Wild to the Bone

by Peter Brandvold

  Raven glanced at the wheelchair-bound marshal still sitting on the porch of the humble jailhouse behind her. She wasn’t sure, but she thought the man was being somehow critical, as though regret over killing someone even in self-defense was a sign of weakness.

  She couldn’t keep her peevishness out of her tone as she said, “Would it sit well with you, Marshal Peete? Shooting a young man, no matter what the reason?”

  “Well, hell—now, that ain’t what I meant,” the marshal said, holding up his hands, palms out, in supplication. “I was just makin’ an observation, that’s all.”

  Chagrin warmed Raven’s ears. So did embarrassment at having reacted so quickly to defend her partner. “Sorry, marshal,” she said, feigning a wan smile. “I reckon I’m just tired from the ride and in dire need of a bath and a short nap.” She pinched her hat brim at the man. “See you later.”

  “See you later, little lady,” Peete said as she turned and started walking across the street, slanting to the left away from the saloon, toward the part of town where Shirley had told her she’d find the hotel.

  As she walked, the wind swirling dust at her boots, her saddlebags dangling down one shoulder, holding her rifle in her other hand, she glanced at the saloon. The batwings were buffeted by the wind, which was also kicking up dust and bits of weeds from the porch and swirling them.

  She looked over the doors, hoping for a glimpse of Haskell, but she could see nothing but the saloon’s deep shadows.

  Raven’s heart was a rock in her chest. She wanted to go to Bear and comfort him about the Stoveville boy, but she knew that doing so would only embarrass him. Maybe even make him angry or, worse, cause him to try to turn her concern into a joke.

  Bear Haskell wasn’t the breed of man who could talk about his tenderest, darkest feelings except indirectly. She knew because she’d seen it in his eyes that killing the boy had brought back many horrific memories from the war and that all she could do for her partner at the moment was give him room to sort through what had happened on his own.

  The Overland Hotel sat on the northeast edge of town, on a rocky, sage-peppered lot, facing toward the main part of the settlement. It was an austere-looking three-story adobe-brick structure with a potted palm and two feeble, shaggy dogs sleeping in the lobby.

  The red-gowned, redheaded woman sweeping the lobby floor, around the two dead-to-the-world dogs and the potted palm, studied Raven critically as the young woman entered, the bell ringing over the door above her head. Not even the bell’s din awakened the two ancient curs.

  The woman in the red gown—probably a beauty in her day, though now in her middle age, she was clinging to her former glamour a little too desperately, with a little too much face paint, too much henna in her hair—frowned over her broom handle and raked her flashing brown eyes up and down Raven’s at once coltish and voluptuous body. She winced her disapproval at the girl’s dusty, rough-hewn trail clothes, the pistol on her hip, the sheathed rifle in her hand, and flashed a too-bright smile, “Yes—how can I help you, dear?” She fingered a locket hanging from a gold chain around her neck. The full corset of the gaudy red gown rose and fell heavily as her bold eyes fairly dined on her unlikely visitor.

  Raven walked up to the front desk—flanked by pigeonholes and a crude oil painting of a high-mountain lake with geese swooping onto its too-still, too-blue water—and set her sheathed Winchester down. She cuffed her hat back off her head and heard sand from its brim and crown tick quietly onto the floor.

  She glanced at the mess she’d made on the otherwise clean wooden floor and made a face. “Sorry about that. Been on the trail awhile. This wind’s a demon. I need a room. A quiet one, please.”

  “Good Lord,” the woman said, tittering, eyes flashing as she glanced at Raven’s weapons once more. “You do travel . . . well-armed, don’t you, my dear? Are you traveling alone?” She stood her broom against the wall, but it slid down to hit the floor with a sharp crack, though she seemed not to notice as she clomped on the high heels of her red shoes around behind the desk. Both sleeping dogs only groaned at the noise and continued slumbering.

  Footsteps sounded behind Raven. A door to another room opened, and a short, stocky man about the same age as the woman poked his head into the lobby and said, “Need help, Loretta?”

