Miss Murray On The Cattle Trail
Miss Murray On The Cattle Trail
Lynna Banning
A cattle drive is no place for a greenhorn……but this city miss is here for the ride!Cowboy Zachariah Strickland should put Alexandra Murray on the first eastbound train home. But he has no choice other than to take her on his cattle trail. She hasn’t ridden a horse to death, nor shot anybody, but she does drives him furious with longing… Is it possible Alex belongs right here in the Wild West—with Zach?
A cattle drive is no place for a greenhorn
But this city miss is here for the ride!
Cowboy Zachariah Strickland should put Alexandra Murray on the first eastbound train home. But he has no choice except to take her on his cattle trail. She hasn’t ridden a horse to death, or shot anybody, but she does drive him furious with longing... Is it possible Alex belongs right here in the Wild West—with Zach?
“[A] delightful and passionate western romance... Romance fans will enjoy the fast pace and nonstop action.”
—RT Book Reviews on Her Sheriff Bodyguard
“Charming, heartwarming and tender.”
—RT Book Reviews on Western Spring Weddings
LYNNA BANNING combines her lifelong love of history and literature in a satisfying career as a writer. Born in Oregon, she graduated from Scripps College and embarked on a career as an editor and technical writer and later as a high school English teacher. She enjoys hearing from her readers. You may write to her directly at PO Box 324, Felton, CA 95018, USA, email her at carowoolston@att.net or visit Lynna’s website at lynnabanning.net (http://www.lynnabanning.net).
Also by Lynna Banning (#u7f29011c-f6ff-5395-84cf-b633a27f70d8)
The Lone Sheriff
Wild West Christmas
Dreaming of a Western Christmas
Smoke River Family
Western Spring Weddings
Printer in Petticoats
Her Sheriff Bodyguard
Baby on the Oregon Trail
Western Christmas Brides
The Hired Man
Discover more at millsandboon.co.uk (http://www.millsandboon.co.uk).
Miss Murray on the Cattle Trail
Lynna Banning
www.millsandboon.co.uk (http://www.millsandboon.co.uk)
ISBN: 978-1-474-07352-3
MISS MURRAY ON THE CATTLE TRAIL
© 2018 The Woolston Family Trust
Published in Great Britain 2018
by Mills & Boon, an imprint of HarperCollinsPublishers 1 London Bridge Street, London, SE1 9GF
All rights reserved including the right of reproduction in whole or in part in any form. This edition is published by arrangement with Harlequin Books S.A.
This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places, locations and incidents are purely fictional and bear no relationship to any real life individuals, living or dead, or to any actual places, business establishments, locations, events or incidents. Any resemblance is entirely coincidental.
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www.millsandboon.co.uk (http://www.millsandboon.co.uk)
For my dear and admired friend Shirley Marcus
Contents
Cover (#uf7f2d0d0-3a79-57b5-8b14-20be842e62f9)
Back Cover Text (#uaddbcbb8-8347-5b15-9207-36f1c7dfcf56)
About the Author (#u685e0525-2c67-579d-a7d8-f7b42339f7cb)
Booklist (#ucb9adaf7-ecc2-5952-a8e1-5d0d9d67f0d4)
Title Page (#u859e4aa9-7f1d-5248-b709-3cd979ee1d6c)
Copyright (#u7b140d1e-1687-5747-969a-8b760e21b8fa)
Dedication (#ud4238d53-4d80-5cdd-b87c-d6d2bfff7b12)
Chapter One (#u36e1b1c4-eb21-5292-a930-4ec249b30d4a)
Chapter Two (#u3e1777b1-6073-52b9-b57c-da69d4d3e29f)
Chapter Three (#ub742c528-3bba-5a1c-885b-5cae3e31d0cc)
Chapter Four (#u8356c03c-b429-52e2-aff3-2cc421f5e4cf)
Chapter Five (#ucbe84d38-0c71-598c-ba9a-acf756330cc6)
Chapter Six (#ufc08402f-c9be-5b5a-9799-8f67014b416d)
Chapter Seven (#u766d87cd-f2b7-5466-9374-3ebdd8916972)
Chapter Eight (#litres_trial_promo)
Chapter Nine (#litres_trial_promo)
Chapter Ten (#litres_trial_promo)
Chapter Eleven (#litres_trial_promo)
Chapter Twelve (#litres_trial_promo)
Chapter Thirteen (#litres_trial_promo)
Chapter Fourteen (#litres_trial_promo)
Chapter Fifteen (#litres_trial_promo)
Chapter Sixteen (#litres_trial_promo)
Chapter Seventeen (#litres_trial_promo)
Chapter Eighteen (#litres_trial_promo)
Chapter Nineteen (#litres_trial_promo)
Chapter Twenty (#litres_trial_promo)
Chapter Twenty-One (#litres_trial_promo)
Chapter Twenty-Two (#litres_trial_promo)
Chapter Twenty-Three (#litres_trial_promo)
Chapter Twenty-Four (#litres_trial_promo)
Chapter Twenty-Five (#litres_trial_promo)
Chapter Twenty-Six (#litres_trial_promo)
Chapter Twenty-Seven (#litres_trial_promo)
Chapter Twenty-Eight (#litres_trial_promo)
Chapter Twenty-Nine (#litres_trial_promo)
Epilogue (#litres_trial_promo)
Extract (#litres_trial_promo)
Chapter One (#u7f29011c-f6ff-5395-84cf-b633a27f70d8)
Smoke River, Oregon, 1871
He knew something was wrong the minute he stepped up onto the front porch. For one thing, Charlie was rocking away in the lawn swing with a big grin on his lined face. And for another, Alice, the ranch owner’s wife sitting beside him, wasn’t.
“Been waitin’ for ya,” Charlie drawled.
“Yeah? Not late, am I?” Maybe that was why Alice’s heart-shaped face looked so set, but Zach discarded that thought right away. When Alice Kingman was displeased about something, she didn’t waste time looking dour; she bared her nails and lit right into your hide.
“All the hands are inside, Zach. And they’re damn hungry,” Charlie added.
Alice stopped the swing with her foot and rose in such a ladylike motion for a woman climbing up on her forties that it brought a chuckle to Zach’s throat. Alice was pure female, and in her blue denim skirt and ruffly red-check blouse she looked good enough to eat.
Charlie slapped him on the back. “Come on, Zach. Consuelo’s fried chicken is getting cold.”
Alice disappeared through the screen door, and Charlie draped a heavy arm across Zach’s shoulders. “Got somethin’ I want to show ya.”
All Zach’s senses went on alert. The last time Charlie had had something to show him, Zach had limped for three days after the boss’s new stud horse threw him.
“It’s not a horse, is it?”
“Heck, no,” Charlie spluttered. “Cain’t invite a horse to Sunday dinner, can I?”
So it was a someone, not a something the boss was showing off. Someones got invited to Sunday dinner at the ranch house, along with Zach and the Rocking K ranch hands.
In the dining room, Zach stood between slim, dark-skinned José and Roberto, an older, slightly overweight man with a salt-and-pepper mustache, and waited for Alice to seat herself. He eyed the vacant chair across from him. Okay, boss, we’re here. So where’s the someone?
He heard the rustle of petticoats behind him and caught a whiff of something that smelled like lilacs. Oh, no, not Alice’s Great-Aunt Hortense! Hell’s bells, Roberto had put her on the train for San Francisco scarcely a month ago, and...
Zach swallowed hard and the other hands stiffened to attention, waiting for Aunt Hortense’s entrance.
But it wasn’t Aunt Hortense.
A young woman so pretty it made him swallow hard glided across the room and sat down next to Roberto’s nephew, Juan. The young Mexican’s blush turned the tips of his ears red.
Everyone dropped onto their chairs like boneless sandbags and Zach slid into his upholstered seat and waited. No one said a word. Finally, Alice signaled Consuelo and the meal got under way.
“Boys,” Charlie announced, snagging a drumstick off the platter the cook offered, “say howdy to Miss Murray.”
A rumble of respectful male voices rose. Then another long silence fell.
“Miss Murray is visiting from Chicago,” Alice said, thin lipped. She split a biscuit with a stab of her knife.
“Welcome, Señorita Murray,” Roberto offered. The older man had civilized manners; his nephew also knew what to do, but he was real young and not as polished as Roberto.
“Ees an honor, señorita,” Juan said with an even deeper blush.
Miss Murray smiled across the table. “Why, thank you, gentlemen.”
Charlie took over the introductions. “On your left is Juan Tapia, and to your right is Skip Billings. Across the table is José Moreno, Zach Strickland and Jase Snell. Zach’s the trail boss for the cattle drive.”
Miss Murray inclined her head. “Gentlemen,” she said again.
Man, oh, man, her hair was something else, dark as blackstrap molasses and so soft-looking that Zach curled his fingers into fists.
What was Charlie’s game here? He thought it over while platters of mashed potatoes and green beans were handed around the table. A prettier girl he hadn’t seen in too many years to count, but Charlie knew Zach wasn’t interested in romancing a female ever again, so what did Charlie want to show him?
Before Zach picked up his fork, Charlie dropped a hint.
“You boys still readin’ those newspaper stories from back East?”
“Sure, boss,” Jase volunteered. “Got ’em all pinned up on the bunkhouse wall.”
“Can’t hardly wait for the next one,” Skip added. “Best da—uh, darn horse-racin’ stories I ever read.”
Zach drove his fork into the pile of mashed potatoes on his plate. So that was it. This Murray woman was somehow related to A. Davis Murray, the newspaper reporter whose stories the hands devoured each week. His daughter, maybe? Or...his gut tightened...his wife? Who was she, exactly? And what was she doing sitting all pink and white at Sunday dinner at the Rocking K ranch house?
The hands couldn’t stop jabbering about A. Davis Murray’s horse-racing stories, and Miss Whoever-She-Was Murray looked mighty interested. More than interested. She was hanging on every word and her eyes... Oh, those eyes. Blue as desert lupines. Anyway, they sparkled like they’d been polished.
Zach caught Charlie’s eye and quirked one eyebrow.
“More chicken?” Charlie asked, his voice bland.
Zach shot a glance at Alice at the opposite end of the long walnut table and lowered his eyebrows into a frown. Alice looked madder than a wet cat, and that was a real puzzler. Alice never got mad about anything—not Skip’s rough table manners or Consuelo’s constant nattering about her dwindling supply of coffee beans, not even the time Charlie forgot her birthday.
But for darn sure she was mad today, and Zach figured it had something to do with pretty Miss Murray.
But Charlie always took his own sweet time about things, and this afternoon was no exception. Finally, finally, the owner of the Rocking K swallowed his last bite of strawberry shortcake, groaned like a contented heifer and rapped on his coffee cup for attention.
“Well, boys, today I’ve got a surprise for you.”
Jase’s scraggly blond head came up. “Yeah?”
“What if I told you...” Charlie paused dramatically and Alice rolled her eyes “...that Miss Murray’s first name is Alexandra.”
“What if ya did, boss?” Jase said. “Fancy name, but it don’t ring no bells for me.” Jase’s grammar stopped at the fourth grade.
“Doesn’t ring any bells,” Consuelo hissed as she circled with her coffeepot. “You set a bad example for my José.”
José ducked his head.
“I mean,” Charlie continued, “what if her name was Alexandra Davis Murray?”
“She is marry to the newspaper man?” Juan guessed.
Charlie gulped a swallow of coffee. “Nah. She is the newspaperman. Or, rather, newspaperwoman. This here lady is A. Davis Murray.”
“Ees not possible,” José protested.
Zach stared across the table at Miss Murray. Miss Alexandra Davis Murray. José was dead right, it wasn’t possible. Just what kind of game was Charlie playing?
Miss Alexandra Murray sent Zach an apologetic smile. “It’s true,” she said. “I write newspaper articles for the Chicago Times.”
Skip gaped at her. “You write about all them horse races?”
“I do.” She looked around the table at each of the ranch hands in turn until she came to Alice, who was still tight-jawed. “Aunt Alice doesn’t approve, obviously. But I like horse races. And I like writing about them.”
“Jehoshaphat,” Jase breathed.
“Madre mia,” José muttered.
Zach wanted to laugh. The thought of this soft, ruffly female tramping around a horse stable made his lips twitch.
Then they were all talking at once. During the hubbub, Charlie leaned forward and addressed Zach. “I want to talk to you,” he intoned. “In private.” He heaved his bulky frame out of the chair and led the way to his office across the hallway.
“Whiskey?” he asked when he’d shut the heavy oak door.
“No, thanks. Gotta ride out at first light.”
Charlie pushed the cut-glass decanter across his desk toward him anyway. “I’d change my mind if I was you, Zach.”
Without another word, he filled two glasses.
“Spit it out, Charlie, what’s up?”
His boss touched his glass to Zach’s and tossed back the contents. “Kinda hard to come right out and tell you, son.”
Uh-oh. Charlie only called him “son” when bad news was coming. Zach swigged down half his whiskey. “Let’s have it, Charlie. Like I said, I’ve got an early get-up tomorrow.”
“Well, Zach, it’s like this. It’s true that Alexandra is a newspaper reporter.”
“You already said that. Or somebody did. Anyway, I know that.”
“Yeah, well. See, her newspaper, the Chicago Times, wants her to do a story about a cattle drive.”
Zach slapped his empty glass onto the desk. “No.”
“I understand how you feel, Zach, but you see the answer’s gotta be yes.”
“No, it doesn’t.”
Charlie just nodded. “Yeah, it does.”
“Why?” Zach demanded. “Why does she pick this ranch? Tell her to choose another cattle drive.”
“Can’t.”
“Why can’t you?”
“Because.” He refilled his glass. “Because not only is Alexandra a newspaper reporter, she is, uh, as you’ve no doubt realized, my niece. Her mama is Alice’s sister.”
Zach said nothing for a long minute. “So?” he inquired at last.
“So,” Charlie said, “she wants to—”
“No,” Zach repeated.
Charlie reached for the whiskey decanter. “You want to keep your job, don’tcha, son?”
Damn, he hated to be threatened, especially by the man who had his financial ass under his boot heel. Zach sighed and refilled his glass.
“Well, hell, Charlie, can she ride?”
Chapter Two (#u7f29011c-f6ff-5395-84cf-b633a27f70d8)
Aunt Alice settled on the edge of Alex’s bed. Her aunt hadn’t lit the lamp, but the moonlight streaming through the multipaned window illuminated her usually serene face, which at this moment looked pinched.
“Alex, you simply cannot go through with this. Surely you—”
“Stop!” Slowly Alex pushed up on one elbow. “Aunt Alice, you don’t understand. My newspaper editor came up with the idea. He is very insistent.”
“But a cattle drive! Women just don’t go on cattle drives.”
“I know. It’s a far cry from my stories on horse racing. It’s a far cry from anything I thought I’d ever, ever do. But my editor pays my salary, and he is adamant.”
“Oh, Alex, why?”
“Back East people are mad for stories about the wild, untamed West.”
“I feel responsible for you,” her aunt said. “And a cattle drive is dangerous.”
“I don’t have a choice, Aunt.”
Alice snorted. “Of course you have a choice. Just tell your editor no.”
“I can’t. If I refuse, he’ll fire me, and I’ve worked too hard to risk losing my job. Eight long, grinding years I’ve spent working my way up from the proofreading desk to being a top reporter. I’m the only woman on the entire staff, and I won’t give it up. I can’t.”
Alex bit her lip and smoothed a crease in the top sheet over and over. Why, why did her job depend on the harebrained idea of a newspaper editor who’d never traveled west of his favorite restaurant?
