The Graves at Seven Devils Read Free Page A

have over the other fellas, Pa. I know from example what I can’t do and say, while the others can only guess at it. Most of the time they guess wrong and end up with a switch across their backsides!”
    â€œThere you have it, Sheriff.” As Colter continued working on the chair, Marie Antoinette planted a kiss on Fletcher’s mouth and squirmed around on his lap. “My salty tongue and evil ways are my boy’s advantage over the others. Hell, soon he’ll be so well behaved he’ll be able to skirt the seminary and head right to the pulpit!”
    Fletcher chuckled as he wrapped his arms around his head-strong wife, drew her to him, and kissed her. “I don’t know about that, but I reckon I see your point. Sort of, anyway. . . .”
    In spite of her tongue, Fletcher had never loved a woman more than he loved Marie Antoinette. He was no saint himself, having ridden on the wrong side of the law several times when he was younger. He was pushing thirty-five now, and he couldn’t argue that so far Marie Antoinette hadn’t done a first-rate job raising Colter to be a respectful, hardworking young man—one whom Fletcher was proud to call his son.
    He kissed her cheek and squeezed her shoulder. “So, what’d you bring us boys for lunch, Mrs. Fletcher? We’d best eat. I gotta ride out to the Double Diamond this afternoon.”
    â€œRustlers again?” Marie Antoinette wriggled off Fletcher’s lap.
    â€œ ’Fraid so. Prob’ly Injuns off the rez. If so, I might have to pay a visit to Fort Dixon.”
    â€œDixon?” Marie Antoinette scowled as she slid the towel from the basket and began setting out plates and silverware. “That means you’ll be gone overnight.”
    â€œ ’Fraid so.” Fletcher plucked a bread ’n’ butter pickle off a glass dish and bit into it, glancing at Colter, who was putting his tools back into his toolbox. “But you got him. He’ll protect you. Only twelve years old, but he’ll be tall as me in another year.”
    â€œI hate it when you have to leave town.”
    â€œDon’t like it much myself, honey,” Fletcher said as Marie laid a thick sandwich of last night’s antelope roast on a blue tin plate and set it before him, nudging aside a can of cheap cigars. “But it’s the way sheriffin’ works, and I can’t complain. I drove cattle long enough. Dug wells, strung fence. Even mustanged down south of the border for a while.”
    The sheriff bit into his sandwich atop which Marie Antoinette had piled a good helping of raw green onion from the kitchen garden she tended out back of their rented frame house at the west edge of Seven Devils, Arizona Territory. She and Colter had even dug an irrigation ditch down from the creek.
    â€œThis is good, steady work. And around here about the worst you have to contend with is long-loopers and drunk soldiers from Dixon. Your occasional bandito on the run from rurales .”
    â€œAnd Mrs. Berg’s hired man,” said Colter as the lanky boy with a thick mop of auburn hair and brown eyes drew a chair up to the right side of Fletcher’s desk.
    Amos Adler was the drunk who’d busted the chair the boy had been fixing. During the week the big German was quiet as a church mouse as he worked around the big house and grounds of the widow of Seven Devils’s founding father. But every Saturday night, Adler’s wolf got loose, as they say, and Fletcher had to arrest the man for breaking up saloons or harassing the soiled doves over at Miss Kate’s sporting parlor.
    â€œAnd Amos Adler, correct,” Fletcher said, playfully nudging Colter’s shoulder.
    â€œWell, you be careful, Toby,” Marie Antoinette admonished as she sat down on the other side of his desk. “If anything happened to you . . .” She bit into her sandwich and regarded her husband angrily, her big, brown eyes grave.