Dorothy Garlock - [Wyoming Frontier] by Midnight Blue

Laramie.
    “I’ve got to exercise my horse. I think I’ll ride out to the lower basin.” Sam got to his feet and reached for his hat.
    “Stay away from the squatters’ place. Rivers is liable to fill your tail full of lead if ya get too close.” The bowlegged man who had helped him carry Pack into the house looked up with a grin that showed tobacco-stained teeth.
    “What’s he hiding out there?” Sam asked casually.
    “His sister. She’s pretty as a speckled pup ’n blind as a bat. I heard a woman singin’ as I was ridin’ along Lodgepole Creek. It come up over the hill sweet ’n clear as a bell. I rode on up close so’s to hear. Bang! The next thing I knowed my horse got a load of rock salt in his rump ’n I went tail over teakettle. Rivers said next time it’d be lead. I ain’t never heared of a man keepin’ such a close eye on a
sister.
Haw! Haw! Haw!”
    Cullen and the two men at the table all shouted with laughter.
    “She’s sightly. Ain’t no two ways ’bout it.” Cullen spoke as if he were privileged to something they knew nothing about. “If you want to get a look at her, hang around when Rivers brings her over to visit Brita. She comes every week or so ’n helps sissy pants with his ma.”
    Sam was getting more than a little tired of Cullen constantly belittling the boy because he took care of his crippled mother and bit back what he really wanted to say.
    “He doesn’t keep
too
close a watch on her if he lets her come here,” he said almost absently.
    “Charlie Rivers’ll sit here on the porch ’n watch to see that no one gets close to her.”
    “What’s he scared of?” Sam moved out of the way so Trellis could pass with the tray.
    “Hell! I guess he’s scared somebody’ll get under her skirt ’n atween her legs. Hell! It ain’t a bad idea.” Cullen grinned. “Bet she ain’t had no man . . . less’n it was Charley. She’s so damn blind she’d not even know who it was anyhow!”
    Sam looked down at the shorter man. “Cut out that kind of talk, McCall.” His voice was more deadly because he spoke quietly. “Any man who forces himself on a woman, decent or not, will answer to me.”
    Cullen was taken aback by the quiet authority in the Texan’s voice and was embarrassed to be chastised in front of the men.
    “You Texans are sure touchy ’bout women.” His need to redeem himself forced him to speak with a sneer in his voice. “Hell, they all got a slit. If’n they ain’t goin’ to let a man enjoy it, they ort a sew it up.”
    The laugh Cullen expected didn’t come. The men got up and filed out the door, leaving him sitting at the table alone. Sam followed them out. He stood on the porch and looked off toward the mountains. Where in all this vast land was the man he hunted? Each time he thought he was close, the trail faded away. When he followed a trail on the ground, he also trailed with his mind. It was what made him good at his job. He had to think as the man he hunted would think. If he had someone on his tail, Sam reasoned, he’d want a far-off place where he could keep out of sight for a good long while. This was such a place. But hell, a hundred places such as this existed between here and Denver.
     
    *  *  *
     
    The dishes were washed and dried and stacked on the clean end of the trestle table. Her mother’s service for ten had dwindled to a service for no more than four. Mara wondered what had happened to the pots and the iron spider that had hung on the nails behind the stove. She remembered the large wooden bread bowl, the churn, the caster set, none of which she had found. She would have cried had she not been so angry.
    “Ma! What the hell am I doing here?”
    As Mara dried her hands on her apron and hurried across to the door, she could hear Brita’s soothing tones. Mara rapped on the door and then opened it. To her dismay the man on the bunk had swung his feet off and pushed himself to a sitting position. The end of the blanket lay