Comanche Moon Read Online Free PDF

make into a pleasant place for Woodrow to visit when he was home.
    She didn't want to get thrown out, so she went across the room and accepted Jake Spoon's money. She didn't look Jake in the eye; she tried to make herself small. Maybe, if she was lucky, the boy would just do it and go.
    Maggie wasn't lucky, though. The minute she took Jake's money he drew back his hand and slapped her hard in the face.
    Jake slapped the whore because he was angry with her for being so standoffish and lingering so long, but he also gave her the slap because that was how Madame Scull had started things with him. The minute he walked upstairs she would come out of the bedroom and slap his face. The next thing he knew they would be on the floor, tussling fiercely. Then they would do the raw things.
    He wanted, again, what he had had with Inez Scull. He didn't understand why she had cut his hair and thrown him out. Her coldness upset him so that he stole a bottle of whiskey from a shed behind the saloon and drank the whole bottle down.
    The whiskey burned at first, and then numbed him a little, but it didn't cool the fever he felt at the memory of his hot tusslings with Inez Scull. Only a woman could cool that fever, and the handiest woman happened to be Woodrow Call's whore.
    She had very white skin, the whore--when he slapped her, her cheek became immediately red. But the slap didn't set things off, as it had when Madame Scull slapped him. Maggie, Call's whore, didn't utter a sound. She didn't slap him back, or grab him, or do anything wild or raw. She just put the money away, took off her dress, and lay back on the bed, waiting. She wouldn't even so much as look at him, although, in an effort to make her a little more lively, he pulled her hair. But neither the slap nor the hair pulling worked at all.
    Except for flexing herself a little when he crawled on top of her, the whore didn't move a muscle, or speak or cry out or yell or bite or even sigh. She didn't scream and kick and jerk, as Madame Scull did every time they were together.
    As soon as the young ranger finished--it took considerably longer than she had hoped--Maggie got off the bed and went behind a little screen, to clean herself. She meant to stay behind the screen, hiding, until Jake Spoon left. She knew she would have a bad bruise on her cheek, from the slap. She didn't want to see the young man again, if she could help it.
    Again, though, Maggie was not lucky. While she was cleaning herself she heard Jake retching and went out to find him on his hands and knees again. At least he was vomiting in a basin; he had not ruined the new carpet she had saved up to buy.
    Jake Spoon heaved and heaved.
    Maggie saw how young he was and took a little pity.
    When he finished being sick she cleaned him up a little and helped him out the door.
    "Now boys, look there!" Inish Scull said, pointing westward at a small red butte.
    "See that? Pretend it's your Alps." "Our what, Captain?" Long Bill inquired. It was breakfast time--Deets had just fried up some tasty bacon, and the breeze, though chilly, could be tolerated, particularly while he was sitting at the campfire holding a tin mug of scalding coffee that in texture was almost as thick as mud. All the rangers were hunched over their cups, letting the steam from the scalding coffee warm their cold faces. The exception was Woodrow Call, already saddled up and ready to ride--though even he had no notion of where they were headed, or why. They had travelled due south for a few days, but then the Captain suddenly bent to the west, toward a long empty space where, so far as any of the rangers knew, there was nothing to see or do.
    The low, flat-topped hill was red in the morning sunlight.
    "The Alps, Mr. Colemanffwas the Captain repeated. "If you find yourself in Switzerland or France you have to cross them before you can get to Italy and eat the tasty noodle. That was Hannibal's challenge. He had all those elephants, but the Alpine passes were deep