Cowboy of Mine Read Free Page B

slapping him playfully against his thick shoulder. “Stop teasing. He doesn’t know you well enough to know you jest.”
    “Am I, Laura? Am I?”
    She giggled and swatted the big man again.
    Jake could only swallow. This wasn’t the first time he’d seen a mixed couple. After he’d become a prisoner of war, he’d been shipped off with his brothers and hundreds of other Highlanders to America to become an indentured servant. When he and his brothers had escaped their servitude, they’d found sanctuary in a Yamasee village, where other slaves and servants had also run away. One of the first people to welcome him into the tribe was an African man with an Irish wife. But Jake hadn’t seen such a thing in over two-hundred years. Didn’t know people would be that brave anymore. And something about it made his heart trip. In such a damned good way.
    Since he’d landed in this time, he kept trying to figure out a way to go back. The man with the pale blue eyes had stolen him then moved him from one era to the next in a tornado-like blur of memories. Jake just wanted to return to his brothers, safe. Well, safety was relative speaking. No matter what age he found himself.
    Maybe this town, this job, wouldn’t be so bad. Maybe he could pass time here, until he could figure out a way back to his brothers.
    Mr. Casper finally released Jake’s hand and nodded. “Well, Mr. Cameron, nice to meet you at last.”
    “Likewise.”
    “Your resume hasn’t arrived yet.”
    Jake nodded. “Scared I’d beat it, but it’s coming.”
    Mr. Casper narrowed his eyes slightly. “You in a rush to become a lawman?”
    “In a rush to make money, sir.”
    Mr. Casper cracked a wide smile at that. “Like honesty, I do. I hope you like honest money too? It ain’t as much as the other kind, but it’s reliable.”
    “Yes, sir.”
    Mr. Casper leaned closer. “Call me Tom, if I can call you Jacob.”
    “Jake.”
    Another smile from Mr. Capser, and Jake felt as if he’d won real money already. “Jake, it is then.” The large man sighed and looked at his wife. “Ah, hell, I like him too.” He studied Jake once more. “I should be interviewing you proper, should wait for your resume.”
    “Yes, sir.”
    “Oh, he’s got that face, though, honey,” Mrs. Casper said as she wrapped two hands around Tom’s massive forearm. It sounded sweet what Mrs. Casper had said, but any comment about his face...Jake immediately looked down to the floor.
    It had been a year now living with this disgusting pox-marked visage, but sometimes he could forget how grotesque he was. Then a child would point, a woman would whisper, or a man would say something about the monster, and he would remember all over again his deformity. His ugliness.
    Jake hardly heeded that Mrs. Casper continued talking. “...look at those eyes. Those are honest eyes.”
    “Yes, they are.” Mr. Casper rocked back on his heels, then clapped Jake on his shoulder. “Ah, hell, you’re hired. You’re our new sheriff. You do have an honest face, honest eyes.”
    Jake blinked, not sure how to handle the compliment. He’d inspected his image yesterday in a brass-backed mantle. In the metallic background, his face had morphed and smeared. Those were handsome features the brass had created for him. But there too were the marks on his face like that of a cannonade fired on a hill. It reeked of war. His personal war had been smallpox, almost forgotten in this time thanks to variolation and inoculation.
    So he just shook Mr. and Mrs. Casper’s hands, trying with everything in him to force the ends of his lips up, make himself appear jovial, normal. Human.
    He was human, but feeling so disfigured, so out of his own time, he often wondered if he was more demon than man.
    “You packed some arms, Jake?”
    “Yes, sir. Have more being shipped.”
    “You were a lawman for a railway, right?”
    “That I was.”
    “Now you want to work for my mining town?”
    Jake gritted his teeth after