Alice sighed. “Your mother would never allow this.”
Alex flung back the sheet and sat up. “Aunt Alice, my mother is dead.”
“Yes,” Alice said quietly. “I know. And you’re just like her. Bright. Beautiful. And...” her voice tightened “...bullheaded.”
Alex slid her arms about her aunt’s rigid form. “Mama always said you were the bullheaded one.”
“Don’t change the subject,” Alice snapped.
“Aunt Alice, you can’t stop me. You can’t keep me from holding on to my career as a newspaper reporter.”
“Oh, I know, honey. I just wish you’d—”
“Settle down and get married,” Alex finished. “That’s what Mama always wanted, too. But I’m twenty-six. On the shelf.”
Alice shook her head and blew out a sigh. “You will be careful, won’t you? At least try to?”
“Of course I will. Uncle Charlie says Zach Strickland’s the best trail boss in three states. I’ll be in good hands.”
Her aunt let out a long sigh and said nothing.
* * *
Zach stuffed his thumbs in his front pockets and watched Miss Newspaper Reporter trip down the porch steps ready to go cattle driving. She looked so bright and shiny it made his head hurt. And, Lord love little chickens, what her butt did to a pair of jeans was indecent.
“Good morning!” she sang.
“Mornin’,” he growled. “Got a lot of miles to cover today. Sure hope you can ride.”
“Why, certainly I can ride.” She rested her hands on her shiny new belt buckle.
“Yeah? Where’ve you ridden?”
“In the city park,” she said, her voice frosty. “On the bridle path.”
Zach resisted a snort, looked her up and down and unhooked his thumbs. “Those your ridin’ boots?”
She glanced down at the stylish, neatly laced leather boots. “Yes. What’s wrong with them? I bought them in Chicago and—”
“They won’t work.”
She propped her hands on her hips and peered more closely at her feet. “Well, if it’s not too much trouble, Mister Knows Everything, would you mind telling me what’s wrong with them?”
He spit off to one side. “You won’t last half an hour in those fancy city leathers. Brand new and probably too tight. Go ask Alice for a pair of her old riding boots.”
For a moment, Miss Newspaper Reporter looked like she was going to argue, but he stared her down. Finally, she pivoted, stomped back up the porch steps and slammed through the front door.
Hell’s bells, she was a greenhorn. A ladyfied greenhorn, and one with a mouth on her. Charlie had just used up his last favor.
When Miss Fancy-Pants reappeared, she wore a pair of Alice’s well-worn riding boots and a sour look. Zach expelled a long breath and tipped his head toward the corral.
“Saddle up.”
“Oh, yes, sir, Mister Trail Boss.”
His jaw tightened. Gonna be a damn long day.
* * *
Alex snapped open her leather-bound notebook and jotted half a line before the chuck wagon rolled into position at the head of the muddle of cows and horses and riders. Her horse jolted forward. She stuffed her pencil in her shirt pocket and grabbed the reins, but the horse danced a few paces to the left before it settled down. She’d never before ridden anything but old, gentle, city-trained mares, and this horse was neither old nor gentle. Or a mare, she’d been told. In fact, she’d never been this close to a horse that had been...well, gelded.
At least forty horses milled around in a whinnying clump, and she counted seven, no, eight scruffy-looking cowboys, not including the horse wrangler and His Highness the Trail Boss.
And hundreds and hundreds of cows. Steers, Uncle Charlie said. Surely they couldn’t all be steers, because some of them had calves tagging along behind.
She flexed her toes in Aunt Alice’s boots. Her aunt had said they were well broken in, but they still felt awfully tight. She was glad she was riding and not walking the four hundred miles that stretched ahead of her.
The chuck wagon, a bulky-looking top-heavy box on wheels, rattled and clanked its way on ahead of the roiling mass of animals and men on horseback. She watched Roberto, the driver, stash his whip under the bench, put two fingers to his lips and give a sharp whistle. Right away she decided she liked the white-haired old man. The wagon lumbered off down the trail, drawn by two horses.
Bellowing cattle, yipping men on horseback and the thunder of horses’ hooves added to the hubbub. It was deafening. She clapped both hands over her ears and lost control of her mount. A rider swung in close, grabbed her reins and settled the horse. Juan, Roberto’s soft-spoken nephew. He laid the leather straps in her gloved hand, touched his hat brim and reined his horse away.
Dust rose in thick clouds. She had just kneed her horse off to one side when Juan dropped back and shouted something. She couldn’t hear over the noise, so she tried to read his lips. “Señorita.” He mouthed something else, but she had no idea what it was.
She shook her head. He pointed at the bandanna covering his mouth and nose. Oh! Of course. But she didn’t have a bandanna. Oh, well. She smiled at Juan, lifted her chin, and spurred her mount forward.
She was on her way!
It was all fascinating. So this was how people in places like Philadelphia and New York got their meat, a thousand bawling cows lumbering after one old seasoned bull called a “bell steer” because of the clanging bell hung around its neck. They would all end in some rough, dirty railroad town in Nevada with the Indian-sounding name of Winnemucca, where the cowboys would load them up in cattle cars that would end up two thousand miles farther east in slaughterhouses in Chicago.
Just imagine! Right before her eyes were thousands and thousands of thick juicy steaks on the hoof. People back East would be avid for these sights and sounds. She patted the notepad and pencil in her breast pocket. She knew her readers would gobble up each delicious detail of this adventure.
* * *
They were three hours out, and whenever he could manage it, Zach pried his eyes off the herd and glanced back at Miss Murray. She lagged way behind, a good forty yards in back of Skip, who was riding drag, and she was fighting through thick clouds of dust. She’d pulled her wide-brimmed black hat down so far it almost covered her ears, but hell, she couldn’t see what was three feet ahead of her.
He winced in spite of himself. Anybody joining a drive for the first time always rode drag behind the herd, the dustiest position there was. She wasn’t complaining. Yet. He knew she must be hot and more miserable than she’d ever been in her pampered little life, and a small part of him felt just a tad sorry for her. An even larger part was making bets on how long she’d last before she’d turn tail for the Rocking K and a hot bath.
Maybe he should... Nah. Let her suffer. Teach her a lesson.
Juan trotted up on his sorrel and signaled that he wanted to talk.
“What’s up?” Zach yelled over the lowing steers.
“The señorita, she has no...” he swept a thumb and forefinger across his face “...Panuelo.”
Zach nodded, and the slim kid galloped off. So she’d forgotten her bandanna, had she? Where’d she think she was goin’, to a party?
“C’mon, Dancer. Let’s go.” He loped up to the point riders, and when Curly and the new hand, Cassidy, gave him a thumbs-up, he dropped back to the drag position. The air was so thick he could almost chew it.
Skip rode with his chin tucked into his chest, and when Zach fell in beside him, the lanky cowhand didn’t look up.
“Go change with Curly,” Zach shouted. Skip touched two fingers to his hat and thundered off to the head of the herd. In a few minutes, Curly appeared to ride drag.
“Thanks, boss,” he yelled. “Gettin’ bored up front.”
Zach laughed. Nothing much got the tubby, blond cowhand down, not even riding drag on a scorching, windless day. Even the cottonwood trees were drooping.
He peered ahead to locate Miss Murray. Crazy name, Alexandra. Like some English queen or something. Yep, there she was, off to the side, trailing the swing riders, Juan and Jase, and losing ground.
She wasn’t moving fast enough to keep up, he noted. Pretty soon she’d be eating even more dust back here with Curly, and then she’d drop farther and farther behind, and that would slow down the entire outfit. He clenched his jaw and spurred forward.
Chapter Three (#u7f29011c-f6ff-5395-84cf-b633a27f70d8)
Alex scrunched her eyes shut and prayed the horse would keep moving forward alongside the herd even if she wasn’t looking. After a minute she cracked open one eyelid. Puffy white clouds floated in the unbelievably blue sky over her head—faces, fantastical cats, even castles—and in the distance rose snow-capped mountains. Oh, how cool they looked!
Her mouth was crunchy with grit and dust, and she could scarcely draw the filthy air in through her nostrils. Tears streamed down her cheeks. She closed her eyes again.
Aunt Alice had been right. It had taken her only half a day on horseback to realize that a girl raised in the city should never, never, never go on a cattle drive. She had never been so tired, so filthy, so miserable in her entire life. And this is only the first day.
A glimmer of understanding about her mother penetrated her roiling thoughts. Mama had always refused to go outdoors unless it was to tea at the Savoy Hotel. Her mother liked to be warm and clean and dressed in the latest fashion, and she had always arranged her life for the maximum comfort with a minimum effort. Maybe Mama had known something Alex didn’t.
Something jostled her, and she snapped her lids open. Zach Strickland’s black horse was beside her mount. He tipped his head to indicate she should pull off to the side, then reined in and reached over to grasp her horse’s bridle.
She ran her tongue over her gritty teeth and opened her mouth. “Is something wrong?”
“Maybe.” He gave her a look and quickly glanced away, then poured water from his canteen over a blue bandanna and pressed it into her hand. “Tie this over your nose and mouth. Keeps out the dust.” He kicked his horse and trotted off.
“Thank you,” she called after him, but he gave no sign he’d heard. Hurriedly, she tied on the wet bandanna and drew in a mercifully grit-free breath. Oh, no. He would surely have noticed her tear-streaked face. Darn him! She hated it when she appeared weak and wishy-washy.
Like her mother.
With a groan she snatched up the reins and urged her mount forward. She hated Zach Strickland. Anyone who would revel in her distress was no gentleman.
But he wasn’t reveling. Actually, he had done her a kindness. It was a civilized gesture, she acknowledged. Well, she’d thanked him, hadn’t she? That was all the good manners she could summon up on this awful, scorching afternoon.
Oh, Aunt Alice, what have I done?
How many more hours were there before she could climb down off this animal and rest her aching thighs? And her bottom. She squinted up at the sun. Almost straight overhead, which must mean it was nearly noon. Did that mean lunch? She could endure anything if there was a meal at the end. She kicked her heels into the horse’s flanks and jolted forward over an expanse of tiny purple flowers.
But lunchtime came and went, and still the cowhands prodded the bellowing animals forward. She had long since gulped down the last of the lukewarm contents of her canteen, and her growling stomach didn’t let her forget for a single sunbaked minute that she was hungry. Desperately so. Right now she’d eat anything, a handful of cracker crumbs, a morsel of desiccated cheese, even a mouthful of the soft leather glove gripping her reins.
This was misery, all right. Aunt Alice hadn’t varnished the truth one bit. She thought longingly of the wide, shaded front porch at the Rocking K ranch house, then determinedly shook her thoughts back to reality. There must be shade ahead somewhere; tall trees with blue-green needles bordered their route, and underneath them she glimpsed a mossy green carpet and some sort of green, grassy plant no more than six inches high.
But there was no shade out here. Apparently there was to be no noon meal, either. She bit her lip. The bandanna helped some, but underneath it the hot air felt as if it were suffocating her. At least it kept out the gnats swarming around her head.
Then out of the dust emerged a sweat-streaked sorrel, and Juan, the young boy, was smiling at her.
He reined in close and thrust a hard biscuit into her hand. “Eat!”
“Thank you!” Oh, no, that was wrong, he was Mexican, wasn’t he? “Gracias!”
He flashed her a grin and galloped off through the dust. Why hadn’t she thought to bring a biscuit, or an apple, or something?
Her aunt had suggested packing a clean shirt and an extra pair of underdrawers in the drawstring canvas bag rolled up behind her saddle. She couldn’t blame her for forgetting to mention biscuits.
They didn’t stop until late afternoon, and by then Alex’s throat was so parched she couldn’t even spit. Ahead of her stretched lush green grass and a stand of leafy willow trees and...surely she was beginning to hallucinate...the chuck wagon, parked next to a burbling stream.
She blinked hard. She must be dreaming.
She edged her mount close to the rear wagon wheel and dismounted. The instant her boots touched the ground her knees buckled. She grabbed the saddle and hung on.
“Señorita,” Roberto said at her shoulder. “You must put horse in corral, not dismount next to cook wagon.”
She groaned. “I can’t let go, Roberto. I can’t walk.”
Carefully he pried her fingers off the saddle, grasped her around the waist and settled her on the ground with her back propped against the wheel. “Cherry!” he shouted to the wrangler. “Come get the señorita’s horse.”
Alex leaned forward and dropped her aching head onto her bent knees. Footsteps approached, and the next minute her saddle plopped down beside her and she heard the horse’s hooves clop away.
“Thank you!” she called after whoever had taken her mount.
“Ride too long today,” Roberto observed. She nodded, her forehead pressed against her jeans.
“Be plenty sore mañana. I go get boss.”
“No!” She jerked her head up. “Don’t get him.” She didn’t want to appear weak in front of Mister I-Told-You-So Strickland.
Roberto stood surveying her, his hands propped at his waist. A stained homespun apron covered his bulky form. “I think yes, señorita. You hurt much, no?”
She sighed. “Yes, Roberto. Much. Very much.”
“Ay de mi,” the old man murmured. He moved away and Alex concentrated on straightening one leg, then the other. She tried three times before she gave up.
Then Trail Boss Zach Strickland was standing before her, his long legs spread wide and a stony hardness in his green eyes that made her shudder. He was not smiling. “Sore, huh?”
She clamped her teeth together and nodded.
“Not surprised,” he said. “We covered ten miles today.”
“Ten miles!” Ten whole miles? In her entire life she hadn’t ridden more than two miles, and that was along a shaded bridle path.
“Do you always ride this many miles in a single day?”
He shook his head, the dark hair streaked with gray dust. “Nope. Usually ride twelve to fifteen miles each day, but today bein’ our first day out, the cattle need some trail learning. And you, bein’ a tenderfoot, need some trail learning, too. We’ll ride more miles tomorrow.”
“Where did all these cows come from? Surely Uncle Charlie’s ranch is not big enough for—”
“Huh! Charlie’s ranch is plenty big, plus we picked up some steers from neighboring ranches.” He leaned forward. “Don’t call ’m ‘cows’ on a trail drive unless you wanna get laughed at.” He shot her a hard look. “But as for where they came from, Miss City Girl, cows come from other cows. And a bull, of course.”
“I see.” How could she ever explain about cows and bulls in a city newspaper?
“Got any more dumb questions, Dusty?”
Dusty? She must look a frightful mess for him to call her that. She wiped her sweaty, gritty hands on her shirtfront. “No, no more questions. But...but I, um, I find that I...I cannot walk,” she confessed.
“Not surprised,” he said again. “Well, let’s get it done.” He reached down, grasped her under the arms and heaved her to her feet.
“Ouch-ouch-ouch!”
“Yeah,” he said, his voice dry. “Come on.” He swung her aching body up into his arms and strode away from the chuck wagon and past the roped-off horse corral. When he came to the stream, he paced up and down the bank and suddenly halted, stepped forward and dropped her, bottom first, into the cold water.
“What are you doing?” she screeched. She tried to scramble to the bank, but he laid one hand on her shoulder and pressed down. “Stay there,” he ordered. “Cold water will help. I’ll be back in thirty minutes.”
She had no choice. She could barely move.
Chapter Four (#u7f29011c-f6ff-5395-84cf-b633a27f70d8)
Zach tramped away from the stream where he’d dumped Miss Murray, or Dusty, as he now thought of her, and halted at the chuck wagon. “Save her some supper, Roberto.”
“Si, boss. But she will not be much hungry.”
“She’ll eat.” He left the aging cook chuckling over his pot of beans and settled himself at the campfire next to Juan.
The young man leaned toward him. “The señorita, she is okay?”
