Last Ride of Jed Strange (9781101559635) Read Free Page B

indispensable position, it was not an esteemed one.
    A bony shoulder clad in blue wool and capped with a lieutenant’s polished brass bar appeared out of nowhere, ramming into Colter’s chest and stopping the young cowboy and Miss Lenore dead in their tracks. “Now, Miss Lenore,” said Lieutenant Pres Belden, “you know this boy can’t dance. Why, I don’t think he even scraped his boots off before he entered the hall.”
    The lieutenant—tall and square-shouldered, with a coal black dragoon-style mustache, belligerently jutting jaws, dimpled chin, and cobalt blue eyes that always owned an angry, condescending cast—worked his nose, sniffing, then made a dismissive face. “Why, I know he didn’t!” He glanced at Colter before giving his back to the young horse breaker and hooking his right arm for Miss Lenore. “Allow me.”
    â€œI do apologize, Lieutenant,” said Miss Lenore, not influenced a bit and just as relief that he wouldn’t have to dance was beginning to ease the tension in Colter’s shoulders. “But I’ve promised this and possibly the next dance to Mr. Farrow.”
    Smiling and radiant, the pearls around her creamy neck setting off the chocolate brown of the sausage curls dancing around her pink cheeks and the amber brown of her sparkling eyes, Miss Lenore Fairchild stepped around the slack-jawed lieutenant. With Colter in tow, she continued out onto the dance floor where, Colter noticed with a horrific shudder, the music had suddenly changed and the dancers were now dancing face-to-face and hand in hand, only two or three inches apart!
    â€œMiss Lenore,” Colter said, hearing the nervous quaver in his voice, “I’m afraid Lieutenant Belden is right—I can’t dance. Oh, I’ve barn-danced a few times back home, but mostly I whacked an empty kettle with a kitchen spoon, keeping time for the banjo picker.” He gulped as she grabbed both his sweating hands in hers and held them up between them, smiling warmly at him, showing all those perfect white teeth sheathed in rich, ruby red lips.
    â€œNonsense, dear Colter,” Miss Lenore said, her head just a little lower than his. “The waltz is the very picture of grace and simplicity. Follow me. Watch my feet. Hold on tight, and I’ll step you through it.” Her laugh sounded like snowmelt water chiming along a cedar-lined creek bed high in the Colorado mountains, which was where the young cowboy wished he were right now.
    She put her moist lips up close to his ear once more, and he could feel her breath again, soft as a butterfly wing. “And we’ll no doubt win the jam-and-apple basket at the end of the evening!”
    â€œOh, Lordy,” Colter muttered as the girl began sidestepping and swinging her hips, tugging his reluctant, six-foot-tall body along like an extra, oversized appendage. “I just don’t think I can do this, Miss—”
    â€œNo, you’re doing well, Mr. Farrow,” the girl encouraged.
    â€œI’m liable to hurt you and face a firing squad in the morning.”
    She laughed heartily. “Just watch my feet and do what I do, and I’ve no doubt you’ll be leading in a minute. See—it’s not so awfully hard, now, is it?”
    Colter concentrated on the girl’s metallic green, elastic, side-zipper shoes showing below the swirling pleats of her cream ball gown, and, ignoring the other dancers he felt himself running into frequently, forced himself to learn the steps lest he should stomp all over this poor girl and likely send her sailing into the punch bowl yonder. It was pure fear rushing through his veins like miniature arrows that kept him on his own feet and off hers as well as off the hem of her obviously expensive dress as they shuffled this way and that about the dance floor.
    After one song Miss Lenore insisted they stay for another—he was catching on so quickly it