said, there was a chance that this thing would keep to the woods or even move elsewhere, but he didn't trust the notion. What he had seen in the clearing had been the work of something savage. He'd never heard of the animal that was satisfied with just a taste of human blood. Bears, wolves, and cougars all became regular man-killers once they'd whetted their appetites for a man's flesh. That thing out there wasn't any of those, but it was an animal just the same. Better than any of them, when it came right down to it. More dangerous. If this woman wanted to throw herself in its way, he shouldn't try to stop her. If she actually managed to kill the thing, so much the better.
"All right," he said at last, extending his hand. "You got yourself a deal."
Cora took his hand and shook it, another grin bearing the gap in her front teeth. "Glad to see you ain't a fool after all."
"That Duggan is a damned fool."
A loud bang echoed in the hotel room as Cora slammed the door behind her. Ben was stretched out on the bed with a book in front of him, a kerosene lamp casting its dim light over his shoulder. He didn't look up or even flinch at the sound of the slamming door.
"Why is that?" he asked.
"I had to sit in his office and tell him that his own wife would be cleaning his guts off his windows before he could bring himself to help us out." Cora's boots thudded her indignation into the worn hide rug as she walked across the room. She set her pistol on the wooden table that stood between the room's two windows and rolled her head around on her shoulders. "Seems to me that a man with any kind of sense would be begging us to chase that thing off after seeing the clearing."
"Didn't seem that bad to me."
"Sure, when we was there," she said, sitting down and pulling off her boots. "Critters had picked it pretty clean by then. Not much left to go on."
"Then what did you shoot at?" Ben finally looked up from his book.
"A gray something hiding itself up in the trees."
The book's spine crackled as Ben closed it. "So you did see something."
Cora told him of the strange shadow she'd seen in the trees and of the chill she'd felt. When she finished, he leaned his head back against the headboard and smoothed down his mustache.
"Ring any bells?" she asked.
Ben shook his head. "Can't say it does. I've never heard of something that can cause a chill like that."
"Sure wasn't no hellhound." Cora propped her feet up on the other chair. Ben nodded his agreement, his eyes tracing the thick pine logs that framed the room.
Cora's gaze settled on her toes, and she gave each set a stretch. Like the rest of her feet, they were thick and hard from long years trapped in boots. The second toe on each foot stuck out beyond the others, the nails worn small. When she was a little girl, her father had told her that having long middle toes meant she was born to ride. Their tiny farm on the Shenandoah hadn't housed more than the two horses needed to plow the furrows. They were big and thick with shaggy brown hair, four-legged giants in her young eyes, but they weren't for riding. Her father had promised that he'd make enough one day to buy her a real riding horse. Then he'd show her how to sit and ride like a real lady, he said.
Of course, that was before the blue coats had come through the valley and burned them out, leaving nothing but blackened earth behind them. She had been a young woman then, gangly and freckled, not the pretty Southern belle she had pictured herself growing into when her father had made his promise.
"Don't seem like a hell beast to me," Ben said, pulling her out of her thoughts.
"What do you mean? Anything that can whip two wolfers that quick sure ain't no angel."
"Course not, but most of the things old Hades spits out have the feel of that place about them, you know? All fire and flames and pain, like the good book says. That unnatural chill you felt out there don't sound like Hell to me."
"Well, maybe Hell has a patch of cold for those that enjoy the warm," Cora said. "Folks living out in Carson City or Santa