.45-Caliber Firebrand by Peter Brandvold Page A

his mind,” Snowberger said, balancing a bag of parched corn on his shoulder. “He decided we could do the unloadin’ ourselves.”
    â€œHope there’s food left,” Serenity said. “The smell o’ that beef’s been pressin’ my belly button ever tighter against my backbone.”
    â€œNo beef tonight,” Cuno said, grunting under the weight of a parched corn sack that Snowberger handed over the side of the wagon. “Fellas, tonight we’re headin’ to a fancy sit-down meal up to the main house. Trent’s special invitation.”
    Cuno didn’t mention the daughter’s fortification of the invitation, but the image of her standing on the narrow, dark stairs, sopping wet under that bulky robe with the partly open front, scampered across his mind again like a mischievous cat, flooding his loins with a young man’s keen, hot desire.
    â€œYou mean we’re gonna sit down to a meal with the man that hornswoggled us into carryin’ rifles and ammo he didn’t pay us for?”
    â€œHe paid us.”
    â€œOnly after we done carried ’em,” Snowberger grunted.
    â€œAnd Dutch went under on account o’ them savages we weren’t warned about,” Serenity added, angrily cranking the winch. “What’d he have to say about that?”
    â€œNot much,” Cuno snapped, annoyed at the question. “He wrote us a check.”
    He grabbed the last feed sack out of Snowberger’s hands and tossed it down beneath the hook. “But I don’t think Dutch would mind all that much if we went up to the house and sat down to a meal with the man. At least, I’m gonna go. You two can stay down here and swap big windies with Quirt’s boys, if you wanna be rock-headed about it.”
    â€œAh, hell, I’ll go,” Snowberger said, dropping out of the wagon’s empty bed with a grunt. “Like to tell the man where he can go . . . after I’ve done smoked his cigars and enjoyed his food and liquor.”
    â€œHell, I’ll throw in,” Serenity said, stomping bandy-legged down the loading dock’s board steps. “I wanna tell ole Trent what I think of him up close enough that he can smell my rancid breath!”
    â€œYeah, well, you’re gonna have a bath first,” Cuno grouched as he started removing the sheeting from the second wagon. “So you best spend the next hour or so, while we bed the mules down, getting used to the idea.”
    On the other side of the wagon, Serenity dropped his jaw and widened his eyes, flabbergasted. “A bath ?”
    â€œYou heard me.”
    â€œJesus Christ! Who else the old fucker got dinin’ up there— U. S. Grant ?”
    The tips of Cuno’s ears warmed, but he kept his mouth shut.
    Â 
    In spite of the dustup earlier in the yard, the Chinaman seemed pleased to oblige Cuno and his men with hot-water baths in the open lean-to shed off the rear of the cook shack.
    The stocky son of Han seemed downright eager to do it, in fact, in spite of the twenty men he’d just fed and all the cleanup he had yet to do in the kitchen. The man enjoyed a good row now and then, Cuno figured, as he ran a bar of lye soap across his work-sculpted pecs, and the Chinaman dumped another bucketful of steaming water between his legs. The steam billowed in the cold night air.
    The Chinese cook didn’t seem to take umbrage with the nick Serenity had given him across his fleshy right cheek, for, as the Chinaman filled the tubs and rummaged for towels, the two got on like old army pals, bantering and joking and wheezing deep laughs, though the Chinaman appeared to understand only about half of all Serenity’s raspy, half-shouted words.
    As Cuno scrubbed at the grime and mule stench en-grained in his brawny hide, Serenity sang as he lathered his bony chest, looking like some scrawny, plucked, bearded chicken in his own corrugated tin tub nearby. Dallas