Wild to the Bone (15 page)

No, she would never succumb to such base attractions again.

Not ever, ever, ever.

That did not mean, however, that she did not feel sorry for him—having killed the boy and all.

Raven sat on the bed and drew a deep breath, half-consciously aware, beneath her new resolve, of feeling suddenly sad and lonely, which must have been the way her partner himself was also feeling now. Only part of the feeling was because of her sympathy for Haskell. There'd been something about the loneliness of the woman downstairs clinging so desperately to bygone years, to obscure desires, that made Raven consider her own time passing.

Her own beauty fading, time running out.

Even as a little girl, Raven had never considered marriage. She'd wanted more out of life than a man and a family. She'd wanted adventure.

But what happened to a female Pinkerton agent when all the adventure had been spent and she found herself an aging spinster alone?

She'd only been half-aware of hearing high heels clomping in the hall before someone knocked on her door. “It's Loretta. From downstairs? I brought your bathtub, Raven!”

17

W
hen she had finally
gotten Loretta Waddell out of her room, Raven shucked out of her clothes and soaked in the water whose steam lifted like pale snakes from the copper tub. She scrubbed the trail grunge from her hair and skin, from beneath the nails of her fingers and toes, and then she leaned far back in the tub, hung her legs and arms over the sides, and soaked some more.

She rolled her eyes when she heard Loretta's heels in the hall. She gave a sigh when the knock came at the door. She tried to keep the irritation out of her voice when she said, “Yes?”

“Care for a warm-up? I have another bucket out here, steaming hot!”

Raven gave another sigh. She looked down at her body—her arms and legs hanging over the sides of the tub, her pink-tipped breasts riding just above the suds.

Oh, why not give the woman a thrill? Likely, her husband couldn't do that for her anymore—if he ever did. She'd said she'd lived in mining camps once. Maybe she'd been a soiled dove who'd gotten so sick of men that women were now her preference. Maybe if Raven gave Loretta a good look at her body, the woman's curiosity would be satisfied, and she'd finally leave her alone.

“Come in.”

The door opened, and Mrs. Waddell came in carrying a steaming wooden bucket, kicking the door closed behind her. The woman's eyes flickered across Raven's body as she moved toward the tub, saying, “I thought you could use some fresh, hot water. Oh, dear, look at that. What a lovely body you have. You know, I used to have one like that.”

“I'm sure it's still beautiful,” Raven said, and immediately wished she hadn't, as Loretta poured the hot water into the tub, between Raven's spread legs.

“Well, I reckon I can't say it is or it isn't,” Loretta said, chuckling. “But age is a thing to be reckoned with—I'll tell you that, honey.” She set the bucket down, dropped to a knee beside the tub, and took up the soap and sponge from a towel folded atop a spool-back chair. “Lean forward, dear, and I'll scrub your back.”

“Oh, you don't have to do that.”

“Oh, Raven, even a girl as young and limber as you can't reach behind to scrub her own back. Come on, now. Don't be shy.”

“Loretta, you've done enough.”

“Raven, dear.”

Raven feigned a grateful smile, curling her nose and half-rolling her eyes. “If you insist.”

She pulled her arms and legs back into the tub, and, feeling her face flush with embarrassment—she hoped the woman wasn't getting any wrong ideas about her sexual preferences—she leaned forward, and Loretta began running the sponge across her shoulder blades.

“What a beautiful back,” Loretta said in a bittersweet tone.

“Thanks.”

“Oh, to be young again.” In the corner of her eye, Raven saw the woman glance around to get a peek at Raven's breasts from the side. “And what a beautiful set of tits. You know what my Dudley would say about those?”

“Uh, Loretta . . .”

The woman laughed. “Oh, we'd better not go into that. No. Well, then . . .” She hummed while she lathered Raven's back, making slow, swirling motions with the sponge. Raven had to admit that it was nice and felt good to have her back scrubbed despite the fact that she was beginning to think inviting the woman into her room had been a bad idea.

“Just passing through, dear?” Loretta asked.

Raven saw no reason to keep her mission a secret. “I'm here to investigate the stage robberies.”

Loretta stopped scrubbing and leaned forward again to frown curiously into Raven's eyes.
“Investigate?”

“I'm a Pinkerton agent. My partner and I were sent here by Mr. Pinkerton himself to run to ground the gang that's been preying on the stage line.”

