Dorothy Garlock - [Dolan Brothers] by With Heart Page B

here.”
    “I never thought about it. I’ve never had anything taken from the truck, but I don’t trust those two yahoos I took down to the sheriff.”
    “They’re trouble all right.” Paul dropped a handful of lead in the bucket. “There’s a canvas cot over there in the corner if you want to sleep here. Pound on the door tonight, and I’ll let you in.”
    “Thanks. Mind if I wash up here?”
    “Go back to my room if you want. There’s soap and water back there. There’ll be no danger of your lady friend walking in on you while you wash that horse-hockey smell off.”
    “Thanks,
friend.
By the way, don’t forget the two bits you owe me.”
    Paul’s head swung slowly around. “That was for the picture show.”
    “You crawfishin’ out of the bet?”
    “The deal was to take her to a show.” Paul’s smile was smug. “Drag up enough courage to ask her out to a show, and the two bits is yours.”
    “To hell with you,” Johnny snorted, and stomped off toward the partitioned room in the corner.
    The room was nicely furnished with a neatly made bed, a bureau, and a long table on which sat a typewriter and two big radios with antenna wires running up along the ceiling and out the single window. Paul’s clothes hung on a rod that spanned one corner of the room.
    Johnny stripped off his shirt, poured water from a pitcher into a granite washbowl, and washed. He soaped his face and stared at his image in the oval mirror above the washbasin. Thank goodness he had shaved before he came to town this morning, although he hadn’t expected to see Kathleen, much less take her out to supper. He borrowed Paul’s comb and tried to tame his hair.
    He pulled the new shirt out of the sack, shook it out, and put it on. He now regretted buying a white shirt. Kathleen would know that it was new. But, what the hell? Johnny slammed his hat down on his head and left the room. He paused just outside the door when he heard Kathleen’s voice. She was showing Paul a two-page article she had written.
    “Can we set the first four lines after the headline in ten point?”
    “Sure. I’ll set it tonight. If it isn’t what you want, we can change it in the morning.”
    Kathleen hung the sheets of paper on the hook beside the linotype machine, turned, and saw Johnny.
    “I didn’t know you were here,” she said, almost in an accusing tone.
    “I came in the back door.”
    “I’ll be ready to go as soon as I wash the ink off my hands, that is if you haven’t changed your mind.”
    “I’m ready when you are.”
    Unaware that Paul was watching him, Johnny watched Kathleen. For days her image had stayed in his mind. Her fiery curly hair and her pretty face were enough to draw a man’s eyes to her, but what riveted his attention to her now was her utter unawareness of just how striking she was. She accepted her good looks as being only a part of her, the other part being a woman completely at ease with herself and her abilities.
    Johnny Henry, you don’t have the brains of a loco steer or you’d get the hell out of here.
    “Pretty, isn’t she?” Paul murmured after Kathleen went back to the front office.
    “You’d better not let Adelaide hear you say that!”
    “She knows it. Sometimes beauty is more of a hindrance than an asset. Addie thinks you’re just the man for Kathleen.”
    “Well, thanks for arranging my life. I don’t agree. Now tend to your own business.”
    “She is my business, cowboy. What concerns Addie concerns me. We’re afraid that she’ll be in deep trouble before she discovers how to get along in this town.”
    “She’s already in trouble. Why do you think I’m sticking around? It was just luck that I found out that Webb and Krome bragged that she’d get what was coming to her before they left town. That could be tonight or tomorrow. I can take care of tonight.”
    “She’s got a date with Leroy Grandon tomorrow night.”
    “Grandon? From the men’s store? How do you know? She tell