Destiny Of The Mountain Man by William W. Johnstone Read Free Book Online Page A

face tanned the color of an old saddle and wild, unruly black hair. His eyes were mischievous and he was quick to smile and joke, but underneath his happy demeanor was a man as hard as iron and as loyal to his friends as they come.
    â€œYeah, me too,” Cal said. Calvin Woods was Pearlie’s young friend and protégé in the cowboy life.
    â€œI suppose if you two had been there you would have been standing over there with Smoke, staying out of it,” Sally said. “Never mind that I was being accosted by two men.”
    â€œHa! From the way I saw it, you were the one doing the accosting,” Smoke said, laughing. “I never saw two galoots leave town so fast. I don’t even think Sheriff Carson could have sent them galloping out of town the way you did.”
    â€œMiss Sally, would you really have shot him in the . . . uh,” Cal began, but he was too embarrassed to finish the sentence.
    â€œYou mean his privates?” Sally asked. “You damn right I would have.”
    â€œAnd she wouldn’t have missed either,” Pearlie said. “I’ve seen her shoot.”
    â€œStill, I could have used a little assistance,” Sally said. “It would have helped me maintain a little female decorum.”
    â€œDarlin’, you’ve got common sense and guts,” Smoke said. “That’s all the female decorum you need.”
    â€œAnd she makes the best bear claws in Colorado,” Pearlie said, reaching for one.
    â€œPearlie, that’s your fourth,” Cal said.
    â€œWell, maybe. But I think she made them just a little smaller this time,” Pearlie said as he took a bite.
    Sally laughed. Her bear claws, sweet, sugarcoated doughnuts that she made by hand, were famous throughout the county, and some men had been known to ride ten miles out of their way to drop by the Sugarloaf just on the off chance she’d have a platter of them made up and cooling on the windowsill. “If you say so, Pearlie.”
    â€œThey weren’t no smaller,” Cal argued. “They was as big as always, just like yore stomach,” he added.
    Sally turned around, wiping her hands on her apron. “Calvin Woods,” she said, mock anger in her voice. “If you don’t start using correct grammar, I’m going to have Smoke make you start taking lessons with the schoolchildren in Big Rock when school starts up again.”
    Pearlie grinned. “You tell him, Miss Sally.”
    She turned to him. “You know, your language could use a little tidying up too, Pearlie. I think listening to you talk is what has made Cal forget everything I taught him when he first came here. I don’t know why I even bothered.”
    A couple of years after Pearlie had joined the ranch, a starving and destitute Cal, who was barely in his teens at the time, had made the mistake of trying to rob Sally of some groceries to eat. Instead of turning him over to the sheriff, she brought him home and made him one of the family along with Pearlie. Since she’d been a schoolmarm in her days before marrying Smoke, she took it upon herself to teach the wild young man grammar as well as proper manners. He’d done well at first, until Pearlie took him under his wing and began teaching him the more rough and ready language and manners of cowhands. But Cal wasn’t yet twenty, so Sally figured it wasn’t too late to send him back to school if he needed it.
    Smoke choked down another laugh until Sally turned to him. “And you, Mr. Smoke Jensen, I see you’ve been letting the boy smoke, and him not even out of his teens yet!”
    Smoke reddened. “But Sally, Cal is doing a man’s work every day and living with the other hands in the bunkhouse. It wouldn’t be right to tell him to work like a man and then treat him like a little kid, would it?”
    â€œHumph!” she snorted. “Next you’ll be giving him whiskey and sending him into town