This Gun for Hire by Jo Goodman Read Free Book Online Page B

stores, but it was insufficient for him to see movement on the street. Mostly what he saw was his office reflected back at him. He shrugged and rocked back in his chair. “She will be here directly. I imagine it is not easy getting the money she’s owed out of Mrs. Fry. The old whore is not only a harridan. She is tightfisted to boot.”
    “I think she would object to being called old.”
    Joe snorted. “You’ve got that right.”
    “How old is Miss Nash?” Quill posed the question casually, but it was a clumsy segue and he felt the full force of Sheriff Pepper’s shrewd gaze. There was a time he would have shifted uncomfortably under a look like that, but those days were long in the past, and the last six months spent in the employ of Ramsey Stonechurch had given him many opportunities to practice endurance. He suffered the look without any outward hint of embarrassment.
    “Twenty-four, I believe. No, twenty-five. I seem to recall that she has an April birthday, not that it means anything to her. Bagger was one for making a fuss over it. That’s how Iremember she was ten when I met her for the first time. It was a few days after a party they had for her at the fort. She was still carrying around the present Bagger gave her. Wouldn’t put it down. I think she slept with it.”
    “A doll,” Quill guessed.
    “You would think so, wouldn’t you?” Joe shook his head. “No, it was a .44 caliber Henry repeating rifle. Had a twenty-four-inch barrel, but I swear, from stock to sight it was as tall as she was. Have you ever held a Henry?”
    “I have. Not at ten years of age. My father would have judged it too heavy for me.”
    “That is because your father had some sense. Bagger didn’t, not when it came to his little girl. Nine and a half pounds of lever action capable of firing thirty cartridges a minute if one took the time to get easy with it. You would be right to suspect Calico eventually got real easy with it.”
    “She has a reputation as an Annie Oakley.”
    Joe’s dark eyebrows kicked up. “Better you keep that to yourself. She is itchin’ to shoot you as it is. I would not give her cause. Follow?”
    “I do. Thank you. You know, when she shot Amos, I thought she missed, but she didn’t, did she? She meant to injure, not kill.”
    “That’s right. Same as you, I suspect.”
    “What makes you say that?”
    “Just a sense I get about you.”
    “Huh.”
    Joe’s mouth twisted wryly at the noncommittal reply. “Am I wrong?”
    “Not entirely, but I was aiming for his other leg.”
    The sheriff gave a bark of laughter. “Liar.”
    Quill merely lifted one lightly colored eyebrow and said nothing.
    Smiling to himself, Joe opened one of his desk drawers and brought out a round green tin with a slightly dented lid and multiple scrapes along the circumference. “My wife dropped off cookies back when she was allowing me to have them. Gingersnaps. I like them because you can’t tell ifthey’re stale. She makes them hard enough to break a tooth if I’m not careful.” He wrestled the lid off the tin, sniffed. “Smell fine. You want some?”
    Quill had not eaten since breakfast, which consisted of coffee and a couple of day-old biscuits. The gingersnaps were probably not as hard. His mouth began to water as soon as Joe opened the tin. He reached for a cookie when the sheriff tipped the tin toward him.
    “Take two,” said Joe.
    Quill was happy to oblige. He snapped one in half and plopped it in his mouth, turning it over with his tongue to soften it before he bit down. He noticed Joe Pepper did the same.
    That was how Calico found them, slouched in their straight-backed chairs, legs extended, mouths full of cookie while they contemplated the one they had yet to eat as if it held the meaning of life. Perhaps it did, she reflected, giving Amos a little shove to propel him farther into the room. She remembered Mary Pepper’s gingersnaps as being very good indeed.
    They both rose to their feet, but not