Wild to the Bone (19 page)

Dulcy's hands, clad in elk skin, shook as she reached down and placed them on each side of her brother's face. She didn't say anything, but Haskell saw that her slender shoulders quivered as she stared down at the dead boy.

Haskell stepped back and turned away, feeling lousy and awkward and knowing he should give the girl some time alone with her brother. He picked up her rifle and rested it on his left shoulder, just to be on the safe side. He wandered off a ways, kicked a couple of stones. When he finally turned back to the wagon, she was sitting on the tailgate, legs and boots dangling toward the rutted, powdered trail.

She looked at her rifle riding Haskell's shoulder, opposite the one on which his own Winchester rested. “That wasn't necessary,” she said.

“Just a precaution.” Haskell spit to one side, opened and closed his hands around the neck of each rifle he continued to hold on his shoulders. “I do apologize, Miss Stoveville, but I didn't kill young Danny in cold blood. He shot first. Several times.”

“What in the hell was he doing way over at the Devil's Creek station?” she said. “That line's been closed for years.”

“I was sorta hoping you could tell me that.”

She stared at him. Her pretty face was stony, dour, as her eyes flicked up and down, appraising the big man before her. “Who the hell are you, anyway?”

“Name's Haskell. Bear Haskell.”

“What the hell were
you
doing at Devil's Creek?”

“Just passin' through,” he lied. He saw no reason to tell her that he was a Pinkerton. Not yet. The gang of stage-robbing cutthroats was headed up by two young women, and Dulcy Stoveville might just be one of them. “Figured that old windmill was still pumpin' water, and it was. That water baited me into your brother's rifle sights.” He hardened his voice. “Suppose you tell me why Danny would want to perforate my hide so bad?”

Dulcy hardened her own voice, narrowed her suspicious eyes. “Suppose you tell
me
!”

“I never met the kid before. Leastways, not that I can recollect.”

“Maybe your recollectin' ability has dimmed a little. I never did know a man big as you whose lamps was turned up all the way in the first place.” She wrinkled her nose at that. She wanted to hammer away at him for killing her brother. He didn't mind. He deserved it. Besides, she wasn't the first one who'd thought him stupid just because he was big.

“That could be, that could be,” he said, lowering his rifle and leaning it butt-down against his leg. He took Dulcy's own carbine—an old-model Winchester with a hide-wrapped rear stock and a rust-spotted barrel—and ejected her last three cartridges.

They plopped into the dust at his boots.

She smiled with half of her face at that. “Chicken shit.”

He tossed the rifle at her. She caught it one-handed and continued to glare at him.

“Where's your horse?”

“Why do you wanna know?”

“I'll follow you on back to your ranch. That's where I figure you'll be plantin' Danny, ain't it?”

“What makes you think I want you ridin' back to my ranch with me? I'm alone there now, and I've already had trouble with no-accounts wantin' to stick their dicks in me.”

Her bold eyes flicked down to his crotch.

Haskell didn't wonder that men wanted to lie with the girl. One, she had an enticing, bold way about her. Two, she was pretty and well set up. She wasn't so skinny that you could break her like a twig over your knee but full-hipped and stout-legged.

She had some extra tallow in her hips, ass, and calves. Her breasts weren't large, but they were large enough. Her mouth was soft and pink, and her devilish green eyes, framed by all that honey-gold hair, were frankly erotic and alluring.

Her dark blue denims tapered tightly down from her wide hips to her ankles, where they were folded into three-inch cuffs above her soft brown shit-stained boots.

“You want me to sit here so you can draw you a picture?” she asked him snidely, though there was a slight upward curve of her mouth corners.

“Nah, I got it,” he said, feeling himself flush a little. “A girl like you shouldn't be out here all alone.”

“What kinda girl is that?”

“A purty, young one.”

“Nothin' much I can do about that, now, is there? No thanks to you.”

“You could move into town.”

“I'm too wild for town. Hell, I'd be lurin' off all the married men and settin' their wives to caterwaulin'!” She smiled evilly at that.