“She is okay, yes. Mad, but okay.”
“Madre mia. She will not be smile tomorrow.”
“Not much,” Zach agreed. Maybe not at all. He kinda felt sorry for her, but kinda not sorry at the same time. Damn Charlie for insisting she come along on this drive. It was no place for a woman. A fancy-assed, citified, back-East newspaper reporter woman was about as welcome as a swarm of locusts.
The clang of a steel triangle announced supper, and the hands around the campfire stampeded to the chuck wagon and lined up with tin plates in their hands. Roberto slapped thick slices of beef onto them, ladled on beans and topped the pile with his special warm tortillas.
Zach brought up the rear of the line, ate leisurely and mentally calculated when Dusty’s half hour would be up.
“Hey, boss,” someone called. “Where’s our newspaper lady?”
Zach laid down his fork and shoved to his feet. “Comin’ right up.”
* * *
Footsteps crunched over the sandy stream bank, and Alex clenched her fists as tall, rangy Zach Strickland came toward her.
“I want you to get me out of here!” she sputtered. “Right now!”
“Yes, ma’am!” He splashed into the water, grabbed her shoulders and jerked her upright.
“Ow! Ow, that hurts!”
“Roberto’s got some liniment in one of his secret cubbyholes. Might help some.”
“Oh, yes, please.”
He swung her upright and half dragged, half walked her onto dry ground. “Not so fast,” she pleaded.
He propped her against a thick pine trunk and stood surveying her. “Look, Dusty, you shouldn’t be out here with us. A cattle drive is rough, even on a seasoned cowhand. For a greenhorn it’s suicidal.”
She said nothing, just stared at the trail boss she was coming to detest. He had overlong black hair that brushed the tips of his ears and eyes the color of moss. Right now they were narrowed at her.
“Tomorrow you’re going back to the Rocking K,” he announced. “I’ll send Curly with you, and he can catch up with us before we hit the river. Right now, though, supper’s on, and you don’t want to miss Roberto’s beans and tortillas.”
“No,” she said.
His dark eyebrows went up. “No, what?”
“I’m not going back.” She tried to shove away from the tree trunk, but her legs still felt like jelly.
He propped his hands on his hips. “In case you forgot, Miss Murray, I’m the trail boss on this drive. You do what I say.”
“No,” she repeated. “I don’t work for you, Mister Trail Boss. I work for the Chicago Times. And that’s who I take orders from.”
“Nope, don’t work that way, Dusty. On the trail you take orders from me.”
She raised her chin. “When we’re ‘on the trail,’ I will take orders from you, but that does not include sending me back to the ranch. That is tantamount to firing me, and as I said, I don’t work for you.”
He stared at her for a long moment with those unnerving gray-green eyes. “I don’t fancy nursemaiding you, whining and stumbling over your boots, for the next four hundred miles. Cattle driving is a tough business. You’re gonna get river mud up your nose and grasshoppers in your hair. By tomorrow night, you’ll have spent another ten or twelve hours in the saddle and we’ll just see what tune you’re playin’ then.”
“Are you a betting man, Mr. Strickland?” She put as much frost in her voice as she could manage. “I will wager you one silver dollar I will be playing my own tune. And that means I will be riding on to Winnemucca with the rest of you.”
Zach rolled his eyes. “I never bet with a fool, Dusty, but in your case I’m makin’ an exception.”
He walked her back to camp and sat her down at the campfire. Roberto brought her a tin plate and a fork and settled it on her lap, then balanced a mug of coffee on a flat rock beside her. “There ees whiskey, señorita,” he whispered. “You wish?”
“No, thank you, Roberto. I do not drink spirits.”
“Long night tonight,” he murmured. “Long day mañana.”
She shook her head. “I will manage.” Somehow.
Zach looked up. “Roberto, after supper, give her some of that liniment you squirrel away.”
“Si. Good idea.”
“Hey, Miss Murray?” Jase called from across the smoldering fire pit. “You gonna write about us?” Jase was the one with the unruly blond hair. She wondered if he got grasshoppers in it.
“Why, yes, I am.”
“Whoo-eee,” he exulted. “You hear that, boys? We’re gonna be in the newspaper. We’re gonna be famous!”
Curly sat bolt upright. “Yeah? How famous?”
Alex studied the rapt faces around the fire. “Well...” She paused for dramatic effect and sneaked a look at Zach Strickland’s unreadable countenance. “More than twenty thousand people read the Chicago Times every day.”
“No funnin’?” Curly asked.
“No funning,” Alex assured him. “And I will want to interview each one of you for my articles.”
She could scarcely hear herself think over the cheers. Yes, she would most certainly write about them. And she’d also write about the body-breaking punishment of a trail drive. That is, she would if she could get her tortured body over to the chuck wagon to retrieve her notebook and pencil.
She groaned and stared at the plate of cold beans in her lap. She would last until she rode down the streets of Winnemucca with all those cows or she would die trying.
* * *
Zach kicked a hot coal back into the fire pit and surveyed the camp. Roberto had long since splashed water on the canvas-wrapped carcass of the calf he’d slaughtered and hung on a hook in the chuck wagon, washed up the supper plates and crawled under the wagon to sleep. All but two of the cowhands had rolled out their bedrolls. Curly and Cassidy, the new man, were night-herding, riding around and around the steers bedded down in the meadow, moving in opposite directions and singing songs to keep them calm. The kind of songs a mother would sing.
He’d always liked night-herding. It gave him a chance to talk to Dancer, reflect on the day’s events and plan for tomorrow’s, at least as much as anyone driving a thousand head of prime beef could plan. Usually, whatever could go wrong, did.
In spite of all the problems, Zach liked this life. When he’d come West as a boy, right away he’d liked the freewheeling, easy existence of a cowboy, and later, when he’d risen to be Charlie Kingman’s top hand, he liked the admiration working for the Rocking K brought him. He liked being in charge, doing his job and doing it well. I’m responsible only to myself, my cattle and my ranch hands.
A successful drive brought him the gratitude and respect of people he cared about, Charlie and Alice Kingman. And this drive would bring him something else, something he’d dreamed about ever since he was a scrawny kid with no home; it would bring him enough money to buy a spread of his own and start his own ranch.
He sucked in a lungful of sagebrush-scented air and surveyed the camp. Dusty sat as close to the chuck wagon as she could get without nuzzling right up to Roberto. He guessed Dusty didn’t trust his cowhands. Zach did, though. Had to, on a long drive like this.
After supper he’d watched her limp off behind the chuck wagon with the bottle of Roberto’s liniment clutched in her hand. When she returned, her gait had evened out some and she was walking easier, at least easier enough to let her climb back on her horse tomorrow. He knew she’d be sleeping in wet jeans; by morning they’d still be pretty clammy. That ought to hurry things up a bit for her deciding she ought to hightail it back to the Rocking K.
He’d sure hate to take that silver dollar off her, but he guessed that by tomorrow she’d yell uncle and turn back, and then he’d be a buck richer.
* * *
Alex huddled by the campfire, sipping from a mug of coffee Roberto kept refilling from the blackened metal coffeepot and staring into the flames. What have I gotten myself into? She could never, never admit it to Mister Know-It-All Strickland, but she was starting to feel just the tiniest bit uneasy. The night was so dark out here in the middle of nowhere.
All around the fire pit were sprawled-out cowboys shrouded in their blankets—a lump here, and one over there, and there. They lay without moving, probably too tired to even twitch.
The trail boss was tramping around out there in the dark somewhere, and while she could hear him, she couldn’t see anything beyond the circle of dying firelight where she sat.
She pulled out her notebook and began writing.
First she described the camp and the dwindling campfire, the dark shapes of the sleeping cowhands, even how the camp smelled after their supper of tortillas and beans. But she did not write about how frightened she felt at the huge expanse of black, black sky overhead. Or the stinging mosquitos. Or her aching muscles.
Finally she admitted she was exhausted and she needed to sleep. She tiptoed to the chuck wagon, scrabbled around in the back and pulled out her roll of blankets. Just one other unclaimed bedroll remained. Roberto had long since crawled under the wagon to sleep, so this one had to belong to Zach Strickland.
She stood uncertainly near the remains of the campfire, wondering where to spread out her blankets. It would be most improper to curl up next to one of the cowhands, even one who was sound asleep, but out beyond the haphazard sprinkling of bedrolls it was pitch black. Wild animals could be lurking out there. Wolves, even.
Or... She caught her breath. Even wild Indians.
She crept forward to an unoccupied space and spread out her blue wool blanket. The other, a forest green one Aunt Alice said wouldn’t show the dirt, she wrapped around her body. Then she lay down on the hard ground and pulled the edges of the blue blanket over herself.
She couldn’t close her eyes for a long time, and when she did they popped open at the slightest sound. Never in her life had she realized nighttime could be so noisy!
She listened to the faint hoofbeats of the horses ridden by the two night-herders Mr. Strickland had assigned. One of them was singing something; she couldn’t identify the song, but it was soothing. Which was no doubt what that herd of cows out there somewhere was feeling. She, however, was feeling anything but soothed.
Something made a whoohing sound off in the dark. An owl. She hoped. Indians made wolf calls, didn’t they? Not owl calls. At least that’s what she’d read once in a dime novel she’d found in Uncle Charlie’s bookcase.
Something rustled out beyond the fire pit. Oh, mercy! What was that? A... What did they call them? A mountain lion? She tugged her blankets more securely around her.
Suddenly she became aware of another sound, a crunching noise. She lay still, listening. Footsteps, that was it! They came closer, and then she was startled by a low voice at her back.
“Dusty?”
“Y-yes?”
“Everything all right?”
“N-no. I mean, yes. Everything is just fine.”
She heard him chuckle. “I mean, did Roberto’s liniment help your sore backsi—your sore muscles?”
“Of course,” she answered.
“Good. Just checking whether you’re ready to throw in the towel tomorrow and hightail it back to a hot bath and a soft bed.”
She refused to dignify that remark with an acknowledgment of any kind. Instead, she wrapped her blankets more securely around her and purposefully closed her eyes.
* * *
Before the sun rose the next morning, the hands were lined up at the chuck wagon for Roberto’s thick-sliced bacon, fried potatoes and sourdough biscuits. Zach studied them as they lounged bleary-eyed around the campfire, warming their behinds and shoveling in their breakfasts. All nine men and one stubborn woman.
He watched Dusty more closely than anyone else. She’d tamed her long, wavy hair into one thick, glossy-looking braid that hung down her back and swung enticingly when she moved. She was wearing a form-fitting blue plaid shirt that hinted at lush breasts beneath the light cotton material, and he swallowed hard.
Didn’t help. After her half hour in the stream yesterday, her jeans had shrunk so tight across her butt that watching her move made his mouth go dry.
He couldn’t help wondering all kinds of things about her. What made her tick? What made a woman who looked the way she did, all soft and desirable, want to pal around with a hardened bunch of cowboys instead of staying home with a husband and a dozen children? What made Dusty prickly as a desert cactus with a spine stiff as a railroad tie?
She tucked into her fried spuds, crunched up the bacon slices like a hungry kid and carefully slipped two of Roberto’s float-off-your-plate biscuits into her shirt pocket. He tried not to smile. Looked like she’d learned something yesterday.
He tossed the dregs of his coffee into the fire and stood up. “Time to roll.”
Twenty minutes later, the chuck wagon lumbered off after Wally, the scout, to set up ten or fifteen miles farther on, somewhere with good grass and enough water for the herd. His wrangler, Cherry, followed with the rest of the horses in the remuda, and the two point men, José and Skip, uncovered the bell clapper on the lead steer and set off. A muddle of lowing animals thundered after the clanging bell.
Zach let out a satisfied breath and studied the pinkening sky over the mountains in the distance. God, he loved chasing steers across pretty country with the sunlight coming up and glinting off their horns.
He spurred forward and began calling out orders. “Curly, Juan, cover the flanks. Cassidy, you ride drag.”
He guessed stubborn, determined Miss Dusty Murray would tag along somewhere, at least until suppertime. Then he’d pry her off her horse, drop her into another cold stream, collect his silver dollar and send her back to the Rocking K. Kinda made him chuckle.
He had to admit he just plain didn’t trust a woman that pretty. Or that sassy. He set his eyes on the trail ahead and kicked his horse into a trot.
* * *
A cattle drive, Alex acknowledged as she guided her mount beside the mass of mooing cows, had to be one of the strangest endeavors ever conceived by modern man. No one would believe most of the things that went on, so her task as a newspaper reporter was easy: write about everything and make it interesting.
Today, for instance, she noticed strange little brown birds no bigger than sparrows that rode along on the backs of the steers, pecking insects off their hides. The sparrows weren’t the least intimidated by the lumbering animals beneath them, and the steers didn’t seem to mind. In a way, it was sort of like Zach Strickland and herself; she survived the best way she could, and Zach paid no attention.
This morning she’d gotten another taste of the strange habits of cowboys on a trail drive. Roberto rose before the moon had set and began to rattle around in the chuck wagon, cutting out biscuit rounds and frying bacon. Before the sun was up, the cowhands dragged themselves out of their bedrolls.
All except the scout, Wally Mortenson. Wally was an older man with laugh lines etched deep in his tanned face, and of all things, he woke up singing. Sometimes it was a hymn; sometimes it was a song so bawdy her ears burned. “Oh, my sweetheart’s not true like she should be,” he bellowed. “At night she lies close and she—”
His voice would break off and he would swear at whoever had kicked him into silence and start again.
The day started off well. Alex was riding a roan gelding that seemed to like her, his gait was gentle enough that her sore behind didn’t hurt too much, and the weather was clear and sunny. She rode for an hour, getting used to the dust clouds and the gnats and the heat, and then spurred her horse to join Juan and Curly, who were riding in the flank position.
All of a sudden the sun that had been blazing down on her only moments before slid behind a cloud. For a brief moment she welcomed the suddenly cooler air, and she lifted her face to the breeze and let it wash over her perspiration-soaked shirt. But when she raked off her wide-brimmed black hat, she felt droplets of water dampen her hair.
“Miss Alex!” Curly pointed to the sky. “Rainstorm.”
Very quickly it grew darker and wetter, and then thunder began to rumble overhead. Oh, heavens, a thundershower! She looked around for some shelter, but other than an occasional stand of spindly cottonwood trees, there was nothing to shield her from the rain, and it was now coming down in sheets.
Alex clapped her hat back on, snugged it down and tried to see through the mist enveloping them. The herd kept plodding forward, with Curly and Juan keeping pace with the animals. Good heavens, would they just keep going?
Yes, they would.
She tried to keep up. After another rain-soaked mile, large patches of boggy grass slowed her progress even more, and then there were big, wide puddles and stretches of mud-slicked ground that splattered when she rode over them.
Rain slashed at her face. Her thoroughly wet shirt stuck to her body as if glued on; her jeans felt cold as water soaked through the denim to her thighs. Despite the rain, she worked hard to keep up with Juan and Curly, who were still racing after straggling cows and whooping it up, as they always did.
She was thoroughly miserable, wet and cold, her clothes sodden and her hat dripping water onto her jeans. She had never felt so cold and clammy, so disheveled or so disheartened.
They rode on, pushing the herd along, for another hour, and then, as suddenly as it had started, the rain stopped and the sun burst through a cloud. Curly and Juan kept the herd moving as the puddles began to dry up, and her wet shirt and jeans began to steam in the sunshine. Now she felt hot and clammy.
By dusk, the moving mass of cows and riders slowed and finally dribbled to a stop near the chuck wagon. The tired cowhands drove the herd to a broad green meadow and bedded them down for the night.
