She stood there seething, then said, “It’s been in safekeeping. Wait here.”
She went into the dining room. He heard her open one of the sideboard’s drawers then slam it shut. She reappeared with his hat in one hand and the Colt in the other. She thrust them at him.
He caught them both against his chest. “Thanks.” He placed his hat on his head and pushed the pistol into his waistband.
“You’re going to walk around town with it poking out like that?”
“No. I’m going to ride around town with it poking out like that.”
“Ride?”
He thumbed over his shoulder toward her backyard where he’d hitched a gelding to a post of her clothesline. She glanced past him, saw the horse, and remarked, again snidely, “He doesn’t look like a bucking bronco to me.”
“Far from it. He’s lazy. His owner hired me to pump some spirit into him. Riding him over was a lesson in obedience.”
“For him or for you?”
“I got him up to a canter. For me, it beat walking.”
The scornfulness in her expression was replaced by one of sudden realization. “When you left last night…?”
“Yeah, I was afoot. But I’m used to walking.” He didn’t see a need to belabor the point. “Corrine and I will ride double. Go get her, and we’ll be out of your hair.”
She hesitated, tugging at her lower lip with her teeth, and damn if he didn’t want to be doing that. Sore as he was at her in his head, other parts of him hadn’t gotten the message.
She said, “Did Corrine express a desire to go with you?”
“You mean just now? No. She was bringing me up to date on Irv. Sounds like he’s doing okay.”
“Ornery, as you predicted, but holding his own.”
“Have you changed the bandage?”
“Not yet. But he isn’t running a fever, so I don’t think the wound is infected.”
“Want me to stay while you check, then help you wrap him up again?”
“No, I wouldn’t want to inconvenience you any more than you already have been.” She clasped her hands at her waist and avoided looking him in the eye. “In fact, Irv asked me to tell you—on the outside chance that you and I met again—that he’s grateful for what you did and to give you his thanks.”
“He said that?”
“Specifically.”
He propped his shoulder against the doorjamb and folded his arms. “Now I wonder who that pained the most? You for having to pass along his thanks? Or him for owing me his thanks in the first place?”
“My gratitude is sincere, Mr. Hutton. So is Irv’s.”
“Then he’s changed his opinion of me?”
“Why would you say that?”
“When you two came into the sheriff’s office while I was in custody, the second he saw me he said, ‘Didn't I tell you he was up to no good?’ Meaning that before he’d even met me, before he ever looked me in the eye, he’d drawn that conclusion and shared it with you.”
He uncrossed his arms and pushed off the door frame to face her squarely. Watching closely to see how she would react, he added, “Which I guess is why he went for his shotgun that day I wandered into your yard.”
“Shotgun?”
“No sense in lying. I saw him. Why’d he have that shotgun at the ready?”
Noticeably uneasy, she said, “He’s leery of strangers.”
“Overmuch, I’d say.”
“He kept a shotgun handy as a precaution. To protect Pearl and me if the need arose.”
“But I hadn’t done anything out of line. You said so yourself. You told the sheriff that—”
“I know what I told him.”
“Then why did your father-in-law feel he had to stand guard?”
His persistence had turned her uneasiness into annoyance. “Maybe it’s your overall manner, Mr. Hutton.”
“What manner is that?”
“The way you look at a person. Like you’re trying to figure them out.”
“Sometimes I am.”
“Well, it’s rude and unnerving. It makes people uncomfortable.”
“You especially, I think.”
Dander up, she said, “Not at all.”
“Then why’d you go all jumpy last night?”
“I didn’t go jumpy.”
He snuffled. She’d played right into his gambit.
When she realized it, she looked away from him, then turned and looked behind her toward Irv’s bedroom before coming back around to him. Her expression was now as prim as a nun’s.
“You deliberately got us off the subject of Corrine,” she said. “In good conscience, I can’t send her back to the roadhouse and that Gert who has been so cruel to her.”
“She wanted out of there, all right. But where can she go?”