Loretta whistled as she dipped the sponge in the water and began to rinse the soap from Raven's back. “Well, I'll be! A girl Pinkerton. What'll they think of next? Back in my day, about the only work suitable for a young woman was teaching school, selling eggs, or dressing skimpily and singing in saloons.” She leaned forward again to give emphasis. “And all that goes along with the singin' . . . if you catch my drift!”

“Are you about finished there, Loretta? I'm starting to feel like a raisin.”

Loretta tittered, embarrassed. “Oh, yes. You've such a fine body, I could just scrub it all day long!” She laughed again, stood, and grabbed the towel off the chair. She opened the towel wide and cooed, “Come to Momma, dear!”

Raven stared dubiously up at the woman beaming down at her, Loretta's brown eyes at once bright and glassy, her smile seemingly painted on with all the rouge and lipstick. The young Pinkerton made a mental note that when she started pushing forty, she would not under any circumstances try to compensate for the lines of natural aging with face paint or anything else.

Deciding that Loretta was a little touched but harmless enough, she grabbed the sides of the tub and heaved herself to her feet. Dirty, soapy water rolled off of her.

As she stepped out of the tub and onto the floor, Loretta wrapped her up in the towel, intoning, “There you are, all clean now, my lovely one!”

Loretta continued to hug her, pressing her ample, corseted bosom up hard against Raven's chest. Raven stiffened, pried herself out of the woman's tight grip, and stepped back. “Thank you, Loretta,” she said, wrapping the towel tightly about her shoulders. She glanced down, saw her left nipple peeking out, and tightened the towel across her bosom. “I'll take it from here.”

“Of course, of course.” Loretta moved back to the door, keeping her unabashed eyes on Raven before turning reluctantly and reaching for the doorknob. The hotel owner stopped and stared at the door for a time before turning back around. Her eyes were suddenly grave, troubled. “Because you're young and beautiful, as I myself was once, I feel that I should give you a word of advice, my dear Raven.”

Raven resisted the urge to sigh with impatience. Instead, she smiled woodenly. “And what advice would that be, Loretta?”

“Don't let any grass grow under your boots in Spotted Horse. No. Not a pretty young thing like yourself.” Loretta turned her head sideways as though listening for someone lurking in the hall.

She turned back to Raven, her eyes as sharp with warning now as they had been with coquettishness only a moment before. She raised a shielding hand to the side of her mouth, narrowed her eyes, and whispered harshly, “The stage robberies are merely one symptom of the sinister forces at work here in Spotted Horse. Anyone who tries to run those girls to ground ends up dead faster'n you can shake a stick at!” She turned, opened the door, peered both ways along the hall, then went out and glanced back inside the room at Raven. “Lock this now!”

Loretta closed the door and clomped off down the hall.

Raven stood holding the towel tightly across her breasts, staring at the door for several moments, Loretta's warning words echoing around between her ears.

Sinister forces at work here in Spotted Horse.

What in the hell had she meant by that?

Feeling a chill creeping through the four-inch gap she'd made in the window, the wind still moaning like a cat in heat around the hotel, Raven moved to the door and turned the key in the lock, hearing the latching bolt scrape home. Something told her it was going to be difficult to get anything more out of the woman.

If Loretta had wanted to explain, she would still be here in Raven's room, explaining.

Nevertheless, Raven would hunt the woman down again—she didn't think that would be too hard—and try to squeeze more sap from the woman's tree. Sometimes cryptic statements lay over a well of information just waiting to boil out.

Keeping the towel wrapped around her body, her hair dribbling water onto her shoulders, Raven moved to the window and stared out through the gauzy curtain that was billowing in the wind seeping through the crack. All she could see from this vantage in the fading, late-day light was a rolling expanse of floury-white prairie bristling with sage, buckbrush, and prickly pear rolling over low hills and bluffs toward the distant, purple, white-mantled Big Horns in the northwest.

The wind was still kicking up occasional thin curtains of pale dust. Tumbleweeds tumbled this way and that.

It was a big, forlorn country out here, far from the beaten path. Raven had visited such isolated settlements before, and she knew that the loneliness of such places often led to various degrees of madness or, at the very least, eccentricities of various and sundry manifestations.

Had Loretta been driven spongy in her thinker box by having somehow ended up out here in the middle of dusty, windblown nowhere, far from the colorful, crowded camps of her yesteryears?

