Claudia Dain Read Online Free PDF Page B

feeling.
    Trouble was, he liked the feel of her.
    Jack pulled off his hat and slapped it a couple of times against his leg, pulling his thoughts back into line. Adjusting his hat down over his tangled hair, he considered the site of the last murder.
    McPherson was a remote spot just west of the old Abilene Trail and east of the old Ellsworth Trail; in the middle of nothing and on the route to nowhere. Good spot for a murder. The cabin was a scant mile from the town proper, isolated and abandoned, the boards shrunken and wind scraped, the roof just able to keep out water. There was a bed frame, stark and wooden, and a shelf in the corner; that was the extent of the furniture.
    There was no blood.
    There was no sign of life.
    There was nothing to see, nothing to learn. It was just an old shack in the middle of nothing. The place where a girl barely turned woman had died.
    The sun slanted low through the small square of a window in the western wall of the cabin; it was getting late, time to make camp. Jack took a last turn, his eyes scanning the space, looking for evidence. There was none. There never was.
    He left the cabin on quick feet; he wanted to make camp before dark and there was no way he was going to bed down in there. Grabbing Joe, he mounted and rode north, toward Abilene. He'd not make Abilene before dark and didn't care to. A night in the open was more welcome than the reception he'd get in that town. He'd rarely been in a town that had more quills than Abilene had set against him. Only the sheriff and that Samaritan gal had shown him any sign of welcome, and he understood the sheriff's reasons. Why the Samaritan hadn't clawed her way out of his range, he couldn't figure. If she understood men at all, she'd light out, leaving a trail he couldn't follow.
    The rise and fell of her breasts and the smell of her hair came to his mind again with the unexpected force of a hot wind running before a prairie fire. She should have run then, that minute, instead of standing so still, caught in the trap of his arms. But he'd been the one to do the running.
    Jack stroked Joe's neck and urged him northward, running again from the image of the dark-haired girl and the soft rhythm of her breathing. He'd bed down on the prairie, just south of the Smoky Hill River, halfway between the cabin and Abilene; it was an easy ride and, though he was running, he was in no mood to push himself hard.
    He got his fire going and his bedroll spread just as the sun touched the rim of the earth, heating the sky with color just before the long fade to indigo. He laid his horsehair rope around his bedroll in a loose loop. The sound of the darkness changed suddenly and he faded back into the growing shadows, leaving the golden firelight to warm an empty camp.
    The newcomer edged into the light slowly, carefully, taking his time with each step. Jack watched from just beyond the man's range of sight. He, too, was careful.
    "Coffee's ready," the man said, using a folded rag resting on a rock to lift the boiling pot off the fire.
    "Help yourself," Jack answered before moving a few feet to his right, not willing for the man to use his voice to find range.
    "Thanks," the man answered, pouring a cup. "You?"
    "Only one cup. It's all yours."
    "Thanks again."
    The man's hands were both blatantly occupied. Jack had circled his own camp and could detect no other men waiting for him in the dark. He moved into the light of his fire, approaching the man head-on, his hands coiling a length of rope, occupied.
    "Name's Foster. I'm a U.S. Marshal."
    Jack had heard of him; this man fit the description. "Scullard."
    "Haven't seen you around; you new to the country?"
    Marshal Foster kept sipping at his coffee. Jack kept playing with his length of rope. Both men edged around each other with caution born of experience.
    "Yeah," Jack said, his hat masking his features in heavy shadow so that only his stubbled jaw was clear in the firelight. "Up from Texas. Huntin' bounty."
    The