The Road to Ratchet Creek Read Online Free PDF Page B

his guard set about watering the horses.
    â€œHe never apologized to me,” grinned Calamity.
    â€œMaybe he’s done like the Good Book says,”Cole replied. “Thou art weighed in the balances and sure been found fit to ride the river with.”
    â€œCould be,” she answered. “Or he don’t think I’m a lady.”
    â€œThere’s that,” admitted Cole and walked off into the bushes.
    After the marshal disappeared from sight, Calamity drew John away from the other passengers and lowered her voice so that only the boy could hear her.
    â€œYou near on did a fool trick back there a piece,” she told him. “Don’t you ever again go butting in and telling folks when they’ve made mistakes. Especially when they make ’em about a gent in the marshal’s line of work.”
    â€œI just thought he’d want them to know who he is,” John replied.
    â€œIf he had, he stood right capable of telling ’em his-self.”
    â€œGee! Do you reckon he’s after them two drummers?”
    â€œHow’d you mean?” asked Calamity.
    â€œBecause they’re wanted by the law,” John clarified.
    â€œI don’t know what, or who he’s after and ain’t meaning to start guessing,” Calamity told him. “And don’t go getting all kinds of ideas that might come out wrong. One thing’s plain as a crow on a snow drift though.”
    â€œWhat’s that?”
    â€œThe marshal don’t want folks to know who and what he is. Now there’s nobody talks worse’n a drummer, that’s how he makes his living. So most likely all the marshal don’t want them to know him for is so’s they can’t spread word around that he’s in this neck of the woods.”
    Put in such a manner Johnny could see that he might be doing the two salesmen a serious wrong. He also felt grateful to Calamity for steering him right in the matter. On the previous occasions when John had travelled, his father had always been along to give advice. With any other girl not more than three years his senior he would have felt irritated at receiving unrequested counsel, but not when it came from Calamity Jane.
    â€œI’ll remember it, Calam,” he promised. “Say, do you reckon the marshal’ll let me look closer at his gun?”
    â€œMaybe. Only not while he’s travelling. Ask him tonight at Coon Hollow way station and he might.”
    â€œWe’ll be moving off real soon, folks,” called the guard, a tall, lean young man in range clothes and backing his low-hanging Army Colt with a twenty-inch barrelled ten gauge shotgun.
    â€œIf you want to go; Johnny boy,” Calamity told the youngster, “now’s the time to do it and among them there bushes’s the place. I’ll go further along.”
    While hitching up her pants after the process of “going,” Calamity heard a rustle among the bushes. Even as she held up the garments with her left hand and reached for the Navy Colt, hung conveniently from a branch, Cole’s voice came to her ears.
    â€œWe’re all cast in the same mold, sister.”
    â€œOnly the bits stick out in different places on some of us,” she replied, putting both hands back to the work of adjusting her clothing.
    â€œI wouldn’t know,” Cole said. “Not having looked.”
    Calamity believed him and his pose as a deacon had nothing to do with the decision. Having completed fastening her pants, she swung the gunbelt around her waist and buckled it into place. Then she walked from the bushes to Cole’s side.
    â€œI figured it might be one of that pair of drummers when I heard you and just recalled that I’ve left my whip in the stage.”
    â€œYou wouldn’t be forgetful enough to have forgotten to load that Colt as well, would you?” he replied.
    â€œHappen you’d been one of them, or somebody else with wrong