Alex rode straight for the rope corral where the wrangler, Cherry, had gathered the remuda. She left her roan in his care and made a beeline for the chuck wagon. Her boots squished. All she wanted to do was peel off her sticky garments and put on dry clothes.
But Roberto had an iron Dutch oven bubbling over a blazing fire and he clanged his spoon around and around in an iron triangle to announce that supper was ready. One by one, the hands straggled in, dismounted and handed their reins to the wrangler. Then they stumbled tiredly toward the fire and the tin plates the cook was loading up with beef stew and hot biscuits.
She had lived through her first thunderstorm on the trail, and she wanted to record the details right away, while they were still fresh in her mind. Her notebook was damp, but the words were still legible. She nibbled on her pencil and started to write.
“Ain’tcha gonna eat supper, Miss Alex?” Curly inquired.
“Yeah,” Skip echoed. “Good thing we had that thunderstorm today, huh?”
“You crazy?” Curly snapped. “Wet is wet and miserable, and steers don’t need washin’.”
“Aw, wise up, Curly. The boss couldn’t send Miss Alex back to the Rocking K during a thunderstorm. That’s good, ain’t it?”
Oh, yes, Alex thought. This rainstorm had come at a most fortuitous time. Being wet and miserable for a few hours was a small price to pay for continuing on this adventure.
Suddenly she found she was ravenously hungry.
* * *
After another bone-crunching day, Alex spied the chuck wagon pulled up in a grassy meadow overlooking a river. She was half dead with exhaustion and so hungry her stomach hurt, and she felt hot and grubby and short-tempered. She sent a longing glance at the serene blue-green river behind the wagon and immediately started to plan how she could indulge in a private, cooling bath with nine cowboys and a cook in the vicinity.
She’d think of something, anything, that would allow her to sponge away the sweat and the faint smell of Roberto’s liniment that still clung to her skin. She might not be a seasoned trail rider, but she was not without wiles. Her chance came after supper that evening when the hands were gathered around the fire.
“Gentlemen,” she began. “I have a proposition for you.”
Jase jerked upright, knocking over his mug of coffee. “Uh, what kind of proposition?”
“Not the kind you’re thinkin,’” Zach snapped. “Mind your manners, boys.”
Aha, she had certainly captured someone’s attention. “Very well,” she said in her best businesslike manner, “I will explain. In exchange for one hour of privacy, complete privacy, I will conduct my first interview with one of you for my newspaper column.”
“Which one of us?” Jase asked.
“You gentlemen will decide which one it will be,” she answered. “You will draw straws. The short straw wins.”
“Quick, Cherry,” Jase said. “Go get us some sticks!”
“Yeah,” Skip echoed. “Short ones.”
Alex turned her gaze on Zach, who was sitting across the fire pit from her. “Mr. Strickland, may I rely on you to supervise the drawing?”
“Maybe.”
She blinked. “Maybe? You do want it to be fair and square, do you not?”
“Sure.” He sent her a long look. “For a price.”
“Oh.” Her heartbeat faltered. “What price would you ask?”
“I don’t want to be included in your drawing. Don’t want you writin’ about me.”
“You don’t want to be interviewed? I cannot write a story if I have no, um, factual information.”
“I said I don’t want to be interviewed,” he repeated, his voice sharp. “That’s my price. Take it or leave it.”
She blinked again. What on earth ailed this man? Did he not want—oh, of course. He did not want her to write any newspaper stories at all. He wanted, he planned, to send her back to the Rocking K. Well, she would show him.
“Very well, I accept your condition.” She suppressed a grin of triumph. “On one condition of my own.”
One dark eyebrow went up. “Yeah? What condition?”
“Yeah,” came a chorus of male voices. “What condition?”
“That I am granted my hour of privacy first, before you all draw your straws. All except Mr. Strickland, that is.” She waited half a heartbeat. “And...” she caught a glimmer of something in Zach’s eyes “...that Mr. Strickland is the one who stands guard while I am, um, being private.”
“Fair enough,” Jase said. “Whaddya say, boss?”
He didn’t answer for so long Alex thought he hadn’t heard her proposal.
“Boss?” Jase prompted.
“Mr. Strickland?” she said, her voice as sweet as she could make it. “What is your decision?”
He stood and tossed the rest of his coffee into the fire. “Come on, Miss Murray. Let’s get your ‘privacy’ over with so the hands can draw their straws and turn in. Night’s half over.”
She shot to her feet. “Cherry, please gather your sticks. I will return in one hour.”
She walked downstream, away from the camp, looking for a sandy beach and a pool suitable for bathing. Zach walked five paces behind her, whistling through his teeth. Suddenly she stopped short. There it was, the perfect spot, a deep pool screened by willow trees.
“Here,” she announced. His whistling ceased, and she waited until he caught up with her.
“Right.” He tipped his head toward the copse of trees. “I’ll be over there.”
“Standing guard,” she reminded him.
“Yeah.” He strode off and disappeared. “Your hour starts now,” he called from somewhere behind the greenery.
Quickly she stripped off her shirt, boots and jeans, listening for telltale signs that he was creeping up to spy on her. He wouldn’t do that, would he? Well, he might, she acknowledged. On second thought, no, he wouldn’t. Zach Strickland was the most maddening man she’d ever come across, but something told her he was a man of his word.
She stripped off her camisole and underdrawers. Then she took three quick steps across the sandy creek bank and dived headfirst into the most blissful, cool bath she could imagine.
She swam and splashed, unwound her braid and washed the grit out of her hair, then floated on her back and gazed up at the purpling sky overhead. Dusk was beautiful out here, soft with tones of lavender and violet, and the air so sweet it was like wine.
“You’ve got ten minutes,” came Zach’s voice from somewhere.
She paddled to shore, dragged herself up on the narrow beach and stood shivering while a million crickets yammered at her. Drat! She had no way to get dry except to just stand still and let the water evaporate.
“Four minutes,” he called.
Double drat. Not enough time to air-dry. She grabbed her camisole to use as a towel. But when she’d blotted up all the water, the garment was too sodden to wear, so she wadded it up, stuffed it in the back pocket of her jeans and pulled on her drawers, followed by her shirt and trousers. Her wet hair dripped all over her shirt, but it couldn’t be helped. At least it was clean.
She heard Zach stalking toward her through the brush. “Time’s up. You ready?”
Well, no, she wasn’t, but at least she’d washed off the trail dust. “Look,” she teased when he appeared. She flipped her wet hair at him. “No grasshoppers!”
Unexpectedly he laughed out loud.
“Tomorrow night when I bathe—”
“Hold on a minute,” he interrupted her. “The hands don’t take a bath every night, and neither will you.”
“But we’ll all smell...well, funny after riding in the sun all day, won’t we?”
“Yeah. Get used to it. We don’t take baths unless there’s a river or a stream handy, and that isn’t too often. We sleep in our duds, too.”
“Oh.” That was another snippet of information she could put in her newspaper column, but it wouldn’t help her sense of smell for the next few weeks.
“So,” he continued, “when you’re close to anybody on a trail drive, just don’t breathe too deep. Or maybe hold your nose.”
“Oh,” she said again.
Back in camp the men sat around the fire, eyeing the fistful of twigs Cherry held in one roughened hand.
“All set, miss?” the graying wrangler inquired. The man was bent from years on the trail, she guessed, but there was something about him she liked. For one thing, he moved so gracefully and deliberately it was like watching a man do a slow sort of dance. And for another, he was the only one of the men who didn’t watch everything she did.
“All set,” she answered. “You may proceed with the drawing.”
The cowhands hunched forward, and one by one each of them drew a stick from Cherry’s gnarled fingers. Zach stood on the other side of the campfire, watching.
“Aw, my stick’s longer’n a steer’s horn,” Skip grumbled.
“Mine, too,” José said.
Some of the men held their sticks close to their chest. Others, disappointed, snapped theirs in two and tossed the pieces into the flames. At last a chortle rose from Curly, who leaped up and capered around the fire. “It’s me! I got the short stick! She’s gonna interview me first.”
“And we’re all gonna listen,” Cassidy drawled. “Ain’t we, boys?”
“This is okay with you, señorita?” José inquired politely.
“More important,” came Zach’s commanding voice, “is it okay with Curly? He might not want you hearin’ all his secrets.”
Jase snorted. “Heck, boss, twenty thousand people back East are gonna read all about ’m. After that, Curly won’t have any secrets!”
Curly settled his work-hardened frame next to Alex and sent her a shy smile. “Guess I’m ready, Miss Murray. Fire away.”
Quietly, Roberto set a brimming mug of coffee at her elbow. She took a sip, fished her notebook and pencil out of her shirt pocket and began.
“Your name is Curly, is that right?”
“Yeah. My real name’s Garner, miss. Thaddeus Garner.”
“Then why are you called Curly? I notice your hair is straight as a licorice whip.” The men guffawed.
“Dunno, ma’am. I’ve always been Curly, ever since I kin remember.”
“Very well, Curly. Now, tell me all about yourself, where you were born, where you grew up, how you came to be on this cattle drive.”
“Well, lessee, now. I was born in Broken Finger, Idaho. That is, I think I was. My momma could never remember. Some days she said it was Mule Heaven and other days she said it was Broken Finger. Pa died before I could ask him.”
“And did you grow up in Broken Finger? Or Mule Heaven?”
“Guess so, miss. Leastways Ma never moved whilst I was growin’ up. Went to school for a while, but I never seemed to learn much.”
Jase snorted. “Didn’t learn nuthin’, ya mean.”
“Didn’t learn anything,” Skip corrected with a grin.
“You neither, huh?” Jase shot back.
Alex tapped her pencil against the notepad. “Gentlemen, please. Let Curly finish his story.”
Curly talked and talked while Alex jotted down pages of notes. The man talked for so long that the other hands began to drift off and retrieve their bedrolls from the chuck wagon, lay them out around the fire and nod off to sleep. And still Curly talked.
Alex’s hand began to cramp, but she kept writing. Finally Curly ran out of steam. She thanked him profusely and he blushed like a schoolgirl.
Her fingers ached, but it was a small price to pay for a long, cooling bath. And the notes for an excellent newspaper story.
Chapter Five (#u7f29011c-f6ff-5395-84cf-b633a27f70d8)
After Curly’s interview, Zach sent him off to night-herd with José, listened to his wrangler’s report about the remuda and grudgingly admitted that Miss Alexandra Murray—Dusty—had more sand than he’d thought. Today she’d ridden a full twelve hours across miles of sunbaked sagebrush and bunch grass without once complaining, or crying, or doing any of a dozen other things most women would under the circumstances. And she could still sit up and talk past suppertime.
Not only that, he’d learned more about Curly tonight than he’d gleaned in the seven years he’d known the man. Dusty had a way of asking questions that sort of drew forth information. And secrets. He’d never known before that Curly had once had a wife. Or that his newborn son had died at birth, along with the baby’s mother.
But he knew one thing for certain—he’d never let Dusty within twenty yards of himself with her pencil and that notepad in her hand. The woman was downright dangerous. He had secrets, too, things he’d never told a living soul.
He heard Roberto’s wheezy breathing from under the chuck wagon. Between his cook’s snoring and the scrape of crickets, the night seemed to close in around him in an unsettling net. Something was bothering him, but he couldn’t figure out what it was. Curly’s dead wife? Juan’s polite but pointed remark about the river they’d have to ford soon? Swollen, the kid said. “And the current muy swift, Señor Boss.”
Or was it the way his new hand, Cassidy, kept staring at Dusty and edging closer and closer to her while she sat talking with Curly?
Last night she’d rolled out her pallet as close to the chuck wagon and Roberto as she could get without scaring the cook out of a night’s sleep. Zach noted that tonight she’d done the same thing.
Cassidy always seemed to be there beside her around the campfire. Not good. And when Dusty climbed into her bedroll, there was Cassidy, throwing his blankets down right next to her.
Zach moved quietly to where she lay, her dark head poking out from her top blanket. Cassidy was sound asleep. Zach laid one hand on her shoulder.
“I’m not asleep,” she murmured.
“Get up and come with me,” he said. She slipped out of her bedroll, and he rolled the blankets up under his arm and tipped his head toward the opposite side of the fire pit. She nodded, picked up her boots and quietly followed him.
He positioned her bedroll parallel to the dying coals and motioned for her to crawl in. Then he rolled out his own pallet next to hers. Now no one could reach her without first stepping over him or wading through hot coals.
“Understand?” he whispered.
“Yes. That man, Cassidy, makes me uneasy.”
“Yeah. Me, too.” He laid his revolver under the saddle he used for a pillow, positioned his hat over his face and closed his eyes.
“Thank you, Zach,” she murmured.
“Yeah,” he said.
“And I’m still here,” she breathed. “You owe me a silver dollar.”
“Yeah,” he said again. He hated to admit it, but he was halfway glad. Dusty was fun to watch.
He tried like the devil to go to sleep, and he would have succeeded if it hadn’t been for the quiet breathing of the woman beside him. He was so aware of her his toes itched.
He damn well didn’t want to be aware of her. He didn’t want to notice her or find himself watching her or listening for her voice. A female could be a dangerous thing. And a female on a cattle drive, a female he couldn’t help admiring, made him sweat bullets.
* * *
The next morning, an incident occurred that brought him up short. It wasn’t what happened, exactly; it was his puzzling anger about it. He never lost his temper. He’d learned long before he came out West, before he’d learned to ride or shoot a rifle or sweet-talk a girl, how to stuff down rage. So his reaction surprised him.
At first light he saw Cassidy snatch up Dusty’s white camisole where it hung drying on the chuck wagon towel rack and caper around camp, twirling the garment over his head. It made Zach see red.
He grabbed the lacy thing out of Cassidy’s hand and laid him flat with one punch. Then he stuffed the garment inside his vest and stalked out of camp to cool off down at the creek bank. When he returned, the men were sitting around the fire, sleepily shoveling down bacon and biscuits, and he sent Cassidy out to relieve one of the night-herders.
Dusty sat between Juan and Curly, calmly sipping a mug of coffee. Zach couldn’t stop staring at her chest. Without her camisole, he knew her bare nipples were pressing against that thin blue shirt, and it was doing funny things to his insides. His outsides, too.
He slipped the bit of cotton and lace out of his vest and without a word knelt beside her, pressed it into her hand and folded her fingers over it. She gave a little squeak, and he bit back a chuckle.
She leaped up, marched over to the horse Cherry had brought up for her today and pulled herself up into the saddle. Lordy, he’d have to work hard to keep his eyes off that all-too-female body of hers this morning.
It wasn’t easy.
Sometime around noon they entered a stretch of red-brown rocks interspersed with clumps of tall mustard, blazing bright yellow in the hot sun. Pretty stuff in the wild. In the summertime, Consuelo used armloads of it to make a kind of spicy-hot spread for venison or baked ham. He watched Dusty slow her mount to admire a patch of the weed. Probably gonna draw a picture of it in her notebook.
She looked up and bit her lip. “How will I ever learn everything there is to know about a cattle drive?” she asked.
“Everything? You don’t need to know ‘everything,’ Dusty. You just need to know enough to stay alive.”
“But my newspaper...the readers are simply fascinated by the West. How will I ever report enough to keep them entertained?”
Entertained! Hell’s bells, this drive means life or death for me, and all she wants to do is entertain?
“Well, I’ll tell ya.” He sent her a look from under the brim of his hat. “Do what Charlie told me when I first came to work for him.”
“And what would that be?”
“Keep your eyes and ears open, and your mouth shut.”
