Silver on the Road (The Devil's West Book 1) by Laura Anne Gilman Read Free Book Online Page A

morning, Miz Izzy,” he said, tipping the brim of his hat to her.
    “Morning, Mister Dash.” He and his son, Samuel, grew enough on their farmstead a few miles out of town to support themselves, and contracted to sell what remained. Molly said that outside the Territory, a black man couldn’t enter into a contract, nor a native, nor a woman of any race, in most places. The boss didn’t seem to care so much about that, so long as they stuck to their terms and didn’t cause troubles.
    She had no contract, no agreement, no terms sealed and signed. The thought made Izzy’s skin itch. Not that there weren’t folk whodid just fine without them, she supposed, here and elsewhere. It just felt strange. Uncertain.
    The planked sidewalk ended just before the smithy, and Izzy stepped down onto the road, puffs of dirt rising around her ankles. It hadn’t rained in nearly a week; that wasn’t good. The smithy’s door was open, but there was no steady clank-clank-clank of the hammer, just the slow breath of the fire, waiting.
    Past the smithy, there was only the icehouse, a low-slung building built into the rise, and then the grasslands that led down to the river’s edge. The low ridge of hills to the west was only a faint purple smudge in the far distance. The river itself was as high as it’d ever be, and old Duarte’s boys would be bringing his cattle through soon enough, heading for summer pasture. The saloon was always busy then, with Duarte’s oldest son paying a visit to the boss, the hired hands spilling their cash on the tables, although few of them sat at the boss’s table.
    She had never been allowed to work the cattle drive; the boss thought the hired men were too unpredictable and prone to abusing their drink, so the younger girls never worked those days. She’d spent the last year’s drive in the kitchen, sneaking peeks when there was a lull, before Ree slapped the flat of a wooden spoon on her backside, herding her back to chores.
    “He’ll have to let me work out front this year, won’t he?” Marie did, but the boss had said that the left hand was different from the right, hadn’t he? She tried to remember exactly what he had said, but the words were blurred in her memory now. Something about having the last word?
    Despite herself, Izzy laughed. Nobody ever got the last word with the boss. Even if he let you speak last, he always had the final say.
    Birds chirped overhead, and a pair of rabbits disappeared into the tall grass as she approached the river, but otherwise she might have been the only living thing for miles, the town quiet and invisible behind her. Suddenly, Izzy wasn’t so sure that this walk had been agood idea. She paused, then licked her lips and forced herself to continue. She was perfectly safe here, so long as she didn’t try to cross the river, and she had no intention of doing anything so foolish.
    Izzy paused when she reached the edge of the river, listening to the water flowing over rocks, a pleasant, steady gurgling sound. She felt too restless still to sit quietly, so she kept walking along the riverbank, letting the morning sun gentle her skin and the sound of the water ease her worries, until she came to a section of the bank that was too steep, the footing too uncertain. She dug the toe of her boot into the dirt and considered working her way around it, then shook her head and turned around. She had gone far enough; there was no need to tempt fate.
    Despite that soothing of the creek and sun, the unease that weighed on Izzy’s shoulders remained. How long could papers take to write up? Should she go back now, or would the boss think she was hovering, that she didn’t have the patience to do the job? Might he change his mind? The worries chased each other until she determined that going back would be no worse than staying here and fretting herself into a state.
    The path seemed longer going in than walking out, and she paused when she reached the border of town, feeling