The Killing Breed by Frank Leslie Read Free Book Online

admonishingly, “Don’t say that.”
     
     
    She didn’t look up but continued cleaning the cut as she said quietly, “My old profession . . . it doesn’t bother you?”
     
     
    After Yakima had helped her escape from Thornton’s Roadhouse, she’d run her own pleasure parlor in the mining camp of Gold Cache. That was before she came down here looking for Yakima to help her spring her brother from the Mexican prison, and stayed.
     
     
    “I never think about it. Any more than I think about what I’ve done, gettin’ by.”
     
     
    She squeezed the bloody water from the sponge and continued dabbing at the congealed blood welling from the cuts. She glanced up at him now, the lamplight flickering in her large blue eyes and casting small shadows across her heart-shaped face and her neck with the small, heart-shaped birth-mark. “You ever think about Ace?”
     
     
    Ace Cavanaugh, the gambler she’d married in Gold Cache and who’d been killed by rurales in Mexico.
     
     
    Yakima splashed another finger into his cup and shook his head. “Nope.”
     
     
    She studied him as her hand continued to work automatically, her eyes searching his, suspiciously probing all his secrets. Finally, the corners of her full mouth rose, and she took the cup out of his hand, sipped, and handed it back to him.
     
     
    Her eyes watered slightly from the whiskey rolling down her throat, and her voice was husky as she said, “We’re doing pretty well, aren’t we, Yakima? Considering where we both came from. . . .”
     
     
    Staring down at her, caressing her smooth cheek with the backs of his brown fingers, Yakima nodded. “Fine as frog hair.”
     
     
    She smiled brightly then, her eyes flashing. She lowered her head and continued to work in silence, moving from his arm to his leg as he sat there naked in the chair, sipping the whiskey to ease the stinging pain and feeling himself grow aroused by his woman’s touch.
     
     
    When she’d finished wrapping the wounds with strips of torn sheets, she glanced at his belly, and smiled once more through the strands of hair in her eyes.
     
     
    She wrapped her hand around him, squeezed.
     
     
    “Sometimes,” she whispered, “it’s an advantage . . . keepin’ house with an experienced woman.”
     
     
    She caressed him gently, then slowly lowered her head, her blond hair spilling across his groin.
     
     
    Yakima squeezed the chair arms and groaned.
     

 
    Chapter 5
     
     
    In spite of the whiskey and his woman’s soothing ministrations, Yakima didn’t sleep well the rest of the night. He’d endured plenty worse scrapes and bruises than those he’d acquired in his tumble down the canyon wall. But his mind turned every coyote yap and owl hoot into the stallion’s challenging bugle.
     
     
    He, Faith, and Kelly were up before dawn, as the others hadn’t slept any better than he had. Faith whipped up a quick breakfast of side pork, fried potatoes, and strong black coffee, and they ate by the light of a hurricane lamp, the crackling cookstove pushing the night’s cold out of the kitchen.
     
     
    After breakfast, Yakima and Kelly saddled up and slid rifles into their saddle scabbards.
     
     
    It was time to take care of the broom-tail bronc once and for all, before the hot-blooded stallion wreaked any more havoc on the ranch, or the Bailey Peak Outfit, which was the name the half-breed had burned into the wooden portal at the edge of the yard. He thought the handle gave the place, so recently carved from the rocks, sage, and pines, some authenticity and respectability. Since Faith and Kelly had come, it had become more than just a bunkhouse; it was now a real home.
     
     
    It deserved a name.
     
     
    As Yakima finished double-checking his saddle cinch, Faith stepped out of the cabin swinging a burlap sack. “Here’s your grub, in case you’re not back by noon.”
     
     
    “Obliged.” Yakima took the sack, glanced over his shoulder at Kelly, who was still