Nathan Stark, Army Scout

by William W. Johnstone; J. A. Johnstone

  Between her and Jaycee Breckenridge, who in her early forties was Slash’s junior by roughly ten years, the two women made sure Slash and Pecos remained (relatively) sober during working hours and kept to a solid workaday schedule, whether they were running their new freighting company in northern Colorado or running down bad guys for Bleed-Em-So and Uncle Sam.

  “Yes, Myra,” both Slash and Pecos replied through the door, sheepish as schoolboys who’d been caught dropping garter snakes through the half-moon in the girls’ privy door.

  Five minutes later, the two stumbled out of their room and into the living and kitchen area of their shack. The main office was at the very front. Myra had a room off of the front office—a long lean-to addition she didn’t spend a whole lot of time in, since she was always filing or cleaning or wrangling the hostlers in charge of the wagons and mule teams in the barn, or going over books or shipping orders, or trying to make sense out of the cash receipts Slash and Pecos brought back from freighting runs.

  She was in the kitchen area of the shack now, just then scooping potatoes out of a cast-iron skillet onto two large stone plates while Jay stood at the range, scrambling eggs in the popping bacon grease.

  “There they finally are,” Jay quipped. “Drink a little too much last night—did you, boys?”

  “It was that card shark from Denver,” Slash said, walking up to his betrothed and wrapping an arm around her waist. “He kept buying us good Kentucky bourbon because apparently he didn’t think he was fleecing us badly enough without it.” He gave a caustic grunt and planted a kiss on Jay’s neck.

  Jay and Myra chuckled.

  “Thank you mighty kindly, ladies,” Pecos said, walking over to Myra, crouching down and planting a brotherly—or, given their age difference, a fatherly—peck on her cheek. “You sure didn’t have to go to all this trouble for me an’ Slash.” He gave his partner a cold look and added, “Especially for Slash.”

  Myra blushed and grabbed Pecos’s hand before he could pull away from her. She smiled up at the big, blond galoot. At least, he was a galoot in Slash’s eyes, though Slash reckoned his partner wasn’t nearly as ugly as Slash always told him he was. Melvin Baker was tall and blond—well, gray-blond these days—and broad-shouldered, with pale-blue eyes the ladies found quite alluring.

  Slash just liked to get under the bigger man’s skin because—well, because they had a relationship similar to that of quarreling and constantly roughhousing beloved brothers, and since Pecos was bigger, Slash thought the bigger man should be able to take the abuse. He just plain liked trying to rile the big man, if the truth be known. He attributed the desire to the ill-behaving boy remaining inside him despite the gray in his own thick dark brown hair, which he wore down over his collar.

  Myra didn’t seem to think Pecos was at all ugly. In fact, in the year or so they’d been operating the freighting business together—her, Slash, and Pecos—it had become more and more obvious that the young woman was positively smitten by the big, blond galoot. She turned to watch him now as he plucked a strip of bacon piled on a plate on the table. She grinned as she admonished him with: “Pecos, you mind your manners and wait till the rest of us are seated!”

  “I’ll be hanged if that ain’t great bacon, and it sure tastes good after a long night in which I got my pockets turned inside out!”

  “Come over here and get your plate,” Myra ordered him, lacing her voice with a crispness that was not heartfelt. “I put potatoes on it for you. I know you like a lot of potatoes, so I fried extra ... with onions and peppers, just the way like them.” She blushed as he walked over and crouched down to accept the plate and give her another peck on the cheek.

  “Thank you, honey. You’re gonna make one of the young men in town a fine wife someday.”

  “Oh, you!” she said, and turned around to face the counter to hide the look of vague frustration that had tumbled across her eyes. She didn’t want any of the young men in town—several of whom had come calling on her here at the freight yard a time or two. She wanted the big man right before her.

  “Ain’t that right, Slash?” Pecos said, taking his plate to where Slash stood with Jay, so Jay could shovel eggs onto it from the cast-iron skillet in which she’d scrambled them.

  “Ain’t what right?” Slash asked.

  “Ain’t Myra gonna make a right good wife one of these days?”

  Slash looked at Myra again. She kept her back to them as she buttered the toasted bread on the counter before her.