She gave him a sharp look, her lupine-colored eyes widening.
“Got it?” he snapped.
“Yes, sir, I have most certainly ‘got it.’ In order to keep my readers riveted to their morning newspapers, I thank the Lord I can scribble my notebook full of interesting facts while joggling along on the back of a horse. Nothing will escape me.” Her voice was so frosty it made him wince. “I do keep my eyes and ears open,” she continued. “And that includes noticing your...your insufferable rudeness. You will not hear another question out of me.”
He laughed out loud. “I’ll believe that when steers can fly.”
She sent him a smoldering look and gigged her mount away from him.
Sure hope you remember the “mouth shut” part, Dusty.
He reined away, but her horse started acting funny, and that caught his attention. She urged it closer to the rocks and all at once the animal shied and danced sideways. What the—Then the sorrel arched its back and bucked her out of the saddle.
She landed flat on her back. By the time he reached her, the horse had skittered off a ways, and out of the corner of his eye he saw what had startled it. Rattlesnake.
Dusty laid without moving. Zach pulled out his gun, shot the snake, then dropped out of the saddle and raced over to her. Her eyes were open, but she wasn’t breathing. Had the wind knocked out of her, he guessed. When he knelt beside her, she grabbed for his arm. Her face was white as flour and she was struggling to draw in a breath.
“You’re okay,” he barked. “You’re winded. Just lie easy.”
She tried to sit up, then sucked in a huge breath and started to cough, gasping for breath at the same time. “C-can’t breathe!” she choked out.
Zach rocked back on his heels. “Not surprising since you got thrown. Your horse shied at a rattler.”
Her eyes widened. “A s-snake?”
“Yeah. Horses are afraid of snakes.”
“P-people, t-too,” she said. “Oh, my s-stars, a snake!” She shuddered visibly.
Now that she was breathing better, he found himself mad as hell. “Dusty, there’s a whole lotta things out here that’ll spook a pilgrim like you. It’s time you turned tail and—”
She jerked upright and jabbed her forefinger into his chest. “Pilgrim! I am not a ‘pilgrim’ by any stretch of your minuscule imagination, Mr. Strickland.”
Hell, she sure had plenty of breath now. He caught her chest-poking hand and held it out to one side. “Damn right you’re a pilgrim. You’re a real beginner out here in the West. Oughtta know better than to ride close to the rocks on sunny days. And that’s another reason why—”
“I am most certainly not going back!” she hissed. “I can learn about snakes and rocks and...and other things. I intend to complete this cattle drive, and my newspaper assignment, so you can just stop yammering and let me get on with it!”
He stared at her.
She jerked her hand out of his grasp. “Did you hear me?”
“I heard you, all right. You’re more stubborn than a whole passel of mules, Dusty, but I’m the trail boss of this outfit, and I say you’re just too much damn trouble out here. I say you’re going back to the Rocking K.”
Before she could speak, Juan cantered up on his bay. “Is problema?”
“No!” Dusty yelled up at him.
“I’ll say,” Zach contradicted. “Horse threw her.”
“It wasn’t my fault,” she protested. “It...it was the snake!”
“Si,” Juan acknowledged with a sidelong glance at Zach. “The snake. And the horse, he did not like, so...” He made an eloquent somersaulting motion with his hand.
“Exactly,” Dusty said. She got to her feet, dusted off her jeans and advanced on her horse. Juan walked his mount forward, leaned over to grab the reins and laid them in her hand.
With a nod of thanks, she stuffed her boot into the stirrup and clawed her way up into the saddle. Then she tossed her head, stuck her nose in the air and kicked the horse into a gallop.
Juan and Zach looked at each other. “Mucho woman,” the young man breathed.
Zach shook his head. “Mucho trouble, you mean.”
“Si, maybe so. But ees ver’ pretty trouble, no? Like I say, Señor Boss, mucho woman.” Chuckling, he kicked his gelding and rode off.
Zach stomped over to remount, but instead stood looking after Dusty. Mucho problem. Very mucho.
* * *
Long days followed long days, one after the other, with nothing happening except endless hot, boring hours plodding after a herd of noisy cows, and listening to the thunder of hooves and the yipping of cowhands trying to keep them moving forward. Sometimes she wondered what the cowhands thought about during the interminable hours on horseback with nobody to talk to and nothing to do but chase after wandering animals.
They all smelled sweaty at the end of a day on the trail. When they could, the men bathed in creeks and rivers, and on Sundays, if Zach held the drive over for a day, they’d grab a cake of yellow lye soap and wash out their filthy garments. Like everyone else, she had only one pair of jeans plus an extra shirt and another pair of drawers, so every day she prayed for a camp beside a creek.
Did people in Chicago or Philadelphia or New York have any inkling what whole days lived like this were really like? She knew her readers would want to “see” what happened on a cattle drive, so part of the hours she spent on horseback she planned how she would write about it.
I’ll start out by describing the meadows full of red and yellow wildflowers that get trampled by thousands of animal hooves, and how the sky looks in the morning when the sun comes up, all pinky-orange, and how hot it gets at noon, and how the dust smells after it rains. And then I’ll...
* * *
A day later Zach’s frustration reached the boiling point. He told himself he was just tired, worried about getting a thousand head of prime beef to market, concerned about Cassidy and his over-interest in Dusty and just plain disgusted about nursemaiding a city girl who had no business on his cattle drive. He’d taken to watching her struggle to keep up with the herd as it lumbered along. Kinda enjoyed it, if he was honest about it.
She was green as grass on a horse, stiff in the saddle and inconsistent with the reins. Often the poor animal couldn’t read her contradictory signals and stopped dead in the middle of a meadow. Dusty had assured him she knew how to ride, but when he watched her, he sure doubted it. She probably rode on tame, city park bridle paths, ambling along with some poor dude she’d roped into an outing.
This afternoon was no different. There she was, trotting parallel to the herd through a meadow dotted with dandelions and patches of bright yellow mustard, pulling so hard on the reins he winced at what the bit was doing to the poor horse’s mouth. He spurred Dancer away and came up on the other side of the herd so he wouldn’t have to watch it.
Juan and Jase were riding flank, working hard because the herd seemed restless today. Probably the weather—part sun, part clouds and lots of wind. Juan tipped his hat. Jase started to say something, then broke off to chase a wandering steer.
Zach reined up and waited for the herd to pass, planning to relieve Curly, who was riding drag. The last animal lumbered past, and through the haze of dust behind them he glimpsed Dusty’s roan standing stock-still in the middle of a patch of grass. Riderless.
Guess the horse had had enough.
He trotted closer and sure enough, there was Dusty, in a heap on the ground. “You okay?” he shouted as he rode up.
“Yes, I think so. I fell off my horse.”
Zach snorted. Got bucked off, more likely. He dismounted and stood beside her. “Want a hand?”
“Yes, thank—” She started to reach up and gave a yelp of pain. “My arm hurts! And my shoulder.”
He knelt at her elbow. “Probably bruised it. Let me see.” He rolled back her shirt-sleeve to see if her arm was broken.
“Just sprained.” But when he touched her shoulder she cried out again.
“That hurt?”
“It most certainly does hurt,” she said through clenched teeth. “And I can’t move my arm.”
Oh, hell.
“Okay, let’s get you back on your horse.”
She sucked in a breath. “I—I don’t think I can ride. I’m right-handed and I won’t be able to hold the reins.”
“Gotta get you on your feet,” he said in a resigned tone. “You hold on to your hurt arm with your left hand.” He slid his hands around her waist and lifted her upright. “Ouch!” she cried. “That hurts!”
He walked the roan over and lifted her into the saddle as carefully as he could while she grabbed her injured arm and gave little groans of distress. Then he had to pry her left hand away from her right arm, which she was clutching, and lay the reins in her hand.
“Wait! I told you I’m right-handed, so how—”
“Any good cowhand can ride with the reins in either hand. So do it. And don’t jerk on the lines. Tossing you out of the saddle is the horse’s way of telling you that you’re not doing it right.”
“Oh.” Her voice sounded funny. “All right, I’ll try.”
Good girl. She might be green, but she had guts.
She urged the horse forward, and after the animal took a few halting steps, Zach strode over to where he’d left Dancer and hauled himself into the saddle. It was going to be a long, achy day for her. Part of him felt okay about that. Might teach her a lesson. The rest of him felt halfway sorry for her. He’d bruised a few shoulders in his time. Hurt like hell.
Hours later they came upon the chuck wagon and Cherry’s remuda on a rise overlooking a long valley. The herd plodded to a halt and the hands began turning their horses over to Cherry and washing up for supper. Almost against his will, Zach kept his eye on Dusty.
Curly lifted her out of the saddle, and she moved very slowly toward the wash bucket. Roberto stopped her.
“Señorita Alex, let me fix your arm.”
She followed him to the chuck wagon, where he pulled a clean dishtowel from one of his drawers and expertly fashioned it into a sling. Then he pressed the bottle of liniment into her hand.
“Tonight you must use this again. Make better.”
“Thank you, Roberto. I’m sorry I won’t be able to help you wash up the plates tonight.”
“No problema, señorita. I get José to help.” He spooned a big dollop of beans onto a tin plate and added a chunk of corn bread, then folded her left hand around the edge.
Zach watched her thank the old man again and settle herself on a log by the fire pit. The hands dug into their suppers, and Zach took his plate and a fork and went to stand outside the circle of firelight.
But Dusty just sat there, staring down at her plate.
Roberto noticed. “What is wrong, Señorita Alex? No hungry for my chili beans?”
“I...I can’t eat with my left hand. I can’t control the fork.”
The cook frowned. “I give you a spoon, okay?”
But after she dribbled beans down the front of her shirt it was clear she couldn’t manage the spoon, either.
Suddenly Zach couldn’t stand it one more minute. “Move over,” he ordered, settling himself next to her. He grabbed her spoon and loaded it up with beans. “You’re a lot of trouble, you know that? Open your mouth.”
Obediently she did so, and he shoveled some beans past her lips. She swallowed them down and looked up at him.
“Thank you, Zach.”
He gritted his teeth, broke off a bit of the corn bread and motioned for her to open her mouth again.
“Just like feeding a baby bird,” he muttered when the corn bread disappeared. Then he wished he hadn’t said it because her cheeks got pink, and when she glanced up there was real pain in her eyes.
Blue eyes, he noted again. Dark blue, like the morning glories Alice grew on the Rocking K porch trellis.
He bit his lip and loaded up her spoon again.
Chapter Six (#u7f29011c-f6ff-5395-84cf-b633a27f70d8)
The day started out like all the others, but after breakfast Cherry told Zach the remuda was worrying him. “Been awful hot and dry the last few days, boss. Mebbe they smell somethin’ on the wind.”
Zach patted the old man’s shoulder. “You’ll figure it out, Cherry. Maybe they’re just thirsty.” He reined away and rode toward the herd. He’d assigned Dusty to ride drag, and he sure didn’t envy her on a scorcher like today. But the damn little fool insisted she wanted to do “her fair share” of the work just like the other hands, so he gave in. Riding drag might teach her a lesson.
Still, he’d keep an eye on her. And he might as well start now. There she was, twenty yards in back of the lumbering herd, the blue bandanna he’d given her pulled up over her nose and mouth, trotting along and yipping like any seasoned cowhand. Guess her arm felt better.
He fell in beside her horse without speaking, and she gave him the barest of nods to acknowledge his presence. It was so hot and still she probably didn’t have the energy to talk, so she didn’t. She wasn’t quiet that often, and he had to smile.
They rode in silence for a mile or so and then she glanced up to the sky. “Oh, look, we’re in for a thunderstorm!” She pointed at a huge cloud that was moving toward them. It looked dark and menacing, and it had an odd yellow-brown tinge to it.
Oh, my God. He wheeled his horse forward toward the herd.
“Skip! Cherry!” By the time he clattered up, the hands were already staring at the cloud overhead.
“Turn the herd,” Zach yelled. “Get them down. Hurry!” He pointed at the cloud bearing down on them, and they jolted into action, spurring hard to round up the steers.
He couldn’t leave Dusty alone back there, so he turned and kicked his mount into a gallop.
“What’s wrong?” she shouted when he reached her. “Is a thunderstorm coming?”
“Not a thunderstorm,” he shouted. “It’s a dust storm.” She pulled her horse to a halt and sat staring up at the advancing cloud.
The sky darkened to a dirty brown. Zach dismounted, then reached up and pulled her off the gelding. He positioned Dancer next to her mount. “Stand between the horses,” he ordered.
“What? But—”
“Don’t argue, just do it!”
“Not until you explain—”
“Dusty, shut up and move! Now!” He shoved her toward the animals. Then he grabbed both bridles and pulled her forward.
“Zach, I don’t understand. Why—”
“You will,” he said shortly. He grabbed her arm, dragged her next to him and pushed her against Dancer’s neck. Then he jockeyed the horses closer together to serve as buffers.
“They’ll squash us!” she protested.
“No, they won’t.” He moved in back of her and pressed her body hard into Dancer’s quivering form. “A dust storm is dangerous. Can’t see. Can’t breathe. It’s important not to panic.”
She started to say something, but at that moment the first gusts of wind hit. “Tie your hat on,” he ordered. “Use your bandanna.”
When she fumbled, he reached over and pulled the square of cotton tight over her Stetson and knotted it under her chin.
Dirt and sand pelted them, and the air filled with swirling grit. He snugged his own hat down as tight as he could, lifted his arms and positioned them around her head. Then he stepped in close and pressed his chest against her back.
“Breathe through your mouth,” he yelled.
He felt her head dip in a nod, and then the storm hit.
The air grew so thick it was hard to see. To Alex it felt as if night was falling, and a bolt of panic stabbed through her. She jerked, and Zach pushed her hat down to shield her face and tightened his arms over her head.
“Don’t panic,” he said, his voice calm. “It’ll get dark but it will pass. Just hang on, okay?”
She tipped her head up and down and felt his warm breath against the back of her neck. In the next minute, the air grew so gritty she couldn’t keep her eyes open, and then all at once she was suffocating.
Choking, she reared back and heard Zach’s voice against her ear. “Keep breathing,” he ordered. “It’s thick and dirty, but it’s air. Just breathe.”
How was he able to breathe? she wondered. He was sheltering her with his body, but the air was just as thick and dirty for him.
The wind screamed around them with a strange, eerie cry, and suddenly she was more frightened than she had ever been in her life. She began to tremble and felt his hard body press more tightly against her back.
“You’re all right, Dusty. Just hang on.” He brought his mouth closer to her ear. “Hang on.”
“But I can’t breathe!” She felt as if she was drowning. Could a person drown on dry land?
“Dusty, take real slow breaths. Don’t hurry it.”
She wanted to scream, but that would take precious air. She opened her mouth wide to gulp in air, and shut her eyes.
Zach’s breath rasped in and out at her back, wafting against her cheek every time he exhaled. Could people choke to death in dust storms?
Don’t think about it. As long as she could feel him breathing she would be all right, wouldn’t she?
“Dusty, stay quiet. Stop thinking.”
How could he know that I’m thinking?
She wanted to ask him how long this would last.
She wanted to thank him for protecting her.
She wanted to stay alive!
Zach could feel her shaking, sending little tremors against his chest, but instead of making him feel protective it made him mad. Damn mad. She was scared? She shouldn’t be out here in the first place. Newspaper reporter or not, she had no business on a cattle drive. It put his men at risk. It put his cattle at risk. And, goddammit, it put him at risk!
Well, now, Strickland, just how do you figure it puts you at risk?
He tried to shut his mind down and concentrate instead on the wind. And the dust. And the...
