(Via: Here.)
The hair and the high cheekbones intimated heartily of Indian ancestry—but his eyes were the crisp dark gray of a lake on a rainy morning.
He nodded toward the woman—kicking her heels on the boardwalk—in a rumpled gown of sheer red muslin and effortless hat of chip-straw bedizened with harmonizing ribbon. "Must be Louis's mail-order bride. Seems to be a China doll—doesn't she?" He steered another nail in place.
An acidic smirk pretzeled the other man's mouth. He was lean and tall—and donned his garments with carefree elegance: muted blue cavalry pants featuring—yellow seam stripe were stuffed into knee-high thumped moccasins of delicate leather—and a pummeled gray hat hung by the strap from one encrusted—but well-silhoutted hand.
Like the hat and footwear—his blue fireman's shirt was unrestricted—in the relaxed style espoused by the Indian Scouts anchored to Camp Greenwood. Beneath his red babushka—a shaggy modeled slice of turquoise pendulous from a leather cord.
He donned his shoulder-length black mane—hauled back and restrained with a knotted thong at the nape and—beneath the pencil-thin and subtly-wrought Patrician nose—his mouth was a determined slash. The hair and the high cheekbones intimated heartily of Indian ancestry—but his eyes were the crisp dark gray of a lake on a rainy morning.
Louis's bride! To his own perplexity—Gabriel realized he begrudged the erstwhile and bled heart for the hindmost. What in holy hell was a woman like that doing with a man like Louis? Didn't she know what he was really like? The sparged muslin clutched to her shoulder blades and breasts—and her black hair eluded its smooth coils—curling into turbulent ringlets around her face and neck.
She popped up—decorus and trendy and unscathed by life. The impression of unattempted guiltlessness would change forever—once Louis got his blood-spattered hands all over that snake-hipped white body. The hunch sickened Gabriel. His eyes twinkled like ice and his lean assets gravitated in stern lines.
"Chloe and her girls are going to lose a lot of business." Gabriel's voice was grating and hasty. The blacksmith was agitated by the atrocious tone. He winked at Gabriel to determine if he was bantering—but there was nowt in the scout's face to render that impression. Even in portrait Gabriel's face had—a treacherous and sensational quality that was more than the grand total of sculpted bone and taut muscles—beneath the darkly buffed up skin.
It was a face that made women glance his way—from under coyly hauled down lashes and made men stomp more—on the qui vive in his existence. There was a tittle-tattle that he was part Comanche—but none knew if it was true or not.