Free Merline Lovelace by The Colonel's Daughter

presses. She was almost certain those tales had been highly embellished.
    Well, now she’d never know for sure. Summoning a smile, she gave her attention back to the station manager.
    “Mother Featherlegs kin put you folks up for the night,” he assured the travelers. “The Express Line will cover the cost of beans and a bed, seein’s how you were inconvenienced out of your seats on the stage.”
    Inconvenienced wasn’t quite the word Suzanne would have used to describe being held up and left stranded, but she merely tipped the man a polite nod.
    “Thank you.”
    “I’ll take your horses to the barn,” he told them, obviously eager to make amends on behalf of the Express Line. “You folks go in and wet your whistle.”
    She glanced at Sloan. “Are you coming in, or should we say goodbye?”
    Best to do it here in the street, quick and now. No sense dragging matters out. Jack acknowledged that fact even as he passed the roan’s reins to the station manager.
    “I’ll stand you and the boy to a beer.”
    With a quick little nod, she gathered her skirts and mounted the single step onto the rickety porch. Jack eyed her trim backside and cursed himself for a fool.
    He cursed again when Matt released his grip onthe pommel, took a single step and went so barrel-legged he almost landed in the dirt.
    “Come on, kid.” Hauling him upright, Jack walked the groaning youth up the step. “Let’s put some vinegar back in your veins.”
    A few steps plunged them from new dusk outside to old gloom inside. A quick sweep told Jack that Mother Featherlegs Shephard’s Saloon and Hurdy-Gurdy Parlor was no different from any of the hundreds of other similar establishments he’d strolled into over the years. The same odor of stale sweat and spilled whiskey soured the air. The same assortment of ranchers, wranglers and drifters hunched over their drinks, fingering the coins in their pockets as they waited their turn with one of the three hurdies working the sawdust-covered dance boards.
    From the look of them, Jack guessed the women made more working the sod huts out back than they did on the boards. None of the three looked to be particularly light on her feet. Not that the men who paid for the privilege of pressing up against female flesh would mind. Women were as scarce as cow eggs on the frontier.
    And women like Suzanne were even scarcer.
    She paused just inside the door, a small, delicate thrush set down amid crows. The dancing slowed to a standstill. Every head in the windowless dance hall turned. Eyes popped. Jaws sagged. The wrangler cranking the hurdy-gurdy froze, and the last verse of “Sweet Betsy from Pike” died a wheezing death.
    No one moved or spoke until a cigar-chewing hurdie gave her partner a shove that sent him stumbling halfway across the floor. Rolling the black stump of her cigar from one side of her mouth to the other, she ambled over to greet the newcomers.
    Jack had no difficulty identifying Mother Featherlegs Shephard. The dingy gray pantalets billowing beneath her shortened skirts gave her the appearance of a fat, feathery hen on the strut. As she neared, she sent out waves of lavender scent. The oversweet odor fought a fearsome battle with the cigar smoke that wreathed her painted face and graying, corkscrew curls.
    “If you folks are looking for the Express Office, you’re at the right place.”
    With a nod, she indicated the Ticket Office sign nailed to the wall above the faro table. “Next stage won’t be through for another couple of days, though.”
    “And that’s only if it don’t get holt up like the last one,” a customer volunteered, elbowing his companion aside to get a better look at Suzanne.
    “Actually, we were on the stage that was robbed,” she explained to the gathering crowd.
    “So you’re the ones.” Mother Featherlegs darted a quick look at Jack and the still weak-kneed Matt before turning back to Suzanne. “We’d heard some of the passengers got left behind. Word