Oh, hell and damn, it was hard not to think about Dusty when he could feel every little hitch in her breathing and every shudder traveling along her spine.
He had to admit she didn’t complain. She didn’t cry. She didn’t shirk her share of the work. She didn’t ask for special treatment because she was female. Dusty was maddeningly agreeable. He hated to admit it, but she was good company.
And, oh, God, she smelled good.
He could feel grit and sand sifting through his shirt and into his jeans, making his sticky skin itch. He heard the wind pick up. A dust storm could blow for half a day or longer, and this one showed no sign of letting up.
One of the horses tossed its head, but it didn’t move. He tried to keep his mind on the animal, but his thoughts kept coming back to Dusty. What was it about her that he found so maddening?
And how much longer can you stand here with her trim little butt snugged into your groin?
Guess he had a bad case of Dusty getting under his skin.
Suddenly she pulled away from the horse she was leaning against and with a half sob turned into his arms.
“Zach, I’m scared.”
Well, maybe she did cry sometimes. He pressed her head against his neck and wrapped his arm around her.
“H-how long will this last?”
“Don’t know. Sometimes an hour. Sometimes a day.”
She gave a little jerk. “A day? A whole day?”
“Sometimes. Forget about the dust storm. Just standing here in one spot for twenty-four hours will probably kill us.”
“Oh, but—It couldn’t really go on for a whole day, could it? What if I have to, um, relieve myself?”
That made him laugh out loud. He pressed her face back against his neck. “Dusty, stop talking. It takes air.”
He let ten minutes go by while the wind screamed across the plain and threw dirt in their faces. After another ten minutes she raised her head and wasted some more air.
“I can’t wait to write down some notes about this windstorm!”
Zach just shook his head. She was either crazy or she was a great newspaper reporter. Maybe both.
The storm finally moved off to the north, and Zach heaved a sigh of relief. Their ordeal was over. He took a step away from her, and she moved out of his arms and began brushing dirt off her clothes. Yeah, he was relieved it was over, but maybe he was the crazy one, because part of him was sorry.
Everyone gathered around, and they decided to set up camp for the night. Dusty immediately began scribbling away in her notebook and Zach took stock of the damage. The storm had left his hands gritty but uninjured and his herd of cattle was still intact. Cherry assured him the remuda was restless but untouched, and he was already brushing the animals down.
The men were all filthy and the chuck wagon was gritty with sand and dirt. Roberto was beside himself.
“Señor Boss, I cannot cook with dirt in pans, and the wagon—ay de mi—it must be scrubbed before supper.”
Dusty looked up from her writing. Her face was dirty, and when she stood up, grit sifted from her jeans. “Roberto, give me a bucket of water and a scrub brush. I’ll help you clean up.”
Zach grinned all the way out to check on the herd, and when he’d ridden twice around the subdued steers, he was still smiling.
She might be green and scared and a little bit crazy, but maybe she was worth riding the trail with.
That night Alex interviewed the scout, Wally. He told her some of his adventures over his considerable years “on the drover’s trail,” as he termed it.
“Kinda hard to get used to it at first, scoutin’ for a cattle outfit. Gotta ride ahead of ever’body, and it kin get mighty lonesome with nobody to talk to ’cept my horse. Got to be purty good friends with my horse after a while, but...aw, heck, Miss Alex, you don’t want to hear about this stuff.”
“But I do, Wally. Honestly I do. And just think, thousands of readers back East will want to hear about ‘all this stuff,’ too. You’ll be famous!”
“Aw, heck, Miss Alex. I don’t want to be famous. Somebody might come after me for money I owed in a poker game somewhere. Golly, I remember one time down in Texas...” And he was off again.
When Wally stopped regaling her with his wild tales, the hands began to spin their own yarns. Nothing was too outlandish or unbelievable. Skip recalled one cattle drive when they ate “nothin’ but oatmeal and bugs” for four days straight. Curly told about riding two days on a spring roundup with a broken foot; it had happened when his horse stepped on his boot, but he’d wanted to stick it out because one of the riders was “a pretty little filly” from a neighboring ranch.
“Aw, that’s nuthin’,” Jase challenged. “One time I was night-herdin’ during a blizzard and my fingers froze up. Had to chop ’em off myself the next morning. Had to, or they’d a got the gangrene.”
Alex didn’t know whether to believe him or not, but when she noticed his middle two fingers on one hand were missing, she decided he was telling the truth. She dug out her notepad again. This was wonderful human-interest material about the type of people who worked these cattle drives. She could see a whole series of pieces about the men on the trail; maybe she should get to know them better.
After an hour of after-supper talk, she acknowledged she was certainly getting a good education about life on a cattle drive. And it wasn’t just about the men. Cherry was constantly instructing her about the horses in his remuda.
“Don’t never walk up to a hoss what’s pullin’ yer rope tight, Miss Alex. Good way to git stomped. Why, I remember one time...” And, like Wally, the wrangler talked nonstop for half an hour.
Chapter Seven (#u7f29011c-f6ff-5395-84cf-b633a27f70d8)
Night after night she watched the men around the campfire, how they teased one another and played practical jokes and sang and told stories about other cattle drives they had been on. Sometimes one of them would start to talk about a girl “back home,” or a woman of questionable reputation, and then Alex noticed the men would tip their heads in her direction and quickly shush the speaker. She guessed they didn’t want to offend her.
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Lynna Banning
A cattle drive is no place for a greenhorn……but this city miss is here for the ride!Cowboy Zachariah Strickland should put Alexandra Murray on the first eastbound train home. But he has no choice other than to take her on his cattle trail. She hasn’t ridden a horse to death, nor shot anybody, but she does drives him furious with longing… Is it possible Alex belongs right here in the Wild West—with Zach?
A cattle drive is no place for a greenhorn
But this city miss is here for the ride!
Cowboy Zachariah Strickland should put Alexandra Murray on the first eastbound train home. But he has no choice except to take her on his cattle trail. She hasn’t ridden a horse to death, or shot anybody, but she does drive him furious with longing... Is it possible Alex belongs right here in the Wild West—with Zach?
“[A] delightful and passionate western romance... Romance fans will enjoy the fast pace and nonstop action.”
—RT Book Reviews on Her Sheriff Bodyguard
“Charming, heartwarming and tender.”
—RT Book Reviews on Western Spring Weddings
LYNNA BANNING combines her lifelong love of history and literature in a satisfying career as a writer. Born in Oregon, she graduated from Scripps College and embarked on a career as an editor and technical writer and later as a high school English teacher. She enjoys hearing from her readers. You may write to her directly at PO Box 324, Felton, CA 95018, USA, email her at carowoolston@att.net or visit Lynna’s website at lynnabanning.net (http://www.lynnabanning.net).
Also by Lynna Banning (#u7f29011c-f6ff-5395-84cf-b633a27f70d8)
The Lone Sheriff
Wild West Christmas
Dreaming of a Western Christmas
Smoke River Family
Western Spring Weddings
Printer in Petticoats
Her Sheriff Bodyguard
Baby on the Oregon Trail
Western Christmas Brides
The Hired Man
Discover more at millsandboon.co.uk (http://www.millsandboon.co.uk).
Miss Murray on the Cattle Trail
Lynna Banning
www.millsandboon.co.uk (http://www.millsandboon.co.uk)
ISBN: 978-1-474-07352-3
MISS MURRAY ON THE CATTLE TRAIL
© 2018 The Woolston Family Trust
Published in Great Britain 2018
by Mills & Boon, an imprint of HarperCollinsPublishers 1 London Bridge Street, London, SE1 9GF
All rights reserved including the right of reproduction in whole or in part in any form. This edition is published by arrangement with Harlequin Books S.A.
This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places, locations and incidents are purely fictional and bear no relationship to any real life individuals, living or dead, or to any actual places, business establishments, locations, events or incidents. Any resemblance is entirely coincidental.
By payment of the required fees, you are granted the non-exclusive, non-transferable right and licence to download and install this e-book on your personal computer, tablet computer, smart phone or other electronic reading device only (each a “Licensed Device”) and to access, display and read the text of this e-book on-screen on your Licensed Device. Except to the extent any of these acts shall be permitted pursuant to any mandatory provision of applicable law but no further, no part of this e-book or its text or images may be reproduced, transmitted, distributed, translated, converted or adapted for use on another file format, communicated to the public, downloaded, decompiled, reverse engineered, or stored in or introduced into any information storage and retrieval system, in any form or by any means, whether electronic or mechanical, now known or hereinafter invented, without the express written permission of publisher.
® and ™ are trademarks owned and used by the trademark owner and/or its licensee. Trademarks marked with ® are registered with the United Kingdom Patent Office and/or the Office for Harmonisation in the Internal Market and in other countries.
www.millsandboon.co.uk (http://www.millsandboon.co.uk)
For my dear and admired friend Shirley Marcus
Contents
Cover (#uf7f2d0d0-3a79-57b5-8b14-20be842e62f9)
Back Cover Text (#uaddbcbb8-8347-5b15-9207-36f1c7dfcf56)
About the Author (#u685e0525-2c67-579d-a7d8-f7b42339f7cb)
Booklist (#ucb9adaf7-ecc2-5952-a8e1-5d0d9d67f0d4)
Title Page (#u859e4aa9-7f1d-5248-b709-3cd979ee1d6c)
Copyright (#u7b140d1e-1687-5747-969a-8b760e21b8fa)
Dedication (#ud4238d53-4d80-5cdd-b87c-d6d2bfff7b12)
Chapter One (#u36e1b1c4-eb21-5292-a930-4ec249b30d4a)
Chapter Two (#u3e1777b1-6073-52b9-b57c-da69d4d3e29f)
Chapter Three (#ub742c528-3bba-5a1c-885b-5cae3e31d0cc)
Chapter Four (#u8356c03c-b429-52e2-aff3-2cc421f5e4cf)
Chapter Five (#ucbe84d38-0c71-598c-ba9a-acf756330cc6)
Chapter Six (#ufc08402f-c9be-5b5a-9799-8f67014b416d)
Chapter Seven (#u766d87cd-f2b7-5466-9374-3ebdd8916972)
Chapter Eight (#litres_trial_promo)
Chapter Nine (#litres_trial_promo)
Chapter Ten (#litres_trial_promo)
Chapter Eleven (#litres_trial_promo)
Chapter Twelve (#litres_trial_promo)
Chapter Thirteen (#litres_trial_promo)
Chapter Fourteen (#litres_trial_promo)
Chapter Fifteen (#litres_trial_promo)
Chapter Sixteen (#litres_trial_promo)
Chapter Seventeen (#litres_trial_promo)
Chapter Eighteen (#litres_trial_promo)
Chapter Nineteen (#litres_trial_promo)
Chapter Twenty (#litres_trial_promo)
Chapter Twenty-One (#litres_trial_promo)
Chapter Twenty-Two (#litres_trial_promo)
Chapter Twenty-Three (#litres_trial_promo)
Chapter Twenty-Four (#litres_trial_promo)
Chapter Twenty-Five (#litres_trial_promo)
Chapter Twenty-Six (#litres_trial_promo)
Chapter Twenty-Seven (#litres_trial_promo)
Chapter Twenty-Eight (#litres_trial_promo)
Chapter Twenty-Nine (#litres_trial_promo)
Epilogue (#litres_trial_promo)
Extract (#litres_trial_promo)
Chapter One (#u7f29011c-f6ff-5395-84cf-b633a27f70d8)
Smoke River, Oregon, 1871
He knew something was wrong the minute he stepped up onto the front porch. For one thing, Charlie was rocking away in the lawn swing with a big grin on his lined face. And for another, Alice, the ranch owner’s wife sitting beside him, wasn’t.
“Been waitin’ for ya,” Charlie drawled.
“Yeah? Not late, am I?” Maybe that was why Alice’s heart-shaped face looked so set, but Zach discarded that thought right away. When Alice Kingman was displeased about something, she didn’t waste time looking dour; she bared her nails and lit right into your hide.
“All the hands are inside, Zach. And they’re damn hungry,” Charlie added.
Alice stopped the swing with her foot and rose in such a ladylike motion for a woman climbing up on her forties that it brought a chuckle to Zach’s throat. Alice was pure female, and in her blue denim skirt and ruffly red-check blouse she looked good enough to eat.
Charlie slapped him on the back. “Come on, Zach. Consuelo’s fried chicken is getting cold.”
Alice disappeared through the screen door, and Charlie draped a heavy arm across Zach’s shoulders. “Got somethin’ I want to show ya.”
All Zach’s senses went on alert. The last time Charlie had had something to show him, Zach had limped for three days after the boss’s new stud horse threw him.
“It’s not a horse, is it?”
“Heck, no,” Charlie spluttered. “Cain’t invite a horse to Sunday dinner, can I?”
So it was a someone, not a something the boss was showing off. Someones got invited to Sunday dinner at the ranch house, along with Zach and the Rocking K ranch hands.
In the dining room, Zach stood between slim, dark-skinned José and Roberto, an older, slightly overweight man with a salt-and-pepper mustache, and waited for Alice to seat herself. He eyed the vacant chair across from him. Okay, boss, we’re here. So where’s the someone?
He heard the rustle of petticoats behind him and caught a whiff of something that smelled like lilacs. Oh, no, not Alice’s Great-Aunt Hortense! Hell’s bells, Roberto had put her on the train for San Francisco scarcely a month ago, and...
Zach swallowed hard and the other hands stiffened to attention, waiting for Aunt Hortense’s entrance.
But it wasn’t Aunt Hortense.
A young woman so pretty it made him swallow hard glided across the room and sat down next to Roberto’s nephew, Juan. The young Mexican’s blush turned the tips of his ears red.
Everyone dropped onto their chairs like boneless sandbags and Zach slid into his upholstered seat and waited. No one said a word. Finally, Alice signaled Consuelo and the meal got under way.
“Boys,” Charlie announced, snagging a drumstick off the platter the cook offered, “say howdy to Miss Murray.”
A rumble of respectful male voices rose. Then another long silence fell.
“Miss Murray is visiting from Chicago,” Alice said, thin lipped. She split a biscuit with a stab of her knife.
“Welcome, Señorita Murray,” Roberto offered. The older man had civilized manners; his nephew also knew what to do, but he was real young and not as polished as Roberto.
“Ees an honor, señorita,” Juan said with an even deeper blush.
Miss Murray smiled across the table. “Why, thank you, gentlemen.”
Charlie took over the introductions. “On your left is Juan Tapia, and to your right is Skip Billings. Across the table is José Moreno, Zach Strickland and Jase Snell. Zach’s the trail boss for the cattle drive.”
Miss Murray inclined her head. “Gentlemen,” she said again.
Man, oh, man, her hair was something else, dark as blackstrap molasses and so soft-looking that Zach curled his fingers into fists.
What was Charlie’s game here? He thought it over while platters of mashed potatoes and green beans were handed around the table. A prettier girl he hadn’t seen in too many years to count, but Charlie knew Zach wasn’t interested in romancing a female ever again, so what did Charlie want to show him?
Before Zach picked up his fork, Charlie dropped a hint.
“You boys still readin’ those newspaper stories from back East?”
“Sure, boss,” Jase volunteered. “Got ’em all pinned up on the bunkhouse wall.”
“Can’t hardly wait for the next one,” Skip added. “Best da—uh, darn horse-racin’ stories I ever read.”
Zach drove his fork into the pile of mashed potatoes on his plate. So that was it. This Murray woman was somehow related to A. Davis Murray, the newspaper reporter whose stories the hands devoured each week. His daughter, maybe? Or...his gut tightened...his wife? Who was she, exactly? And what was she doing sitting all pink and white at Sunday dinner at the Rocking K ranch house?
