Read Online Wild to the Bone by Peter Brandvold - Free Book Online Page A

robbers are and run them to ground in short order. You can be sure of that.”
    Smiling confidently, she extended her hand. Her employer squeezed it gently, gave a courtly dip of his chin, and said, “I don’t doubt it a bit. A safe journey to you both, and please fill me in from time to time via that wonderful invention known as the telegraph.”
    â€œWill do, Allan.”
    Bear rose and started to follow Raven to the door, but Pinkerton said, “Bear, hold on a minute. I’d like a private word.”
    When Agent York had left the office and closed the door, Haskell said, “What is it, Allan?”
    Pinkerton canted his head to one side and narrowed one eye suspiciously. “You and Miss York haven’t done anything, uh, against the rules, now, have you, Bear?”
    The tips of Haskell’s ears burned. What in hell had put the head Pinkerton on the sex scent? A fella—and a gal—had to be mighty careful around a man with Allan Pinkerton’s detective experience.
    To cover his chagrin, Bear widened his eyes and dropped his jaw in feigned exasperation. “What do you take me for, boss?”
    That didn’t seem to appease the older agent a bit. He continued to scrutinize the big man suspiciously as Bear, wagging his head as though his feelings had been irreparably hurt, turned, opened the door, and went out.
    Raven was just then leaving. Miss Whitehurst caught him catching a brief glimpse of his partner’s round ass beneath her pleated wool skirt as she went out through the car’s rear door.
    Bear blushed as he donned his hat.
    Sitting at her desk, Miss Whitehurst shook her head and stared skeptically at him over the rims of her old-lady glasses. “Agent Haskell—”
    â€œOh, don’t you start!” Bear said, cutting her off.
    She arched a light red brow and canted her head to one side. “It’s a long journey up to Spotted Horse in the Pumpkin Buttes,” she said in a lilting, faintly admonishing singsong voice, tapping a pencil on her desk. “One hundred and twenty-five miles to Douglas and then another hundred miles by horseback through some of the emptiest country on the western frontier.”
    Haskell had already thought about that. It had tied his vocal cords in a knot, and he had to clear his throat of shame before croaking, “Meaning what, Abby?”
    â€œMeaning”—she glanced at the door through which Raven had disappeared—“should I be jealous?”
    Haskell chuckled as he hiked a hip on the corner of the secretary’s desk and leaned toward her. “Let’s say you are, though I assure you that you have no need to be. Me, I’m partial to redheads. Besides, that one’s snooty. How ’bout if when I return from them Pumpkin Buttes up yonder with another gang of stage robbers tied up in knots, I take you out to the Larimer Hotel in Denver for a nice porterhouse by candlelight, followed by . . . coffee and brandy, upstairs in one of them fine-appointed suites?”
    â€œHmmmm. I’ll have to think about that.”
    â€œYou do that.” Haskell poked his half-smoked stogie between his lips, rose from the secretary’s desk, and winked. “Me, I’ll be doin’ little else.”
    â€œOh, get on with you, you big tease!”
    Chuckling, Haskell left.

8

    B y the time Bear had stepped out of Pinkerton’s office car, Raven was gone.
    The two bodyguards sitting on the car’s front steps merely glowered at him as Bear pinched his hat brim to them and then headed off across the rail yard toward the depot station and Cheyenne proper, in hopes of finding a meal.
    He found one at the Mountain Lion Saloon on Railroad Avenue, a place he knew well and that had a Mexican cook who could throw together the best huevos rancheros north of the border. The Mexican also knew the size of Haskell’s appetite. When the cook’s pretty daughter carried out