“Well?” she asked, frowning impatiently.
“Miss Latham, I think that if I had to spend two weeks near you, I’d be hanged for murder—yours.”
Even though he was watching her intently, she didn’t betray any emotion—if she had any. “I guess that’s settled, then. I wish you the best in your endeavors in the future, and I hope that you can continue to dodge bullets for many years. Good day, sir.”
With that she left the room, closing the door behind her.
Cole walked to the cabinet against the wall and withdrew a bottle of whiskey and downed a healthy slug. What would little Miss Prim and Proper say to his drinking at this time of the morning? Probably just look down her boring little nose at him.
At the window, he held the curtain aside and watched her walk across the street. Not one man turned to watch her walk or even looked at her. She was the most undesirable woman he’d ever laid eyes on. Yet something about her got under his skin.
“Damn!” he said out loud. In a matter of minutes she had made him feel that his entire life was a failure. Him! C
oleman Hunter, a man known throughout the Southwest as a man to be reckoned with, a man who could have his pick of any woman in the country.
He moved away from the window, and as he did so, he happened to see himself in the mirror over the bureau. Turning sideways, he stood a little straighter and sucked in his stomach. There wasn’t any paunch. His stomach was as flat as the day he had his first gunfight. Angrily he grabbed his hat and left the room.
Two hours later he was sitting on the front porch of the sheriff’s office whittling a stick into nothing. He was beginning to think the woman was a jinx. Ten minutes after he’d left his boardinghouse, a boy had come running to him with a telegram. His next job, for some rancher in Plano, had been canceled. The man had wanted someone to find and kill a bunch of rustlers, but he had telegraphed that a younger, less expensive man had already done the job for him.
This news had made Cole so angry he’d gone to Nina and told her he wanted her, and now. Nina had said that he had to wait his turn and he hadn’t paid her for the last time. Since when had he had to pay for a woman? Women were dying to go to bed with him.
“Nina,” he said, hating himself for doing it, “do you think I’m…well, you know…attractive?”
That had made her laugh. “What’s wrong with you, Cole, honey? You fallin’ for some girl that thinks you’re old enough to be her father?”
That was probably the only insult Miss Latham had not given him, but now Nina had. First a dried-up old maid and now a prostitute. He thought he’d better get out of Abilene fast, before his hair turned gray and his teeth fell out.
“What’s eatin’ you?” asked the sheriff, who was now sitting next to him on the porch.
“Nothing’s wrong with me,” Cole snapped. “What makes you think anything is wrong with me?”
“I’ve rarely seen you awake this early, and when you do get up in the daylight it’s usually to meet somebody in a shootout. How come you ain’t over at the saloon like you usually are?”
“Is that what you think of me? Is that what you think I do with my life, shoot people and drink and gamble? If you think I’m such a wastrel, why haven’t you arrested me? For that matter, if I’m such a killer, why haven’t you hanged me?”
The sheriff looked at Cole in amusement. They had known each other for years, had ridden together many times, until the sheriff decided that he’d had enough of bedrolls and beans. He’d married a plump widow and produced two little boys who were everything to him. “Nina turn you down?”
“No, Nina didn’t turn me down,” Cole lied. “What is wrong with the people in the town that a man can’t do something a little different now and then?”
“Somebody got to you today. Who was it? Any of Dalton’s boys around that I don’t know about?”
Cole didn’t answer him because at that moment boring little Miss Latham stepped out of the hotel and started walking down the street toward the bank.
The sheriff was watching his longtime friend, trying to figure out what was wrong with him, when Cole’s eyes suddenly changed. It was the look he usually reserved for cardsharps who might have an ace up their sleeves and for notorious gunmen who might draw at any second so they could say they’d killed Cole Hunter. The sheriff, to his disbelief, saw that Cole had fastened his gaze on a small, plain woman in a modest brown dress. Cole usually went for flashy women in red satin and black lace. He said he fought men for a living, so he didn’t want to fight women; he wanted them to be easy.
“Who is she?” Cole asked belligerently, pointing his knife blade toward her.
Abilene was a good-sized town, but the sheriff prided himself on knowing who came and went. “Money.” He bit off a chew of tobacco. “Her father was from the East, came out here and bought a few hundred acres of very pretty land up north, built the biggest house ever seen by most people, then sat down and waited. Most people thought he was crazy. Four years later the railroad came through and he sold them land for five times what he’d paid for it. He built a town, called it Latham after himself, then rented the buildings to people who wanted to work. A hard man. They say he throws out tenants if they’re twenty-four hours late with the rent.”
“Did,” Cole said. “He died nearly a year ago.”
“Oh? I hadn’t heard,” the sheriff said, letting Cole know that he’d like to hear more. But Cole had always accused him of being an old gossip and wasn’t about to give him any information.
“What about his wife?” Cole asked.
“I heard he bought her too. He went back east for a few months and returned with her.” The sheriff paused to smile. “I hear she was the most beautiful woman most men had ever seen. I talked to a cowboy that used to work for them, and he said there wasn’t one man that could say a word when she was around. All of ’em just stood and stared at her.”
“And she had a daughter who looked just like her,” Cole said softly.