Heartstrings Read Online Free PDF Page A

bartender, “she can fly to Templeton on her parrot’s back.”
    “Whatever y’say,” the bartender answered, refilling his customer’s glass.
    Wrapping his hand around the glass, Roman looked into the mirror on the wall behind the bar. Its reflection showed him a cloud of blue-gray smoke, with weak rays of sunshine filtering through it. Beneath the haze a half dozen men sat at tables, playing cards and stealing a feel or two from the voluptuous barmaids. Others stood at the bar, nursing their drinks in solitude. Most were drifters like himself, he knew. They wandered here and there, earning money when they needed it and handling their days the way a child builds with blocks—one by one, with no specific scheme in mind.
    That was where the similarities ended, Roman thought. He had a definite plan, and it wasn’t some sort of castle in the air, as his stepmother had so coldly put it.
    It was a dream so big that only twenty-five thousand acres of the richest grassland that the Rio Grande Plains had to offer could support it. He’d raise a remarkable breed of horses on that beautiful land and then make a fortune off the cattle ranchers who would undoubtedly pay any price he named to buy his stock.
    To make that fortune, however, he had to spend a fortune. True, he was only five hundred dollars short of being able to purchase the land. And the herd of sturdy Spanish mares wouldn’t be expensive.
    But the English Thoroughbred stallions would not come cheap. The best in the country, bred and raised on various farms in the east, cost nearly their weight in gold. He would get them somehow, though, for he wanted the finest money could buy.
    Nothing— no one in the entire world was going to keep him from realizing his dream. As he had done for ten long years, he would accept any and every job that came his way until he possessed the funds he needed.
    He would just have to find the patience to put up With Theodosia Worth during the trip to Templeton. He couldn’t afford to pass up the money Dr. Wallaby would pay him for completing the job.
    “Reward money, that’s what it is,” he muttered, raking his fingers through his hair. “Like the kind a man gets for bringing in some sort of menace to society.”
    “A real menace,” the barkeep agreed automatically. “Hey, don’t I know you? Ain’t I seed you… Yeah, you’re the same feller who come through a few months ago. Roman Montana, that’s who ya are. Folks ain’t quit talkin’ about that horse o’ yours. Still ain’t sellin’?”
    Roman shook his head and sipped his whiskey.
    “Y’know, Will Simpson said his horses ain’t never been shod they way y’shod ’em when ya was here last. Said your blacksmithin’ weren’t nothin’ short of amazin’ and that he’d like to know how y’got them shoes to stick s’good.”
    “Tell him to drive the nails home with one blow. More than one strike gives the nail a chance to loosen before it’s even in.”
    “Really? Hmm. Didn’t never know that. Well, what about ole Herman Gooch? Jest the other day he said he was hopin’ you’d come back and bigger his wife’s parlor. She really liked how you biggered her kitchen. Y’on’t me to fetch him over here?”
    Roman drained his glass. “Another time, maybe. I’ve got another job to do right now. A real headache of a job by the name of Theodosia Worth. And her damned parrot’s every bit as much of a pain in the—”
    “Parrot? A big gray bird with red tail feathers? Oh, I seed that woman. She stopped in front o’ the saloon fer a second. Purty little thing. Skin so white, it looked like it come from a milk bottle. Whatcha gotta do fer her?”
    Roman sloshed more whiskey into his glass. “Take her to Templeton. She’s over at Claff’s livery now, trying to pick out a horse and wagon. I had a mind to stay and help her, but when she asked Claff about a certain Equus caballus, I couldn’t leave fast enough.”
    “ Equus caballus?” The barkeep scratched