.45-Caliber Firebrand by Peter Brandvold Read Free Book Online Page B

end of a jerkline. Cuno would give Glenda a couple hundred dollars to see her through a couple of years on her own.
    Stuffing the folded check in a pocket of his buckskin tunic, Cuno rose from his chair and turned to the door.
    Behind him, packing his pipe, Trent said, “I’d like to invite you and your men back to the house for dinner later. Say, around seven o’clock? Give you adequate time for a bath and a change of clothes, if you so desire.”
    Cuno tramped past the grimly staring Kuttner to the door. “No, thanks.”
    â€œI have a wonderful cook. A full-blooded Sioux with a club foot. Ain’t much good for anything but cooking, and the cooking he does right well. He’s preparing an elk roast with a delightful chokecherry sauce.” Cuno turned from the office door as the old man sat back in his chair, casually touching a match to his pipe and puffing smoke like an old steam engine on an uphill push.
    Trent said, “You and your men are welcome to bed down here in the lodge, as well. I have four empty rooms upstairs.”
    â€œWe’ll dine in the cook shack and throw down with your men in the bunkhouse, Mr. Trent.” Cuno drew a deep, weary breath. “Thanks just the same. We’ll rest the mules for a day or two, be pullin’ out again by Wednesday.”
    Trent lowered the pipe and stared across the room at Cuno, brows beetled. “Please. It’s the least I can do to compensate your men—”
    Cuno tapped his breast pocket. “The check will do.” He wheeled and tramped back down the dark hall toward the front door.
    In the ceiling, he heard the slap-squawk of running, wet feet. The tapping continued beyond him overhead. As he approached the broad foyer of the front door, steps squeaked to his right.
    He stopped and turned to see a girl standing halfway down a dark, narrow stairwell—the same long-haired blonde he’d seen in the yard with the cat.
    She stood now, dripping wet and holding a buffalo robe around her slender shoulders. With her hair plastered across her head and over the robe’s broad collar, she looked like a half-drowned gopher. Only her face was far from gopher-like.
    It was, in a word, angelic.
    â€œMr. Massey?” she said softly, her chest rising and falling heavily beneath the bulky, brown robe.
    The robe came down to just below her knees. One bare foot was slightly lifted on one step, while the other had come down sideways on the step below. Her wet calves were peach-pale, smooth, and perfectly sculpted.
    Cuno’s voice caught in his throat, and he found himself fumbling his hat from his head. “It’s Cuno, Miss . . . ?”
    â€œMy bathroom is over Father’s office, and I heard you talking. I wasn’t meaning to eavesdrop.” The girl tipped her head to one side and knotted her brows. “Won’t you please come to supper? We seldom get company out here, and Father gets lonely. He told me all about how you hunted down the killer of your father and stepmother. He’s quite the connoisseur of gunslingers, you see, and he’s been waiting to meet you.”
    The pretty, blue-eyed waif bent her knees with beseeching and balled her cheeks, which were mottled red from her hot bath and from chagrin at her half-dressed state. “Won’t you please join us? It would mean so much to him, and he’s ordered a big, elaborate meal in your honor, Mr. Massey.”
    She fumbled with the robe, which she held from the inside, up close to her throat, with both hands. As she did, the two unbuttoned flaps parted slightly to reveal the deep, inside curves of her creamy breasts. They, too, appeared pink from the hot bath.
    The vision bit Cuno deep, and his throat dried. In one fell swoop, his beef with the old, arrogant rancher was gone, and all that remained was this naked, wet vision of young, vibrant femininity clad in a buffalo robe before him.
    â€œI reckon . . . if you think