.45-Caliber Firebrand by Peter Brandvold

it’s that important . . .”
    â€œI do, indeed, Mr. Massey.”
    â€œAll right, then,” he stammered, his eyes roving down her delicate body once more before climbing back to those deep, soulful eyes set wide above a long, fine nose. “I’ll be back.”
    The girl turned suddenly and began padding back up the stairs. “Thank you!”
    â€œHey, wait a minute.”
    She stopped, turned. The robe parted even farther, revealing for a split second all of one pink, bud-like nipple. She seemed totally oblivious of her beauty and sensuality, which was somehow enhanced by that bulky, moth-chewed robe.
    â€œWhat’s your name?”
    â€œOh,” she said, smiling, the flush rising in her cheeks. Her eyes flashed in the last of the light emanating from the windows on either side of the lodge’s front door. “I’m Michelle Trent. I live here most all the time now.”
    â€œYou’ll be joining us for supper?”
    â€œOf course.”
    Cuno felt his lips spread with a shit-eating grin, and he was glad Serenity couldn’t see him now. “All right, then.”
    The girl continued up the stairs. Cuno donned his hat and stumbled out the lodge’s front door.

6
    AS CUNO DESCENDED the grade from the big house toward the bunkhouse and stables, he saw Renegade staring at him from over the corral gate at the yard’s western edge. The skewbald whinnied and twitched his ears—little more than a silhouette in the last of the twilight.
    â€œEat your hay,” Cuno said, glancing at the pile of cured timothy mounded at the horse’s feet. His mind was on the girl and the flesh peeking out from behind the bulky robe.
    The men had disappeared from the branding corral, and buttery light shone in the sashed bunkhouse windows, over the broad porch equipped with a hammock and several stout log chairs as well as a sandbox spittoon. A rumble of conversation emanated from both the bunkhouse and the cook shack, which was still spewing smoke from its fieldstone chimney. The smoke was rife with the aroma of spiced beef and coffee.
    The Chinese cook could be heard, berating someone for tracking manure onto his floor then ordering the man outside: “Git! Git! Git!”
    A hatted silhouette carrying a plate and a steaming cup of coffee stumbled out the shack’s side door, laughing, and mounted the bunkhouse porch. As the waddie pushed into the bunkhouse, Cuno moved up to his two wagons fronting the supply shed’s loading dock.
    One of the wagons was nearly empty, and Serenity and Dallas Snowberger were winching one of the crates up to the loading dock on the shed’s raised platform—raised to keep rodents and other critters from burrowing into the place from under the floor and befouling costly supplies that weren’t all that easy to acquire out here.
    â€œYou fellas about done?” Cuno said.
    â€œOh, look who’s here!” Serenity said as he turned the winch’s squeaky crank atop the loading dock. “Just in time to help us unload the last wagon.”
    â€œQuit grousin’, you stove-up ole mossy horn.” Cuno tapped his tunic pocket as he climbed the ramp angling off the wagon’s open tailgate. “I got your money. We’ll split it up when we get to Crow Feather. Enough here for a nice, long drunk and carouse in Denver on the way to New Mexico.”
    â€œHazard pay?” asked Snowberger as he headed back to the wagon.
    â€œI reckon.”
    â€œAin’t gonna do Dutch much good,” the graybeard said as Cuno carried a crate of bagged Arbuckles down the wagon ramp.
    â€œWere you expecting it to?” Cuno set the crate on the ground under the winch hook, wrapped the leather harness around the crate, and set the hook. As Serenity winched up the crate, Cuno looked around. “I thought Quirt was gonna send some of his rannies out to give us a hand.”
    â€œThat broken nose you gave him changed