  “I reckon that’s right,” Slash said.

  Jaycee glanced at Myra then, too, and, sensing the turmoil inside the younger woman, gave her arm an affectionate squeeze. Jaycee shot Slash a conferring look. Slash only shrugged.

  “I’m gonna sit outside and eat on the porch,” Pecos announced, when he’d piled bacon over his potatoes and eggs, and had accepted a slice of toasted bread from Myra.

  “I’ll join you,” Myra announced, and quickly filled her own plate.

  When she and Pecos had stepped out the side door, where there was a short stoop facing the freight yard corrals and barn and blacksmith shop to the west, Slash set his plate down on the table and dragged a chair out with his boot.

  As he did, Jay turned to him from the range, with her own filled plate, and said, “That big galoot is going to break that poor girl’s heart, Slash. Isn’t there something you can do about it?”

  CHAPTER 4

  “Ah, hell, I don’t know what to do about him,” Slash said. “Pecos, he don’t seem to realize his effect on Myra.”

  Jay set a piece of toast on her plate, then moved to the table, shaking her copper hair back from her face. She wore a formfitting cambric day frock printed with a wildflower pattern and an apron. The simple dress was a stark contrast to the richly colored velveteen gowns she usually wore at work, managing the Thousand Delights.

  This morning, she wore her hair down, and it shone with a recent washing and brushing. She wore no rouge on her face, like she usually wore at night at the popular watering hole, gambling parlor, and whorehouse.

  All in all, it was a softer, more domestic look for Jay—one that Slash very much liked on her.

  Jay sat down across from him, reached across the table, and squeezed his hand. Gently, she said, “Maybe you should talk to him. Explain it to him—how Myra obviously feels about him.”

  “Ah, heck, Jay—you know women are always fallin’ in love with that big galoot. Big he may be, but he’s a charmer with his soft voice and his easy way with women.”

  “So what are you saying?”

  “Maybe we should just let it run its course. How’s he supposed to keep the girl from tumbling for him when so many others have in the past?”

  “But he’s going to break her heart, Slash. She’s had a tough time, having such a lousy upbringing, then getting enmeshed in that outlaw gang.” In fact, it had been Slash and Pecos’s own gang she’d gotten enmeshed in. When Bledsoe had sent the two former cutthroats out to run their old gang to ground, the gang, led by a couple of young firebrands who’d double-crossed Slash and Pecos, had sent the pretty young Myra back to distract them and kill them, though obviously and fortunately for Slash and Pecos, she hadn’t managed to pull it off.

  In fact, Jay herself had intervened. If not for Jaycee Breckenridge’s help, Slash and Pecos would have been crowbait.

  “And now ...” Jay turned to the open side door through which she and Slash could hear Pecos and Myra chatting and chuckling together.

  “And now she’s got her feelings all wrapped around that big, old cutthroat out there on the porch,” Slash finished for her, pausing with a forkful of eggs and potatoes to stare out the open door and into the brightly lit yard. “All right, I’ll talk to him on our way to Dry Fork. That’s a three-day ride, so we’ll have plenty of time to powwow about it. Maybe we can come up with a plan to cushion the blow for her. That big, old reprobate is too damn old for her. I wonder what she’s thinkin’.”

  Jay swallowed a m
outhful of the succulent vittles and smiled sweetly across the table at Slash. “At that age, they don’t think. They just feel. Don’t you remember?”

  “Um ... well . . . yeah, of course I do ...” Slash kept his eyes on his food and kept shoveling it into his mouth, trying to keep the lie from showing on his face. At least, he thought it was a lie. Back when he’d been Myra’s age, he’d been so busy stomping with his tail up, chasing women as opposed to falling in love with them, as well as robbing banks, stagecoaches, trains, and anything else that housed or carried money, that he really hadn’t taken time to fall in love.

  Or maybe he hadn’t been capable of falling in love back then.

  But he was now ... wasn’t he?

  He glanced up at Jay studying him a little too quizzically for his own good comfort. He was in love with her, wasn’t he? Wasn’t that what he felt for her? Or did he really know what love was even now in his yonder years... ?

  “Slash,” Jay pressed him, “you have been in love before, haven’t you?”

