin. Her heart lurched in her chest. At the same time, shame caused her ears to burn. She was a married woman. She had no right to feel so light in the head at the prospect of enjoying a meal and maybe part of an evening with her husband’s hired man.
The two of them—Josephina and Henry Otherday—alone in her husband’s cabin!
Mr. Hawkins’s own transgressions gave her no right to transgress in a similar way. But then, she was only cooking supper for the hired man, she reminded herself. She had no intention of letting things go any further than that. In fact, the thought increased the burning in her ears, and added a shrill, admonishing hum.
It caused her heart to flutter and her breath to grow short.
She’d been raised a good Christian girl. In fact, her mother had read to Josephina and her sisters and two brothers from the Good Book right up until the very night before Josephina married George Hawkins. If Josephina’s family knew that she was entertaining a man alone in her husband’s cabin tonight, they’d likely disown her.
Outside, the sound of footsteps grew. There was a thump as the hired man stepped up onto the small boardwalk fronting the Hawkins’s shanty.
A light knock sounded against the door.
Josephina gave another gasp, stepping back.
Oh, dear Lord—what had she done!
CHAPTER SIX
“Please, come in, Mr. Otherday,” Josephina said, turning quickly toward the range, pretending that she’d been tending the two chicken leg quarters frying in a small, cast-iron skillet and not staring at the door and having second thoughts about inviting the hired man into Mr. Hawkins’s cabin for supper.
The door squawked open, giving a little shudder on its leather hinges. Josephina felt a breath of cool air blow in to caress the backs of her legs and her bottom. On that breath of cool air, she smelled the sagey, manly musk of Mr. Otherday coupled with the infernal stench of horse and cow manure that lingered forever over the ranch yard.
The young man’s smell, a familiar one now, caused a nerve to jerk to life in Josephina’s belly.
Turning the chicken in the pan, Josephina glanced over her shoulder. “Good evening, Mr. Otherday. Supper’s almost ready. You can peg your hat a
nd coat there by the door. There’s water on the stand, if you need to wash.”
Mr. Otherday offered a cordial smile touched with a shyness that Josephina had detected in the young man the very first time he’d smiled at her, when Mr. Hawkins had finally introduced the two a full three days after Otherday had been hired and living in the little bunkhouse.
It hadn’t been much of an introduction. Mr. Hawkins had just said, “This is Henry Otherday, Jo. He’ll be stayin’ in the bunkhouse.”
That was all he’d said, and then the two had gone to work. But not before Mr. Otherday had cast Josephina that boyishly shy smile of his while his brown-eyed gaze had flickered with quick, furtive male interest across her body.
Henry Otherday didn’t say anything. He glanced at Josephina and then looked away, doffing his hat and hanging it on a peg by the door. Facing the front wall, he shrugged out of his jacket and pegged it, as well.
Then he walked over to the zinc-topped washstand on the other side of the door, and washed.
As he did, Josephina took their plates off the table, which she’d already set, and filled them with the chicken, mashed potatoes, milk gravy, and corn she’d harvested from her irrigated garden patch. As she set a basket of hot cross buns and a dish of butter onto the table, she glanced at Mr. Otherday and caught him studying her in the small mirror hanging from a nail over the washstand.
When his eyes met Josephina’s, he ran the towel over his face with a start.
Josephina jerked her gaze away, as well, and said, “Well, then . . . supper is served.” She heaved a sigh. “I hope it’s edible. While mother is a wonderful cook, and most of my sisters are, as well, I’m afraid it’s a gift the Good Lord didn’t see fit to bestow upon me.”
Mr. Otherday hung the towel on the nail beside the mirror, and turned to the table. His brown eyes took in the two steaming plates on the oilcloth-covered table, and he smiled at Josephina, shrugging. “Looks mighty good to me, ma’am. I mean . . . Miss . . .”
“Please call me Jo. All my friends do, and I don’t see why I can’t count you among my friends, Mr. Otherday. Lord knows I have few enough!”
She laughed nervously, almost having to choke back a sob of loneliness.
For she was lonely.
So, so lonely.
Sometimes her heart felt as thin and brittle as an old newspaper left out in the weather for weeks.
Mr. Otherday placed his hand on the back of his chair and stared down with a suddenly troubled expression at the steaming food on his plate. Finally, he looked up at her from beneath his black brows, and he smiled oddly as he said, “Are you sure . . . you know . . . it’s all right?”
He had a very deep, almost guttural voice, and he flattened his vowels. He had the voice of a much older man. It was an odd, almost toneless rhythm, and a particularly Indian one, Josephina had come to know, having been raised here in the Dakota Territory, home to many bands of Sioux, some of whom were still allowed to roam freely with travois and wagons as long as they also lived in peace with the whites.
Josephina frowned, feigning befuddlement. “Why wouldn’t it be all right? You’re Mr. Hawkins’s hired man. It’s only right that I feed you from time to time.”
Mr. Otherday glanced skeptically at the door. “I know . . . but . . .” He let his voice trail off. Josephina knew that he’d been going to say that Mr. Hawkins had warned him to stay away from her. That George had likely forbidden him to go anywhere near his wife or the cabin. Of course, Josephina didn’t know this for sure, but she’d lived with Mr. Hawkins long enough to know the kind of man he was.
Mr. Otherday had worked alongside him long enough to know, too. Thus the look of wariness and sheepishness in the young half-breed’s eyes.
