Liz Ireland Read Online Free PDF Page B

man, Paulie thought. Poor Will, too. Oat wasn’t going to be much of a help. She’d feel a lot better knowing Will had somebody along who would really watch out for him.
    Paulie froze for a split second as an idea began to hatch. Why not? Why shouldn’t she follow along with Will? She would be as much use to Will as Oat would!
    As decided as Oat was himself—only more so, because she was sober—Paulie ran the rest of the way up to her room, a blur of white frills and lace, smashing her hoop skirt close to her body as she took the stairs two at a time. Maybe it was a good thing that she looked silly in dresses, she thought, her mood picking up. They sure were a nuisance!
    When Will finally emerged from Dwight’s mercantile, he was nearly flattened by Paulie on her way in. He almost didn’t recognize her, though she had changed back into the shirt and breeches that should have been most familiar to him. For some reason, he couldn’t get the thought of her in that white dress out of his mind.
    “I’m going with you,” she told him in passing.
    By the time the words registered, Paulie had slapped the door shut behind her and disappeared inside. Will stood on the porch of Dwight’s building for a moment, sure he’d heard wrong. Or seen wrong. That was Paulie he’d just bumped into, wasn’t it? He pivoted and went back inside to check.
    Sure enough, there was Paulie, her crazy hair braided and smashed under one of her pa’s old hats, moving along the shelves of Dwight’s, scooping up matches, pointing todried beef and fruit and quickly calculating the amounts of corn meal and coffee she could take along with her.
    Will strode toward her. “Never mind, Dwight,” he told the store’s short, balding proprietor. “You can just put all that stuff away, Paulie. Unless you’re buying it for Oat.”
    His words barely fazed her. “I’ll be more of a help to you than Oat will,” she said matter-of-factly. Then she turned back to the store owner. “I guess a pound of coffee will do, Dwight.”
    Will rolled his eyes. “You don’t know what you’re talking about, Paulie. For heaven’s sake. I can’t be hauling a girl along with me.”
    “Why not? You can haul an old boozy whiskey trader.”
    “That’s different.”
    “Why?”
    “He’s a man, that’s why.” He’d be damned if he was going to spend precious minutes explaining the facts of life to Paulie. “Now be reasonable, Sprout.”
    She put her hands full on her hips and glared up at him. “You can’t go out alone, and if you go with just Oat, you’ll be as good as alone. Now I’ve told you my opinion on the matter. You should call out the proper authorities. But since you won’t take my very sound advice, you’ll just have to put up with my company.”
    Will looked away from her, annoyed. Dwight still had his hand in a large sack of coffee, not certain whether he should start scooping it out or not.
    “You’ll slow us down.”
    Paulie hooted at that idea. “I can ride better than Oat, and I can shoot better, too. And see better.”
    “Leave Oat out of this. As far as I’m concerned, adding you to the crew will be travelling with two handicaps instead of one, only you’re a different kind.”
    “What kind?”
    “The female kind,” he said.
    She screwed her lips up wryly. “That’s a fact I suppose you’re just apt to notice when it suits you!”
    “You’re not going,” he repeated, more forcefully.
    “You can’t stop me,” she said. “If you don’t allow me in your party, then I’ll follow you. And that would be even more dangerous, wouldn’t it?”
    He took off his hat and slapped it against his thigh. “Darn it, you know chasing an Indian is no job for a girl.”
    “It’s no job for a cowboy, either, but that isn’t stopping you.”
    He sighed, then appealed to Dwight for assistance. “Will you please tell this stubborn girl that she can’t just pick up and chase after Night Bird?”
    Dwight had been standing in blank