Free High and Wild by Peter Brandvold Page B

hadn’t spied the girl.
    Raven must have been in some sort of disguise again, although he’d thought she always traveled in . . .
    He let his thoughts trail off as he glanced through the soot-streaked window to his left. He frowned and continued to stare through the glass as he let the smoke from his Cleopatra Federal dribble out his broad nostrils. Finally, he raked the burning coal off the end, stubbed it out with his boot, and stuffed the rest of the stogie into the pocket of his cowhide vest.
    He picked up his saddlebags, which he draped over his left shoulder—he had his bear-fur coat roped tightly to the bags, as now in September, it would likely be chilly up along the Continental Divide—and took his Winchester Yellowboy ’66 in his right hand. He fumbled the door open, stopped, and grinned.
    He kicked the door closed behind him and strode forward along the aisle, the passengers sitting in twos and threes on either side of him in the straight-backed, green velour bench seats beneath wooden-slatted luggage racks. It was warm enough that several windows were open, and some of the passengers were coughing against the smoke from the Baldwin locomotive’s big, diamond-shaped stack that was slithering into the car, sometimes accompanied by glowing cinders that were known to set folks’ clothes on fire.
    Haskell stopped behind the black-haired young woman, dressed all in black, with a prim, square box hat on her head, sitting on the right side of the aisle, her back to him. She sat in the aisle seat, staring straight ahead. No one sat beside her. Even from the back, she had such a chilly set to her shoulders that Bear didn’t wonder why.
    He grinned at having finally run the girl down. He saw no reason they couldn’t exchange the briefest of greetings. They were still a long way from their destination, and sometimes old Allan was secretive to the point of schoolboy foolishness.
    Haskell crouched down behind the woman and said into her left ear, “Don’t shoot, Miss York, it’s only the stable boy you played house with last . . .”
    He let his voice trail off. The woman had turned to him. He jerked his head back in surprise.
    It was not Raven’s oval-shaped, perfectly sculpted countenance and deep blue eyes facing him but the face of an old woman in her late fifties, early sixties, with deep crow’s feet around her eyes and mouth and shock and dismay in her pale brown eyes. On the seat beside her, a Rhode Island Red hen clucked through the wicker bars of its cage, regarding Haskell with much the same expression as its owner.
    â€œSir, would you pleas e !” the matron said.
    â€œBeg your pardon, ma’am,” Haskell said, tipping his hat to the woman. “Beg your pardon. I thought you were somebody else.”
    â€œIndeed, I am not!”
    â€œI see that.” Bear pinched the brim of his slouch hat. The stark contrast between the girl he’d expected to see and the middle-aged woman he’d actually seen was like a punch to the solar plexus. “My sympathies for your loss.”
    â€œOh, that old scoundrel wasn’t much of a loss. I donned the weeds for his sister. Just the same, I do not talk to strangers, sir!”
    â€œAll right, all right, I understand, and good day to you, ma’am!”
    Flushed with embarrassment, Haskell retreated several rows to an empty aisle seat. He stowed his saddlebags and rifle in the overhead rack and glanced at the man sitting beside the window. He was a gray-bearded old-timer in a shabby bowler hat, and he was chuckling delightedly, obviously having heard Haskell’s brief exchange with the widow.
    â€œI was married to one like that,” the graybeard said. He spoke around his gnarly old hand. “Meaner’n a barrel full o’ snakes. You ask me, her husband’s the lucky one!” The old man laughed, wheezing, and finished up by coughing and wiping spittle