  His voice sputtered when his eyes found Raven standing at the desk, her back to him. The man’s eyes widened, brightened.

  “Not at all, Dudley,” the woman said, making a gesture as though brushing away a fly. “Go on back to the kitchen. I can more than adequately take care of this young lady myself.”

  Dudley raked his eyes across the backside of the raven-haired visitor once again, lustily, and then muttered something, ducked his head sheepishly, pulled it back into the room behind him, and closed the door with a click of the latching bolt.

  “That’s Dudley,” the woman told Raven, with no further introduction. For a second, Raven thought the woman was going to yawn, as though even his name bored her to death.

  “A room, please,” Raven said, setting her saddlebags atop the mahogany front desk. “Oh, make that two rooms.” She was fishing around inside her saddlebags for the leather grip in which she kept her traveling papers.

  “Oh, you’re not traveling alone?” the woman asked, arching her brows as she opened the large cloth-bound register book.

  “No, I’m traveling with my partner. He’ll be needing a room, too. Close to mine.”

  “Hmmm . . . traveling with a man, are you?”

  “Yes, I’m traveling with a man,” Raven said, annoyed by the woman’s pedestrian snoopiness, although, as a pretty young woman traveling alone, she encountered it all the time. She’d acquired the slightly devilish habit of toying with such snoopy folks. “A big man who’s even better armed than I am. You’d better give him a room with a big bed and not put anyone else too close to him. He snores. Like a bear.”

  She smiled up at the woman as she scribbled both hers and Bear’s names in the register book. “His name’s Bear, in fact.”

  “Good Lord, child!” the woman intoned, fingering her locket again, cheeks flushed. “How well do you know this man?”

  Raven winked and returned the pen to its holder.

  The woman tittered as she sort of swooned toward the pigeonholes behind her and plucked a key from its box. “You’ll have room five on the second story. I’ll give him, when he comes in, room seven.” She added in a whisper, her eyes flicking to Raven’s blouse, “Right across the hall!”

  “Much obliged.”

  “Not trouble at all . . .” she said, turning the register book toward her and glancing down at the page, “Miss York.”

  As Raven grabbed her saddlebags off the desk, the woman extended her hand to her. “I’m Loretta. Loretta Waddell. At your service, my dear. Anything you desire, please do not hesitate to ask. So far today, you and your, uh, friend are our only boarders.”

  Raven released the bags to shake the woman’s hand and said, “Pleasure to meet you, Miss Waddell.”

  “Loretta.”

  “Loretta it is. And I believe I’ll take you up on your offer, if it includes a bath. I’d like to scrub off the two or three inches of trail dust covering every inch of me.”

  Loretta Waddell’s cheeks reddened as she stepped back away from the desk, twirling the locket between her fingers and intoning like an off-key church organ, “A bath! Nooooo problem at all, Miss York. I’m sure a bath will feel most lovely against your tender skin, indeed. How perfect!”

  “Raven.”

  “No problem at all, Raven. I will heat and transport the water myself. I’d ask my husband, Dudley, but . . .” Loretta leaned over the desk and shielded her mouth discreetly as she raked out, “I simply don’t trust him around young, beautiful women. I think it has something to do with his age—just a goatish old brute, if you know what I mean. Why, sometimes I hav
e to discourage that old dong of his with a fly swatter, I swear!”

  She squealed a devilish laugh, cleared her throat, and said, “No problem at all, Raven. The range is already fired up for supper, so I will have the water heated and delivered to your room personally and in short order.”

  “Thank you, Loretta. I hope it’s not too much trouble.”

  “No trouble at all, dear,” Loretta intoned as Raven stepped away from the desk.

  As she palmed her room key and turned toward the stairs, she ran into one of the old dogs. It appeared to be a retriever cross, its muzzle white, its eyes pale with cataracts. The dog had awakened from its nap to sit down beside Raven, looking up as though urging attention, flopping its ratty tail.

  “Sorry, there, fella!” Raven said, dropping to a knee and giving the old dog a pat. “How you doin’ there, huh, old fella?”