  “Of course, I have.” He chuckled as he shoved more food into his mouth, returning his gaze to his plate. “I mean... yeah... time or two...”

  “Slash?”

  He felt his shoulders tighten. He didn’t like the serious tone of her voice. It meant they were going to have a conversation about something important, and Slash Braddock was a man who preferred to focus on frivolous things.

  Steeling himself, holding his freshly loaded fork in front of his mouth, he said, “Yeah, Jay?”

  “You do love me... right?”

  “Of course, I do.” Chuckling again, he reached across the table with his free hand and closed it around her own free hand. “Of course, I do, Jay. We’re gettin’ hitched, ain’t we?”

  She studied him. Her eyes were painfully serious, probing. They sort of made Slash shrivel up inside and start thinking that it was maybe time for him and Pecos to hit the trail for Dry Fork.

  “Slash?”

  “Uh-huh.”

  Jay canted her head a little to one side, narrowing one of her serious eyes. “You aren’t getting cold feet, are you?”

  “Me? Cold feet? Nah!”

  Slash was genuinely astonished by the question. He’d made up his mind to marry this beautiful, copper-haired, hazel-eyed woman. He’d been in love with her—at least, in something very close to love, if he had any idea at all about the nature of love—since she’d been hitched to Pistol Pete Johnson. That had been years ago. He’d loved her beauty, which she still very much maintained even now in her forties. He’d loved her earthiness and practicality ... the ease with which he found himself being able to talk to her, like no other woman ever before. He liked the way she wore a blouse and a tight-fitting pair of jeans ... and the way she walked... the sound of her voice... her husky laugh... the fact that she didn’t begrudge a man an off-color joke now and then and even told them herself . . . and several other things about her he’d best not think about lest he start blushing.

  He really did, deep down, feel that he and Jay were soul mates. If he knew anything else about his often-mysterious self, it was that he could see himself growing old with Jaycee Breckenridge.

  “Are you sure?”

  “Certain-sure.” Slash squeezed her hand a little harder and gave her a direct stare, which was not something that came easy to him, given his shy nature, especially around most women.... “I love you, Jay. I am not getting cold feet. Hell, they ain’t even chilly!”

  They both chuckled at that. Jay seemed convinced.

  “All right, then,” she said, setting her fork down on her empty plate. “You boys best get moving. It’s almost eight thirty. When you get back, I thought we’d go over to that house Old Man Springer put up for sale last week. The one on the south edge of town, by the Poudre River?”

  “A house?” Slash said. He’d had to clear his throat to get it out. For some reason, his vocal cords suddenly felt more cumbersome than they had a minute ago.

  “Yes, a house.” Rising from her chair and picking up their empty plates, Jay laughed as she looked around the cluttered, roughhewn cabin. “You don’t think we’re going to live here after we’re married, do you? With Pecos?”

  She laughed again.

  “You better be talkin’ me up in there and not drown!” Pecos yelled from out on the porch.

  Slash chuckled, but it sounded wooden to his own ears. “Oh, right, right. You’d get tired of smellin’ his socks in no time—like I done twenty years ago.” Slash laughed. Pecos cursed them both from the porch.

  Then Slash said, “Let’s go over and take a look at Old Man Springer’s place just as soon as we get back from Dry Fork, darlin’.” He winked.

  She smiled, then as she dropped the plates in the wreck pan over the dry sink, she frowned over her shoulder at him. “Why is old Bleed-Em-So sending you boys to Dry Fork, anyway? I don’t think you told me last night.”

  “Pickin’ up some prisoners, is all. Transportin’ ’em via jail wagon to Cheyenne, then via train to the federal building in Denver to stand trial.”

  “Is it dangerous?” Jay asked.

  “Nah, this should be an easy one, for a change.” Slash threw back the last of his tepid coffee, then rose from his chair. “In fact, it’s so unimportant that the chief marshal only sent a letter this time, giving us the assignment. You know how if it’s somethin’ bigger and needs more explainin’ we meet the old devil himself out somewhere?”

