A Wanted Man: A Stone Creek Novel. Linda Miller Lael

grinned and blew another smoke ring. “We’ll be wanting steaks, soon as we’re dried off and decent, if you can scare them up,” he told Jolene. “Pardner likes his rare.”

      “If that don’t beat all,” Jolene said, pondering the hound. “I can get steaks, all right, but they’ll cost you a pretty penny. And if you’ve a mind to pass the time upstairs with any of my girls, cowboy, your partner here will have to wait in the hall.”

      Given that he was naked, and in a prone position, Rowdy didn’t see any profit in pointing out that he didn’t have truck with whores. His .44 was within easy reach, as always, but shooting a woman, saint or sinner, was outside the boundaries of his personal code. Unless, of course, she drew first.

      “No time for idling with the ladies,” he said, feigning regret. He idled with plenty of ladies, whenever he got the chance, but he favored fine, upstanding widows.

      “You lookin’ for ranch work?” Jolene asked, in no apparent hurry to rustle up the steaks.

      “Maybe,” Rowdy answered. The truth was, he’d been summoned to Stone Creek by none other than Major John Blackstone and Sam O’Ballivan, an Arizona Ranger he’d chanced to encounter down south, a little over a year before, in the border town of Haven. He’d come partly because he and Pardner hadn’t had anything better to do, and because he was curious. And there were a few other reasons, too.

      He suspected his pa was somewhere in these parts, up to his old tricks, for one.

      “Try Sam O’Ballivan’s place,” Jolene said helpfully. “Sam’s a fair man, and he’s always hirin’ on hands to feed them cattle of his.”

      Rowdy nodded. “Obliged,” he said.

      “Not that you’re hurtin’ for money, if you can afford clean bathwater and a steak for a dog,” Jolene added.

      “A man can always use money,” Rowdy allowed, wishing Jolene would order up the steaks, go back to riding herd over the drunks he’d seen out front in the saloon swilling whiskey, and leave him to bathe in peace.

      Pardner gave a despairing whimper.

      “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