Packing Iron Read Free Page B

and that was one miracle she couldn’t explain.

CHAPTER FIVE
    Almighty Sky was right: the stranger, now awake, was indeed hungry. As he greedily sipped broth from the spoon held by Raven, who’d insisted on feeding him, Ingrid introduced herself and her daughter. When he didn’t respond, she asked him his name.
    Instead of answering her, he fixed his ice-blue eyes on Raven and said hoarsely: ‘Y-You’re the girl in the desert … one who tried to steal my gun.’
    If he expected her to be repentant, he was mistaken.
    ‘You would’ve done the same, mister, if you thought I was dead.’
    ‘Raven—!’
    ‘It’s true, Momma. He would’ve. Anybody would’ve. Wouldn’t you?’ she demanded, holding the spoon just out of reach of his mouth. ‘C’mon. Admit it.’
    He said only: ‘I’d rot in hell ’fore I’d rob a dead man.’
    ‘An’ hell’s where you’d be if I hadn’t found you.’
    ‘Raven, how dare you!’ Ingrid glared at her rebellious daughter. ‘Apologize immediately.’
    ‘Why? I ain’t sorry I said it. I saved his life and now he’s calling me a thief!’ Raven angrily pushed the bowl and spoon into her mother’s hands and ran out of the barn.
    ‘Please, forgive her,’ Ingrid said. ‘Raven looks full grownbut emotionally, my goodness she’s still a child…’
    He was too weak to care. Wearily closing his eyes, he continued sipping the broth.
    When the bowl was empty Ingrid patted his lips dry with her apron and stood up. The stranger hadn’t opened his eyes since he’d finished eating and she thought he was asleep. Quietly, so as not to awaken him, she started to leave.
    ‘Brandy…?’ he whispered hoarsely.
    ‘I’m afraid I don’t have any. I do have whiskey—’
    ‘No, no … my horse … Brandy … is he…?’
    ‘Oh, he’s fine,’ she assured him. ‘He’s out there in the corral. But any time you like, I can bring him into the barn.’
    For an instant, relief flickered in the man’s uncannily pale blue eyes. Then it was gone and he weakly shook his head.
    ‘Leave him be….’ He closed his eyes and was asleep before Ingrid could say another word.
     
    When he next awoke it was night. Raising himself up on his elbows, he looked around. A kerosene lamp glowed nearby. By its light he saw an old wagon parked against the rear wall, a well-worn bridle hanging from a hook, a pitchfork leaning against a stall and feed piled in one corner. So, he thought, nothing has changed. I am still here – wherever here is.
    ‘Feeling better?’ The same blue-eyed woman with the pleasing smile and butter-colored hair who’d fed him earlier now leaned into his vision. When he nodded she asked him if he was hungry. He nodded again. The woman disappeared and, when she returned a little later, she carried a fresh bowl of broth, a hunk of bread and a spoon.
    She fed him slowly, dunking the bread in the broth so he wouldn’t have to chew it, using the spoon to catch the excess dribbling from his lips, and when the bowl was empty he felt strong enough to sit up and lean back against his saddle. 
    He looked at the woman more carefully than he had before and realized there was more to her than he’d first noticed. Besides being wholesomely pretty, she had a regal quality about her. It surprised him. Since boyhood he’d seen countless women in her position, all of them old before their time, living out their lives of drudgery on ranches just like this and she was the only one who seemed out of place – like a princess in a pig pen, he decided. Despite her earthy, rundown surroundings, cheap cotton dress, worn out shoes and the smudges of dirt on her face, nothing could hide the inner elegance she possessed. It was, he thought, the kind of elegance one could only inherit; the kind that no amount of hardship or adversity could ever destroy. He’d seen it only once before, when in an El Paso barbershop he’d thumbed through an Eastern society magazine and come upon a picture of the British