Читать книгу Prim And Improper - Liz Ireland, Liz Ireland - Страница 7

New Mexico Territory, 1852

A gunshot shattered through the noise in the small smoky barroom, effectively ending conversation and several card games.

The place suddenly quieted as about twenty rough, dusty men all turned in unison to gape at the tiny woman who had fired her rifle at Ed Peter’s ceiling.

“Say!” Ed cried. The woman was just a little mite of a thing, all decked out in a yellow dress, and that gun looked near as big as she was. At first, Ed was prepared to give the lady a piece of his mind for shooting off firearms in his drinking establishment, but at the sound of his voice she turned his way, preventing his rebuke. Her blue eyes were two narrow slits of ice boring right into him, Ed thought, startled.

“The name’s Purdy, Lida Purdy, and I’m lookin’ for a man by the name of Atticus Purdy,” she said. What with hat yellow dress, her straw-colored blond hair and her intense expression, the woman resembled a very mean canary. “Anybody seen him?”

Murmurs rippled through the room. All down the long bar, the men glanced up at Ed, as if questioning how he was going to handle this crazy little woman. But they really shouldn’t have wondered. He was a saloon keeper, not a sharpshooter. Ed hadn’t lived to the ripe old age of sixty-two by arguing at gunpoint, even if the gun was being held by a pint-size lady in a yellow dress.

“Atticus Purdy?” he asked. “Who’s he?”

In her same edgy voice, Lida Purdy announced, “Used to be a barber back in Alabama.”

A barber? Somehow Ed had expected her to say this man she was looking for was an outlaw. She seemed awfully intent on finding him. “Well, he ain’t here,” Ed told her.

“That so?” She kept her rifle raised. “Well, if’n you do see him, you tell him for me that I’m gonna find him if it’s the last thing I do.” Her eyes narrowed further. “And once I find him, I’m gonna kill him. Got that?”

The room was once more deadly silent until somebody called out, “What’s Purdy done to you to make you so het-up to kill him?”

“He married me, that’s what.” Lida Purdy spat.

Bart Wood laughed. Bart always did lack sense. “Most women hold more of a grudge to men who won’t marry ‘em!”

The cold stare she sent him froze Bart’s smile. “He married me, then he run off and stoled all my money. Then, come to find out, the rapscallion had been married before, back in Georgia. So ‘bout three months ago, I started trailin’ dear old Atticus. I’ll find that son of a gun if it’s the last thing I do.”

And by the looks on the men’s faces around the bar as they stared at her, Ed could tell everyone believed her.

“Maybe you oughtn’t not to be leaving this Atticus Purdy messages then,” said one of the men helpfully. “Thataway maybe you can find him easier.”

A slow smile spread across Lida Purdy’s face, matching the venomous look in her eye. “Oh, I’ll find him. Meantime, if he hears I’m after him, so much the better. I want him to be scared.”

Ed swallowed, quickly poured a whiskey and shoved it across the bar to her. He didn’t like selling drink to women particularly, but as mad as this woman seemed about Atticus Purdy, he figured it was just as well not to get on her bad side.

“On the house,” he said, trying to be friendly. “That’s a hard-luck story you got there, sister.”

She shot him another of those cold stares, then reached out with her free hand and slugged down the drink without so much as a wince. He was amazed that a woman so dainty could pack away liquor so neatly.

“It’ll be harder luck for Atticus if I ever find him,” she said. “Now you got that message straight, bartender?”

“Sure,” Ed repeatedly carefully. “Atticus Purdy. And you’re gonna find him.”

“And when I find him, I’m gonna kill him.” Her lips twitched into a sweet, determined smile Ed wouldn’t soon forget. “Don’t leave out the killin’. That’s the most important part.”