Widowmaker Jones

Widowmaker Jones by Brett Cogburn Read Free Book Online

Book: Widowmaker Jones by Brett Cogburn Read Free Book Online
Authors: Brett Cogburn
strange choice in horses.”
    Newt twisted around and saw that the Circle Dot horse was lying down, full out on its side with its eyes closed. Only the heave of its belly showed that it was alive.
    â€œThat gelding looks in good flesh and not too hard used,” she added.
    â€œI guess he’s tired,” he said. “And I’m coming to think he’s a bit peculiar.”
    â€œHow did you come by him?”
    â€œIndians gave him to me.”
    â€œIndians?”
    â€œComanche, I think.”
    â€œYour guardian angel must really be something. I never heard of them doing anyone a good deed.”
    He helped her drag her husband’s body to the grave. It was something on the order of a miracle that she had managed to get it from the river to the wagon, given how petite she was.
    As if she read his thoughts, she said, “I rolled him in that tarp and drug him behind one of the horses. Broke my heart to treat him that way. He was always good to me.”
    A bit of the tarp came unfolded, revealing her husband’s head. Newt was pretty sure the man was past caring about how he was treated, by his wife or otherwise. One of Cortina’s bunch had put a bullet above his left eyebrow and a second one right through his teeth. He quickly covered the man’s head before the woman had to take another look at him. It was best that she remembered him as he had been and not how Cortina had left him.
    Digging the grave had sapped what little strength Newt had left, and he and the old woman took turns at the shovel, covering the body. She was a scrappy worker.
    â€œSorry, ma’am. Usually I’m more of a hand than this.”
    She nodded. “You’ve got the shoulders for it. Not bad-looking, either, once you look past all those scars you’re packing.”
    â€œThank you, I guess.”
    He took a close look at her again. His first impression was that she was old, but it was hard to tell if she was a well-preserved sixty or a hard-used fifty. She had the mannerisms of a lady, but the sharp, up-front talk of the frontier. His own mother had been a woman like that.
    â€œWhat’s your trade when you’re not manhunting?” she asked.
    He shrugged.
    She laughed, but no matter how she tried, she couldn’t hide the sadness in her voice. “One of those, huh? Knock-around man. Jack-of-all-trades?”
    â€œWhatever it takes to put food in my belly and some cover over my head.”
    â€œSpeaking of cover. You’re going to boil your brains if you don’t get a hat.” She reached down on the ground where her husband’s hat had fallen when they were dragging him over. “Take this if it fits you. Amos wasn’t half your size, but he had a head like a watermelon.”
    Newt tried on the hat, and it fit him like he had picked it out himself. It was an odd hat to have belonged to an emigrant farmer—black and broad brimmed with a hitched horsehair hatband. He took the hat off and turned it in his hands, examining it more closely.
    â€œSpeaking of occupations,” Newt said, “what was it that your husband did?”
    â€œKind of a rounder himself. Trying his hand at farming was a recent thing and only because I was tired of him being gone all the time. He was a lawman by calling and trade, you might say. He was a city marshal here and there. We lived most everyplace in Texas you can imagine. Then he was a U.S. Deputy Marshal and later he worked for those Rangers some. One of his friends out in Tucson already had him a job as deputy sheriff there if he wanted it. You know, to give us something to help get by until we settled in and found a farm.”
    â€œSounds like a good man.”
    â€œThere isn’t a lawman in Texas that didn’t know my Amos. He was a well-liked and respected man, even if I sound like I’m bragging.” She dabbed quickly at a tear at the corner of her eye.
    Newt wondered if Cortina knew he had shot

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