Or had she voiced a genuinely dire admonition?

Likely, the answer lay somewhere in between.

Raven stepped back from the window and dropped the towel. She'd just started rummaging around in her cavvy sack for a pair of clean panties and socks when large clomps rose on the stairs, echoing around the hall. Someone was moving fast, although it didn't sound like Loretta's high-heeled tread.

These footfalls, emanating from the hall now, were harder, quicker, heavier. They were the tread of a man in stout boots moving in the direction of Raven's room.

Raven picked up the towel with one hand, unsheathed her .41-caliber Colt Lightning with its two-and-a-half-inch barrel and pearl grips, and clicked the hammer back. Pressing the towel against her breasts, she swung the gun at the door.

At the same time, the footsteps stopped suddenly. Someone pounded the door twice, hard, so that despite herself, Raven jerked with a start and squeezed the Colt's pearl grips tighter in her fist.

A familiar voice spoke loudly on the other side of the door: “Uh, uh, a g-gift from Mr. Sh-shirley, Miss Y-y-york. And an . . . and an
invitation card
!”

There was a soft, glassy thump, then a scratching sound. Raven watched a small white envelope slide into the room beneath the door. A shadow moved under the door, and then the foot clomps started again, dwindling off down the hall and then down the stairs. They were louder on the stairs and spaced widely, as though the simple young man from the livery barn were descending the staircase two or three steps at a time.

Down in the lobby, Raven heard Loretta scolding the lad.

A moment later, silence.

Raven lowered the pistol, depressed the hammer, and returned the gun to its holster. She walked over to the door, picked up the envelope, removed the small card, and read the note written in a man's neat but unadorned hand.

“Miss York, my wife and I would like to invite you and Mr. Haskell for supper around seven. We live above the store. Take the stairs at the rear of the building. The brandy is a gesture of my appreciation in advance for your efforts. Sincerely, Duke Shirley.”

Raven opened the door. A small, elegant bottle with an ornate label stood at her bare feet. Raven picked it up, turned into her room, closed the door, and popped the cork.

“Don't mind if I do,” she said, and tipped back a small but bracing shot.

She lowered the bottle, smacked her lips, and arched her brows. “Haskell would say that ain't such bad skull pop.”

18

L
oretta's words continued to
linger in Raven's mind as she dressed, taking occasional, conservative sips of Shirley's brandy.

Sinister forces at work here in Spotted Horse.

Normally, Raven wouldn't wear her pistol to dinner at a private residence, but after Loretta's warning, however purple the woman's prose, she thought it would be foolhardy to be caught on the dark streets of Spotted Horse unarmed.

She made sure the .41 was loaded, slipped it into the small holster angled for the cross-draw on her left hip, and snapped the keeper thong over the hammer. A razor-edged stiletto was snugged into a sheath inside her right boot. She looked at herself in the mirror, ran her hands through her hair, which the arid air had already dried, and donned her hat, letting the chin thong dangle across her breasts.

In the Stetson, denims, and cream muslin blouse with red pinstripes, she wasn't exactly dressed for the governor's ball, but she was traveling light, pragmatically, and in the style of the country. She doubted the Shirleys or anyone else in Spotted Horse would be offended that she wasn't in a dress.

Loretta hadn't appeared to disapprove any . . .

Raven went out and was glad to find the lobby empty, Loretta probably off supping with Dudley. Outside, the sun had sunk behind high western ridges, casting the town and the sky in an eerie twilight, the wind still blowing though with less vigor than before. Just enough to keep the tumbleweeds and paper trash skittering down the broad, dusty streets and to cause Raven to bat her lashes against the grit.

There were few people out, but the town's lone saloon, the Spotted Horse Watering Trough, was bustling, piano music hammering out over the batwings through which Raven pushed. She paused just inside, looking around. There were twenty or more men in the place, most with the billowy neckerchiefs and brushy mustaches of cowpunchers. They were all liberally coated in dust from the windstorm. There were a few shopkeepers in bowler hats, but mostly, it looked like the thirty-a-month-and-found-cow nurses were in town, hiding from the wind and letting their hair down, so to speak.

There were several girls, all of the working variety. One was dancing a jig with a lean, sun-bronzed cowboy on the dance floor at the far end of the bar, behind the little gray-haired gent in a calico shirt and armbands playing the piano and smoking a cigar. The doxie was having trouble keeping the slender black strap of her scoop-necked pink dress on her arm but didn't seem to care overmuch when her entire right breast became exposed, flapping as she danced.

