Quicksilver Passion (14 page)

Tabor stuck a pencil behind one ear and shrugged.
No one knows really. About a year ago, she got off the stage here, accompanied by that ugly bartender of hers, Al. Nobody knows where they came from or anything else about them except the stage driver thought from their tickets that they had started out from Chicago.”

She did have a Northern accent, Cherokee thought, but somehow, Silver had struck him as a country girl, not someone from a big place like Chicago.
Does she really own that saloon?”

Lock, stock, and barrel!” Tabor hooked his thumbs in his white apron.
She had two thousand dollars in cold cash, gossip says, and promptly bought the place. That’s a lot of money by anyone’s standards.”

He was even more intrigued.
And there’s no other man?”

Who? Silver? Perish the thought!” Tabor made a gesture of dismissal.
Not her! Folks say she wouldn’t even allow whores there, but they begged for the jobs. Her card tables are honest, which is rare, and the Nugget don’t water the whiskey. Silver’s always treating some old bum or hungry passerby to a meal.”

Hard-eyed whore with a heart of gold
. It was the stuff novels were made of. But if she wasn’t a whore, just what was she? Whatever she was, Cherokee didn’t want to leave town until he unraveled the mystery, even though his partners needed him back at the claim.

You been here long, stranger?” the other interrupted his thoughts.

Cherokee shook his head.
First time in town, though I’ve been up on the claim for months. How’d it get a name like Buckskin Joe?”

Oh, some call it Laurette now, sounds fancier, I reckon, but it won’t stick.” The storekeeper stuck his pencil behind his ear.
Most of us think it should stay named for the old mountain man who founded it.”

Cherokee grunted, his mind still on the girl.

We’ll be a state someday, sure you’re born,” the shopkeeper said.
Why, us becomin’ an official Territory last month is just the beginnin’, and I intend to be part of her future!”