Cavalry Man: Powder Keg
Chapter One
Never bothered me much to pull a gun on a man, but a woman was a different matter. Even if it was 1883, despite a lot of new contraptions like electric lights and telephones, women still needed a whole lot of protection.
The place was Kansas City, the Elite Hotel, room 227, six minutes after midnight. I was sitting in my dark room listening to the giddy Friday night noise from the casino one floor below me and the whorehouse one floor above me.
I had been planning on visiting the latter but I'd had so much bad luck with the former that night that I wasn't much in the mood, not even for the kind of soft and perfumed young flesh a man could find in a good-sized city like that one.
I was trying to think about my job there so I wouldn't have to think about how much I'd lost at the casino. Faro had never been kind to me. But then neither had poker or blackjack. Gambling was one of my curses.
The knock came at nine minutes after midnight, which I knew because the moon was cordial enough to shine on the railroad watch that sat ticking away on the arm ... read full excerpt from Cavalry Man: Powder Keg ebook
