The Bandit Princess Read Online Free PDF Page B

his lips.
    “Take it down by the river and smash it,” she said. “As the last bottle in camp, it’s a menace.”
    “Hey!” Del shouted.
    “No!” Tate said, aghast.
    “Then you guys will have nothing to fight over.”
    She turned to leave.
    “Wait!” Tate yelled.
    She turned. Tate and Del were both staring at her. The men were a study in contrast. Aside from being the same age, twenty-eight, Tate was tall and thick, Del was short and slender.
    “Give it to Del,” Tate said.
    “What?” Pearl asked.
    “Give the bottle to Del,” he said again. “I’ll wait until we go to town and get some more.”
    Pearl looked at Del, who was staring at the bottle. Suddenly, the smaller man seemed to deflate.
    “No, it’s okay,” he said. “Give it to Tate.”
    She stared at both of them, then said, “I’ll keep it for later. You two get mounted up and ride into Whitfield. We need supplies. That’s the most important thing.”
    “Play,” Del said.
    “Sure,” Tate said.
    She left the tent, wondering if the two men had just made some kind of progress. Maybe they’d argue less, after this. They did their jobs well, but when there was no job at hand, they were usually at each other’s throats. She’d been wondering if she should replace one or both of them.

    Ralph Tate and Del Weeks mounted up and rode out of camp.
    “She didn’t have no call to smash that bottle,” Del complained.
    “I know it,” Tate said, “but she’s Pearl, ya know? She does what she wants to do.”
    “What I wanna do is get us some whiskey,” Del said.
    “Well,” Tate said, “Briartown’s closer than Whitfield.”
    “You wanna go to Briartown?” Del asked. “But she said to get the supplies in Whitfield.”
    “How’s she gonna know where we got our supplies?” Tate asked.
    “Next time she goes in, maybe somebody’ll say somethin’ to her,” Del said. “You know, like maybe ‘ya ain’t been here in a while’ or somethin’.”
    Tate thought a moment before he came up with an answer.
    “Well, we could go to Briartown first, have some whiskey, maybe a whore, and then go to Whitfield for the supplies. Whataya think?”
    “We could do that,” Del said happily. “Who would it hurt?”
    “Nobody, that’s who.”
    They rode along in silence for a while, then Del said, “Wait.”
    “What?”
    “What are we gonna tell her when she asks why it took us so long to get back?”
    “I’ll think of somethin’,” Tate said. “I gotta get me a whore, and some whiskey.”
    “We could say one of the horses was lame.”
    “Okay,” Tate said. “Let’s say that. Now shut up and let’s ride.”
    “Okay,” Del said, “let’s ride. I gotta get me a whore, too.”
    While Pearl took some of her men to bed, she had never been with Del or Tate that way. Which suited them. They wouldn’t have wanted to have to satisfy their boss in bed. Both men were used to being with whores and had no idea how to satisfy a woman.
    And they didn’t care to learn.

TWELVE
     
     
     
    Clint and Marshal Eads rode into Briartown a week after leaving Fort Smith. Since they were splitting the watch on the trail each night, they had only had a little time to talk together, some at night and some the next morning. And Clint did most of the talking, trying to teach Alice Eads what she needed to know to be a good deputy.
    She was smart, and she listened, but he still didn’t think a badge should have been pinned on her until after she had learned these lessons.
    It was also obvious that she had not spent a lot of time in the saddle, and by the time they rode into town, she was exhausted.
    The town was small and run down, had certainly seen better days. Clint reined in his horse in front of the only hotel and said, “Go in and get yourself a room. I’ll take the horses over to the livery.”
    “I can come with you—”
    “That’s okay,” he said. “It only takes one of us to see to the horses.”
    “Should I get you a room?”
    “No,