Cavalry Man: Doom Weapon by Ed Gorman

Author:Ed Gorman [Gorman, Ed]
Language: eng
Format: epub
ISBN: 9780061740336
Publisher: HarperCollins
Published: 2007-12-21T23:00:00+00:00

I was about half a block away from the good madam’s when I heard the slap-slap of small feet. Being the distrustful sort, my hand dropped to my Colt—people with bad intent can have small feet, too—and I turned to see who was coming so fast at my back.

The rest of her was as small as her feet, a freckled prairie girl in a blue gingham dress and pigtails. “I heard you talking back there, mister.”

When she caught up with me, she grabbed my arm and leaned against me, all out of breath.

She looked up at me smiling as she tried to get her wind again. “I never was much of a runner. My brothers back on the farm always made fun of me.”

“Feeling better now?” I asked after a minute or so.

“Sorry,” she said, taking one last gasp of ragged breath. Then she seemed to be all right. “I wanted to tell you about Grieves’s friend.”

“Grieves’s friend?”

“Uh-huh. See, when Brandy said he was sort of a bad drunk, he was. But he stayed with me and kind of sobered up. And then he was real nice. I heard you askin’ questions about him so I figured I might as well add my part, too.”

She slid her arm through mine. “You mind being seen on the street with a lady of ill repute?”

I laughed. “Not unless you mind being seen on the street with a man of ill repute.”

“Then I guess we’re even up, huh?” She gave my arm a little squeeze as we walked amidst the shade trees and the noisy knots of wee ones playing all sorts of wee-one games. You could smell wash on clotheslines, that heady clean scent, and pies on window sills cooling off for supper. A smart-looking carriage went by driven by a little old lady who wielded a pretty savage whip.

“He was sweet. After he started sobering up, I mean.”

“He talk much?”

“A lot. He told me about New Hampshire where he grew up and how his first wife died and how he was coming up on fifty and had never gotten to do much with his life. And then he started crying.”

“That’s strange. Don’t you think?”

“Not so much, really. A lot of men cry when they see us girls. They tell us things they’d never tell anybody else.”

“Mind if I ask what he was crying about?”

“Look at that butterfly. I’ve never seen one like that before.” Then: “Got sidetracked, sorry. Well, what he was crying about, he never really got specific, you understand, he just said he’d done something he shouldn’t have and that he wished he could get out of it but that Grieves wouldn’t let him.”

“He didn’t seem to like Grieves?”

“He was afraid of him and didn’t trust him. And that’s just how he put it. He said that Grieves was a very dangerous man.”

“But he didn’t tell you what he’d done that he wished he hadn’t?”

“Just that he was thinking of going back home.”

“Did he leave with Grieves?”

“Yes. I was

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