“When Mr. Hawkins sells stock in town, he’s usually gone for three days at least,” Josephina said quietly, recognizing the sheepishness in her own voice. Tension drew tight in her, as though Mr. Hawkins were standing right outside the door, listening. “Sometime an entire week,” she added with a phony laugh, as though her husband’s behavior merely amused her.
She removed her apron and hung it on the back of her chair. “Please, Mr. Otherday. Do sit down. The food is getting cold!”
The hired man shrugged as he pulled his chair out and sat down. He immediately picked up the chicken leg quarter in his hands.
Josephina said, “Would you like to say grace, or should I?”
Otherday gave that bashful, cockeyed smile of his again, and returned the chicken to his plate. He wiped his hands on his trousers and bowed his head.
Josephina said a quick table prayer, and unfolded her napkin on her lap. She noticed that Mr. Otherday ignored the napkin beside his plate as he eagerly went to work on his food. Josephina marveled at the abandon with which the young man ate, busily stirring the gravy into his potatoes, mixing the corn into the potatoes and gravy, and then lifting the chicken to his mouth, tearing and chewing.
Normally, she would have been repelled by such a poor display of manners, but it wasn’t all that different from how Mr. Hawkins himself ate. About the only difference was that Josephina’s husband used a napkin from time to time, instead of his trousers.
She was overjoyed at the young man’s delight in the food she’d cooked for him. Once, out of an undeniable rush of curiosity, she’d slipped into the bunkhouse when Mr. Hawkins and the hired man were off tending cattle on the range. About all that Mr. Otherday ever ate, it appeared, were canned goods—especially canned beans and peaches—that he purchased from the grocery shop in town. He had only one cook pot, a scorched and dented tin coffee pot, one tin plate, one wooden-handled fork, a spoon, and a skinning knife, which he apparently used as a table knife.
Josephina had run her hands over these utensils, and felt a shudder of intrigue along her spine. She’d liked how the bunkhouse smelled, as well. It smelled of Mr. Otherday, which she’d found somewhat heady.
The half-breed ate with such concentration that Josephina decided not to distract him with idle conversation. So they ate in silence, the young man finishing a good ten minutes before Josephina herself did. He merely stared down at her plate, waiting for her to finish. This made her self-conscious, and she left some chicken on the bone before she declared herself done.
“Let me clear and scrape the plates,” she said, rising from her chair.
She took her plate and Mr. Otherday’s plate to the dry sink and began scraping what few leavings there were into a wooden bucket. As she rinsed the plates from a kettle of soapy water, she became aware of him standing behind her.
She hadn’t heard him move, but he was standing behind her, all right. His manly, wild tang was heavy in her nostrils. She could feel the heat radiating off of him, pushing against her from behind. He was like a fully stoked stove.
“I’ll be through here in just a minute, and then I’ll cut us each a slice of—oh!” she said when he placed his hands on her shoulders.
She dropped a plate into the kettle of soapy water. She felt as though she’d been struck by lightning. A jangling, burning, searing, tearing heat rippled all through her. What felt like hot tar puddled low in her belly, making her knees quake.
As he wrapped his arms around her, and closed his hands over her breasts, he pressed his face against the side of her neck, nuzzling her. She felt his slightly chapped lips open. She felt the hot, wet, aggressive caress of his tongue along her neck. He groaned as he licked her and massaged her breasts through her dress.
“Oh,” Josephina said, wanting him to go away so badly . . . to keep doing what he was doing so badly. . . .
She just stood there, stricken, as the hired man licked her neck and nibbled her ears. Gradually, he opened her dress and slid it down off her shoulders. She watched the garment open and pull away from her bosom.
“Oh . . . no,” she said, moaning, lolling her head back against him. “Oh . . . god . . . no. . . .”
But then he’d run his hands up inside her chemise, and her bare breasts were in
his work-callused hands. Her nipples came alive beneath his manipulations. Her bosom was like a bared nerve, sending shudders of pure horror and pure ecstasy through every nerve in her lust-wracked body.
Her ears registered the clomps of a horse’s approach long before her brain did. She turned toward the hired man pressing up against her, and glanced at the scraped-paper window to see Mr. Hawkins’s face glaring in at her.
Glaring in at them! Mr. Otherday still had his hands on her breasts, his lips on her neck.
Josephina slapped hands to her mouth and screamed.
The hired man whipped around to the window, but George was no longer there. A boot thumped on the boardwalk. The door flew open, and George Hawkins bolted in to stand just in front of the dark opening, glaring at the two mashed up against the dry sink together.
“Figured!” George Hawkins said. “I just figured!”
“No!” Josephina cried, tearing at her hair in misery.
Her husband bolted inside the cabin and reached down to grab a stick of split firewood from the pile near the potbelly stove. Otherday shoved Josephina away from him, and strode around the table. As he did, he pulled a knife out of his right boot, and thrust it out offensively, crouching, facing the man coming toward him.
“You damn half-breed savage!” Hawkins bellowed, and swung the log.
Otherday ducked. The log whistled through the air over his head. The momentum of the blow turned Hawkins sideways. Otherday thrust the knife at Hawkins, slicing the right side of the rancher’s shirt, just beneath his arm.
Blood oozed through the tear.
Hawkins looked under his arm at the slice. Josephina could see that he was glassy-eyed, drunk. He brushed his hand against the tear in his shirt, and looked at the blood on his palm.
He cursed savagely and whipped the log at the half-breed’s head once more. Mr. Otherday hadn’t ducked fast enough, and the log clomped him on the side of his head, just above his ear. His head wobbled drunkenly as he fell onto the end of the table, scattering glasses and cups.
To Hell on a Fast Horse Page 24