Lucky Red by Claudia Cravens

Author:Claudia Cravens [Cravens, Claudia]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Random House Publishing Group
Published: 2023-06-20T00:00:00+00:00

Chapter 11

It wasn’t until the next night that Spartan showed back up at the Buffalo Queen. I’d gone wall-eyed from watching the door; I knew she was now too notorious to slip in and out of saloons unnoticed, but my insides churned like a barrel of snakes as I feared the night before the hanging might have meant more to me than it had to her. I was waiting with bated breath for the moment when the doors of the saloon would open and she would be the one stepping inside, wrapped in a gust of wind. There’s nothing lust enjoys more than secrecy, and I hadn’t told even Constance what had passed between me and the gunfighter. Or, as I disliked to recall, about Jim’s proposal.

She and I were at the bar together getting talked at by a couple of scouts from a cavalry unit, on leave from persecuting the Sioux. They had a good strategy going: one would tell a story about the valiant deeds of the other, who would duck his head and truckle like a schoolboy, and then they’d switch places. I could see Constance enjoying their game; in the corner of my eye she was smiling her widest, most knowing smile, for it was the type of human folly that amused her. I was bored halfway to sobs, sipping my cold tea and wishing it was whiskey, tilting my head back and forth and laughing at all the right times. Between the scouts’ shoulders I could see the front door, and I was casually keeping an eye on it, pretending to all and sundry that I was just waiting for Jim, about whom the rumors had been promising.

And yet when she did arrive, she seemed not to notice me at all. The cold wind finally blew Spartan Lee through our door and I all but froze in my tracks, my muscles tightening and aching as if frostbitten. I wasn’t familiar with the fascination, which I’m told is quite common, of watching your lover when they don’t know you can see them, the intrigue of seeing their mannerisms unfettered, untainted by the feel of your eye. Out of the wind, she cupped her hands to light one of those little cigarillos she liked to smoke, raising the match and tilting her head to the side rather than down so that she never lost her view of the room. She threw the match on the floor and tucked the matchbook into the breast pocket of her gold-striped shirt, pushing her jacket back to show her Colt with its newly pink-stained ivory handle. She let her gaze drift in a slow semicircle around the room and I tensed, waiting for her to spot me, but her eyes moved right past without so much as a flicker.

Constance elbowed me hard—one of the scouts was saying something.

“Why, certainly,” I said without thinking.

“What’s that?” said the scout, startled.

I laughed. “I’m sorry, what were you saying?”

“He was asking if you’ve ever been shot with an arrow,” said Constance, one eyebrow raised.

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