CHAPTER 11
“That girl’s taken a shine to you,” Slash said, glancing at Pecos sitting beside him on the driver’s seat. “You know that, don’t you?”
Pecos frowned at him. “Who?”
“Myra, ya dope!”
“Myra? Taken a shine to me? Why, she’s young enough to be . . . well, she’s young enough to be the oldest daughter of my oldest brother. Oldest brother by a long shot!” Pecos snorted to himself and ran a sleeve of his suit coat across his mouth.
“She’s old enough to be your daughter, ya lout!”
“She’s old enough to be my daughter if I fathered her when I was still a boy. Now, that’s as far as I’m gonna go. You keep pushin’ it, I’m gonna drag you down off this noisy contraption and kick your bony behind!”
“All right, all right. Don’t get your bloomers in a twist. I’ll let that part go. Fer now.” Slash shook his head and gave a wry chuff. “Believe me, I’m even more confounded by the situation my ownself. Don’t see how anyone could take a shine to an old scudder such as yourself, let alone a pretty young thing like Myra Thompson. But she has, all right. You maybe can’t see it, but I can.”
He turned to his partner, gesturing with his hands. “Every time she looks at you, she gets two little pink dots and one large pink dot right here on her cheeks.”
“Oh, she don’t, neither.”
“Does, too.”
They were riding along through the mountains, following a narrow, winding valley toward the Sawatch Range. This was their first day on the trail. They’d gotten a late start after the row with Todd Elwood and having to show Myra around the freight yard.
It was just after midday, and Slash was driving the team of four mules. They were leading their saddle horses—Slash’s Appaloosa and Pecos’s buckskin. Sometimes a man had to ride far wide of these well-traveled mountain trails to find game of a night, and it was best to have a good saddle horse along for that purpose.
The box behind the two former cutthroats was empty. Slash had thought it best just to cover it with a tarpaulin rather than fill it with wood. This way, the pull would be easier on the mules, and they’d make better time in climbing to Tin Cup.
Bleed-Em-So’s advice about the wood be damned. He’d likely never driven a freight wagon before.
No one had any reason to believe the two freighters were not hauling freight in their freight wagon.
“She don’t neither.”
“She does, too!”
Pecos glanced at Slash, one brow arched over a lake blue eye beneath a thin blond brow. “You really think so?”
“I know so. All mornin’, she was followin’ you around like a long-lost stray that had finally found its owner. Only”—Slash grinned at the big blond freighter—“I heard violins sawing soft and low in her heart.”
“I’ll be damned.” Pecos looked straight ahead over the mules’ twitching ears and shook his head. “So I wasn’t just imagining it.”
“You sensed it, too?”
Pecos grimaced, nodded. “Yeah, I could kinda feel her eyes on me too long at a stretch. Then when I’d look at her, she’d look away right quick an’ flush like you said, or she’d continue gazin’ up at me, her eyes fairly glowin’ like sunshine through rose petals.”
“Like sunshine through rose petals. Damn! No wonder she’s gone for you—you silver-tongued old devil!”
“I think I mighta stole that from somewhere,” Pecos lied.
Slash dug a half-smoked cheroot out of his shirt pocket, inside his coat, and stuck it in his mouth. “What’re you gonna do about it?”
He scratched a lucifer to life on his thumbnail.
“I don’t know. It makes a fella feel like struttin’ with his feathers out to know such a young, purty thing gets all fluttery-hearted over him, but you’re right. I’m too damn old for her. She needs her a younger man.” Pecos sighed. “Oh, well. She’ll be alone there in Fort Collins a few days before we get back. The way she looks, she’ll turn more than a few heads around town in that time. Hell, by the time we get back to the freight yard, there’ll probably be a whole line of young men linin’ up at her front door, waitin’ to ask for her hand in holy matrimony.”
“Maybe.”
Pecos glanced at Slash. “Say, I forgot to ask. Speakin’ of our love lives, how’d it go with Jay?”
Slash’s belly twisted. “How’d what go?”
“I assume you seen her this mornin’ in the Thousand Delights. I figured you went alone so you could talk to her—you know.” Pecos grinned insinuatingly. “Private-like.”
“No, I didn’t.”
“You mean you didn’t see her?”
“No, I didn’t go in alone to see her private-like.” Slash paused, winced. “Or . . . maybe I did. I’m not sure.”
“Slash, fer cryin’ in Grant’s whiskey, did you see her or not?”
“What’s it to you?”
Pecos studied him through one narrowed eye. “Did you make a mess of it?”
Slash stretched his lips back from his teeth in silent agony. Only half aware of what he was doing, he steered the mules around a tree that had fallen partly into the trail. When they were past the hazard, he blew out a long breath, and said, “I think I lost her for good.”
“What happened?”
“She asked me if I’d object to her steppin’ out with Cisco Walsh.”
“She did? She asked you that?”
“Sure as hell.”
“What’d you say?”
“I don’t wanna tell you. You’ll drag me off this noisy contraption and kick my scrawny ass.” Slash turned to his friend in misery. “And you know what, Pecos?”
“What?”
“It’d be too good for me!”
“She was testin’ you—you know that, don’t you?”
“Yes, I know that.”
“So what’d you tell her? Go ahead—risk it. Your punishment can’t get any more severe.”
“I wished her the best.”
Pecos blinked, astounded. “You wished her the best?”
“Yep, that’s what I did, all right.” Slash jerked back on the ribbons and worked the brake. “Whoa, now, Socrates!” he called to the lead puller. “Whoa, Katie! Whoahhhh, you hayburners!”
“What’re you gonna do?” Pecos asked him when the wagon had stopped.
Slash set the brake, then clambered down off the wagon, his guts roiling. “I think . . . I think I’m gonna air out my paunch!”
He stumbled off into the brush.