Free A Wanted Man by Linda Lael Miller Page B

like he always did. If Rowdy’d gone through the gates of hell itself, he figured the dog probably would have followed.
    The inside of that shack looked even worse than the outside. The stone fireplace was crumbling, and half the floorboards were missing. Those that remained were probably rotten.
    He paused on the threshold, stopped Pardner with a movement of his knee when he would have ventured inside.
    Rowdy stepped back, walked around the perimeter of the place, noted the overgrown vegetable garden, the teetering privy and the well. Returning to examine the cardboard For Sale sign, he noted from a scribbled addition that the whole place, a little under an acre, could be had for fifty dollars in back taxes.
    He rubbed his chin, thinking about becoming a landowner.
    He’d saved most of his pay while he was in Haven, so he was flush, and he’d developed a penchant for carpentry, helping to rebuild the burned-out town. He liked the smell of freshly planed lumber and the release of swinging a hammer or wielding a saw.
    It was a fool’s notion, of course.
    What could he do with an acre of ground?
    And, anyhow, he planned to move on, once he’d gotten the truth of the train-robbing situation and unraveled the secrets behind Lark Morgan’s brown eyes.
    Still, with the railroad headed in that direction, the land might make a good investment. He’d need something to fill his free time, since Stone Creek didn’t appear to be a hotbed of crime or social activity, and putting that shack to rights seemed like a sensible occupation.
    Resolved, he went back to the jailhouse and built a fire in the potbelly stove. By the time he’d adjusted the damper and shifted the chimney pipe to close the gaps issuing little scallops of dusty smoke, the supplies had arrived from the general store.
    He put a pot of coffee on to brew.
    Pardner, meanwhile, padded into the single jail cell, jumped up on the cot inside and settled himself for a snooze.
    Jolene Bell showed up before the coffee was through perking.
    “I hope you’ll be a better lawman than old Pete Quincy was,” she said.
    “I guess that remains to be seen,” Rowdy replied. He’d have offered her some of the coffee, but it was still raw and he only had one cup.
    “I run a clean place,” Jolene told him, after working up her mettle for a few seconds. “My girls are all of legal age, and my whiskey ain’t watered down, neither.”
    Rowdy bit the inside of his lip, so he wouldn’t grin. Obviously, Jolene was there on serious business. He’d learned a long time ago that if a woman had something to say, it was best to listen, whether she was the preacher’s wife or the local madam.
    “Am I gonna have trouble with you?” she asked, frowning.
    Rowdy hooked his thumbs in his gun belt. “Not unless any of your ‘girls’ are there against their will,” he said. “And I’ll be by to collect pistols, if I see more than a dozen horses tied up at your hitching rail.”
    Jolene’s gaze slipped to the .44 on his left hip. “Might be some as protest a rule like that one,” she asserted.
    “I don’t give a damn whether they protest or not,” Rowdy replied.
    “Since when is there a law on the books that says cowboys got to surrender their sidearms afore they can do any drinkin’?”
    “Since now,” Rowdy said. “They’ll get the guns back when they’re ready to ride out, sober.”
    “I’d be interested to see how you plan to make that stick,” Jolene told him. “There’s a lot of big spreads around here. The cowboys work long, hard hours, and when they get paid, they like to come into town and have themselves a good time. They get pretty lively, sometimes—especially if there’s a dance down at the Cattleman’s Meeting Hall, like there is next Saturday night.”
    “All the more reason,” Rowdy said, “to enforce the Rhodes Ordinance.”
    “The Rhodes Ordinance? I ain’t never heard of it.” Her tiny eyes widened as revelation struck. “Say—that’s your