Free Dorothy Garlock - [Dolan Brothers] by With Heart

she stopped beside him. He folded the paper and put it in his shirt pocket.
    “I forgot to put cornmeal on the list, Mrs. Wilson. Give me a five-pound bag.” The grocer’s wife nodded and went down the crowded aisle of the store.
    “I hear that you’ll be one of the contestants at the rodeo,” Kathleen said. “I’ll be cheering for you.”
    “Thanks. I enter every year just for the hell of it.”
    “Adelaide says that you usually win.”
    “Only the bronc-riding.”
    “You’re being modest. She says you win the calf-roping and sometimes the steer-wrestling.”
    “Once in a while I get lucky.” His tone was one of disinterest.
    He hadn’t looked directly at her except the one time when she first came into the store. Color tinged her face and neck as her irritation mounted.
Who the heck does he think he is? He has no right to snub me. I didn’t ask for the darn table.
    “Have I stepped on your tail? Is that why you’re giving me the cold shoulder?”
    His head turned quickly, and he looked down at her.
Good. I got his attention at last.
    “Why do you say that?”
    “I’m not so dumb that I don’t know when I’m getting the brush-off. I thought that we could be friends as long as we’re both connected to my Uncle Tom. Do you have something against being friends with a woman?”
    “Of course not.” Johnny felt his face tingle with embarrassment.
    “Then perhaps I have body odor or bad breath. I’ll keep my offensive body at a distance when I see you at the rodeo. Good-bye.” She walked away from him with her head held high.
    “Here ya are, Johnny.” Mrs. Wilson returned with the bag of cornmeal. “Anything else?”
    “I don’t think so. Tally up the bill.”
    After he paid, she packed his order in boxes while he carried a five-gallon can of kerosene out to his truck.
    “You should set your cap for Miss Dolan, Johnny,” Mrs. Wilson teased when he came back for the boxes. “She’s nice. Pretty, too. Every single man in town will be beating a path to her door.”
    “Ah . . . no,” he stammered. “She’d not see me for dirt. I’m a poor rancher who’s head over heels in debt.”
    “Who isn’t? She works hard and isn’t in the least snooty. By the way, I put a hunk of cheese in the box, our thanks for the big order.”
    “I’m obliged.”
    “Good luck at the rodeo, Johnny.”
    “Thanks.”
    • • •
    When Kathleen left the store, she was angry at Johnny and angry at herself for having been glad to see him. Embarrassment mingled with her anger. She had been about to make a fool of herself and ask him if he’d like to go to Red Rock to see the Tom Dolans. She should be grateful that he made his feelings perfectly clear.
    Damn him! If he thought she was chasing after him, he could just get that thought out of his block head.
But the idea that he could be thinking that cut her to the quick.
    She was so engrossed in her thoughts that she almost ran into the two men coming toward her. She looked up and recognized them immediately. The two toughs who had attempted to steal her car and her money stood there brazenly grinning at her. Temper that had been simmering since Johnny’s snub, boiled up. With her hands on her hips, she stopped in front of them, barring their way.
    “How come you’re not in jail?” she almost yelled.
    “Well, looky here. If it ain’t that feisty redhead we helped get outta the ditch.” The one called Webb grinned inanely, showing stained, broken teeth.
    “Helped, my hind leg!” The tone of Kathleen’s voice was keeping pace with her temper. “You . . . you piles of horse dung! You were hijacking my car.”
    “Hijackin’ ya? Hear that, Webb? She ain’t grateful a’tall fer what we done. You’d’a thought a uppity-up like her’d have manners and give us a little somethin’ more than a jawin’ out fer all the help we done a pushin’ her car. Like a little kiss maybe.”
    “Listen to me, you mangy polecats,”—Her eyes glittered with the