Widowmaker Jones by Brett Cogburn Read Free Book Online Page B

sometimes.”
    â€œIf you intend to make it to Arizona alone, you might ought to keep this for yourself.” He hefted the gun before her.
    â€œI’m thinking you’ll be needing it more than me,” she said. “You know how to use one of those?”
    â€œI’ve shot one a time or two.”
    â€œIf you’re going to carry that, you’d best learn.”
    â€œI aim to.”
    A sad look passed across her face that he thought was pointed more at him than it was a reflection on the loss of her husband. She washed the dishes while he sat by the fire, and when she was through she petted her milk cow, obviously lost in thought. After a while, she put her hands to the small of her back, arching and stretching against the sore muscles the hard shovel work had likely given her. Newt couldn’t help but notice that for an old woman, her breasts were especially upright and prominent where the front of her dress pulled tight against them. He averted his eyes, ashamed at himself, but it was already too late.
    â€œI’m going to my wagon alone, so don’t you be getting any ideas,” she said.
    â€œI don’t know what you mean.”
    â€œI saw you looking at me. Might be you’re a good man, and Lord knows I’m twice your age. But I saw you looking like that just the same.”
    â€œI never.”
    â€œMight be that I’ll have to take another husband one of these days, but don’t go getting notions that you can take advantage of me. My Amos was a good man. I’ll be a long time forgetting him.”
    â€œYes, ma’am, but I never . . .”
    â€œOh, don’t blubber and dodge around it. I saw the urge building in you. My Amos was a man of urges himself. There were times when Amos was younger that I felt like I was married to a rutting billy goat.”
    Again, Newt didn’t know what to say and felt his face and neck growing warm with embarrassment. No woman he had ever met talked like that.
    She stared at him, as if weighing a solemn matter. “I’m about half a mind to take you to my wagon, as sinful and horrible as that sounds. It’s going to be a long night, and I don’t relish being alone.”
    â€œMa’am . . .”
    â€œOh, don’t go to stuttering again. You come in my wagon on the sneak, and I’ll show you the business end of my Sharps.”
    â€œI’ll stand guard. You rest assured that me or nothing else will bother you tonight.”
    â€œDon’t mind me. I guess I’ve gotten so old that I’m not embarrassed to be thinking aloud,” she said. “My mother used to say that I was too forward for a proper lady, but I found it was helpful to keep men off guard. A man off guard is easier to get to do what you want him to and less likely to bother you. A sharp tongue will vex many a man.”
    â€œYou’re the vexingest woman I ever met.”
    Her laugh was as dry and crackly as the wind through the grass. “Oh, you’ll meet some young thing that will vex you worse. That’ll be how you know she’s the one to marry.”
    She went to her wagon without another word to him. He led her team and the Circle Dot horse on a long walk to the river to water them, and all the time while he was going out of camp he was expecting her to hear him and think he was stealing her horses. He believed her when she said she knew how to use that Sharps rifle.
    She didn’t raise any protest, so he assumed she didn’t hear him leave. But unknown to him, she did hear him and sat up waiting for him to come back to see if she had been right about him. She was peering out of a slit in the wagon cover when he finally returned an hour later.
    â€œWhat’s your name? I never asked it,” she whispered from inside the wagon.
    â€œNewt Jones.” He rigged some hobbles out of a length of rope he found lying on the ground and hobbled her horses and turned them loose to pick