Gaffney, Patricia Read Online Free PDF Page A

was just
like a woman to run a clean saloon, but it turned out—who'd've thought?—a clean
saloon was nice for a change. It probably made you feel a lot better while you
were defiling your lungs and pickling your liver and squandering your wife's egg
money on simpleminded games of chance.
    Natural caution told him to stay away, but Miss McGill's red dress
was calling to him like a siren. First, he poured a little more liquor, though,
and stuck a thin black cigarette, prerolled, in the corner of his mouth—for
that look at me wrong and I'll blow your brains out effect so vital to a
man in his line of work. Nobody stared openly, but he felt the cautious, veiled
looks as he moseyed around the tables of drinkers and poker players, heading
for the blackjack table.
    A man saw him and started to scramble up off his stool, but Jesse
put a friendly hand on his shoulder— which still made him freeze like a bird
dog—and whispered, "Just watching." He was pretty sure McGill knew he
was there, but was making a point not to look at him. So he looked at her.
    She sure had good posture. And she wasn't barefooted after all;
she had on flesh-colored stockings. This afternoon she'd worn her curly dark
hair down, but tonight it was up in a big, top-heavy pompadour that took some
getting used to. In fact, he couldn't get over how completely different she
looked from a couple of hours ago. Not that he was complaining. But even the
freckles were gone. She had rouge on her lips, and perfume he could smell from
here. Which was fine, great, he liked perfume and red lips on a woman, but...
But nothing. She was gorgeous, and as soon as he got over the shock he'd start
to appreciate it.
    That dangling shoe looked in danger of falling off as the swinging
foot bobbed faster and faster. He liked the idea that he was making her
nervous, but except for the foot you'd never have known it. She kept her face
poker straight, as the saying went, and she handled the cards with the crisp,
quick, slightly bored snappiness of a true professional.
    "You're busted, Gunther," she told a plaid-shirted,
lumberjack-looking fellow, and leaned over to scoop up his cards. Jesse's eyes
went where every other man's went, and that's when he saw it.
    Or thought he saw it—it only flashed for a second, and afterward
he wondered if it had been a trick of the light. So he waited until the game
was over— dealer won—and she swept up everybody's cards with one long,
leaning-over pass. There it was, no mirage, no bourbon-induced hallucination: a
genuine tattoo on the shadowy inside curve of her left breast. Some kind of a
bird, an eagle or something, flying out of the cleft and nose-diving toward the
nipple. His cigarette fell out of his mouth.
    He stepped on it, pretending he'd meant to drop it, hoping nobody
noticed it wasn't even lit. Hell, no danger of that: who'd be looking at his
cigarette when they could look at Cady's tattoo? She dealt another round, and
he was so fixated on catching another glimpse of the elusive bird he forgot all
about trying to catch her at card-palming or double-dealing. Which might, now
that he thought of it, be the whole point. Hm.
    He was thinking about other uses for the tattoo, less practical
but more interesting ones, when a tall, willowy blonde trapped his arm between
her powdered breasts and breathed, "Hi," on a gust of gin and
bitters.
    He was glad to see her. It was good that he struck fear in the
hearts of men, but the down side was that hardly anybody talked to him. He got
lonely. "Hi," he returned, then wished he'd said something meaner,
more menacing. But what? Those real? Not very gentlemanly. And say what
you would about Gault, he always tried to be a gentleman.
    "I'm Glendoline," the blonde confided in a childlike
whisper, blinking dreamy blue eyes and pursing her lips as if she wanted to kiss
him. "And you're Gault. I heard all about you."
    Ah, now he had her number. He'd never known about this species of
woman before, the kind