very fast if we needed to.”
“I wanted to steer clear of towns until we got to the hideout.”
“I know,” Scratch said, “but this can’t be helped. We’ll see if we can find some little settlement where there’s no law and nobody will know you.”
“All right, all right,” she said with a disgusted tone in her voice. She waved a hand toward the west and went on, “There’s a wide place in the road over that way called O’Bar. Might be a blacksmith there. We needed to start headin’ in that direction anyway if we’re gonna avoid Fort Worth.”
“Sounds good,” Scratch said. “Why don’t you climb up here with me, so your horse won’t have to carry you? We can ride double for that far.”
Cara agreed with that idea. She dismounted and handed him the reins to Bo’s horse. Scratch took his left foot out of the stirrup and let her use it to swing up behind him. When she was settled down behind the saddle and had her arms around his waist, he heeled his mount into motion again and started off, leading Bo’s horse.
Cara told him which way to go. This was still wooded, hilly country, although not as rugged as it would be farther west, where the Gentry gang’s old hideout was located. It took them about an hour to reach O’Bar, which turned out to be a one-street settlement with a couple of blocks of businesses and a few dozen houses scattered around its outskirts. Scratch spotted a church steeple that stuck up on the other side of some cottonwood and Post oak trees lining the banks of a creek just west of town.
“You see a blacksmith shop?” Cara asked anxiously.
Scratch nodded to a building on the left side of the street. It had double doors that stood open, and smoke came from a chimney in the middle of the roof.
Scratch reined to a halt in front of the doors. Cara slid down from the horse first, then he dismounted, too, as a stocky man with rusty hair and a close-cropped beard emerged from the building.
“Got a horse with a loose shoe that picked up a rock,” Scratch said. “I got the rock out, but the shoe still needs work. Reckon you can take care of it for us?”
“Not a problem,” the blacksmith replied with a nod. “I got one job to finish up first, but I can get to it in a little while. That be all right?”
Scratch turned to look at Cara, but she wasn’t there. He stiffened in surprise for a second before he spotted her walking across the street. He nodded to the blacksmith and said, “Yeah, that’ll be fine, thanks,” and started after her.
She was headed for a squat building made of red sandstone. The place had a tiled roof that was a darker shade of red. A sign on the overhang above the flat, flagstone porch proclaimed the place to be the RED TOP CAFE AND SALOON. Several horses were tied at the hitch racks in front of the porch.
Scratch’s long legs allowed him to catch up to Cara before she reached the cafe.
“I thought you didn’t want to call attention to yourself,” he said quietly.
“We’re already here anyway,” she said. “I figured it wouldn’t do any harm to get a meal that amounted to more than just bacon and biscuits.”
“Well, that’s not a bad idea,” Scratch admitted.
He opened the door, and they stepped into warmth that was thick with the delicious aromas of food cooking. The Red Top was more saloon than cafe, he saw. There was a lunch counter to the left that formed an L with the long side of it running toward the back of the low-ceilinged room and serving as a bar. The right-hand wall had several booths with leather-covered seats, and round tables were scattered over the open area between the wall and the bar. A poker game with four cowboys playing was going on at one of those tables.
A couple of punchers were at the bar nursing mugs of beer, while two men sat at the lunch counter with plates of food in front of them. Out of habit, Scratch quickly scanned the faces of all the men in the place. He didn’t see anybody he recognized, which came as no surprise. He had never been to O’Bar before, leastways that he could remember.
The patrons glanced at the newcomers, curious as anybody would be about strangers in their midst, and several of the cowboys took a second, longer, more appreciative look at Cara. Scratch didn’t think that any of them seemed to recognize her. Like all young men, they were just interested in the sight of a pretty girl.
They probably thought he was her grandfather, Scratch told himself. He didn’t care one way or the other. He didn’t intend for them to stay in O’Bar any longer than they had to in order to get that horseshoe fixed.
Cara sat down on a stool at the lunch counter. Scratch took the stool beside her. A short, burly man with salt-and-pepper hair rested thick-fingered hands on the counter and said, “Howdy, folks. What can I do y’all for?”
Cara gave him a dazzling smile.
“I’d love a nice juicy steak with all the trimmin’s,” she said.
The counterman grinned back at her.
“I reckon we can do that for y’all,” he said. “How about you, old-timer?”
Considering the gray in the man’s hair, Scratch didn’t think he was all
“Comin’ up,” the counterman said with a nod. He shouldered his way through a swinging door into the kitchen, which let out even more appetizing odors into the air.
Scratch leaned closer to Cara and said quietly, “If the idea was for you not to attract much attention, you ain’t goin’ about it the right way.”
He nodded toward the cowboys watching them.
Cara gave a toss of her head that made her mass of blond hair swirl enticingly around her shoulders.
“Oh, them?” she said. “To tell you the truth, I don’t even notice it that much anymore. Men have been lookin’ at me like that since I was fourteen.”
Scratch didn’t believe for a second that she didn’t notice the attention. She saw it, all right, and she liked it. But that wasn’t important at the moment. They would eat their meals, pick up Bo’s horse when that shoe had been repaired or replaced, and then shake off the dust of O’Bar’s single street as quickly as possible.
At least, that was the plan. But one of the poker players at the table threw in his hand in disgust, announced, “I’m out,” and scraped his chair back. Cocking his Stetson at a jaunty angle, he sauntered toward the lunch counter.
And all Scratch had to do was look at him to know that trouble was walking toward them.
CHAPTER 25
“Hello, sweet thing,” the young cowboy said to Cara as he came up and rested a hand on the counter next to her. He gave her a grin that was cocked at a jaunty angle just like his hat. “You don’t live around here, do you? I don’t remember seein’ you around these parts before.”
“You know everybody who lives around here, do you?” Cara asked him coolly.
“I can promise you, if you lived in O’Bar, I’d know it. Fact of the matter is, I’d have been courtin’ you before now. My name’s Joe Reynolds.”
“Well, you’re right, Mr. Reynolds, I don’t live around here,” Cara told him. “We’re just passin’ through.”
“Travelin’ with your grandpa, are you?” Reynolds asked, sparing Scratch barely a glance.
“Oh, he’s not my grandpa.” Cara linked her arm with Scratch’s and leaned her head intimately on his shoulder. “This here is my husband.”
“Husband!” Reynolds exclaimed in obvious amazement. “This old codger? You can’t be serious.”
“He’s all the man I need, and then some,” Cara said with great solemnity.
“What in blazes do you think you’re doin’?” Scratch asked her in a whisper.
Cara ignored him. She kept giving Reynolds that daring, go-to-hell smile of hers. She even ran her tongue over her lips in a deliberately provocative gesture.
“Well, all I got to say is that this is the biggest pure-dee waste of a beautiful woman that I ever did see.” Reynolds sneered at Scratch. “Why don’t you let this gal spend a little time with a real man, Gramps?”
A low growl sounded in Scratch’s throat. He was about to lose his patience with this young pup, even though Cara was egging him on.
