A Wanted Man Read Free Page A

wrote a very fine hand. Copperplate, you know. Quite elegant.”
    “I’m sure he did,” Lark replied, saddened. Then, tentatively, she ventured, “You must miss him very much.”
    Mrs. Porter’s spine straightened. “He’s gone,” she said, almost tersely, “and that’s the end of it.”
    Feeling put in her place, Lark busied herself stirring more milk into her tea. “I’m sorry,” she said. “I didn’t mean to pry.”
    Mrs. Porter patted her hand, her touch light and cool. The house was large, and it was cold, except for the kitchen, since the fireplaces in the parlor and dining room were never lit. When she wasn’t at school, where there was a potbellied stove and plenty of wood, Lark either shivered in her room, bundled in a quilt or read at the table where she was sitting now.
    There had been no snow since before Christmas, but the weather was bitter, just the same. Would the winter never end? Though spring would surely bring trouble, Lark longed for it with helpless desperation.
    “No need to apologize, dear,” Mrs. Porter said graciously. “Have another lemon tart.”
    Lark, who had been hungry ever since she’d fled Denver, did not hesitate to accept the offered refreshment.
    The back door opened, and Mai Lee, Mrs. Porter’s cook, dashed in, a shawl pulled tightly around her head and shoulders. She carried a grocery basket over one arm, with a plucked chicken inside, its head lolling over one side.
    “Make supper, chop-chop,” Mai Lee said.
    “Have some tea first,” Mrs. Porter told the woman kindly. “You look chilled to the bone.”
    “No, no,” Mai Lee answered, hanging up her shawl and setting the basket decisively on the worktable next to the stove. “Stand here. Be warm. Cook chicken.”
    Mrs. Porter rose from her chair, fetched another china cup and saucer from the breakfront, with its curvy glass doors, and poured tea, adding generous portions of sugar and milk. “Drink this,” she told Mai Lee, “or you’ll catch your death.”
    Dutifully Mai Lee accepted the tea, only to set it aside and grab the dead chicken by its neck. “I tell man at mercantile, chop off head,” she announced. “But he no do.” Her eyes glowed with excitement. “On way there, I see Rowdy Rhodes in barbershop. He getting haircut. Dog getting haircut, too. Horse at livery stable, plenty of grain.”
    Mrs. Porter sat down again, poured herself more tea and took a tart, nibbling delicately at the edge. “Mai Lee,” she said appreciatively, “it will be the Lord’s own wonder if I don’t lose you to the newspaper one of these days. You’d be a very good reporter.”
    “I no read or write,” Mai Lee lamented good-naturedly, spreading her hands wide for emphasis before slamming the chicken down on the chopping board to whack off its head with one sure stroke of the butcher knife. “Cannot be reporter.”
    “How did you know Mr. Rhodes’s horse was at the livery stable, let alone how much grain it receives?” Mrs. Porter asked, both amused and avidly curious.
    Mai Lee frowned as she worked her way through the intricacies of the question, put to her in a language that was not her own. “I hear man talking outside barbershop,” she said finally. “He work at stable.”
    “Ah,” Mrs. Porter said. “What else did you learn about Mr. Rhodes?”
    Mai Lee giggled. She might have been sixteen—or sixty. Lark couldn’t tell by her appearance, and it was the same with her husband, who joined her each night, late, to share a narrow bed in the nook beneath the main staircase, and was invariably gone by daylight. Both of them were ageless.
    From the limited amount of information she’d been able to gather, Lark surmised that the couple was saving practically every cent they earned to buy a little plot of land and raise vegetables for sale to the growing community.
    “He handsome, ” Mai Lee confided, when she’d recovered from her girlish mirth. “Eyes blue, like sky. Hair golden. Smile—” here,