A Tale Out of Luck Read Online Free

the ground, holding his rifle, leaning against a cedar post where he had fallen asleep on guard.
    Skeeter jumped up and glanced toward the captain’s bedroom window. He had been hidden in the shadow of the barn when he sat down, but the moon had risen over the roof now, bathing him in light. Thank God the captain hadn’t seen him sleeping at his post.
    He yawned and shivered. He was just so damned tired. It wasn’t even supposed to be his night on guard. It aggravated the tar out of him the way he sometimes let Jay Blue talk him into things. Jay Blue was so blasted full of confidence and forty-dollar words. Right now he was probably telling a joke and winning a poker game, with some barmaid on his lap. Not the barmaid he wanted, though, because that girl—the pretty one—didn’t have much use for Jay Blue. Still, he probably had one of the ugly gals on his lap, and he was probably drinking a beer near the woodstove at Flora’s Saloon, and he was no doubt sneaking some glances at Flora’s tits. She was always leaning over and showing them off.
    Skeeter could actually hear men snoring through the walls of the bunkhouse. He had grown accustomed to that long ago, and in fact it sort of lulled him to sleep nowadays. Right now it just irritated him. Lucky bastards. Those old, stove-up, bowlegged cowpokes were slumbering like puppies right now. Crotchety old men. They were all over thirty. Old farts. Listen to them, snoring like nobody’s business.
    “I ain’t gonna be worth a damn mañana,” he muttered to himself. It would make more sense for him to sneak back to his bunk right now and get some rest so he could pull his weight tomorrow. Hell, yeah, who would know? That settled it, he was going to sneak back into the bunkhouse. Nothing was going to happen tonight. Nothing ever happened.
    He was already at the bunkhouse door. He pulled the latch string and let himself in. He closed the door quietly, tiptoed to his bunk, and lay down on top of the covers, fully dressed. Ah, now that felt more like it. My God, they were snoring louder than a freight train! He stretched out, felt the knots shudder out of his skinny frame.
    No more crawdad dreams. He was going to have that good dream where he found out that his father was really a rich rancher out yonder somewhere, and had been looking for him for years, and wanted him to come break horses and boss the outfit. And they were always eating fried chicken. Except for breakfast, when they ate scrambled eggs. Nice firm scrambled eggs, though—not jiggly the way Beto made them in a hurry every morning.
    He yawned and closed his eyes. The snoring sounded like a sawmill.
    And his daddy had blue eyes like Skeeter’s and was the best shot in the county and rode the fastest horse, and owned the dry goods store in town where pretty girls came with their mothers to shop for cloth and buttons and . . . and the name of the town was not Luck, but it was Buena Suerte
. . .
and beautiful paint horses were just wandering around everywhere . . . no school . . . and apple pie . . . gold watch chains and pearl-handled pistols . . . and . . . saltwater taffy . . .
    Jane Catlett finished rinsing the last of the beer mugs and shot glasses in the lean-to kitchen adjoining Flora’s Saloon. She dried her hands and looked at her palms, red and soft right now due to the warm soapy water, but sure to dry and crack later. She wished she had some hand cream at home. You couldn’t get anything nice like that in this little frontier town. It was a day’s ride on a stagecoach to Austin, and she didn’t have the time to make the trip or the money to spend on stagecoaches.
    She heard laughter and a ridiculously loud holler of drunken joy through the thin partition wall between her and the tavern. She was hoping the Double Horn boys would have left by now, but they were still drinking and playing cards. She took off her apron, hung it on a peg, and quietly opened the door to the saloon.
    She looked to the