Haskell gaped at her. Had she just said what he thought she'd said? “Christ, you don't beat around the bush, do you?”

“That's how it is for us Pumpkin Buttes girls.” Dulcy glanced back at her blanket-wrapped brother in the box behind her. “Especially those of us who live alone with no-account horses, some wild cats, and a few dusty chickens.”

She kept her gaze on her brother for a time. Her nostrils flared a couple of times, but she otherwise continued to keep her emotions on a short leash.

A tough one, this girl.

“Why don't you get your horse, miss?” Haskell said gently. “We'll strap your brother behind your saddle, and you can take him home and bury him.”

Dulcy turned to him. “You shot him,” she said crisply, dropping down off the tailgate and striding up the side of the bluff. “The least you can do is help me bury him.”

22

A
couple of hours earlier
in the Overland Hotel, Raven gasped and lifted her head from her pillow. She'd expected to find herself staring up at Bear Haskell's face as the big man hammered away between her legs.

But Bear was nowhere in sight.

What she did find, however, was that sometime during the night, she'd pulled her undershirt up above her breasts. She'd kicked out of her cotton panties and spread her legs and was massaging herself almost violently with the first two fingers of her right hand.

Her hands were creamy. Her pussy was quivering.

She was coming.

She squealed and, feeling foolish, threw her head back on the pillow, lifted her shirt over her face, and chomped down on it so her love cries wouldn't be heard all over Spotted Horse. At the same time, she continued to massage her clitoris, seeing and feeling again, as she had only a moment before, Haskell grinding his forehead against her chest while his cock hammered in and out of her, setting every nerve in her body on fire.

She imagined she could feel his beard raking her bare breasts deliciously, feel one of his big, callused paws massaging one breast while he sucked the other one with the vigorousness of a newborn lamb.

“Gnahhh!”
she grunted, chewing on her shirt and laughing despite herself.

When her body stopped spasming, she lay slack on the bed, her breasts rising and falling sharply as she breathed. “Christ,” she rasped out, poking the tip of her right finger inside her vagina once more, remembering how the head of his cock had felt, sliding in and out of her snatch.

Raven felt the warmth of Victorian shame rise in her cheeks and behind her ears. But then she laughed again, despite feeling like a fool, scissoring her legs and rolling onto her side, chewing on a fingernail as she let herself go ahead and pine for the big, shaggy-headed, whore-mongering reprobate.

“All right, that's enough,” she said, finally, and dropped her feet to the floor. She sighed and threw her hair back behind her shoulders. “You, lady Pinkerton, have a job to do. What that man does is his business, and his alone. You do not depend on him or anyone else.”

She heaved herself to her feet. “In fact, you do not
care
about what he does. In fact,” she added more firmly and loudly, “you don't
care
about him in the least. Sure, his cock is nice, but the trouble with cocks is that they come with men attached!”

She snorted at that as she glanced out the window.

It was full dawn, purple shadows turning light gray. The sun would likely be up in half an hour or so. She had to get to work.

Still tingling from her imagined love tussle with Haskell, she chuckled again as she sort of staggered over to the marble-topped washstand. She poured water from the pitcher into the porcelain basin and began taking a slow, leisurely sponge bath, starting with her face and breasts.

Fifteen minutes later, she was bathed, her freshly brushed hair gathered into a ponytail hanging down her back. She dressed in the same clothes she'd worn yesterday. Normally, that would have rankled the girl who'd been brought up in New York City high society, complete with debutante balls and coming-out parties, but she'd been a field operative long enough to know that she couldn't very well haul a steamer trunk around to wherever her assignments took her.

Especially to the Pumpkin Buttes country of eastern Wyoming.

She had one change of clothes stuffed into her saddlebags, in which she also carried rudimentary camping gear and ammunition. Between changes, she was proud to make do with a little soap and water and her ebony clothes brush from Japan.

Raven donned her hat, used the mirror over the dresser to make sure it was straight on her head, the thong dangling against her chest, and then wrapped her cartridge belt and .41 pistol around her waist. She decided to leave her Winchester carbine in her room, as she doubted—at least,
hoped
—she wouldn't need it here in Spotted Horse.