The hands couldn’t stop jabbering about A. Davis Murray’s horse-racing stories, and Miss Whoever-She-Was Murray looked mighty interested. More than interested. She was hanging on every word and her eyes... Oh, those eyes. Blue as desert lupines. Anyway, they sparkled like they’d been polished.
Zach caught Charlie’s eye and quirked one eyebrow.
“More chicken?” Charlie asked, his voice bland.
Zach shot a glance at Alice at the opposite end of the long walnut table and lowered his eyebrows into a frown. Alice looked madder than a wet cat, and that was a real puzzler. Alice never got mad about anything—not Skip’s rough table manners or Consuelo’s constant nattering about her dwindling supply of coffee beans, not even the time Charlie forgot her birthday.
But for darn sure she was mad today, and Zach figured it had something to do with pretty Miss Murray.
But Charlie always took his own sweet time about things, and this afternoon was no exception. Finally, finally, the owner of the Rocking K swallowed his last bite of strawberry shortcake, groaned like a contented heifer and rapped on his coffee cup for attention.
“Well, boys, today I’ve got a surprise for you.”
Jase’s scraggly blond head came up. “Yeah?”
“What if I told you...” Charlie paused dramatically and Alice rolled her eyes “...that Miss Murray’s first name is Alexandra.”
“What if ya did, boss?” Jase said. “Fancy name, but it don’t ring no bells for me.” Jase’s grammar stopped at the fourth grade.
“Doesn’t ring any bells,” Consuelo hissed as she circled with her coffeepot. “You set a bad example for my José.”
José ducked his head.
“I mean,” Charlie continued, “what if her name was Alexandra Davis Murray?”
“She is marry to the newspaper man?” Juan guessed.
Charlie gulped a swallow of coffee. “Nah. She is the newspaperman. Or, rather, newspaperwoman. This here lady is A. Davis Murray.”
“Ees not possible,” José protested.
Zach stared across the table at Miss Murray. Miss Alexandra Davis Murray. José was dead right, it wasn’t possible. Just what kind of game was Charlie playing?
Miss Alexandra Murray sent Zach an apologetic smile. “It’s true,” she said. “I write newspaper articles for the Chicago Times.”
Skip gaped at her. “You write about all them horse races?”
“I do.” She looked around the table at each of the ranch hands in turn until she came to Alice, who was still tight-jawed. “Aunt Alice doesn’t approve, obviously. But I like horse races. And I like writing about them.”
“Jehoshaphat,” Jase breathed.
“Madre mia,” José muttered.
Zach wanted to laugh. The thought of this soft, ruffly female tramping around a horse stable made his lips twitch.
Then they were all talking at once. During the hubbub, Charlie leaned forward and addressed Zach. “I want to talk to you,” he intoned. “In private.” He heaved his bulky frame out of the chair and led the way to his office across the hallway.
“Whiskey?” he asked when he’d shut the heavy oak door.
“No, thanks. Gotta ride out at first light.”
Charlie pushed the cut-glass decanter across his desk toward him anyway. “I’d change my mind if I was you, Zach.”
Without another word, he filled two glasses.
“Spit it out, Charlie, what’s up?”
His boss touched his glass to Zach’s and tossed back the contents. “Kinda hard to come right out and tell you, son.”
Uh-oh. Charlie only called him “son” when bad news was coming. Zach swigged down half his whiskey. “Let’s have it, Charlie. Like I said, I’ve got an early get-up tomorrow.”
“Well, Zach, it’s like this. It’s true that Alexandra is a newspaper reporter.”
“You already said that. Or somebody did. Anyway, I know that.”
“Yeah, well. See, her newspaper, the Chicago Times, wants her to do a story about a cattle drive.”
Zach slapped his empty glass onto the desk. “No.”
“I understand how you feel, Zach, but you see the answer’s gotta be yes.”
“No, it doesn’t.”
Charlie just nodded. “Yeah, it does.”
“Why?” Zach demanded. “Why does she pick this ranch? Tell her to choose another cattle drive.”
“Can’t.”
“Why can’t you?”
“Because.” He refilled his glass. “Because not only is Alexandra a newspaper reporter, she is, uh, as you’ve no doubt realized, my niece. Her mama is Alice’s sister.”
Zach said nothing for a long minute. “So?” he inquired at last.
“So,” Charlie said, “she wants to—”
“No,” Zach repeated.
Charlie reached for the whiskey decanter. “You want to keep your job, don’tcha, son?”
Damn, he hated to be threatened, especially by the man who had his financial ass under his boot heel. Zach sighed and refilled his glass.
“Well, hell, Charlie, can she ride?”
Chapter Two (#u7f29011c-f6ff-5395-84cf-b633a27f70d8)
Aunt Alice settled on the edge of Alex’s bed. Her aunt hadn’t lit the lamp, but the moonlight streaming through the multipaned window illuminated her usually serene face, which at this moment looked pinched.
“Alex, you simply cannot go through with this. Surely you—”
“Stop!” Slowly Alex pushed up on one elbow. “Aunt Alice, you don’t understand. My newspaper editor came up with the idea. He is very insistent.”
“But a cattle drive! Women just don’t go on cattle drives.”
“I know. It’s a far cry from my stories on horse racing. It’s a far cry from anything I thought I’d ever, ever do. But my editor pays my salary, and he is adamant.”
“Oh, Alex, why?”
“Back East people are mad for stories about the wild, untamed West.”
“I feel responsible for you,” her aunt said. “And a cattle drive is dangerous.”
“I don’t have a choice, Aunt.”
Alice snorted. “Of course you have a choice. Just tell your editor no.”
“I can’t. If I refuse, he’ll fire me, and I’ve worked too hard to risk losing my job. Eight long, grinding years I’ve spent working my way up from the proofreading desk to being a top reporter. I’m the only woman on the entire staff, and I won’t give it up. I can’t.”
Alex bit her lip and smoothed a crease in the top sheet over and over. Why, why did her job depend on the harebrained idea of a newspaper editor who’d never traveled west of his favorite restaurant?
Alice sighed. “Your mother would never allow this.”
Alex flung back the sheet and sat up. “Aunt Alice, my mother is dead.”
“Yes,” Alice said quietly. “I know. And you’re just like her. Bright. Beautiful. And...” her voice tightened “...bullheaded.”
Alex slid her arms about her aunt’s rigid form. “Mama always said you were the bullheaded one.”
“Don’t change the subject,” Alice snapped.
“Aunt Alice, you can’t stop me. You can’t keep me from holding on to my career as a newspaper reporter.”
“Oh, I know, honey. I just wish you’d—”
“Settle down and get married,” Alex finished. “That’s what Mama always wanted, too. But I’m twenty-six. On the shelf.”
Alice shook her head and blew out a sigh. “You will be careful, won’t you? At least try to?”
“Of course I will. Uncle Charlie says Zach Strickland’s the best trail boss in three states. I’ll be in good hands.”
Her aunt let out a long sigh and said nothing.
* * *
Zach stuffed his thumbs in his front pockets and watched Miss Newspaper Reporter trip down the porch steps ready to go cattle driving. She looked so bright and shiny it made his head hurt. And, Lord love little chickens, what her butt did to a pair of jeans was indecent.
“Good morning!” she sang.
“Mornin’,” he growled. “Got a lot of miles to cover today. Sure hope you can ride.”
“Why, certainly I can ride.” She rested her hands on her shiny new belt buckle.
“Yeah? Where’ve you ridden?”
“In the city park,” she said, her voice frosty. “On the bridle path.”
Zach resisted a snort, looked her up and down and unhooked his thumbs. “Those your ridin’ boots?”
She glanced down at the stylish, neatly laced leather boots. “Yes. What’s wrong with them? I bought them in Chicago and—”
“They won’t work.”
She propped her hands on her hips and peered more closely at her feet. “Well, if it’s not too much trouble, Mister Knows Everything, would you mind telling me what’s wrong with them?”
He spit off to one side. “You won’t last half an hour in those fancy city leathers. Brand new and probably too tight. Go ask Alice for a pair of her old riding boots.”
For a moment, Miss Newspaper Reporter looked like she was going to argue, but he stared her down. Finally, she pivoted, stomped back up the porch steps and slammed through the front door.
Hell’s bells, she was a greenhorn. A ladyfied greenhorn, and one with a mouth on her. Charlie had just used up his last favor.
When Miss Fancy-Pants reappeared, she wore a pair of Alice’s well-worn riding boots and a sour look. Zach expelled a long breath and tipped his head toward the corral.
“Saddle up.”
“Oh, yes, sir, Mister Trail Boss.”
His jaw tightened. Gonna be a damn long day.
* * *
Alex snapped open her leather-bound notebook and jotted half a line before the chuck wagon rolled into position at the head of the muddle of cows and horses and riders. Her horse jolted forward. She stuffed her pencil in her shirt pocket and grabbed the reins, but the horse danced a few paces to the left before it settled down. She’d never before ridden anything but old, gentle, city-trained mares, and this horse was neither old nor gentle. Or a mare, she’d been told. In fact, she’d never been this close to a horse that had been...well, gelded.
At least forty horses milled around in a whinnying clump, and she counted seven, no, eight scruffy-looking cowboys, not including the horse wrangler and His Highness the Trail Boss.
And hundreds and hundreds of cows. Steers, Uncle Charlie said. Surely they couldn’t all be steers, because some of them had calves tagging along behind.
She flexed her toes in Aunt Alice’s boots. Her aunt had said they were well broken in, but they still felt awfully tight. She was glad she was riding and not walking the four hundred miles that stretched ahead of her.
The chuck wagon, a bulky-looking top-heavy box on wheels, rattled and clanked its way on ahead of the roiling mass of animals and men on horseback. She watched Roberto, the driver, stash his whip under the bench, put two fingers to his lips and give a sharp whistle. Right away she decided she liked the white-haired old man. The wagon lumbered off down the trail, drawn by two horses.
Bellowing cattle, yipping men on horseback and the thunder of horses’ hooves added to the hubbub. It was deafening. She clapped both hands over her ears and lost control of her mount. A rider swung in close, grabbed her reins and settled the horse. Juan, Roberto’s soft-spoken nephew. He laid the leather straps in her gloved hand, touched his hat brim and reined his horse away.
Dust rose in thick clouds. She had just kneed her horse off to one side when Juan dropped back and shouted something. She couldn’t hear over the noise, so she tried to read his lips. “Señorita.” He mouthed something else, but she had no idea what it was.
She shook her head. He pointed at the bandanna covering his mouth and nose. Oh! Of course. But she didn’t have a bandanna. Oh, well. She smiled at Juan, lifted her chin, and spurred her mount forward.
She was on her way!
It was all fascinating. So this was how people in places like Philadelphia and New York got their meat, a thousand bawling cows lumbering after one old seasoned bull called a “bell steer” because of the clanging bell hung around its neck. They would all end in some rough, dirty railroad town in Nevada with the Indian-sounding name of Winnemucca, where the cowboys would load them up in cattle cars that would end up two thousand miles farther east in slaughterhouses in Chicago.
Just imagine! Right before her eyes were thousands and thousands of thick juicy steaks on the hoof. People back East would be avid for these sights and sounds. She patted the notepad and pencil in her breast pocket. She knew her readers would gobble up each delicious detail of this adventure.
* * *
They were three hours out, and whenever he could manage it, Zach pried his eyes off the herd and glanced back at Miss Murray. She lagged way behind, a good forty yards in back of Skip, who was riding drag, and she was fighting through thick clouds of dust. She’d pulled her wide-brimmed black hat down so far it almost covered her ears, but hell, she couldn’t see what was three feet ahead of her.
He winced in spite of himself. Anybody joining a drive for the first time always rode drag behind the herd, the dustiest position there was. She wasn’t complaining. Yet. He knew she must be hot and more miserable than she’d ever been in her pampered little life, and a small part of him felt just a tad sorry for her. An even larger part was making bets on how long she’d last before she’d turn tail for the Rocking K and a hot bath.
Maybe he should... Nah. Let her suffer. Teach her a lesson.
Juan trotted up on his sorrel and signaled that he wanted to talk.
“What’s up?” Zach yelled over the lowing steers.
“The señorita, she has no...” he swept a thumb and forefinger across his face “...Panuelo.”
Zach nodded, and the slim kid galloped off. So she’d forgotten her bandanna, had she? Where’d she think she was goin’, to a party?
“C’mon, Dancer. Let’s go.” He loped up to the point riders, and when Curly and the new hand, Cassidy, gave him a thumbs-up, he dropped back to the drag position. The air was so thick he could almost chew it.
Skip rode with his chin tucked into his chest, and when Zach fell in beside him, the lanky cowhand didn’t look up.
“Go change with Curly,” Zach shouted. Skip touched two fingers to his hat and thundered off to the head of the herd. In a few minutes, Curly appeared to ride drag.
“Thanks, boss,” he yelled. “Gettin’ bored up front.”
Zach laughed. Nothing much got the tubby, blond cowhand down, not even riding drag on a scorching, windless day. Even the cottonwood trees were drooping.
He peered ahead to locate Miss Murray. Crazy name, Alexandra. Like some English queen or something. Yep, there she was, off to the side, trailing the swing riders, Juan and Jase, and losing ground.
She wasn’t moving fast enough to keep up, he noted. Pretty soon she’d be eating even more dust back here with Curly, and then she’d drop farther and farther behind, and that would slow down the entire outfit. He clenched his jaw and spurred forward.
Chapter Three (#u7f29011c-f6ff-5395-84cf-b633a27f70d8)
Alex scrunched her eyes shut and prayed the horse would keep moving forward alongside the herd even if she wasn’t looking. After a minute she cracked open one eyelid. Puffy white clouds floated in the unbelievably blue sky over her head—faces, fantastical cats, even castles—and in the distance rose snow-capped mountains. Oh, how cool they looked!
Her mouth was crunchy with grit and dust, and she could scarcely draw the filthy air in through her nostrils. Tears streamed down her cheeks. She closed her eyes again.
Aunt Alice had been right. It had taken her only half a day on horseback to realize that a girl raised in the city should never, never, never go on a cattle drive. She had never been so tired, so filthy, so miserable in her entire life. And this is only the first day.
A glimmer of understanding about her mother penetrated her roiling thoughts. Mama had always refused to go outdoors unless it was to tea at the Savoy Hotel. Her mother liked to be warm and clean and dressed in the latest fashion, and she had always arranged her life for the maximum comfort with a minimum effort. Maybe Mama had known something Alex didn’t.
Something jostled her, and she snapped her lids open. Zach Strickland’s black horse was beside her mount. He tipped his head to indicate she should pull off to the side, then reined in and reached over to grasp her horse’s bridle.
She ran her tongue over her gritty teeth and opened her mouth. “Is something wrong?”
“Maybe.” He gave her a look and quickly glanced away, then poured water from his canteen over a blue bandanna and pressed it into her hand. “Tie this over your nose and mouth. Keeps out the dust.” He kicked his horse and trotted off.
“Thank you,” she called after him, but he gave no sign he’d heard. Hurriedly, she tied on the wet bandanna and drew in a mercifully grit-free breath. Oh, no. He would surely have noticed her tear-streaked face. Darn him! She hated it when she appeared weak and wishy-washy.
Like her mother.
With a groan she snatched up the reins and urged her mount forward. She hated Zach Strickland. Anyone who would revel in her distress was no gentleman.
