Read Wolver's Gold (The Wolvers) for Free Online Page B

again?"
    " Might be new sheriff," Rachel corrected, "and I don't think there's anything funny about Challenger McCall. It's a very masculine name and it suites him. As it would any officer of the law," she added when Bertie snickered.
    The cook nodded, but her lips kept twitching. "Where's your father? Sleepin' or primpin' to go out?"
    "Sleeping and don't start, Bertie."
    "It would be a waste of breath. I know you love him," the older woman said with as much as kindness as her personality allowed, "It don't mean I have to and it don't change what he is."
    "Please?" Rachel knew how Bertie felt about Joseph us Kincaid, but she just couldn't listen to another tirade about her father's selfishness. "Not tonight."
    Bertie must have seen it in Rachel's face because she changed the subject. "That guest feller, the might-be new sheriff, he alone or got somebody with him?"
    "He has a dog, a big one, and Papa woke up in time to tell him he could keep it in the room."
    Rachel tried repeatedly to enforce the no dog rule, but Papa, just as repeatedly, rescinded it and it was Rachel who was left to scrub out the stains the animals left in the carpets or the puddles they left in the hall.
    Bertie whipped off her shawl and reached for another plate from the shelf. "Not likely he had supper. I'll just fill a plate with leftovers and you can bring it to him when he comes in." She loaded a plate with roast beef and added a dab of potato salad and coleslaw on the side. "I'll put it right here next to Eustace's supper."
    "Bertie," Rachel warned.
    "What? The man might be hungry," she said, "and as he's paying for his supper, he ought to get one."
    Rachel dug in the pocket of her apron and pulled out the day's tips. She doled out some to Bertie, saved some for Eustace and some for the cookie jar on the top shelf over the stove and the rest would go in the bag for Arnold Slocum, the pack's banker.
    "You shouldn't," Bertie said, but it didn't stop her from stuffing the money in her own apron pocket. "One of these days Arnie's gonna catch on."
    All money earned was supposed to be turned in to The Bank where Arnold Slocum withheld the proper taxes and paid the pack's bills. He then returned what was left to the people who earned it.
    "You think Daisy's girls turn in all of their tips?" she asked as she always did.
    "Daisy's girls earn their tips from the men's pay packets. That's different," Bertie answered as she always did.
    " Of course it is. We work for it," Rachel told her with a wink. "Don't spend it all in one place."
     
    Later, much later, when the day's work was almost done, she heard Eustace laughing, and the new guest shushing him, as they came in through the back entrance with the luggage that should have been brought in hours ago. She left them to it, though she would get after Eustace later for leaving her to do all of the cleanup alone. She wasn't his regular employer, but she fed him three squares a day and gave him a warm, dry place to sleep in the shed. He did his bathing and she did his wash at the hotel, too, so she shouldn't feel guilty for expecting something in return.
    But as soon as she thought it, she felt just that. Eustace might be an omega in the pack, the lowest of the low, but he earned his keep far more than many of the higher ups and she shouldn't begrudge him a few hours of fun.
    She wasn’t sure what he’d done to be reduced to his low station. No one spoke of it as if it was too shameful to whisper. It wasn’t because of his handicaps, no matter what the Second hinted.
    She put their suppers on the table with forks and napkins, but it was only Eustace who came whistling down the stairs a few minutes later, and swaggered into the kitchen on his crooked legs. He was grinning like the cat who stole the cream.
    "Don't know why we had to drag all that shit up there, when we're gonna drag it all down tomorrow," he said.
    He smelled of the pickled eggs they served at the saloon and beer had loosened his tongue enough for