Authors: Ed Gorman
Powder Keg (20 page)
I
stayed a few days longer than I’d planned. Jen and Clarice were there every day. Clarice would soon become her adopted daughter.
Jen also decided that the two-bed hospital was no place for a federal man to recover his strength. I figured she had her hands full with Clarice, but she took me to her place, the scandal of it be damned, and for four days running we played nurse and patient. She was a most generous nurse, giving all of her body and at least some of her soul to making me feel better.
I never wanted to get better but dammit I did. On a frosty Sunday morning, she kissed me goodbye on the depot platform. She went back to live down the scandal and I went on to Washington to find out who I was supposed to kill next.
My thanks to Linda and Kate Siebels, for their invaluable help with this book
ED GORMAN’S
western fiction has won the Spur Award and his crime fiction has won the Shamus and Anthony Awards and has been shortlisted for the Edgar
®
Award. In addition, his writing has appeared in
Redbook
, the
New York Times
,
Ellery Queen Magazine
,
Poetry Today
, and other publications.
Visit www.AuthorTracker.com for exclusive information on your favorite HarperCollins author.
This book is a work of fiction. The characters, incidents, and dialogue are drawn from the author’s imagination and are not to be construed as real. Any resemblance to actual events or persons, living or dead, is entirely coincidental.
CAVALRY MAN POWDER KEG
. Copyright © 2006 by Ed Gorman. All rights reserved under International and Pan-American Copyright Conventions. By payment of the required fees, you have been granted the non-exclusive, non-transferable right to access and read the text of this e-book on-screen. No part of this text may be reproduced, transmitted, down-loaded, decompiled, reverse engineered, or stored in or introduced into any information storage and retrieval system, in any form or by any means, whether electronic or mechanical, now known or hereinafter invented, without the express written permission of HarperCollins e-books.
ePub edition January 2007 ISBN 9780061740343
10 9 8 7 6 5 4 3 2 1
Australia
HarperCollins Publishers (Australia) Pty. Ltd.
25 Ryde Road (PO Box 321)
Pymble, NSW 2073, Australia
http://www.harpercollinsebooks.com.au
Canada
HarperCollins Publishers Ltd.
55 Avenue Road, Suite 2900
Toronto, ON, M5R, 3L2, Canada
http://www.harpercollinsebooks.ca
New Zealand
HarperCollinsPublishers (New Zealand) Limited
P.O. Box 1
Auckland, New Zealand
http://www.harpercollinsebooks.co.nz
United Kingdom
HarperCollins Publishers Ltd.
77-85 Fulham Palace Road
London, W6 8JB, UK
http://www.harpercollinsebooks.co.uk
United States
HarperCollins Publishers Inc.
10 East 53rd Street
New York, NY 10022
http://www.harpercollinsebooks.com