A Wanted Man Read Online Free PDF Page B

even though the guy was movin’. Then nodded like he’d aimed there all along.”
    “Is that hard?”
    “Hard? ’Bout as hard as pluggin’ a quail on the fly with a pistol. Didn’t anybody ever teach you to aim for the body?” He thumped himself on the chest. “Bigger target.”
    “No, I can’t say anybody ever taught me that.” Or anything else about guns beyond the fact of their existence.
    “Remedy that first thing tomorrow, if you want.”
    “You most certainly will not!” Mrs. Bossidy had a grip on her purse like she was ready to swing for his head if he dared to try such a thing.
    “Yeah, I suppose not.” He sighed in deep regret.
    “Spoilsport,” Hiram mouthed at her.
    Laura cleared her throat, trying to inject the proper note of casualness in her voice. “Did you find out who he is?”
    “He wasn’t the sort to volunteer a whole lot of information, if you know what I mean. And we were a tad busy.”
    “Oh.”
    “They’re gonna be handing all the captives off to the authorities at the next station. S’pose he’ll come back to pick these up, too.”
    “Do you think he’ll get off with the prisoners?”
    Mr. Hoxie shrugged; the fun was over and he wasn’t much interested in what came next. “Don’t know.”
    “You’re awfully interested in that man,” Mrs. Bossidy commented.
    “Oh, no,” Laura hedged. “I just…it would be only polite to thank him. Perhaps offer him a reward.”
    “I see.”
    “You always taught me one can never be too polite. Something you’ve demonstrated for me so wisely all these years.”
    Hiram choked.
    “Did I? Perhaps I overemphasized the importance of that convention.”
    “Oh, no,” Laura assured her. “I am certain that it would be unforgivably rude if we did not thank him properly for saving our lives.”
    “And what, exactly, would you consider the appropriate ‘thank-you’ for saving your life?”
    “I—” There was obviously a wrong answer, Laura decided. Mrs. Bossidy watched her with all the suspicion of a headmistress who knew her girls were plotting escape. “My heartfelt appreciation?” she ventured.
    Mrs. Bossidy shook her head. “Where you and that man are concerned, there will be no heartfelt anything .”

Chapter 3

    O nce they left the station in Papillon, Laura had allowed Mrs. Bossidy to nudge her back to their private car. It was perfectly obvious he wasn’t coming back, anyway, and at least in her own car she could stop constantly glancing at the door, drawing her companion’s sharp attention.
    Looking back on it now, she didn’t know why she had been so certain he’d come back. She only knew she’d wanted him to. But it was not as if she was accustomed always to getting everything she wanted. Her parents had certainly tried, showering her with toys and dolls and pretty new dresses, but they hadn’t been able to give her the two things she had really wanted: health, and freedom. Only time and patience had given her those.
    Laura had from the first wanted to plan out as little of the trip as possible. She intended to follow her interests and instincts. The painting would be better for it. They had spent two days longer in Omaha than they’dplanned, allowing her to wait for one brilliantly sunny day to capture the light on the Missouri River and the broad, shimmering expanse of the mudflats north of town. It took them the better part of a week to reach Kearney; they’d pulled off at Columbus so Laura could capture the meeting of the Platte and the Loup River, and again at a small side spur line on the great, empty stretch before Grand Island, an endless sweep of nothingness like nothing she’d ever seen.
    And so she’d considered chugging right through Kearney. In those endless months that she’d waited for the cars to be completed, Laura had pored over the available photographs and paintings of the entire length of the railway. Her concept for the panorama was to record the changes that the railway had wrought in