The Coyote Tracker Read Online Free

the overskirts caught up with black buckled ribbons. A jacket bodice made of the same expensive-looking material, with a high neckline and cuffs, was layered over the dress. The dress shimmered in the bright sunshine of the day. Pearl wore a flat-crowned straw hat tipped forward, adorned with ribbons that matched those on her dress. To the uninformed, Pearl Fikes still looked like a woman of wealth, of high social standing, an important person to step aside for. Nothing could have been further from the truth.
    What Pearl wore was a remnant of her past, of a time when she was the only daughter of a Texas Ranger captain, a debutante, whose mother’s main goal in life was to see her marry well and maintain the large estate they lived on and the large house they lived in.
    Now the estate and the house were gone, a consequence of the Panic of ’73, the death of Hiram Fikes, and a series of bad decisions and bad investments on her mother’s part.
    Now Pearl’s mother was in a sanatorium, and Pearl was staying in a nearby boardinghouse, intent on taking up studies at the local normal school to be a schoolteacher as a way to generate some income for herself. She barely had two bits to rub together, and if it weren’t for her uncle, Juan Carlos, Hiram Fikes’s half brother, she would be in even worse shape financially than she currently was.
    Pearl stared at Josiah with disbelief on her face. “Rory Farnsworth did not even look me in the eye before departing so quickly. Did you have words with the man, Josiah?” She seemed agitated and tense, something Josiah did not expect after a moment of shopping in the mercantile. Pearl was happy when she went in, happy to be out with him. Or so he’d thought.
    â€œNo, no, everything is fine,” Josiah said, guiding Pearl down the boardwalk, away from the mercantile and Rory Farnsworth as quickly as possible.
    Pearl looked over her shoulder quickly, then sighed loudly when she faced forward. “I would like to go home.”
    â€œNow? We have the whole day ahead of us. I had planned for a picnic on the banks of the river. I know it’s one of your favorite places.”
    â€œPlease, Josiah, just stop.”
    â€œDid something happen that I need to know about?” Josiah asked, as he ceased walking, promptly ending their departure from Farnsworth, doing as Pearl asked. He stood in the middle of the boardwalk, still as a statue, like he had just fulfilled a marching order.
    â€œI have been shopping in Robertson’s for years. My mother carried an account there and was a very, very good customer. I asked for my own account and was refused. Refused? Can you believe that?”
    Josiah looked away, then back to Pearl quickly. He wasn’t surprised by the news. “You can’t take the rejection personally, Pearl. The man has a business to run.”
    Pearl’s normally soft face grew hard. “Are you saying I’m a bad investment, Josiah Wolfe?”
    Without knowing it, Pearl had raised her voice and was drawing attention to herself—which was very much out of her character. Or, at least, it had been before her mother was carted off kicking and screaming to the sanatorium, from a house that now belonged to the bank and stood empty.
    Now that he thought about it, there had been a bit of obvious nervousness about Pearl when Josiah called on her at the boardinghouse on Second Street, Miss Amelia Angle’s Home for Girls. But any discomfort seemed to have faded once they were beyond the confines of the house. Women, and their moods, had always been harder to read for Josiah than the weather, and just as unpredictable, so he wasn’t surprised that he might have been wrong.
    It was not the first time Josiah had met Amelia Angle or been to the house on a proper, chaperoned call, but this day was the first time he and Pearl had walked the boardwalks of Austin arm in arm, as a couple. It was less a coming out than what