  The dog tilted his head to the left as Raven scratched the ear on that side. Loretta acquired a sad, wistful look, shuttling her gaze between the dog and Raven. “That’s Fred. Can you believe I was your age when I found him in an alley of a now-defunct mining camp in Montana?” She shook her head and turned her mouth corners down. “Now look at him.”

  Raven smiled at the woman, no longer feeling quite so annoyed as sympathetic. “Time does fly.”

  “Oh, it does, dear,” Loretta said. “It does, indeed.”

  Raven straightened. The old dog limped back to where he had been sleeping near the other one, who had not awakened from its nap. To Loretta, Raven said, “Are you sure the bath isn’t too much trouble?”

  “No trouble at all,” Loretta said, the glitter returning to her smiling eyes.

  Raven picked up her rifle and climbed the stairs at the end of the lobby, her stockman’s boots thumping on the carpeted steps.

  In the second-floor hall, she stopped at the door to room 5. As she stuck the key in the lock, she glanced at the door on the opposite side of the hall, marked with a brass 7.

  Bear.

  She wondered how drunk he was getting, hoping he didn’t overdo it. Why did she care? Merely because she wanted her partner to be on top of his game tomorrow, when they began investigating the gang preying on Shirley’s stage line?

  Or was there some other reason?

  She went into her room, kicked the door closed, and tossed her gear onto the bed covered with a star quilt and two pillows with snowy cases. The room was small, with only about two feet of room between the bed and the walls on each side. In such tight confines, a shabby dresser abutting the same wall as the door appeared as large as a clipper ship anchored on a narrow bay, but the room was clean and comfortable just the same.

  It was, however, hot and stuffy. Raven tossed her hat onto the bed and went over to the room’s single window to the right of the bed’s headboard, slid the white lace curtains aside, and opened the pane.

  Fortunately, the wind had died somewhat, and a shovelful of dirt didn’t come blowing in.

  No, of course, there was no other reason for her concern.

  The big man was her partner, plain and simple. While she had to admit a physical attraction to him, the allure was only because he was relatively attractive in an oversized, bearish sort of way. She supposed the spark she felt harked back to the days when humans resided in caves. Back then, for practical reasons when choosing their mates, a woman chose the biggest, burliest, most capable caveman she could find, the one most adept at providing food, shelter, and protection from predators.

  And usually, such specimens just happened to also be loud and uncouth and most likely more than a little hard to share a fire with.

  Raven felt sorry for all those poor cavewomen who had had to endure the endless fireside strutting, preening, and bragging while their husbands sucked the marrow from mastodon bones. They were just lucky there’d been no saloons back then, and gambling hadn’t been invented yet.

  It embarrassed her that she could be so influenced by such atavistic urges, but there it was in a nutshell, reasonably explained. She was, by God, going to conquer this animal attraction that was far, far beneath her station.

  She would not—could not—continue to sleep with her colleague against the rules of the man and the company that had been gracious enough to employ her and against the rational, cultured, and refined manner in which she had been raised.

  Then again, her parents hadn’t exactly raised her to be a Pinkerton agent, either.

  But that was neither here nor there. Raven York was a cultivated, civilized lady despite her profession, and she was no longer going to find herself enslaved by Bear Haskell’s intoxicating, boyish grin and brawny physique, not to mention the admittedly impressive organ with which he was outfitted between his legs.

  No, she would never succumb to such base attractions again.

  Not ever, ever, ever.

  That did not mean, however, that she did not feel sorry for him—having killed the boy and all.

  Raven sat on the bed and drew a deep breath, half-consciously aware, beneath her new resolve, of feeling suddenly sad and lonely, which must have been the way her partner himself was also feeling now. Only part of the feeling was because of her sympathy for Haskell. There’d been something about the loneliness of the woman downstairs clinging so desperately to bygone years, to obscure desires, that made Raven consider her own time passing.

  Her own beauty fading, time running out.

  Even as a little girl, Raven had never considered marriage. She’d wanted more out of life than a man and a family. She’d wanted adventure.

  But what happened to a female Pinkerton agent when all the adventure had been spent and she found herself an aging spinster alone?

