This Gun for Hire Read Free Page A

with little resistance, which made his entrance ungainly as he more or less fell over himself crossing the threshold. He stumbled clumsily past the woman he meant to save.
    “That’s one way to do it,” she said, not sparing him a glance as she pushed the door closed behind him.
    Quill straightened, regaining his equilibrium if not his dignity, and turned. He was glad she did not look up as astonishment had momentarily made him slack-jawed. She was kneeling at Mr. Whitfield’s side, testing the ropes that trussed that former tree of a man into something more closely resembling a stump. He lay awkwardly and uncomfortably curled on his side by virtue of the fact that his wrists and ankles were now bound behind him. His sweat-stained neckerchief was wadded in his mouth, secured by a piece of linen that Quill recognized as a strip torn from the hem of Katie Nash’s shift.
    He watched her place a hand on Whitfield’s shoulder, shake him hard enough to rattle his teeth if he had not beengagged and unconscious, and then, apparently satisfied, raise herself so she could rock back on her heels and finally turn narrowed eyes on him.
    “Well,” he said. “So it’s true.”
    She cocked an eyebrow at him. “What’s true?”
    “The ropes and gag. My brother’s proclivities in the bedroom run to the peculiar.” He thought she might smile, but she didn’t. She continued to stare at him, more suspicious than curious.
    “I was concerned about you,” he said.
    “Can’t think of a reason why that should be so.”
    “Just now, neither can I.” Quill’s gaze darted to Whitfield and then to the clothes scattered across the floor. His gun belt hung over the headboard. The man certainly had been eager. She had managed to subdue him while he was still wearing his union suit, but even that was unbuttoned to the navel. Whitfield had a chest of hair like a grizzly. His cock was a small bulge pressing weakly against the front flap of his drawers. It occurred to Quill that stumbling through a door was a lesser indignity than being laid low with a cock curled in on itself like a slug.
    When Quill’s attention returned to her, his eyebrows beetled as he scratched lightly behind his right ear. “I admit to being a tad perplexed.”
    She stood, hands at her sides. “A tad?”
    “A touch. A mite. A bit.”
    “I know what ‘a tad’ means.”
    “Good. It’s better if I don’t have to explain.”
    “Words I live by.” She pointed to Whitfield. “You want to give me a hand, you being here and all? Uninvited, for a fact.”
    “Depends. Are you going to drop him out the window?”
    “A temptation, but no. Help me get him on the bed and then tell Mrs. Fry she can send for Joe Pepper. He’s the sheriff.”
    “All right.” He observed that his agreement seemed to make her more suspicious, not less. “Did you expect an argument?”
    She said nothing for a moment then her cheeks puffed with an expulsion of air. “Not sure what I expect. You’re not a bounty hunter, are you?”
    “No, ma’am.”
    “That’s no good,” she said, more to herself than to him.
    “How’s that again?”
    “I said it’s no good. You would lie about it if you were.”
    “Lying doesn’t come naturally to me. I have to work real hard at it.”
    “Are you working hard now?”
    “No, ma’am.”
    “Katie,” she said. “Call me Katie.”
    “I don’t think that’s your name.” If he had not been watching her closely, he would have missed her almost imperceptible start. It pleased him that he had guessed correctly, though he took pains not to show it.
    “You were sitting beside Honey downstairs. I saw you. You heard Mrs. Fry tell Whit my name.”
    “I heard what she said. I am no longer certain I believe it.”
    “I can’t be responsible for what you believe. Call me Katie or nothing at all. Now, you take his shoulders while I get his feet.”
    It was no easy task hoisting the man she called Whit, so they dragged and carried and dragged