The Honorable Nobody (Heroines on Horseback Book 2)
Page 30
But he was worth it. For him, she would make this dreadful life into something as beautiful as her old one had once been.
***
“There’s a new claim to the north of mine,” Jared said thoughtfully, admiring the amber depths of his cloudy glass. He could still see the bartender’s fingerprints around the rim. The Professor was not an overly fastidious fellow, but a man drank where a man could drink. “Surprised to see someone try to take it on. That’s a rough piece of land.”
“Not much water on it,” his neighbor at the bar agreed, scraping at his black whiskers. “Just that shallow little creek cutting across the southeast corner. Guess a fella could get some water off it though.”
“My creek,” Jared clarified. “The headwaters are from that spring right near my cabin. I’m going to irrigate my wheat fields from that creek.”
“Don’t imagine there’ll be much left for the other claim if you start diverting water.”
“Not my problem, Matt,” Jared said flatly, and tossed back the whiskey with a practiced flick of the wrist. He didn’t even blink at the burn; in fact, sometimes he kinda missed it, that the raw pain that made a boy’s eyes tear up. A man got used to everything, and then he forgot why he’d liked it to begin with. “Can’t help these damn greenhorns, just gotta let them fail on their own and get back on the train East.”
“You were a greenhorn from back East once,” Matt said daringly. “I reckon you were just as foolish.”
Jared glowered down at the dregs in his glass. It wobbled unevenly on the rough splinters of the bar. Last week Tiny Pete had flung Big Pete right through the bar here and it had been hastily patched together with some bits of raw board from Morrison’s lumber-yard. Big Pete was still in his bed at the Red Rose Rooming House, being tended to hand and foot by Miss Rose herself, if rumor was to believed. So it had worked out okay for Big Pete in the end, gossips agreed. Miss Rose wasn’t young, but she had a sweet way about her, and curves like a Kentucky-bred filly.
Jared didn’t see what all the fuss was about, mind you. Miss Rose was long in the tooth and light with her skirt. And Jared had had quite enough of light-skirted ladies pretending to be respectable.
He took off his wide-brimmed cowboy hat and rubbed at his dark-brown hair. He thought maybe he was losing some of it. He’d thought that for years and because of that fear it was too long, falling in loose curls over his ears and his shirt collar and into his eyes, a mop of hair worthy of a some East Coast Dandy, but Jared wasn’t no dandy. He might have been born back East, but he’d been raised on a horse, he’d been roping steers since he was seven, and for Matt to compare him to some tenderfoot from the city was just plain crazy talk.
“I wasn’t never green,” Jared growled finally, liquor rasping at the edges of his deep voice. “I was just young.”
“Sure,” Matt allowed agreeably. Matt was agreeable. That was his strongest talent, his agreeableness. He was the opposite of Jared in that respect. “You was just young. And,” he added slyly, “you never made no mistakes.”
“I made a few,” Jared blurted tensely, more to the bar than to his drinking buddy. “I made a few.” He pushed back his chair suddenly and stood from the bar. The Professor looked up from behind the bar, alert as always to any loud noises that might signal a bar fight was about to commence. He loved a good bet as much as the next man. He saw it was only Jared and shook his head, going back to rubbing glasses with a greasy cloth. Jared never caused trouble. He mighta been a cowboy once, but even then he’d never been the hootin’ hollerin’ hell-raisin’ kind. Jared was a more thoughtful sort of man. He’d talk to a man and take him outside before he’d throw a punch.
“You leavin’?” Matt was still slumped over his glass. He peered up at Jared blearily. “Where you goin’?”
Jared sloped out of the saloon without a word to Matt, and so Matt, used to his old friend’s changeable temper, did not bother to follow him. It was a hot son-of-a-bitch of a day anyway, and not even the bonds of friendship could withstand the pleasure of sitting in a cool dark room and letting another man refill his glass with rotgut, again and again, waiting for night to fall so that he could commence with his inevitable bad behavior and obscure, half-forgotten endings.
And he didn’t need Jared for that. Jared rarely had anything to do with these foolish nights on the town, such as it was, unless he showed up to pick Matt up and brush him off and send him home. He was a good fellow for riding with, a good hand with a horse and a good partner with a rope and a cow, and he had done a dang fine job on his nights with the cook-pot too, but ever since that last winter in Galveston, Jared had got downright sullen. He’d given up the drives and put in a claim and built that cabin along that cold little no-name creek, but still, his mood had gone from bad to worse. Why, Matt could hardly tell if they were even friends anymore, half the time. It was obvious living in one place wasn’t doing him any favors. But when Matt had suggested they join old Captain Jarvis’s cattle drive and spend the coming winter in Galveston, Jared had flared up and told him not to talk nonsense. He was a homesteader now, and he wasn’t goin’ nowhere.
Matt lifted an eyebrow at his empty glass, regarding it sadly, and the Professor took the hint, lifting a bottle with his liver-spotted hand and dropping a few fingers tremblingly into the smudged glass. Matt smiled. The Professor smiled. He wiped a filthy glass on his spotless black vest, splashed it full again, and the two men threw back their portions together. When the Professor raised the bottle again, his hand wasn’t shaking anymore.
Matt knew whiskey was the best medicine, and this just proved it.