A Hard Ride Home Read Online Free PDF Page A

into the road, breathing hard, excited. The men were dead, dark red blood pooling around one's shattered skull, but all he could think was that this—this was just like the stories he read in Warren Grady's library. Emmett was like a fancy musketeer or a gallant pirate, and hell if Jesse didn't sound like one of those damn girls, swooning over make-believe heroes.
    When he reached Emmett, he realized Emmett probably read those same books, in that same library, before Jesse ever came to Silver Creek. The thought abruptly left him colder than the sight of brains in the dirt, and he couldn't fathom why.
    Emmett had sweat all over his face and blood on his arm. He looked at Jesse, frowning, as more people spilled out onto the street, drawn to the echoes of gunfire and the eerie silence that followed.
    "Are you all right?" Emmett asked, squinting in the bright sun and eyeing Jesse like he couldn't figure out why Jesse was staring at him. Even his eyelashes were a deep, rusty orange.
    Jesse said, "You're bleeding. Did they get you?" He stamped his foot nervously, like the horses, trying to forget every fool thing he'd just thought because when he looked at Sheriff, he didn't want to think about anything else, not that library, not Warren's big hands on him, not anything but Emmett's face and the steadiness of his hand on the gun.
    "Just a little." Emmett touched his torn shirt where a bullet must have grazed his arm.
    By then, there were enough folks around that Jesse thought he better not put his hand over that bleeding place like he wanted to.
    Besides, Rose did it for him, wrapping a perfectly good kerchief around the wound and tutting.
    Jesse slipped back through the crowd, his heart racing. He passed Evelyn in the street, gave her a little shrug, and hurried into the Willow. He rushed up the stairs so he could hide in his room, thinking about the wild look in Emmett's fine blue eyes as he came down from the fight as quick as a whip's snap.
    *~*~*
    As the end of his first month in Silver Creek neared, Emmett started to feel at ease walking the short length of the town from one end to the other. His small room at the back of the jailhouse wasn't much, but it felt cozy and even a little cheerful thanks to the fresh wildflowers Rose and Josephine and Beatrice brought him every few days. They were awfully cordial, for whores.
    The people of Silver Creek gossiped more than a gaggle of old women at a knitting circle.
    All it took was a handful of sour lemon candies to secure more information than his sister had shared with him since he got back.
    "Mayor Grady's got his own posse, Sheriff," a boy told him in front of the General Store. "Ma says they're sc-scoundrels."
    He crouched in front of the boy. "I'm a Grady too, you know."
    "They gonna drown you like they did the old sheriff?" the boy asked, reaching into his paper bag to nab more of the round candies.
    Emmett didn't know what to make of that. Children had a way of twisting what was real into fancy. He was fairly certain Evelyn, if anyone, would have told him if their father were engaged in illegal goings-on.
    The gunsmith, Charley Green, a young black man with amber-colored eyes, told Emmett how a city-educated homesteader called Ira Durn had been pouring half his fortune into the Weeping Willow wooing Charley's sister Sara, even though Sara was the madam's seamstress.
    "She's not a painted lady," Charley said, looking down with a shy grin. "Though don't get me wrong, the girls there are real nice. Good girls."
    Their father had died owing the mayor a debt that Sara and Charley's salaries together were barely putting a dent in. Sara refused to marry her homesteader suitor until the debt was clear.
    "But I've said too much," Charley said pleasantly. He sold Emmett a box of cartridges. "Easy with these now, my stocks are low."
    Milton, the town doctor, and Horace, the old shopkeeper, had been around since Silver Creek was just a cattle estate on a lone prairie. They both had