  Slash shook his head as he plucked his black hat off a wall peg. “Not this time. The way I figure it, he didn’t have some wet-behind-the-ears lacky deputy handy, so he decided to send me an’ Pecos. That’s all right. As long as the check don’t bounce. Me, I’m ready for a nice, peaceful ride in the country, anyways. Maybe do a little fishin’ up around the North Platte. Haven’t done that in years.”

  “Yeah, I reckon this is just a little vacation for me an’ Slash.”

  Pecos followed Myra back through the side door and into the cabin. Myra was carrying the empty plates of her and Pecos both. “We’ll just have to take that load of dry goods up to Del Porter in Jamestown after we get back next week,” Pecos continued, stretching and yawning, the ill effects of last night apparently lingering in the big man’s bones.

  “Want me to send a telegram to let Porter know about the delay, Pecos?” Myra asked, helpfully.

  “Would you mind, darlin’?”

  The pretty brown-eyed girl, gifted with a thick head of pretty auburn curls, beamed up at the big, gray-blond ex-outlaw. “I’d love to. Anything I can do to help out. You know that, Pecos.”

  “Thanks, darlin’.” Pecos pecked her cheek again, and Slash thought the girl was going to squirm out of the red calico prairie dress she wore.

  The two men said their goodbyes, both ex-outlaws hugging both women, for the four were like a family, after all, then headed out of the cabin through the side door, heading for the barn and their horses. They’d been instructed to ride up to Cheyenne to pick up the federal jail wagon from the barn behind the courthouse.

  “Hey,” Jay called from the side porch. “I know it’s an easy job. Leastways, it sounds like one. But you know how you two manage to get yourselves into trouble no matter what?”

  Both men, halfway to the barn, stopped and turned to her, grinning guiltily.

  They glanced at each other. Then Slash said, chuckling, “I reckon we do, at that, sweetheart.”

  Jaycee Breckenridge planted her fists on her shapely hips and canted her head to one side, fixing them both with a pleading scowl. “Please, don’t!”

  * * *

  “So ... what do you think about that girl?” Slash asked Pecos an hour later as, astride their well-traveled mounts, they followed the Union Pacific rails north toward Cheyenne. The Front Range of the Rocky Mountains lumped boldly up on their left.

  “What girl?”

  “What girl?” Slash said with a caustic grunt. “Myra! Who the hell you suppose I’m talkin’ about?”

  “I
don’t know—I thought maybe you were referring to one of Jay’s girls.” Jay wrangled a stable of pretty doxies over at the Thousand Delights, and Pecos regularly partook of the lovely ladies’ delights, although Slash refrained for obvious reasons—namely, because he was fixing to marry the madam.

  “No, I’m not referring to one of Jay’s girls. I know what you think of them. It’s obvious every time you walk into the saloon and they tumble all over you, and you blush up like an Arizona sunset.” Slash chuckled, wagging his head. “No, it’s Myra, I’m talkin’ about, you fool!”

  Pecos scowled at him from beneath his tan Stetson. “Well, what about her?”

  “Can’t you see she’s done tumbled for you?”

  “Tumbled?” Pecos frowned, pensive, disbelieving. “For me?”

  “Yes, for you.” Slash stared at him in exasperation. “You mean you really haven’t seen it? The way she looks at you and fawns all over you? Not like Jay’s girls, but like a girl who has rightly and truly, make-no-mistake tumbled for you?”

  “Pshaw!” Pecos said. “We’re just pals, Myra an’ me. Just like Myra an’ you!”

  Slash shook his head again. “Boy, here I thought I was the stupid one when it came to women.” He gave a caustic laugh as he stared straight ahead at the blond prairie rising gradually toward where Cheyenne was laid out amidst haystack buttes to the north.

  Pecos continued staring at him skeptically as they rode along the two-track maintenance trail hugging the shiny iron rails. Slash rode a rangy Appaloosa, while Pecos straddled a buckskin big enough, seventeen hands high, to carry his bulk. “Stop insultin’ me an’ chew it up a little finer for me, will you, Slash—before I haul you out of your saddle and kick the stuffing out of both ends of your!”

  Slash sighed. “Myra’s gone for you.” He spoke more slowly, enunciating each word carefully. “She has fallen head-overheels, bloomers-over-her-head in love with you, you dunderheaded polecat!”