High and Wild (11 page)

The kid sucked a deep drag off his quirley, blew the smoke toward the ceiling, and smiled obliquely. “'Cause he owns Black Diamond Freighting.”

Haskell wanted to hear more about this freighting company, since the man he was looking for was or had been a freighter himself, and the file on him had mentioned a dispute between Wendigo freighting companies. But just then, a girl's voice rose from outside a window above Haskell.

“Burt, how you holdin' up in there?”

12

T
he sandy-haired kid named
Burt rose from his cot and looked toward the window just to Haskell's right. It was crisscrossed with iron bands so that the face peering through it was obscured, but Haskell glimpsed curls of tawny hair tumbling to slender shoulders.

“Teddy?” the kid called.

“I got the money, Burt,” the girl said. “I'll have you out in a minute.”

“Ah, God damn it, Teddy, don't go spendin' our operatin' money on me. I'll spend the week Goodthunder sentenced me to right in here!”

“We can't afford to have you locked up for a week, Burt. I got the contract for the King Henry. Now, you hush. I'll be right there!”

Burt gave a caustic chuff and yelled, “Teddy!”

But the girl had moved away from the window. Haskell could hear boots thudding beyond the stout log wall behind him. He sat up and regarded Burt, who sank back down on the edge of the cot with a curse.

“Teddy?” Haskell said skeptically. “That girl I seen on the street sure didn't look like no Teddy.”

“Theodora,” Burt said, doffing his battered hat and raking his hands in frustration through his hair. “Theodora Redwine. A big, oyster-busting pain in the ass, though she probably don't weigh much more than a hundred pounds.”

“I sorta gathered that,” Haskell said, sitting up against the log wall. “I mean both that she could bust a fella's oysters right quick and that she don't weigh more than a thimbleful of whiskey.”

Voices rose from the main office, beyond the cell block's stout wooden door outfitted with a barred window in the top. Haskell could hear the girl's voice pitched with threat.

He could also hear the rumble of Goodthunder's voice. The sheriff's voice was drowned by the girl's for a time, and then a key rattled in the cell-block door. The door opened, and Goodthunder strode into the cell block with a frustrated sigh, wagging his head in what appeared like bitter defeat.

“Miss Redwine, I don't believe I've ever known a young lady sassier than you,” Goodthunder lamented. He looked flustered as he strode past Haskell's cell, lapels of his black frock coat flapping. He held a key ring in his right hand. “I can tell that your father did not take you over his knee near enough!”

The girl followed the sheriff past Haskell's cell. Haskell stared at her. She was a tough-nosed beauty, that one.

When she glanced at Haskell, turning her head just slightly, he felt as though it was her expensive rug he'd just tramped shit on. She turned away with a little curl of her fine suntanned nose and pulled up behind Goodthunder, who'd stopped at Burt's cell.

“Your sister, Mr. Redwine, will not pay me the money for your bail until I have opened this door. She doesn't trust me, she says, farther than she could throw me uphill against an East Texas cyclone.”

Burt was glaring at his sister. “Teddy, I told you I'd rather rot in here than have you spend our operating money on my bail. It's my own damn fault I'm in here in the first place!”

“It sure as hell is,” Teddy said, “but we got a contract to fulfill, and Sonny can't drive both wagons. You know I sure as hell can't! Now, get your ass out here before this son of a bitch ups the bail on us. I never heard of no sheriff settin' bail, anyways. Christ almighty, Goodthunder, ain't that the judge's job?”

“Whenever the judge is on a bender,” Goodthunder said to the girl, glaring down at her from his six-foot-two height, “I am judge, jury, and executioner. Keep that in mind! Now, hand over the money, God damn it, before I lock both you consarned Redwines up together.”

Teddy slapped a wad of bills against the sheriff's chest. While he counted it, she strolled up to Haskell's cell door, canting her head to one side, appraising the prisoner. “You're a big son of a bitch, aren't you?”

Haskell chuckled. “The sheriff's right—you got a mouth, girl!”

“I wasn't raised right. Neither was Burt. That's why he's in here. What about you? Why are you here?”

“I tracked shit into the Sawatch House Saloon.”

The girl grinned. She had a pretty grin made even prettier by the devilish glint in her eyes, which were the color of sandstone with the west-falling sun shining on it. “On
Judith's
new rug?”

“One and the same. And then I tattooed Rock and Samson.” Haskell shook his head. “Those boys will never be the same.”

“You weren't raised right, either!”

“Well, my mam and pap would disagree, but I reckon the proof's in the puddin'.”

Goodthunder stuffed the money into his shirt pocket and said, “No fraternizing with the prisoners, Miss Redwine.”

“Go fuck yourself, Sheriff,” Teddy said casually, keeping her eyes on Haskell, sizing him up once more through the iron bands of his cell door. “If you ever get out of here, which I don't expect you will after what you done, and if you want a job, look me an' Burt up. Redwine Freighting Company. Sometimes, when my brother is
indisposed
, I need a relief driver.”

Teddy looked at Haskell's thick neck, shoulders, and arms. “I bet you could handle a ten-mule hitch . . . and just about any hitch you had a mind to.”

She held his gaze for a beat, winked, glanced at Burt, who'd come up behind her, and started walking toward the cell-block door.

“Never heard a girl talk like that in all my days,” Goodthunder said, shaking his head in disgust as he followed Teddy and Burt toward the main office. “That's a new one on me. I don't know how you'll ever get a decent man to marry you, Miss Redwine.”

