Free Willow: A Novel (No Series) by Linda Lael Miller Page A

wish that on anybody,” she said, with a broken sort of wryness. Once, she and Evadne had liked each other. Everything had been somuch easier then. “Why do you suppose he’s here at all, when he could be with Dove?”
    Maria bit her full lower lip and would make no comment.
    *   *   *
    Gideon realized, with alarm, that he was losing his taste for hard liquor; he’d been nursing the same lousy, watered-down drink for better than an hour. To add insult to injury, he felt distinctly drunk.
    It was late when the traveling peddler came into the saloon. He was a very tall man, with fair hair that stuck out from under his dusty bowler hat, and his suit, ill-fitting and assembled of a bright plaid, was an assault to the eyes.
    Gideon swore under his breath and looked away, blinking.
    As luck would have it, the drummer set his case down within an inch of Gideon’s left boot and jovially pounded on the bar with one fist. “A special!” he shouted to the bartender, in a thick Scots burr that seemed to roll on and on, like a wagon wheel racing downhill. “And one for me new friend here, as well!”
    Was the bartender smirking a little? In his unlikely drunken state, Gideon couldn’t rightly tell. He peered into his glass, wondering if it had been laced with poison.
    “Aye and have a wet for your whistle, then!” enjoined the friendly peddler, as two enormous mugs of foaming beer were set on the bar.
    Gideon looked at the Scot and thought that his mustachewas just a bit off center. “Don’t mind if I do,” he said, befuddled, his words a bit slurred.
    He took a sip from the mug allotted to him and the taste of it was so bad that he spat the stuff unceremoniously onto the sawdust floor.
    “We call it panther piss,” explained the barkeeper.
    The peddler laughed richly. “It’s an acquired taste, Mr. . .?”
    “Marshall,” frowned Gideon. “Gideon Marshall.”
    “’Tis a troubled man you are, Gideon Marshall,” guessed the Scot. Did he straighten his mustache? No, it wasn’t possible to do that; Gideon had merely imagined the gesture.
    At the back of the saloon, someone pounded a tinny piano and a woman began to sing a bawdy barroom song, the lyrics of which Gideon would normally have appreciated. Everyone except the bartender, the drummer, and Gideon himself drifted toward the music, singing along.
    The peddler drained his mug and ordered another. He seemed as steady on his feet as before, a remarkable thing, considering. “You’re a wee bit into your cups, Mr. Marshall,” he observed, and it seemed to Gideon that his burr was slipping, just as his mustache had seemed to, moments before. “Might be good if you went back to your house, then. There are those who’ll set upon a man and take his valuables, in an evil and wayward town such as this one.”
    “Evil?” muttered Gideon, drunker than he’d ever been in his life. Virginia City was a wild place, especially when compared to the comforts of San Francisco, but he wouldn’t have gone so far as to say it was evil.
    “’Tis a sin to sell spirits of a Sunday,” announced the peddler, in a jovial tone of confession, raising his glass and looking at it appreciatively before taking a deep draft.
    Gideon sighed inwardly. The world was full of hypocrites and he himself was among the greatest of those. “What’d you say your name was?” he asked the peddler.
    “I didn’t say,” came the reply, with no accent at all, and then the stranger was calmly ushering Gideon out of the bar and onto the almost deserted street.
    There, he suddenly thrust Gideon up against the weathered outside wall of the saloon and landed a very respectable punch in his middle.
    Though he was a fair hand in a fight, thanks to years of defending himself against his older brother, Zachary, Gideon was in no condition to do battle now. He gave a windless grunt and slid ignobly down the wall to rest on his haunches.
    The drummer crouched before Gideon and, to his amazement, handed him