Kaki Warner Read Online Free Page B

on the dollhouse. Instead, he dreamed of firm-bodied women with silky blonde hair and eyes the greenish-blue color of a high mountain lake. At dawn, he awoke sweating, the quilts twisted around his legs, with an empty ache in his chest.
    He stayed busy throughout the day, shoveling paths to the barn and woodshed, cleaning the stalls, hauling water from the creek. By late afternoon, he was so stiff he moved like an old man, but at least the chores were done. After adding two limp carrots, an onion, and a couple of potatoes to his venison stew, he put it on to cook, then filled every other pot he owned and set them by the hearth. While the water heated, he pulled the dented metal tub from the back stoop, then stripped down and checked his stitches.
    Two had torn loose. But they weren’t infected, and the rest were itching, so he figured it was time. He snipped through each horsehair knot without cutting himself more than a couple of times. With a whiskey-soaked kerchief and a lot of cussing, he cleaned the wound and sopped up what blood there was, then filled the tub and climbed in, a brick of soap in one hand, the whiskey bottle in the other.
    The tub was woefully small. But with his knees bent and his feet outside the tub, he had enough room to slouch down with his butt against one end and his shoulders against the other, so that water covered him from chest to hip. He took a long swallow from the bottle, sucked air against his teeth to ease the burn, then started scrubbing.
    “I ought to bathe you, too,” he told the hound dozing by the hearth. “Serve you right for not coming when I called.”
    Roscoe lifted his head to stare mournfully at him, then sighed and let it drop back to the plank floor.
    “You’re useless, that’s what you are. You and that sorry horse.”
    Roscoe didn’t respond. Pleased to have the last word, Daniel tipped his head back against the rim and sighed as warmth spread through his aching body. Steam curled around him. Knotted muscles loosened. Closing his eyes, he let the whiskey dull his headache and send his mind into a peaceful drift.
    “You promised.”
    “Jesus!” Daniel lurched upright. Cool water sloshed out of the tub and onto the floor. He scanned the shadows but saw nothing move. “Who’s there?”
    No response.
    “I’m tired of this game. Show yourself.”
    Silence.
    Roscoe rose from the hearth and went to sniff at the crack beneath the door. Lifting a paw, he whined and scratched at the wood.
    Daniel rose, toweled off, and stepped into his trousers. He didn’t waste time hunting up a shirt. The cabin was dark now except for the flickering light from the fire in the hearth. Padding barefoot across the cold floor, he grabbed his jacket off the hook, pulled it on, lifted his repeater from the pegs on the wall, and chambered a round. He yanked open the door.
    Roscoe rushed out.
    Cold air rushed in, prickling Daniel’s damp skin. Keeping his finger on the trigger and resting the barrel loosely in the crook of his left arm, he scanned the yard. An unbroken dusting of snow covered over old tracks. No new ones showed. Other than Roscoe racing toward the woodshed, no dark shadows moved across the white expanse.
    “You there,” he called loudly. “Come out. Now!”
    Silence except for the whining of the hound as he took off into the trees.
    Shivering so hard his teeth chattered, Daniel stepped back into the house and slammed the door. His mind running in circles, he finished dressing by the hearth. This couldn’t all be just an overactive imagination. Someone was up to mischief. But why? And who?
    Confused and starting to doubt his own mind, he pulled on his boots and jacket, picked up the rifle, and went back outside. He checked the barn, found it bolted, as he’d left it. Merlin rested quietly in his stall. The chickens had roosted for the night. Even in the dim light of the early crescent moon, he could see no new tracks circling the paddocks or cabin. Everything seemed as it