Occasionally, her dancing partner gave a howl, leaned down to grab the breast with one hand, and kissed the nipple. The girl threw her head back and laughed as she continued dancing.

Raven moved over to the bar running along the right wall. As she did, she was vaguely aware of the eyes turning to her and staying longer than was polite. Accustomed to such attention, she ignored it. Someone to her left whistled. She ignored that, too. She set her right elbow on the bar and continued sweeping the long room's smoke-laced shadows with her eyes.

She found him at a table about two-thirds down the room and opposite the dance floor.

Someone said something in her right ear, but she was so focused on her partner that the man had to clear his throat and ask again, a little louder to be heard more clearly above the raucous music and foot stomping and general din of the crowd. “Can I get you something, miss?”

Raven turned to the barman, a raw-boned, balding, and clean-shaven gent rolling a stove match around between his lips as he studied her with a sheepish cast to his gaze.

“Whiskey,” she said, not because she necessarily wanted one but because she wanted the bartender to leave her alone.

“You got it,” he said with humorous surprise, slapping the bar with his hand. He shared a smug grin with the man standing beside Raven and stepped away to fill her order.

Raven returned her gaze to the table two-thirds down the smoky room. Bear slouched back in a Windsor chair at the table's far left end. Actually, she saw now that there were two round tables pushed together, and at those tables sat seven or eight men.

They were playing cards—five-card stud, Raven thought. They were talking and laughing loudly as they called and raised and slapped the pasteboards down. Smoke billowed into the watery light cast by the lantern hanging by a wire over the tables. What had caught the brunt of Raven's attention was the girl sitting on Bear's lap.

Sitting wasn't the right word. She was . . .

The bartender's voice sliced into Raven's right ear again, distracting her. “There you are, ma'am. On Dusty!” With that, the barman slapped the counter again and walked away.

Raven glanced at the drink on the bar near her elbow and then looked up to see the tall, long-faced, dull-eyed cowboy standing beside her and smiling at her.

Raven raised the drink in salute. “Thanks, Dusty.”

She threw half of the astringent substance back as Dusty chuckled bashfully, reddened, and dropped his eyes to the bar and the half-filled beer schooner resting between his callused hands.

Raven returned her gaze to Bear's poker game.

The girl wasn't so much sitting on his lap as straddling his right thigh and leaning fast against him, both arms around the big man's stout neck.

As Haskell smoked the dynamite-sized Cleopatra Federal wedged in the corner of his mouth, the girl rubbed her left temple against the heavy dark brown beard carpeting his right cheek. She smiled and laughed at what he was saying in his deep, thundering baritone punctuated now and then by his bullhorn laugh.

The whore was a pretty brunette. Her long hair swirled down her slender, bare back. She seemed to have Mexican or Indian blood. Her eyes were dark brown. Her back and arms were vanilla-hued. Silver hoop rings dangled from her ears.

She wore a sexy metallic-green corset and bustier with black ruffled edges and black garters to which her long, sheer green stockings were attached. Her legs were long and angular. Her breasts bulging the corset were full and with a deep valley between them.

Bear had his thick, muscular right arm around the girl's shoulders, his right hand wrapped proprietarily around her forearm. He held his cards with his left hand, and the girl was helping him play while she continued to squirm around on top of him, occasionally grinding her fanny against his crotch.

Raven's ears burned with an aching, throbbing jealousy. She ground her jaws against it, threw back the rest of her drink, smacked her lips, ran the back of a hand across her mouth, and stepped away from the bar.

Dusty turned toward her with a diffident grin and said, “Can I buy ya another one, miss?”

Raven stopped, glanced at him, having forgotten about him, and shook her head in annoyance. “Some other time, cowboy.”

She strode down the bar, shaking her hair back from her cheeks and working hard to manufacture a poised, collected expression. She turned from the bar and sidestepped between men, tables, and chairs, stopping just off the whore's shoulder and Bear's arm.

“Excuse me, Agent Haskell,” Raven said, poking his shoulder and speaking loudly enough to be heard above the clamor.

Bear turned to her, and a heavy smoke cloud billowed from between his lips as he spoke around the stogie in his mouth. “Oh, shit, Agent, uh, York!”