She went out, locked her door, and headed down the stairs and into the lobby. She passed the door to the right of Mrs. Waddell's mahogany desk, and while the curtain was drawn aside, she did not peer through it. She didn't want to make eye contact with Mrs. Waddell, for she'd hoped to make it out of the hotel without being pawed up as she had been yesterday. But halfway to the front door, the woman's voice called loudly, trillingly, “Good Lord, dear, you're not thinking about facing the day on an empty stomach, are you?”

Raven stopped. She winced.

She drew a breath and walked back to the door opposite the desk and looked into a small dining room that housed half a dozen tables covered in wash-worn and lye-yellowed linen. A large stuffed bear stood in the middle of the room on its hind feet, ready to pounce, near a cold potbelly stove, and to the left of the bear, Loretta sat at a table strewn with manila folders and papers.

She was dressed every bit as gaudily as she had been the day before. A steaming cup and saucer sat on the table before her, along with a small porcelain sugar bowl with little pine trees painted on its side.

“Come hither!” Loretta trilled, holding up her arms and beckoning with her beringed, long-fingered hands. “Sit down here, and I'll have—” She stopped and cupped her hands around her mouth as she yelled through another curtained doorway beyond the bear, “Dudley, we have a customer! Bring coffee!”

Raven shook her head. “That's not neces—”

But Loretta wouldn't let her finish. “Nonsense, my dear! Dudley and I serve the best breakfast in town”—she glanced morosely around the empty room—“though I reckon you couldn't tell it. Sit down, sit down. Dudley will whip you up some pancakes and eggs.”

Dudley came through the curtained doorway to the right of the bear, balancing a steaming china coffee cup in a saucer. The stocky man was decked out in a chef's hat and an apron, and he had an unctuous grin on his fleshy, craggy face as he gazed at the pretty customer standing in the doorway.

“Why not?” Raven said, remembering that she needed to speak to the woman—preferably with her clothes on. Besides, the steaming coffee in Dudley's fleshy hand looked enticing despite the lusty glitter in the man's eyes.

“Dudley, tear your eyes from the poor girl and cook her up some pancakes and eggs!”

“Right, Loretta, right,” Dudley said, nodding to Raven and then reluctantly trudging back through the door beyond the bear.

To Raven, crossing the room to the woman's table, Loretta said, “Sleep well, dear?”

As she sat down before the coffee cup, Raven glanced at Loretta smiling at her in that half-jeering, half-admiring manner of hers. For a second, she wondered if Loretta had heard Raven's groans as she'd pleasured herself to images of her brawny colleague. But no. Loretta couldn't have heard anything, unless, of course, she was listening right outside Raven's door.

Which, after all the fawning of yesterday, wasn't all that impossible.

“Indeed, I did, Loretta,” Raven said, pouring cream into her coffee. “You?”

“I never sleep all that well. Dudley probably snores louder than that bear of a man you told me about.” Loretta sipped her coffee and frowned over the rim of the steaming cup. “Say, where is he, anyway? He didn't come in last night.” She leaned forward, smiling broadly. “You didn't just imagine this big bear of a man, now, did you, dear?”

Loretta slapped the table loudly and laughed.

Raven flushed. “He found himself otherwise disposed,” she said, growing weary of explaining the man. She sipped her own hot brew, set the cup down on its saucer, and glanced around. “Is business usually this slow?” she couldn't help asking.

“Unfortunately, this is customary, at least for weekday mornings,” Loretta said, turning her mouth corners down behind the coffee cup she was holding up near her chin with both hands. “The country's drying up, I'm afraid. Folks have been leaving the rangeland for years, and because of that, more and more businesses are closing in Spotted Horse. We managed to hang on after the drought started because word was going around that a spur railroad line was going to push through into the gold camps up in the Big Horns. That hasn't come to pass, which was good for Duke Shirley, but now, unfortunately, because of the stage holdups, he's also fallen on hard times.”

