Gaffney, Patricia Read Online Free PDF Page B

the edge, curiosity getting the better of his
nerves.
    "You like it here? This place?" He looked around
in mock disbelief. "What's good about it?"
    "Well, Miz Cady the best thing, and I like it when Chico play
the piano, and Miz Glen and Miz Willagail, they nice, plus sometimes I get tips
or candy or a piece o' licorice. And my daddy, he the bartender and everybody
like him, so that make 'em like me."
    "Uh-huh. So why's Miss Cady the best thing? By the way,
what's your name?"
    "Abraham."
    "Pleased to meet you. You married?"
    "Naw." He giggled, then instantly sobered. "
'Cause. She just is. She let me do anything, drive her buggy, come in her room
and play with stuff. And she always give me things, like a book or a apple or
something. She funny, too, and she always smell good."
    "I noticed that myself."
    Abraham banged his heel against the chair leg, more at ease now
but still devouring Jesse with his eyes. "Poppy say you a
gunfighter," he said shyly.
    "Yep."
    "Why?"
    "Why what?"
    "Why you wanna go and shoot people?"
    "Well, it isn't that I wanna go and shoot people.
Anyway, I only shoot people who really need it."
    "Who? Who you shoot?"
    "Bad guys. People who'd shoot other people if I didn't shoot
'em first."
    Abraham's mouth made an O. "So you one o' the good guys."
    "That's it." Jesse smacked the table with his hand.
"I'm one o' the good guys. But listen." He leaned close; Abraham
blinked in alarm but didn't flinch. "Don't tell anybody, hear? Because I
don't want this getting out. Me being a good guy—this is a secret between us
and nobody else, okay?"
    "Okay. Why?"
    "Why." He was mulling over reasons when Glendoline came
back.
    "Ham Washington, your daddy said get your skinny ass off that
chair and back to work right this minute or you're gonna be good and
sorry."
    "Uh-oh." He scrambled up, grabbing for his pan and
broom, darting a worried look toward the bar. His father scowled back at him.
Jesse sighed, feeling dispirited when his new little pal scampered away and
Glendoline took his vacated chair.
    "So, honey, you gonna show me your gun or not?"
    He was wearing two guns—maybe she was driving at something
else. Luckily a new interruption came along before he had to answer.
    He didn't even have to look up to know why the room quieted down
all of a sudden, or whose shoes were marching dutifully toward him from the
swinging doors. He had experience at these things. He'd lay twenty to one it
was the law.
    Glendoline, who had sidled closer so she could press her knee
against his thigh, sat back guiltily. "Oh, hi, Tommy," she said in a
careless tone, patting the corkscrew curls at the back of her head. "Fancy
meeting you here."
    You could tell it was the sheriff because he had a badge on his
starched white shirt, but otherwise you'd have guessed some other line of work.
Bank teller, maybe, or telegraph clerk. "Good evening," he said,
nervous but polite. "It's Mr. Gault, isn't it? I'm Sheriff Leaver."
    Ordinarily Jesse, being a polite kind of fellow himself, would've
taken the slender, uncallused hand Sheriff Leaver held out to him. But Gault
wouldn't, and besides, half the customers in the saloon were eavesdropping on
this conversation, and the other half were trying to. So he ignored the hand
and gave the sheriff his dead-eye stare, until the poor guy blushed and Glendoline
giggled uneasily.
    "Glen," said the sheriff, "would you excuse us,
please?"
    "Why, what'd you do?" She laughed at her witless joke,
but nobody else did.
    He coughed behind his hand. "I mean, would you mind leaving
me and Mr. Gault alone?"
    "Oh, you can talk in front of me."
    Sheriff Leaver had red hair and a skimpy goatee and the kind of
fair, delicate skin women wished they had. The kind of skin that's like a
thermostat under a clock in the middle of town where everybody can see it.
White, terrified; pink, scarified; red, mortified. Currently it was a sort of
rusty salmon shade, moving toward lobster.
    Jesse couldn't stand it. "Take a walk," he