Page 22 of Unwilling Wolf

“Since you are alone out here, I think I’ll come callin’ tomorrow. Maybe the next day, too. I think over time you’ll grow used to me, Mrs. Shaw.”

He wheeled his horse and kicked it into a furious pace. The rifle sagged in her shaking arms. Lenny peeked around the corner of the house, nodded to her. “We need to go,” she said simply.

While the girl headed to the barn to saddle their horses, she rushed inside to pack a few necessities. Wyatt Jennings might come calling tomorrow, but she and Lenny had no intention of being here for that. Not without backup.

****

She took the main road into town with Lenny at a trot, listening for hoofbeats and hoping to avoid Wyatt Jennings if he were headed in a similar direction. Lenny threw worried looks at her often, but Eliza ignored them. She was too busy trying to pick her way through the maze of her own thoughts.

Jennings was no doubt a villain, and easily an insufferable ass, but had no reason to lie about Garret’s betrothal to his sister. How silly of her to assume Garret didn’t have a life before she came bumbling along. Did he love the woman? Was she beautiful, as only a woman willingly chosen by Garret Shaw should be?

Maybe Jennings’s sister was the reason he’d distanced himself from her. The questions whirled on and on like a tumbleweed on a windy Texas day. Unable and unwilling to think of anything else, by the time the first shops at the edge of town appeared on the horizon, she’d worked herself up quite vigorously.

She was foolish to care. Garret Shaw hadn’t managed to say a single civil thing to her since she’d arrived in Rockdale, so why should she care if she ruined any chance of him being with that Jennings woman? He was the one who’d insisted on marrying her, and now he would strap her with this pestering guilt over ruining his chance at love? Absurd!

The tips of her ears grew hot. They had likely turned bright red as they did only when she was truly upset, but that did nothing to calm her escalating fury.

She followed Lenny into town, as the girl seemed to know exactly where to find the men of the Lazy S, and rode straight to a building called the Brass Buckle. From inside came the sounds of women drunkenly singing and laughing. Loose women, no doubt. A saloon.

“Really?” Eliza raised an eyebrow at Lenny.

Her companion looked around as if she were uncomfortable. Passersby stared at her and Lenny, open-mouthed. The townspeople’s reaction could very well have been caused by the sight of an unfamiliar lady, full skirts flowing off the back of a buckskin horse, pulling up before a notorious saloon.

Lenny jumped off skillfully. She took Buck’s reins and twitched her head to the side, signaling her to dismount. “Let’s go.”

After Eliza had done so—ungracefully—Lenny led the horses off in the direction of a crude stable near a hotel.

The mooing and the rank smell of cattle drifted to her on the wind, but the enormous stable blocked where the sound was coming from.

Eliza squinted up at the Brass Buckle Saloon sign. Lenny hadn’t given her any further directions.

What now?

****

“Damned woman,” Garret muttered as he slowly twirled a shot glass of whiskey in the condensation ring he’d made with his last drink. He’d seen his dad drown himself in the bottle too many times to count, so he rarely drank the throat-scorching liquor. At the tail end of the week he’d had though, he would try anything to escape his misfortune, even if just for a little while.

Down the counter to his left, Burke talked up a woman on his lap. She was a saloon girl wearing a bright-blue dress with black lace trim cut so low at the neck, her plump womanly attributes had tumbled out twice already. Her hair was piled in curls on top of her head. The amount of rouge on her face did little to hide her bad skin and even worse breeding. More than three quarters of the way to being unable to see a hole in a ladder, Burke didn’t seem to mind in the least. Lucky him.

The boys always took rooms above the saloon when they stayed in town. The railroad had only come through a few years ago, but the saloon was their traditional place to cut loose when they drove the cattle in. Before the train, they’d had to drive the cattle at least a month to make it to other cattle towns further north. After his nicer digs in Georgetown, the Brass Buckle left Garret unimpressed, but the men had worked hard for him. The hands deserved a break where they wanted.

If not for the damned guilt nagging at him, he would’ve been tempted to lose his mind and take one of the whores upstairs, but he was a married man now. Even if it was just for show, marriage meant something.

He sighed and downed his drink.

“Ahem,” someone said in a dainty, ridiculous accent as the saloon doors swung creakily open. “Has anyone seen Mr. Garret Shaw?”

Eyes narrowed, Garret twisted to look at the woman over his shoulder.

Shhhhit.

Eliza stood at the front of the room, searching for someone and looking every bit the lamb in the lion’s den. He had seen all of her dresses when he’d dug through her highfalutin luggage. This was the plainest one she owned, but still leaps and bounds fancier than was fashionable here. Her hair was pulled back and pinned like some frilly woman in a catalog picture, and the small, frail-looking hat she wore on her head did nothing to help her fit into her surroundings. She was a striking young woman, he had to admit, but dumb as a fence post if she thought it a good idea to show up at the Brass Buckle. Men and whores only. The sign outside read as much.

“What now?” he muttered. He slammed his shot glass on the table and threw some change on the counter. “Thanks, Milly.”

The woman behind the bar nodded and continued to stare at Eliza.

He spun around and stalked up to Eliza in a long stride that echoed off the silent walls of the saloon. “Sorry for the interruption, fellas,” he said to the men, who had frozen as one in whatever position they’d been in when she’d arrived. He grabbed her hand and barged out of the saloon with her in tow.

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