“How does that affect you?”

“His mercantile brings folks in from the countryside—what few there are left, that is. There's always a few prospectors and drummers and card sharps pushing through now and then. Some on horseback, some in wagons, some on the stage. By the time they get here, they're usually tired, and they usually need supplies. So they shop at Shirley's place, maybe drink some whiskey over at the saloon, and then come here to sleep and get up and eat breakfast here in the morning.”

Loretta sipped her coffee, smacked her lips, and shook her head. “So, you see, Duke Shirley's sort of the hub of the wheel in Spotted Horse. We're the spokes. Every wheel needs a hub, or it stops goin' around—see?”

Raven nodded. “Wouldn't need the spokes without the hub,” she said as Dudley Waddell hauled a smoking platter through the kitchen door, holding the large porcelain plate with an oven mitt.

“Hot off the skillet!” the man said above the sizzling of the five strips of bacon separating the two eggs from the two large flapjacks swimming in butter and maple syrup. “Hope you're hungry, miss!”

When the man had set the plate down in front of Raven and headed back into the kitchen, Raven wasted no time digging into her food. She hadn't realized she was hungry until she'd smelled the bacon, but now her stomach was fairly dancing at the prospect of the meal.

Loretta laughed at Raven's unabashed delight.

To the horror of her well-brought-up mother, Raven had never been a dainty eater. So she didn't slow down much as she leveled a pointed look at the middle-aged woman gazing back at her fondly. “Loretta, yesterday, when you were leaving my room, you said something that I'm sure you realize begs elaboration.”

Loretta pooched out her overly painted lips and turned her head slightly. “I did?”

Raven picked up a strip of bacon, bit off a chunk, and chewed while she cut into one of the sunny-side-up eggs. “You said that the stage robberies are merely one symptom of the
sinister forces
at work here in Spotted Horse.”

Loretta stretched her lips, wincing, looking uneasy. “I did, did I?”

“Yes, you did. Now, you know I'm here to investigate those robberies, so I'd be remiss if I didn't ask you to explain what you meant by
sinister forces
.”

Loretta winced again, as though the phrase were a hand slapping her face. “Me and my big mouth,” she said, glancing toward the door behind which Dudley was banging pots and pans around and opening and closing a squeaky stove door.

Raven continued to eat hungrily, sipping her coffee between bites and watching Loretta curiously. “Might as well spill the beans,” Raven said. “I'd bet if I threw that phrase around town long enough, someone would give me an explanation for it.”

“No, no, no—you don't want to do that, dear! This town is right protective of its secrets, don't ya know!”

“Then spill it, Loretta.” Raven smiled shrewdly as she chewed.

Loretta glanced at the door to the kitchen and then at the door to the lobby, obviously afraid she might be overheard. Leaning forward, she placed one hand flat on the table, atop her scattered business papers, and kept her voice low as she said, “Only if you promise not to tell anyone I told you about this. Do you promise, Raven?”

“Wild horses couldn't drag it out of me,” Raven said, setting a forkful of food back down on her plate and resting her forearms on the table, holding her coffee up in her right hand. She'd lift her head out of the feed bag for a time, not wanting to miss a word of what might turn out to be an important bit of information.

Loretta took another sip of her coffee, set the cup down carefully, staring at it, and then lifted her troubled eyes to Raven. “There was a girl who worked for me about a year ago. A pretty half-breed from the Wind River reservation. Apparently, she'd run into some trouble up there, trouble involving an Indian agent. So Vera—her name was Vera Walking Thunder—ran away from the agency and showed up here. Dudley found her one morning sleeping out in the keeper shed. She was tired and hungry, and she needed a place to stay.

“Business was better then, as another mine had just opened up south of here, though it's since gone under, but at the time, I could afford a girl to clean rooms, do the laundry, split wood, and help in the kitchen. That sort of thing.”

Loretta paused. Color rose in her painted cheeks as she stared down at her coffee cup. Her eyes gained a faraway cast, and then she drew a breath, swallowed, and returned her gaze to her rapt audience of one.