Read Crooked Hearts for Free Online Page B

his feet together with a rope.
    When Reuben turned around, Sister Gus was gone.
    “Excuse me,” he muttered to Willis, “I, um, I’m not feeling well.” Cutting a swath with his cane, he shambled down the lane after her.
    He saw her beyond the first bend in the road. She had one foot in the stirrup, one on the ground, hopping frantically after the horse while it pivoted away from her. When she saw him, she forgot about escaping. “I knew it!” she cried, dropping the reins and starting toward him, fists clenched, mad as a hive of wasps.
    “Sister?” he tried, waving his arms. “Is that you?”
    His mistake was letting her under his guard; she darted in and landed a solid right before he could duck. “It’s me,” she said grimly.
    He clutched his stinging jaw with both hands, momentarily seeing stars. “What the hell did you do that for?” he sputtered.
    “Because you’re a sidewinder and a pervert.”
    “Hold it, now, let’s—”
    “Degenerate!” She squared off to punch him again. “You’d’ve let that Chinaman rape me!”
    “How can you say that? I saved you.”
    “Fiend. Coward!”
    He jumped back, dodging a deft left hook. “Let’s have this conversation later,” he suggested, grabbing for the horse’s mane before the animal could shy away.
    “That horse is mine, I saw him first. Stop! Damn you—”
    He leapt onto the animal’s back, out of the way of Sister’s flying fists. The stirrup leathers were way too short; he had to bend his knees like a cricket. He leaned over, offering her a helping hand, but she slapped it away with a sacrilegious curse. He backed the horse up and kicked it into a walk.
    “Hey! Wait! Damn it, you wait up!”
    “Well, hurry the hell up, Gus, before they figure out we’re gone.” This time she took his outstretched hand with alacrity, and he hoisted her up behind him. When he spurred the horse, she had to fling her arms around his waist to stay aboard.
    Nobody appeared, nobody shouted after them from the direction of the stagecoach. After half a mile of tense, bumpy silence, Reuben was ready to believe they’d gotten clean away.
    “We did it!” he exulted, slowing the horse to a canter. “They won’t come after us in the stage because they’ve got to go south to telegraph the sheriff.” Behind him, Sister Gus was already fidgeting; he guessed she wasn’t used to bouncing bareback on a horse’s rear end.
    “Where are we going?”
    He could tell by the tone of her voice that she was still irritated with him. “I thought I’d go home,” he said mildly.
    “Which is where?”
    “Fourteen Yancy Street, San Francisco.” Now, why had he told her that? “Where do you live?”
    “None of your business.”
    There you were: it never paid to trust a woman. “I’ve got about four dollars and some change,” he mentioned as they trotted up out of a pine-filled canyon. “And you?”
    “Nothing,” she snapped. “Not one thin dime.”
    He grunted. “That makes it harder. We’ll have to keep riding, then, at least as far as Woodside. With four bucks, we can probably get third-class seats on a train from there to San Francisco.”
    She said nothing.
    He decided it was time they introduced themselves. “My name’s Reuben Jones.” He twisted around, holding out his hand. She ignored it. “And you are Miss … ?”
    “Mrs.,” she corrected testily. “Mrs. Henri Rousselot.”
    He whistled. “Well, that’s kind of a mouthful. Why don’t I just call you Grace, and you can call me Reuben.”
    “How do you know my—” The beautiful blue eyes widened. He could tell the second she figured it out: he knew her name because he’d read it on her dressing gown, embroidered in white thread. Right after he’d walked into her room and seen her naked as a straight pin.
    Sister Gus shoved back on the horse’s rump as far as she could go without falling off, and didn’t speak another word for twenty miles.

3
    What is commonly called friendship is only a