Wolver's Gold (The Wolvers) Read Free Page A

was alone with no one else around to hear or see .
    She' d once complained about it to her father, but only once, and she hadn't been able to bring herself to repeat what the odious man had said.
    " A lady shouldn't remark upon such things and I'm sure you are mistaken, my dear. Mr. Jack Coogan is a gentleman," was Papa's reply, which in her father's world meant Jack Coogan paid his poker debts with alacrity. "It was probably only a little harmless flirting. You'd do well to smile and flirt a little in return. Mr. Coogan would make a fine mate."
    Her father was still trying to find her a mate. It had been a running argument for the past fifteen years, but about this one thing, Rachel held her ground and refused to give in. In the past, there’d been a string of eligible bachelors invited by her father to dine, but slowly the word had spread. Rachel Kincaid had no interest in finding a mate.
    "I've heard he's only been invited to interview for the position. He's not the new sheriff yet," she said just to be perverse and to quash any lingering hopes her father might have.
    Ignoring her remark, her father asked, "Where will he be staying? Do you know?"
    "I should think they'll give him Porter's house. It came with the position, I believe," Mr. Doughman said quietly.
    He was a sweet, older man with mutton chop whiskers who'd lost his mate two years before and moved to the hotel with the others last spring. Rachel secretly hoped he'd take an interest in Mrs. Hornmeyer, the widow who lived in genteel poverty in Room 6.
    "I think it's awful to replace our dear Sheriff Porter before his grave has had time to settle," said the widow. She shivered a little. "I shouldn't like to live in a house that had so recently seen death."
    "You didn't mind living in your mate's house after he passed," Mr. Coogan stated , a little meanly, Rachel thought.
    "That was different." Mrs. Hornmeyer sniffed into her ever present handkerchief. "I would have welcomed dear Mr. Hornmeyer's ghost."
    "Is he the one Sheriff Porter recommended?" Rachel asked when she saw Mr. Coogan's mouth open. "Or is he someone the Mayor found?" she went on, not because she cared, but because she wanted to head off any snide remarks about dear Mr. Hornmeyer leaving his mate penniless after almost sixty years together. There was a mean streak in Jack Coogan that had been there since he was a cub.
    "Ah now, Miss Kincaid, that's not something you need to worry about," Mr. McKinley said in his usual condescending manner. "You just leave those things to the folks who know best."
    "I wasn't worried, Mr. McKinley, and I have every right to…"
    "Rachel," her father warned, "It isn't your place to argue with Mr. McKinley."
    The grandfather clock in the hall bonged the hour and Rachel , smarting from her father's reprimand, stood, ready to begin her day.
    "Well," she said, nodding her head to those still seated around the table, "That's our signal and we'd best be off. The tourists will be here before we know it."
    Gold Gulch was a tourist attraction. If it weren't for the tourists in their modern shorts and sandals, a person would have thought they'd stepped back in time. Gold Gulch was an old Western town straight out of the late 1800s. With a wide dirt road running down the center bordered by wood plank sidewalks fronting each of the buildings that flanked the street, you could easily imagine ladies in long skirts wearing bonnets or fancy hats, cowpunchers in their chaps and spurs, bankers in pinstripes and high collars.
    But you didn't have to imagine, because there they were, walking among the tourists, going about their daily lives, stopping to chat, and then hurrying on their way. Make a purchase in the General Store, cash your check at the Bank, buy a hat or a parasol at the Ladies' Emporium. Gentlemen could purchase a suit or a hat at the haberdasher's or relax with a hot towel shave at a barber shop with the traditional striped pole out front.
    The barbers were always busy with