  She’d only been half-aware of hearing high heels clomping in the hall before someone knocked on her door. “It’s Loretta. From downstairs? I brought your bathtub, Raven!”

  17

  When she had finally gotten Loretta Waddell out of her room, Raven shucked out of her clothes and soaked in the water whose steam lifted like pale snakes from the copper tub. She scrubbed the trail grunge from her hair and skin, from beneath the nails of her fingers and toes, and then she leaned far back in the tub, hung her legs and arms over the sides, and soaked some more.

  She rolled her eyes when she heard Loretta’s heels in the hall. She gave a sigh when the knock came at the door. She tried to keep the irritation out of her voice when she said, “Yes?”

  “Care for a warm-up? I have another bucket out here, steaming hot!”

  Raven gave another sigh. She looked down at her body—her arms and legs hanging over the sides of the tub, her pink-tipped breasts riding just above the suds.

  Oh, why not give the woman a thrill? Likely, her husband couldn’t do that for her anymore—if he ever did. She’d said she’d lived in mining camps once. Maybe she’d been a soiled dove who’d gotten so sick of men that women were now her preference. Maybe if Raven gave Loretta a good look at her body, the woman’s curiosity would be satisfied, and she’d finally leave her alone.

  “Come in.”

  The door opened, and Mrs. Waddell came in carrying a steaming wooden bucket, kicking the door closed behind her. The woman’s eyes flickered across Raven’s body as she moved toward the tub, saying, “I thought you could use some fresh, hot water. Oh, dear, look at that. What a lovely body you have. You know, I used to have one like that.”

  “I’m sure it’s still beautiful,” Raven said, and immediately wished she hadn’t, as Loretta poured the hot water into the tub, between Raven’s spread legs.

  “Well, I reckon I can’t say it is or it isn’t,” Loretta said, chuckling. “But age is a thing to be reckoned with—I’ll tell you that, honey.” She set the bucket down, dropped to a knee beside the tub, and took up the soap and sponge from a towel folded atop a spool-back chair. “Lean forward, dear, and I’ll scrub your back.”

  �
�Oh, you don’t have to do that.”

  “Oh, Raven, even a girl as young and limber as you can’t reach behind to scrub her own back. Come on, now. Don’t be shy.”

  “Loretta, you’ve done enough.”

  “Raven, dear.”

  Raven feigned a grateful smile, curling her nose and half-rolling her eyes. “If you insist.”

  She pulled her arms and legs back into the tub, and, feeling her face flush with embarrassment—she hoped the woman wasn’t getting any wrong ideas about her sexual preferences—she leaned forward, and Loretta began running the sponge across her shoulder blades.

  “What a beautiful back,” Loretta said in a bittersweet tone.

  “Thanks.”

  “Oh, to be young again.” In the corner of her eye, Raven saw the woman glance around to get a peek at Raven’s breasts from the side. “And what a beautiful set of tits. You know what my Dudley would say about those?”

  “Uh, Loretta . . .”

  The woman laughed. “Oh, we’d better not go into that. No. Well, then . . .” She hummed while she lathered Raven’s back, making slow, swirling motions with the sponge. Raven had to admit that it was nice and felt good to have her back scrubbed despite the fact that she was beginning to think inviting the woman into her room had been a bad idea.

  “Just passing through, dear?” Loretta asked.

  Raven saw no reason to keep her mission a secret. “I’m here to investigate the stage robberies.”

  Loretta stopped scrubbing and leaned forward again to frown curiously into Raven’s eyes. “Investigate?”

  “I’m a Pinkerton agent. My partner and I were sent here by Mr. Pinkerton himself to run to ground the gang that’s been preying on the stage line.”

  Loretta whistled as she dipped the sponge in the water and began to rinse the soap from Raven’s back. “Well, I’ll be! A girl Pinkerton. What’ll they think of next? Back in my day, about the only work suitable for a young woman was teaching school, selling eggs, or dressing skimpily and singing in saloons.” She leaned forward again to give emphasis. “And all that goes along with the singin’ . . . if you catch my drift!”