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Authors: The Colonel's Daughter
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him.
“That kind of female ties a man up in so many knots he can’t stand up straight,” Jack warned, “let alone stiffen his spine.”
An unexpected flash of humor appeared in the boy’s blue eyes. “Is there any other kind?”
“Been knotted up before, have you?”
“Sort of.” Grimacing, the kid shifted hisweight. “I slipped free, though, to come out to the Black Hills.”
“You don’t think the rope will still be waiting for you when you get home?”
“I’m not going home. Not for a while, anyway. There’s places I want to see, things I want to do.” His voice took on an eager note. “You ever been to San Francisco?”
“Once, a few years back.”
He’d tracked Obediah Chilton, the third man on his list, to San Francisco. Jack had spent weeks roaming the city’s fog-shrouded streets before he discovered his quarry had moved on to the California gold fields.
“Is the city as wide-open and wild as they say?”
“It’s taming down some, but a man can still buy just about anything there if he’s got the cash in his pockets.”
“That’s the way I heard it. What about Sacramento? Have you been there, too?”
Jack’s jaw locked. He’d found Chilton fifty miles west of Sacramento, in one of the hundreds of mining towns that had sprung up along the gold trail that cut north to south along the foothills of the Sierra Nevadas. The man had cried like a baby when Jack cornered him in a saloon and told him to draw or die one small piece at a time.
“I’ve been there.”
The flat reply drew a quick glance from the kid.He might still show some green behind the ears, but he was old enough to tread warily on another man’s past. Especially a man with a past like Black Jack Sloan’s. Matt’s questions eased off.
But not his saddle aches.
By midafternoon, he could hardly sit upright. Whenever the travelers dismounted to walk their horses, he stumbled along on India-rubber legs. Suzanne kept the lead and slowed the pace more with each passing hour. Once or twice she’d flicked a quick glance over her shoulder at Jack, as if she sensed how much it chafed him to amble along at a slow walk.
She sensed right. Impatience bit at him like a three-fanged snake. He’d get her and the kid to Rawhide Buttes, he’d promised her that much. The station was a good size stop, not like the swing station at Ten Mile. If she was so bullheaded as to want to keep traveling from there, she could damned well sweet-talk someone else into riding shotgun for her.
She wasn’t his responsibility, dammit.
The sun flamed low and orange when the massive red rock formations that gave Rawhide Buttes its name rose in the distance. As the three riders drew closer, the lively notes of “Buffalo Girls Won’t You Come Out Tonight” rolled through the gathering dusk to greet them.
Like most of the major home stations strung out along the Cheyenne-Deadwood stage route, Rawhide Buttes offered the wayfarer both sustenance and sin. This particular station, Suzanne soon discovered, combined the two in one rather lively operation.
Music pumped out of a clapboard building erected in the shadow of the butte. A crude sign nailed to a porch strut identified the place as Mother Featherlegs Shephard’s Saloon and Hurdy-Gurdy Parlor. Raucous laughter bellowed through the open door of the saloon, almost drowning out the wheezing notes of the hand-cranked organ.
A combination of rods and strings, the hurdy-gurdy had once graced the courts of Europe. Composers such as Haydn and Mozart had composed music for the instrument. In more recent years, its easy portability had made it so popular on the frontier that the women who worked the dance halls had become known as hurdy-girls or hurdies.
Suzanne was no stranger to hurdies, generally considered one class up from the prostitutes who serviced the troops stationed at frontier army posts. While social barriers existed in the West, just as they did in the East, the distinctions tended
“That kind of female ties a man up in so many knots he can’t stand up straight,” Jack warned, “let alone stiffen his spine.”
An unexpected flash of humor appeared in the boy’s blue eyes. “Is there any other kind?”
“Been knotted up before, have you?”
“Sort of.” Grimacing, the kid shifted hisweight. “I slipped free, though, to come out to the Black Hills.”
“You don’t think the rope will still be waiting for you when you get home?”
“I’m not going home. Not for a while, anyway. There’s places I want to see, things I want to do.” His voice took on an eager note. “You ever been to San Francisco?”
“Once, a few years back.”
He’d tracked Obediah Chilton, the third man on his list, to San Francisco. Jack had spent weeks roaming the city’s fog-shrouded streets before he discovered his quarry had moved on to the California gold fields.
“Is the city as wide-open and wild as they say?”
“It’s taming down some, but a man can still buy just about anything there if he’s got the cash in his pockets.”
“That’s the way I heard it. What about Sacramento? Have you been there, too?”
Jack’s jaw locked. He’d found Chilton fifty miles west of Sacramento, in one of the hundreds of mining towns that had sprung up along the gold trail that cut north to south along the foothills of the Sierra Nevadas. The man had cried like a baby when Jack cornered him in a saloon and told him to draw or die one small piece at a time.
“I’ve been there.”
The flat reply drew a quick glance from the kid.He might still show some green behind the ears, but he was old enough to tread warily on another man’s past. Especially a man with a past like Black Jack Sloan’s. Matt’s questions eased off.
But not his saddle aches.
By midafternoon, he could hardly sit upright. Whenever the travelers dismounted to walk their horses, he stumbled along on India-rubber legs. Suzanne kept the lead and slowed the pace more with each passing hour. Once or twice she’d flicked a quick glance over her shoulder at Jack, as if she sensed how much it chafed him to amble along at a slow walk.
She sensed right. Impatience bit at him like a three-fanged snake. He’d get her and the kid to Rawhide Buttes, he’d promised her that much. The station was a good size stop, not like the swing station at Ten Mile. If she was so bullheaded as to want to keep traveling from there, she could damned well sweet-talk someone else into riding shotgun for her.
She wasn’t his responsibility, dammit.
The sun flamed low and orange when the massive red rock formations that gave Rawhide Buttes its name rose in the distance. As the three riders drew closer, the lively notes of “Buffalo Girls Won’t You Come Out Tonight” rolled through the gathering dusk to greet them.
Like most of the major home stations strung out along the Cheyenne-Deadwood stage route, Rawhide Buttes offered the wayfarer both sustenance and sin. This particular station, Suzanne soon discovered, combined the two in one rather lively operation.
Music pumped out of a clapboard building erected in the shadow of the butte. A crude sign nailed to a porch strut identified the place as Mother Featherlegs Shephard’s Saloon and Hurdy-Gurdy Parlor. Raucous laughter bellowed through the open door of the saloon, almost drowning out the wheezing notes of the hand-cranked organ.
A combination of rods and strings, the hurdy-gurdy had once graced the courts of Europe. Composers such as Haydn and Mozart had composed music for the instrument. In more recent years, its easy portability had made it so popular on the frontier that the women who worked the dance halls had become known as hurdy-girls or hurdies.
Suzanne was no stranger to hurdies, generally considered one class up from the prostitutes who serviced the troops stationed at frontier army posts. While social barriers existed in the West, just as they did in the East, the distinctions tended
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