The girl retorted with what sounded like her typical insolence, but what she said was obscured by the thump of the cell-block door being closed and the rattle of the bolt being thrown.

Haskell rested his tender head against the sour pillow and thought through the girl's offer.

If he ever got out of Goodthunder's jail, he might just see about taking her up on it. It might be a good way to mix with the area freighters, whom he'd probe for information about Briar.

Just then, another female voice rose from the barred window to his right. “Haskell?”

This female voice was familiar. Before he'd even put a face to it, he felt as though a warm, gentle hand had wrapped itself around his scrotum.

“Raven?”

“You damn fool!” she hissed.

Haskell rose despite his pounding head and stepped back to where he could get a better look out the window. But there was no one there. Footsteps sounded just outside the wall behind him.

R
aven stepped back away
from the jailhouse window and strode along the wall toward the sheriff office's front veranda. She wore an amiable smile on her ruby-red lips beneath the brim of her feathered picture hat, but under that cool veneer, the raven-haired beauty was seething.

The damn fool—as she hadn't been able to help so correctly hissing at her partner and colleague through the jailhouse window, although she knew she was going against the orders of Mr. Pinkerton himself—seemed bound and determined to undermine the integrity of his and her mission here in Wendigo.

Raven's stagecoach had pulled into town the day before. She'd taken a room in the Sawatch House Hotel, and, having heard less than a half hour ago the familiar, thundering voice echoing around the main drinking hall, she'd slipped out of her room and onto the balcony to gaze down into the saloon, where Bear Haskell himself was doing his best imitation of . . . of what exactly she couldn't imagine!

A raging moron who needed to be locked up in the nearest asylum?

What on God's green earth could the man have been thinking to have made such a stupid error, striding into the most elegant establishment in town—although that admittedly wasn't saying much—and not only to track dung on a new carpet but to start shouting the name of the man whom he and Raven had been assigned to look for and then, on top of that, start beating people up!

They were investigating the whereabouts of a man who had gone missing under what appeared to be very suspicious circumstances, and that sort of investigation required
subterfuge
.

As Raven had gazed in shock and horror at her partner doing his best to lay waste to the Sawatch House Saloon, she'd begun to wonder if Mr. Pinkerton wasn't blind to Haskell's weaknesses—namely, his inability to think coherently or rationally and to carry himself with any delicacy whatsoever.

Why, everywhere the man went, he was a bull in a china shop. That might work when one was dealing with stock thieves or bank robbers—as it had
sort of
worked on the train from Denver, although the big fool would be dead as a doornail if it hadn't been for Raven's intervention—but in situations where one was looking for a missing person, one had to blend in with the missing person's environment for a time.

She—or he—had to gain the trust of those who might know something about the person whose fate she—or he—was investigating. Once the investigator had gained that trust and had somewhat blended into that particular environment, then and only then did she start probing with a little more confidence and daring, although even then, you didn't track mule shit into an elegant watering hole and knock about like a bull in the parson's pantry!

Fool . . .

Well, here Raven was, risking her cover for him, although she'd planned this little visit with the sheriff when she'd first arrived in town. Now, however, she would add another, possibly dangerous little task to her current mission, one that might very well ignite the man's suspicion.

Haskell.

Raven ground her molars against the way the image of Bear Haskell affected her down below her belly. The brief remembered vision of him straining on top of her, hammering that gigantic rod of his between her legs, powerfully yet tenderly. Him scrubbing his beard and the warmth of his lips across her breasts . . .

There was a loud, wooden scrape, and Raven suddenly realized that the sheriff's door had opened in front of her. She'd stopped herself just before she'd automatically, instinctively flexed the spring slide beneath her right puffy sleeve and dropped an ivory-gripped derringer down into the palm of her hand.

She blinked, composing herself, hoping the flush from the memory of hers and Haskell's toil had receded from her cheeks, although she could still feel the tingling in her belly.

A tall man—not as tall as Haskell himself and older but handsome just the same—was standing in the open doorway. He wore a sheriff's star pinned to the brocade vest beneath his black frock coat.

“Holy shi—” the man said, catching himself. “I mean, uh, hello there.”

He doffed his hat and held it over his chest.

“Hello, there, uh, Sheriff . . .”

“Goodthunder. Sheriff Goodthunder it is, Miss . . .”

“York. Raven York.” She extended her hand to the man, who took it in his own right hand and gave it a gentle squeeze.

He appeared to start to lower his head to it, as though to kiss it, but then something stopped him, as though he suddenly felt like a fish out of water, and, flushing slightly, although he did not look like a man accustomed to being embarrassed, he raised his head and released her hand.

“Pleased to make your acquaintance, Miss York.” Goodthunder looked around behind Raven, as though looking for a male escort or a female chaperone, and said, “You're
alone
?”

“Oh, yes. I prefer to travel alone. Escorts can prove to be so . . . confining.”

“Oh, you're traveling.”

“Yes, I'm new around here. I thought it might be wise, Sheriff Goodthunder, to introduce myself to the reigning lawman of the town and to speak to you about my endeavors here in Wendigo.” Raven let her eyes scuttle across his broad shoulders, and then, as though impressed—he was not, after all, an unimpressive man—she dropped her chin demurely, allowing a faint flush to rise in her cheeks.