Linda Miller - A Wanted Man - A Stone Creek Novel

“Just bide there for a while,” Rowdy told him quietly.

Pardner huffed out a sigh and hunkered down to endure. He was a faithful old fella, Pardner was. He’d trotted alongside Rowdy’s horse for the first few miles out of Haven, but then he’d gotten footsore and come the rest of the way in the saddle. As they traveled north, the weather got colder, and they’d shared Rowdy’s dusty old canvas coat.

Remembering the looks they’d gotten from the townsfolk, him and Pardner, riding into town barely an hour before, Rowdy smiled. Even with a new and modern century underway, the Arizona Territory was still wild and woolly, and odd sights were plentiful. He wouldn’t have thought a man and a dog on the back of the same horse would attract so much notice.

“You run along and see to those steaks,” Rowdy told Jolene. Even with the bucketful of hot water she’d just poured into his tub, the bath was lukewarm, and there was cold air coming up through the cracks between the ancient, warped floorboards. He wanted to scrub himself down with the harsh yellow soap provided, dry off, and get into the clean duds he’d saved for the purpose.

Of course, Pardner needed sudsing, too, and Rowdy didn’t reckon even Jolene’s services extended quite that far.

Jolene hadn’t had her fill of visiting, that much was clear by her disgruntled aspect, but she lit out for the kitchen, just the same.

Rowdy finished his bath, dressed himself, then laundered Pardner as best he could. He was toweling the poor critter off with a burlap feed sack when he heard the sound of spurs chinking just outside the door.

Rowdy didn’t hold with the use of spurs, branding irons or barbed wire. Whenever he encountered any one of those three things, he bristled on the inside.

Out of habit he touched the handle of his .44, just to make sure it was on his left hip, where it ought to be.

Pardner bared his teeth and snarled when two drifters strolled in.

“Easy,” Rowdy told the animal, rising from a crouch to stand facing the strangers. One was short, and the other tall. Both were in sore need of a bath, not to mention the services of a dentist.

The short one looked Pardner over, scowling. His right hand eased toward the .45 in his holster.

Rowdy’s own .44 was in his hand so fast he might have willed it there, instead of drawing. “I wouldn’t,” he said affably.

“It’s a hell of a thing when a man’s expected to bathe himself in a dog’s water,” the taller one observed. He had a long, narrow face, full of sorrow, and thin brown hair that clung to the shape of his head, as if afraid of blowing away in a high wind.

“For an extra nickel,” Rowdy said, “you can have your own.”

The short man took a step toward Rowdy, and it was the tall one who reached out an arm and stopped him. “Me and Willie, here, we don’t want no trouble. We’re just lookin’ for hot water and women.”

Willie subsided, but he didn’t look too happy about it. Rowdy reckoned he’d have shot Pardner just for being there, if he’d had his druthers. Fortunately for him, his sidekick had interceded before it would have been necessary to put a bullet through his heart.

Pardner, who looked a sight with his fur all ruffled up and standing upright on his hide like quills on a porcupine, from the rubdown with a burlap sack, growled low and in earnest.

Yes, sir, Rowdy thought, looking down at him, he did want barbering.

“That dog bite?” Willie asked. A muscle twitched in the beard stubble along his right cheek. He carried himself like a man of little consequence determined to give another kind of impression.

“Only if provoked,” Rowdy answered mildly, slipping the .44 back into its holster. He was hungry, but he tarried, for it was his habit to take careful note of everyone he encountered, be they friend or foe. Pappy had taught him that, and it had proved a useful skill.

Just then Jolene trundled in with the littlest Chinaman Rowdy had ever seen trotting behind her. The sight put him in mind of a loaded barge cutting through the muddy Mississippi with a rowboat bobbing in its wake.

“Ten cents if you want clean water,” Jolene told the new arrivals, clearly relishing the prospect of ready commerce. “A nickel if you don’t mind secondhand.”

Willie and the sidekick didn’t look as though they were in a position to be too picky.

“A dime for a tub of hot water?” Willie demanded, aggrieved. “It’s plain robbery.”

The tall man took a tobacco sack from the inside pocket of his coat and dumped a pile of change into a palm. After counting out the coins carefully, he handed them over to Jolene.

“We’ll have the best of your services,” he said formally.

The Chinaman, strong for his size, nodded at a go-ahead from Jolene and turned Pardner’s tub over onto its side, so the water poured down through the gaps between the floorboards.

“I ain’t bathin’ in the same tub as no dog, Harlan,” Willie told his friend stoutly.

Harlan sighed. “Willie, sometimes you are a trial to my spirit,” he said. “That mutt was probably cleaner than you are before he even set foot in this place.”

“Them steaks are about ready,” Jolene informed Rowdy, giving Pardner a dark assessment. “I don’t reckon the dog could eat out back, instead of in my dining room?”

“You ‘don’t reckon’ right,” Rowdy said pleasantly. With cordial nods to Harlan and Willie, he made for the bathhouse door, Pardner right on his heels.

* * *

LARK MORGAN WATCHED slantwise from an upstairs window of Mrs. Porter’s Rooming House as the stranger strode across the road from Jolene Bell’s establishment to the barbershop, the dog walking close by his side.

The man wore a trail coat that could have used a good shaking out, and his hair, long enough to curl at the back of his collar, gleamed pale gold in the afternoon sunlight. His hat was battered, but of good quality, and the same could be said of his boots. While not necessarily a person of means, he was no ordinary saddle bum, either.

And that worried Lark more than anything else—except maybe the bulge low on his left hip, indicating that he was wearing a sidearm.

She frowned. Drew back from the window when the stranger suddenly turned, his gaze slicing to the very window she was peering out of, as surely as if he’d felt her watching him. Her heart rose into her throat and fluttered there.

A hand coming to rest on her arm made her start.

Ellie Lou Porter, her landlady, stepped back, her eyes wide. Mrs. Porter was a doelike creature, tiny and frail and painfully plain. Behind that unremarkable face, however, lurked a shrewd and very busy brain.

“I’m so sorry, Lark,” Mrs. Porter said, watching through the window as the stranger finally turned away and stepped into the barbershop, taking the dog with him. “I didn’t mean to frighten you.”

Lark willed her heart to settle back into its ordinary place and beat properly. “You didn’t,” she lied. “I was just—distracted, and you caught me off guard.”

Mrs. Porter smiled knowingly. There wasn’t much that went on in or around Stone Creek, Lark had quickly learned, that escaped the woman’s scrutiny. “His name is Rowdy Rhodes,” she said, evidently speaking of the stranger who had just entered the barbershop. “As you may know, my cook, Mai Lee, is married to Jolene’s houseboy, and she carries a tale readily enough.” She paused, shuddering, though whether over Jolene or the houseboy, Lark had no way of knowing. “It’s got to be an alias, of course,” Mrs. Porter finished.

Lark was not reassured. If it hadn’t been against her better judgment, she’d have gone right down to the barbershop, a place where women were no more welcome than in her former husband’s gentleman’s club in Denver, and demanded that the stranger explain himself and his presence in her hiding place.