What—had he forgotten her
name
?

The whore turned to Raven and immediately acquired that opaqueness that women's eyes gained when they were studying a possible interloper. The whore's eyes shuttled up and down the length of the young woman in cowboy garb before her, as Raven, willfully ignoring the girl, said to Haskell, “Just thought I'd mention that the man who brought us here, Mr. Shirley, has requested the pleasure of our company this evening. We might consider it a business dinner.”

She'd wanted so much not to sound supercilious, but she knew even as the words were leaving her lips that she'd failed. She managed to maintain her balanced smile, but her jaws ached from the strain.

My God, the whore had nice breasts!

She was met with a fleeting, bone-splintering chill as her mind flashed on the imagined image of Haskell reaching up past the girl's belly to squeeze her tits in those large brown paws of his while he feasted his tongue and lips and big nose on her snatch, evoking unearthly groans and squeals from the girl . . .

Raven hadn't realized it before, but she saw his lips as her lips. His tongue as hers.

His nose as hers . . .

“Ah, hell, I'm all involved here,” Bear said above the din, continuing to speak around the stogie, which bounced as he moved his lips. “I ain't much for dinner parties, anyways. I'll talk to ol' Shirley tomorrow, when we haul the dead kid back to his sis.”

He gave her a wink over the doxie's head, rolled the stogie to the other side of his mouth, and returned his gaze to his gambling companions. “Now, where were we? Bill, you foldin' or raisin'?”

The man's response graveled Raven. She didn't want to leave him here with the whore. The urge nettled her.

In a blink, however, she managed to channel her anger more appropriately and said, “I don't think that getting drunk and playing poker is the most productive use of our time here in Spotted Horse, and I certainly don't think it's a very flattering reflection on the agency. But have it your way, Agent Haskell. I'll tell Mr. Shirley that you are otherwise disposed.”

“Or you could just him I'm gettin' liquored up and playin' cards!” Haskell laughed and then whispered into the whore's left ear.

The other men laughed.

The whore tossed a card from Haskell's hand onto the table. Her face on fire with rage and embarrassment, Raven swung away from the table and retraced her steps to the bar. She strode along the bar, brushed past Dusty, who'd stepped out to impede her course, and pushed through the batwings.

She dropped stiffly down the porch steps and, feeling light-headed and disoriented, stumbled to the right along the boardwalk before leaning against an awning support post and feeling a sob sputter up from deep in her throat.

She clipped it before she thought it could be heard by anyone else, but just then, someone placed a hand on her shoulder. A man's voice said, “You all right, there, miss?”

Recovering quickly despite having been sideswiped by the emotion, Raven said, “Yes, I . . . I just saw a rat. Startled me is all.” She'd rather be made a fool of by a rat than a man.

“A rat?” the cowboy said, staring down at Raven in the sunset's gaudy light. “Where?”

Another cowboy sidled up to the first one. Raven had the sense they'd both just stepped down from the horses snorting at the hitch rack to her left. “Where is it?” the second cowboy said. “We'll take care of him for ya, miss!”

“I think he ran down the alley there,” Raven said, gesturing toward the gap between the saloon and the
adobe
brick barbershop beside it, just wanting to be alone.

“Don't you worry, miss,” said the first cowboy, unsheathing a Schofield .44 and clicking the hammer back. “That rat'll never frighten you agin!”

Both men ran down the gap. Raven was glad they'd left, so she had some time to compose herself. When she'd drawn a couple of deep breaths, she jerked with a start as a pistol cracked down the dark alley beside the saloon.

“I think I seen him, Luke!” one of the cowboys shouted.

A gun cracked again.

“Yeah, there he is!”

Crack! Crack-crack!

Raven rolled her eyes as she got her bearings and headed east along the boardwalk. She took several more deep breaths and had managed to nearly completely scour Haskell from her mind as she followed a brick path around Duke Shirley's sprawling mercantile building, the first-story windows of which were dark.

Shirley had closed for the day.

At the rear of the place, an outside stairway rose to the second story. An old bull's-eye lantern hung from a nail in the railing at the bottom of the stairs, though it was not yet dark enough for the lantern to require lighting.

Raven manufactured a cool, professional expression. Loretta's remembered warning braced her.

Sinister forces at work here in Spotted Horse.

Raven climbed the stairs to Duke Shirley's private quarters and knocked on the door.