The Copper City - Chris Scott Wilson [17]
Quantro snorted. How many kinds of blackmail did this man need? But if need be, you’d see a word was said in the right ear…
Harley smiled. “Quantro, you’re a smart man. But you’re a dead one too if you don’t take up my offer.”
Quantro tried to roll a cigarette from the last few strands of tobacco from his sack. “One thing, my partner, Pete, needs a job too. Take him on and you’ve got me.”
Harley showed off his white teeth again, flashing them as he fished a cigar from his inside pocket and flipped it through the bars.
“He’s already on the payroll. He started at sun-up today.”
***
Pete was sitting on the bench outside the little clapboard house on Capote Hill when Quantro walked up the street. He was whittling at a stick. When he heard the footsteps he looked up with a lopsided grin. “See you got your hardware back.”
Quantro touched the butt of his Colt. “News to you, I suppose.”
Pete grinned, then sliced another hunk from the stick to join the pile growing by his boots. “No, I figured you’d work it out once Harley put it to you.”
“Didn’t have much choice.”
“His boss, Green, owns damn near all the town, law and all, so what Harley wants, Harley gets.”
“I started seeing it that way too,” Quantro’s nostrils twitched as they detected cooking. “White-Wing. Is she okay?”
Pete nodded.
Quantro patted his stomach. “I’m as hungry as hell. All they got down there is tortillas and beans.”
“She’s cooking fatback.”
“Smells good.”
Pete inspected the blade of his knife. Scowling, he began to slice at the wood. “You get on in, I’ve already eaten.”
“Think I will.” He stood up and pushed open the door. She had her back to him, standing over a spitting skillet on the pot-bellied stove. At the sound of his boot heels she turned, dark flashing eyes that lit up as she saw him.
She looked good, he had to admit. He almost couldn’t blame those two drifters for wanting to sample her favors. The truth was he didn’t know why he had waited so long himself. Maybe it was the thought that if he left her alone she would go back to her people. Now, he was glad she hadn’t. She’d nursed him twice when he’d been in a bad way. What he had done yesterday wouldn’t even begin to repay what she had done for him.
He stood there, staring into her bronze face, wondering at her resilience. He could detect no trace of yesterday in her serene face. She looked solidly back at him, knowing he was about to kiss her. She had waited a long time. Just as he was about to close the gap between them, his belly rumbled loudly.
He stopped, frozen. She burst out laughing. After a second he joined her when he realized how ridiculous it was. The moment had gone.
“You’re hungry.”
“I could eat a saddle. As long as there’s no beans with it.”
She pointed to a chair, her other hand automatically reaching for the coffee-pot. By the door was a bowl of cool water where he washed away the dust of the street. Face damp, but refreshed, he sat down on the hard seat. The strong black coffee was cooling and he sipped it gratefully. The jail coffee had been like muddy creek water. At the stove, White-Wing flipped the fatback over once more in the skillet then served it up.
Quantro ate as though he hadn’t seen food for weeks. White-Wing wiped her hands and came to sit opposite, watching as he chewed. He smiled his satisfaction, glancing at her pleasing face, remembering how he had thought of her most of the night while he’d been lying sleepless on the hard bed in the jail. He had worried what the attack on her and the death of the two men would do to her. A sudden flash had recalled the image of his own mother, three years back, when she had been raped by the four men he had since hunted down. That indescribable expression before she turned