The Long Trail (The McCabes Book 1) by Brad Dennison (microsoft ebook reader .TXT) 📗

to do some unpleasant things just to survive, yes. But you’re only a saloon whore if that’s how you think of yourself. And you don’t have to think of yourself like that any longer.”

“Take me, Josh. Right here. Right now.”

“I can’t. I’d be treating you no better than all the other men have.”

“There’s one big difference. With those other men, I never had any choice. I had to, so I wouldn’t starve. And with Loggins, I don’t have a choice either. With you, I do. And I choose you.”

“You can leave all of this behind you,” he said. “Come with me, and I’ll take you away from all of it, and you can start over again.”

She pulled away, a surge of panic rushing through her. “What are you saying? Leave? I can’t go with you.”

“Why not?”

“Because..,” she found herself reaching frantically for words that wouldn’t come because of the suddenness of it all, ideas that wouldn’t fully form.

“Because, I can’t!” she turned and ran.

That night, she stood before a mirror mounted on the wall of one of the two bedrooms in the cabin. By the light of a candle standing on a small table in one corner, she was trying to tie her hair into a fashion she had seen worn by the wife of the mine owner in town, but couldn’t quite figure it out.

She was wearing a slip only, and when Loggins parted the blanket that served as a door and stepped in and planted a kiss on her neck, she did not find herself smiling. She found herself thinking of Josh.

“What’re you doin’?” he asked.

“Trying to fix my hair.”

“Why?” he seemed truly perplexed.

“So I can look pretty.”

“Pretty?” A chuckle began, and grew into a laugh. “You? Pretty?”

She let her arms drop to her sides, her hair falling loosely to her shoulders.

“Nothin’ your hair can do will make you look pretty. Not with that nose, and your eyes too close together. You’re a saloon whore, Tempy. You don’t need to look pretty. All you need to do is satisfy your man.”

He saw her jeans lying on the bed. “I don’t know what’s getting’ into you, girl, wearin’ that dress-thing. You know I like you better in jeans. Show’s the roundness of your ass better,” his hands reached for and grabbed her bottom. “Get this foolish thing off.”

She did as instructed, letting it drop to the rough hewn floorboards, and he pulled her to the bed and under the covers.

When he was done, he lay snoring, the smell of his whiskey-soaked breath filling the room. She curled up under the blankets at the far side of the bed, and wept silently until sleep finally took her.

The following afternoon, Vic Falcone sent Flossy to fetch Dusty, then sent her to the garden so Falcone could be alone in the cabin with his guest.

This time, Falcone didn’t offer him a drink.

“I’ve made my decision,” Falcone said.

Falcone strolled thoughtfully toward the hearth, then turned to face Dusty. “As much as I would like to trust you, Dusty, I can’t afford the chance of being wrong.”

As if on cue, which Dusty realized it probably was, Loggins and Kiowa stepped from the back room, each with a pistol trained at him.

“In the morning,” Falcone said, “you and Josh will be shot. I am truly sorry.”

Kiowa smiled. “I ain’t.”

THIRTY-EIGHT

Dusty sighed, long and wearily and with much exasperation, as Loggins bound his wrists behind his back with a strip of rawhide. Loggins then did the same with Josh, and left them both sitting at the crest of the grassy slope behind the cabin.

Loggins stepped away, to where Stew was sitting at a bench alongside Kiowa at the cabin wall. Kiowa held a pint bottle of clearish liquid Dusty guessed to be corn squeezings?

Kiowa raised the bottle to Dusty in a mock salute. He called out, “Tomorrow morning, muchacho, I gut you like a pig. I’ve been waiting to do this ever since Patterson first took you in. I will gut you like a pig, and watch you slowly die.”

“I take it your plan didn’t work,” Josh muttered to Dusty, with an edge of sarcasm.

Dusty shook his head grimly. “How about you? I noticed you were trying to work that girl. Did you get anywhere with her?”

Dusty didn’t realize quite how loaded a question that was.

Josh had seen Temperance a handful of times that day. She had been again wearing jeans and a range shirt, and he had caught her looking at him a couple of times with open sadness in her eyes. One time their eyes had met for a moment, then she looked away. Josh called to her, but she turned and ran into the woods. That had been around noon, and now the sun was drifting low in the western sky.

“No,” he said. “My plan was a complete failure. In more ways than one. I guess I made the mistake of getting too close to her. I’m still new at this.”

“I can’t fault you for that. I grew up in this life, and I didn’t do any better.”

A question occurred to Josh. “Why is Falcone holding off until tomorrow on letting Kiowa kill us? Why not do it right now?”

“Falcone is just enough of a military man to want things done by a sort of schedule. He used to teach at a military school back east, or so I’m told. A condemned man is always given a least a night to ponder his fate and make peace with his maker before he’s put in front of a firing squad.”

“Hey!” Kiowa called over to them. “No talking, or I will go to work on you tonight.”

“And violate Falcone’s order?” Dusty called back. “You don’t have the backbone for that.”

Kiowa drew his knife, a bowie that gleamed in the late afternoon sunlight. “Shut your mouth, little muchacho, or I will show you how much guts I have.”

Dusty said to Josh, “We may have a way out of this, yet.”

He then raised his voice to Kiowa.