Battle Mountain: Classic Western Series (Bloody Joe Mannion Book 8) by Brandvold Peter

Author:Brandvold, Peter
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Wolfpack Publishing
Published: 2023-11-21T00:00:00+00:00

CHAPTER 15

Earlier, as Mannion had ridden away from the Continental, heading for the jailhouse, James Kincaid had entered the hotel. Ma Lonnigan sat at the desk in the lobby, several ledger books open before her, a loosely rolled quirley dangling from a corner of her knife-slash mouth in a face as wrinkled as crumpled, dark-brown paper.

She glanced at James and then returned her attention to her books, saying in her smoker’s growl, “What can I do for⁠—”

She cut herself off and jerked another look at the newcomer.

Her eyes widened, and her mouth started to open until she almost lost the cigarette. She plucked it out of her mouth and blinked against the smoke. “Oh.”

James moved slowly into the foyer, doffing his hat, worrying it in his fingers.

“You’re here to see…her.”

“Giannina, yes.”

Ma drew her mouth corners down and nodded guiltily, likely for her part in not identifying Giannina to Mannion. Instinctively, she’d probably thought she’d been protecting the rest of the town who’d done such an injustice to the girl. Mannion was a powerful lawman, and he was just passing through. Or so she’d thought.

He’d stayed for Giannina.

Ma drew on the quirley and blew a smoke plume toward the stairs. “Up the stairs. First room on the right.”

“I’d like to stay, too.”

Ma nodded once. “Take the room just beyond it.” She flicked ashes from the cigarette, stuck it between her lips again, and returned her attention to the ledgers.

James adjusted the saddlebags on his shoulder and started up the creaky stairs. He stopped before the first door on his right and canted his head to listen through the panel. Silence.

Giannina was likely asleep. After what she’d been through, she needed all she could get. He needed some, too. He’d take only one step away from the door, the floorboards creaking beneath his boots, when a soft query issued from behind Giannina’s door:

“Who’s there?” A tremor of fear in her Spanish-accented voice.

James’s heartbeat quickened. He turned back to her door, slowly twisted the knob, pushed the door open a foot, and poked his head into the room.

“Giannina,” he said quietly, “it’s me—James.”

“Who?”

“James. Don’t you remember?”

Silence. He could hear her breathing.

Then she said, “Your voice…it’s familiar.”

“Can I come in?”

He heard the rustling of the covers as she pushed herself up in bed. She was no more than a human-shaped shadow.

“Maybe in the morning,” he said, and began to pull his head back out of the room.

“No, wait.” Another pause. “Come in. Light a lamp.”

James let his saddlebags slide down his arm to the floor in the hall. He stepped into the room and gently latched the door behind him. In the candlelight from the hall, he’d seen a lamp on a cloth-draped table to his left. Now, the mantle glistened in the light from the half-moon angling through the room’s single window. He moved to the table and opened the table’s single drawer. He pulled out the box of matches there, removed the mantle, turned up the lamp’s wick, scratched a match to life on the underside of the table, and touched it to the wick.

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