The Lassiter Luck by Loren Zane Grey

Author:Loren Zane Grey
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Dorchester Publishing Co., Inc.
Published: 2008-10-21T00:00:00+00:00

Chapter 15

Regina lay on her right side in one of the bunks. In the strong morning light, Dolan and Ander looked even more disreputable than before. The big room seemed dustier and Ruby even fatter. She still sat in a chair, the ever-present shotgun across her lap.

Whenever Regina turned her head, she found the two men staring at her. It put goose bumps on her forearms and set her heart to pounding in a cold breast. Dolan sat with his feet on a scarred table, his hat over his eyes. The two men had come inside after their night outdoors in their blankets. Ruby had heated up the meat and beans for breakfast. But the shotgun was always either in her lap or under a plump arm as she stirred the pan of food on the stove.

Tex Ander complained, “It makes me nervous, Ruby. You with that shotgun so close to the stove. It might go off from the heat. You better set it down somewhere.”

Ruby turned her plump face with the myriad lines and roseate cheeks and said, “You’d like me to set it down, wouldn’t you?”

“Only thinkin’ of the gal,” Harve Dolan put in, lifting the hat from his eyes and smiling at Regina.

“Yeah, I know damn well you’re thinkin’ of her,” Ruby said in her gravelly voice. “You lay a finger on her an’ Manly’ll have your guts.”

“Canada ain’t too damn far,” Tex Ander said with a laugh. “An’ there’s always Mexico.”

“He’d find you, no matter where. Maybe you don’t know it, but me an’ him is shirt-tail kin. My Leo, who died on me, poor man, was Manly’s cousin.”

“Only foolin’ with you, Ruby.”

After breakfast, Tex said he was going out to hitch up the team. “Ruby’ll have to ride back in the wagon, anyhow,” he said after giving Regina a speculative look. Regina shivered, taking the look to mean that he didn’t quite know whether she was to remain alive to ride in the wagon or not. “I don’t reckon there’s a horse the Lord ever made that’s big enough for Ruby to ride,” he finished with a chuckle.

“Go ahead an’ hitch up,” Ruby snapped. “Things you say don’t bother me none.”

Soon Dolan began to emit faint snores at the table. Regina could hear Ander walking around in the yard, his boots crunching gravel. Occasionally one of the horses would snort and stomp the ground. The breakfast lay like lead in Regina’s stomach.

There was only one mistake Manly had made that Regina could name, and that was to have tied her wrists in front instead of in back. He assumed, no doubt, that Ruby would always keep a close watch on her. Ruby was slumped in a chair across the table from Dolan. She was yawning and her eyelids drooping.

Carefully, so as not to make any disturbing sounds, Regina rolled over on the bunk so that her back was to both of them. Making sure they weren’t watching her, she put the knot of the rope between her teeth and began to tug on it.

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