Trail Angel Read Online Free PDF Page B

might have looked sincere if his face showed anything, and Annabelle wondered if she’d misjudged him. It had been dark around the fire. Maybe he hadn’t seen well enough to recognize me.
    He slipped away before she thought of something to say in amends, so she moved off to find her mother.
    Still deliberating over the boxes of candles, her mother raised her head and smiled. “Find anything you like?”
    Annabelle looked back toward the bloomers and Josey Angel. “I have everything I need.”
    â€œAre you feeling all right, Annabelle? You look flushed.”
    â€œI’m fine.”
    Her mother ignored her abrupt tone. “I think we might want more candles,” she said. With her wide mouth and dark eyes, she had been a great beauty, the kind of woman men describe as handsome now that gray spotted her dark hair and lines creased her expressive face. She had retreated into herself on losing Annabelle’s brothers, emerging again only once they started the journey. “I would hate to run out. I hear the prices we’ll find on the trail are criminal.”
    â€œWar profiteering is criminal, Mother,”Annabelle said. Thinking of their plans for Montana, she added, “These prices are merely opportunistic.”
    Her mother laughed. “Do you think we’ll have the opportunity to sell these candles for twice this price in Montana?”
    â€œI should think at least three times,” Annabelle said.
    â€œWe should buy more,” her mother said with a sly grin.
    They spent another hour in the store, even though they needed little. Annabelle studied jars of fruit, boxes of dry goods and stacks of clothes for no reason other than the uncertainty of when she would find such bounty again.
    The shopkeeper was bundling their purchases and the children sucking on peppermint sticks when several men rushed out of the store. Her mother must have asked about the fuss because one shouted over his shoulder as he left. “There’s fixing to be a gunfight.”
    Annabelle looked for Josey Angel. Surely, he is far away by now. She grabbed her packages. “Mother, can you see to the rest?” She charged out the door before hearing her mother’s reply.

C HAPTER S EVEN
    Annabelle pushed through the crowd gathered on the wooden boardwalk outside Hellman’s, her slender frame riding the tide of townspeople until she saw Josey Angel. He stood near the hitching post outside the store with a pair of Indian ponies and a black man who looked too large to ride such a small horse.
    Three men faced them. From their look and demeanor, Annabelle assumed they came from the saloon across the street. One wore a tattered, gray Confederate coat. All were big enough to make Josey Angel look small in his baggy shirt as he stepped toward them, his hands held wide from his gun belt.
    The man in the middle wore a bolo tie and a crisp white shirt beneath a vest. A neatly trimmed mustache accentuated the grin on his face as he spoke, a finger pointed in Josey Angel’s face. Annabelle wondered what prompted the trouble, whether the men were acquainted or had fought in the war. She knew Josey Angel had the kind of reputation men might want to measure themselves against. Two cocks in the yard. Could it be something so foolish? Unable to hear what they said, she eased closer.
    The man in the bolo stepped forward and knocked Josey Angel’s hat from his head, then rested his hand on his belt, just above the white-handled pistol on his hip. Josey Angel didn’t move.
    â€œI heard you killed more men than any soldier in the Union army,” the grinning man said. “I always wondered. Are you fast? Or did you just rely on that Henry rifle of yours and shoot ’em down like hogs at the slaughter?”
    If Josey Angel responded, Annabelle didn’t hear. She’d heard stories of western gunfighters, heroic figures who might gun down three men before they fired a single shot.