But he wasn’t reveling. Actually, he had done her a kindness. It was a civilized gesture, she acknowledged. Well, she’d thanked him, hadn’t she? That was all the good manners she could summon up on this awful, scorching afternoon.
Oh, Aunt Alice, what have I done?
How many more hours were there before she could climb down off this animal and rest her aching thighs? And her bottom. She squinted up at the sun. Almost straight overhead, which must mean it was nearly noon. Did that mean lunch? She could endure anything if there was a meal at the end. She kicked her heels into the horse’s flanks and jolted forward over an expanse of tiny purple flowers.
But lunchtime came and went, and still the cowhands prodded the bellowing animals forward. She had long since gulped down the last of the lukewarm contents of her canteen, and her growling stomach didn’t let her forget for a single sunbaked minute that she was hungry. Desperately so. Right now she’d eat anything, a handful of cracker crumbs, a morsel of desiccated cheese, even a mouthful of the soft leather glove gripping her reins.
This was misery, all right. Aunt Alice hadn’t varnished the truth one bit. She thought longingly of the wide, shaded front porch at the Rocking K ranch house, then determinedly shook her thoughts back to reality. There must be shade ahead somewhere; tall trees with blue-green needles bordered their route, and underneath them she glimpsed a mossy green carpet and some sort of green, grassy plant no more than six inches high.
But there was no shade out here. Apparently there was to be no noon meal, either. She bit her lip. The bandanna helped some, but underneath it the hot air felt as if it were suffocating her. At least it kept out the gnats swarming around her head.
Then out of the dust emerged a sweat-streaked sorrel, and Juan, the young boy, was smiling at her.
He reined in close and thrust a hard biscuit into her hand. “Eat!”
“Thank you!” Oh, no, that was wrong, he was Mexican, wasn’t he? “Gracias!”
He flashed her a grin and galloped off through the dust. Why hadn’t she thought to bring a biscuit, or an apple, or something?
Her aunt had suggested packing a clean shirt and an extra pair of underdrawers in the drawstring canvas bag rolled up behind her saddle. She couldn’t blame her for forgetting to mention biscuits.
They didn’t stop until late afternoon, and by then Alex’s throat was so parched she couldn’t even spit. Ahead of her stretched lush green grass and a stand of leafy willow trees and...surely she was beginning to hallucinate...the chuck wagon, parked next to a burbling stream.
She blinked hard. She must be dreaming.
She edged her mount close to the rear wagon wheel and dismounted. The instant her boots touched the ground her knees buckled. She grabbed the saddle and hung on.
“Señorita,” Roberto said at her shoulder. “You must put horse in corral, not dismount next to cook wagon.”
She groaned. “I can’t let go, Roberto. I can’t walk.”
Carefully he pried her fingers off the saddle, grasped her around the waist and settled her on the ground with her back propped against the wheel. “Cherry!” he shouted to the wrangler. “Come get the señorita’s horse.”
Alex leaned forward and dropped her aching head onto her bent knees. Footsteps approached, and the next minute her saddle plopped down beside her and she heard the horse’s hooves clop away.
“Thank you!” she called after whoever had taken her mount.
“Ride too long today,” Roberto observed. She nodded, her forehead pressed against her jeans.
“Be plenty sore mañana. I go get boss.”
“No!” She jerked her head up. “Don’t get him.” She didn’t want to appear weak in front of Mister I-Told-You-So Strickland.
Roberto stood surveying her, his hands propped at his waist. A stained homespun apron covered his bulky form. “I think yes, señorita. You hurt much, no?”
She sighed. “Yes, Roberto. Much. Very much.”
“Ay de mi,” the old man murmured. He moved away and Alex concentrated on straightening one leg, then the other. She tried three times before she gave up.
Then Trail Boss Zach Strickland was standing before her, his long legs spread wide and a stony hardness in his green eyes that made her shudder. He was not smiling. “Sore, huh?”
She clamped her teeth together and nodded.
“Not surprised,” he said. “We covered ten miles today.”
“Ten miles!” Ten whole miles? In her entire life she hadn’t ridden more than two miles, and that was along a shaded bridle path.
“Do you always ride this many miles in a single day?”
He shook his head, the dark hair streaked with gray dust. “Nope. Usually ride twelve to fifteen miles each day, but today bein’ our first day out, the cattle need some trail learning. And you, bein’ a tenderfoot, need some trail learning, too. We’ll ride more miles tomorrow.”
“Where did all these cows come from? Surely Uncle Charlie’s ranch is not big enough for—”
“Huh! Charlie’s ranch is plenty big, plus we picked up some steers from neighboring ranches.” He leaned forward. “Don’t call ’m ‘cows’ on a trail drive unless you wanna get laughed at.” He shot her a hard look. “But as for where they came from, Miss City Girl, cows come from other cows. And a bull, of course.”
“I see.” How could she ever explain about cows and bulls in a city newspaper?
“Got any more dumb questions, Dusty?”
Dusty? She must look a frightful mess for him to call her that. She wiped her sweaty, gritty hands on her shirtfront. “No, no more questions. But...but I, um, I find that I...I cannot walk,” she confessed.
“Not surprised,” he said again. “Well, let’s get it done.” He reached down, grasped her under the arms and heaved her to her feet.
“Ouch-ouch-ouch!”
“Yeah,” he said, his voice dry. “Come on.” He swung her aching body up into his arms and strode away from the chuck wagon and past the roped-off horse corral. When he came to the stream, he paced up and down the bank and suddenly halted, stepped forward and dropped her, bottom first, into the cold water.
“What are you doing?” she screeched. She tried to scramble to the bank, but he laid one hand on her shoulder and pressed down. “Stay there,” he ordered. “Cold water will help. I’ll be back in thirty minutes.”
She had no choice. She could barely move.
Chapter Four (#u7f29011c-f6ff-5395-84cf-b633a27f70d8)
Zach tramped away from the stream where he’d dumped Miss Murray, or Dusty, as he now thought of her, and halted at the chuck wagon. “Save her some supper, Roberto.”
“Si, boss. But she will not be much hungry.”
“She’ll eat.” He left the aging cook chuckling over his pot of beans and settled himself at the campfire next to Juan.
The young man leaned toward him. “The señorita, she is okay?”
“She is okay, yes. Mad, but okay.”
“Madre mia. She will not be smile tomorrow.”
“Not much,” Zach agreed. Maybe not at all. He kinda felt sorry for her, but kinda not sorry at the same time. Damn Charlie for insisting she come along on this drive. It was no place for a woman. A fancy-assed, citified, back-East newspaper reporter woman was about as welcome as a swarm of locusts.
The clang of a steel triangle announced supper, and the hands around the campfire stampeded to the chuck wagon and lined up with tin plates in their hands. Roberto slapped thick slices of beef onto them, ladled on beans and topped the pile with his special warm tortillas.
Zach brought up the rear of the line, ate leisurely and mentally calculated when Dusty’s half hour would be up.
“Hey, boss,” someone called. “Where’s our newspaper lady?”
Zach laid down his fork and shoved to his feet. “Comin’ right up.”
* * *
Footsteps crunched over the sandy stream bank, and Alex clenched her fists as tall, rangy Zach Strickland came toward her.
“I want you to get me out of here!” she sputtered. “Right now!”
“Yes, ma’am!” He splashed into the water, grabbed her shoulders and jerked her upright.
“Ow! Ow, that hurts!”
“Roberto’s got some liniment in one of his secret cubbyholes. Might help some.”
“Oh, yes, please.”
He swung her upright and half dragged, half walked her onto dry ground. “Not so fast,” she pleaded.
He propped her against a thick pine trunk and stood surveying her. “Look, Dusty, you shouldn’t be out here with us. A cattle drive is rough, even on a seasoned cowhand. For a greenhorn it’s suicidal.”
She said nothing, just stared at the trail boss she was coming to detest. He had overlong black hair that brushed the tips of his ears and eyes the color of moss. Right now they were narrowed at her.
“Tomorrow you’re going back to the Rocking K,” he announced. “I’ll send Curly with you, and he can catch up with us before we hit the river. Right now, though, supper’s on, and you don’t want to miss Roberto’s beans and tortillas.”
“No,” she said.
His dark eyebrows went up. “No, what?”
“I’m not going back.” She tried to shove away from the tree trunk, but her legs still felt like jelly.
He propped his hands on his hips. “In case you forgot, Miss Murray, I’m the trail boss on this drive. You do what I say.”
“No,” she repeated. “I don’t work for you, Mister Trail Boss. I work for the Chicago Times. And that’s who I take orders from.”
“Nope, don’t work that way, Dusty. On the trail you take orders from me.”
She raised her chin. “When we’re ‘on the trail,’ I will take orders from you, but that does not include sending me back to the ranch. That is tantamount to firing me, and as I said, I don’t work for you.”
He stared at her for a long moment with those unnerving gray-green eyes. “I don’t fancy nursemaiding you, whining and stumbling over your boots, for the next four hundred miles. Cattle driving is a tough business. You’re gonna get river mud up your nose and grasshoppers in your hair. By tomorrow night, you’ll have spent another ten or twelve hours in the saddle and we’ll just see what tune you’re playin’ then.”
“Are you a betting man, Mr. Strickland?” She put as much frost in her voice as she could manage. “I will wager you one silver dollar I will be playing my own tune. And that means I will be riding on to Winnemucca with the rest of you.”
Zach rolled his eyes. “I never bet with a fool, Dusty, but in your case I’m makin’ an exception.”
He walked her back to camp and sat her down at the campfire. Roberto brought her a tin plate and a fork and settled it on her lap, then balanced a mug of coffee on a flat rock beside her. “There ees whiskey, señorita,” he whispered. “You wish?”
“No, thank you, Roberto. I do not drink spirits.”
“Long night tonight,” he murmured. “Long day mañana.”
She shook her head. “I will manage.” Somehow.
Zach looked up. “Roberto, after supper, give her some of that liniment you squirrel away.”
“Si. Good idea.”
“Hey, Miss Murray?” Jase called from across the smoldering fire pit. “You gonna write about us?” Jase was the one with the unruly blond hair. She wondered if he got grasshoppers in it.
“Why, yes, I am.”
“Whoo-eee,” he exulted. “You hear that, boys? We’re gonna be in the newspaper. We’re gonna be famous!”
Curly sat bolt upright. “Yeah? How famous?”
Alex studied the rapt faces around the fire. “Well...” She paused for dramatic effect and sneaked a look at Zach Strickland’s unreadable countenance. “More than twenty thousand people read the Chicago Times every day.”
“No funnin’?” Curly asked.
“No funning,” Alex assured him. “And I will want to interview each one of you for my articles.”
She could scarcely hear herself think over the cheers. Yes, she would most certainly write about them. And she’d also write about the body-breaking punishment of a trail drive. That is, she would if she could get her tortured body over to the chuck wagon to retrieve her notebook and pencil.
She groaned and stared at the plate of cold beans in her lap. She would last until she rode down the streets of Winnemucca with all those cows or she would die trying.
* * *
Zach kicked a hot coal back into the fire pit and surveyed the camp. Roberto had long since splashed water on the canvas-wrapped carcass of the calf he’d slaughtered and hung on a hook in the chuck wagon, washed up the supper plates and crawled under the wagon to sleep. All but two of the cowhands had rolled out their bedrolls. Curly and Cassidy, the new man, were night-herding, riding around and around the steers bedded down in the meadow, moving in opposite directions and singing songs to keep them calm. The kind of songs a mother would sing.
He’d always liked night-herding. It gave him a chance to talk to Dancer, reflect on the day’s events and plan for tomorrow’s, at least as much as anyone driving a thousand head of prime beef could plan. Usually, whatever could go wrong, did.
In spite of all the problems, Zach liked this life. When he’d come West as a boy, right away he’d liked the freewheeling, easy existence of a cowboy, and later, when he’d risen to be Charlie Kingman’s top hand, he liked the admiration working for the Rocking K brought him. He liked being in charge, doing his job and doing it well. I’m responsible only to myself, my cattle and my ranch hands.
A successful drive brought him the gratitude and respect of people he cared about, Charlie and Alice Kingman. And this drive would bring him something else, something he’d dreamed about ever since he was a scrawny kid with no home; it would bring him enough money to buy a spread of his own and start his own ranch.
He sucked in a lungful of sagebrush-scented air and surveyed the camp. Dusty sat as close to the chuck wagon as she could get without nuzzling right up to Roberto. He guessed Dusty didn’t trust his cowhands. Zach did, though. Had to, on a long drive like this.
After supper he’d watched her limp off behind the chuck wagon with the bottle of Roberto’s liniment clutched in her hand. When she returned, her gait had evened out some and she was walking easier, at least easier enough to let her climb back on her horse tomorrow. He knew she’d be sleeping in wet jeans; by morning they’d still be pretty clammy. That ought to hurry things up a bit for her deciding she ought to hightail it back to the Rocking K.
He’d sure hate to take that silver dollar off her, but he guessed that by tomorrow she’d yell uncle and turn back, and then he’d be a buck richer.
* * *
Alex huddled by the campfire, sipping from a mug of coffee Roberto kept refilling from the blackened metal coffeepot and staring into the flames. What have I gotten myself into? She could never, never admit it to Mister Know-It-All Strickland, but she was starting to feel just the tiniest bit uneasy. The night was so dark out here in the middle of nowhere.
All around the fire pit were sprawled-out cowboys shrouded in their blankets—a lump here, and one over there, and there. They lay without moving, probably too tired to even twitch.
The trail boss was tramping around out there in the dark somewhere, and while she could hear him, she couldn’t see anything beyond the circle of dying firelight where she sat.
She pulled out her notebook and began writing.
First she described the camp and the dwindling campfire, the dark shapes of the sleeping cowhands, even how the camp smelled after their supper of tortillas and beans. But she did not write about how frightened she felt at the huge expanse of black, black sky overhead. Or the stinging mosquitos. Or her aching muscles.
Finally she admitted she was exhausted and she needed to sleep. She tiptoed to the chuck wagon, scrabbled around in the back and pulled out her roll of blankets. Just one other unclaimed bedroll remained. Roberto had long since crawled under the wagon to sleep, so this one had to belong to Zach Strickland.
She stood uncertainly near the remains of the campfire, wondering where to spread out her blankets. It would be most improper to curl up next to one of the cowhands, even one who was sound asleep, but out beyond the haphazard sprinkling of bedrolls it was pitch black. Wild animals could be lurking out there. Wolves, even.
Or... She caught her breath. Even wild Indians.
She crept forward to an unoccupied space and spread out her blue wool blanket. The other, a forest green one Aunt Alice said wouldn’t show the dirt, she wrapped around her body. Then she lay down on the hard ground and pulled the edges of the blue blanket over herself.
She couldn’t close her eyes for a long time, and when she did they popped open at the slightest sound. Never in her life had she realized nighttime could be so noisy!
She listened to the faint hoofbeats of the horses ridden by the two night-herders Mr. Strickland had assigned. One of them was singing something; she couldn’t identify the song, but it was soothing. Which was no doubt what that herd of cows out there somewhere was feeling. She, however, was feeling anything but soothed.
Something made a whoohing sound off in the dark. An owl. She hoped. Indians made wolf calls, didn’t they? Not owl calls. At least that’s what she’d read once in a dime novel she’d found in Uncle Charlie’s bookcase.
Something rustled out beyond the fire pit. Oh, mercy! What was that? A... What did they call them? A mountain lion? She tugged her blankets more securely around her.
Suddenly she became aware of another sound, a crunching noise. She lay still, listening. Footsteps, that was it! They came closer, and then she was startled by a low voice at her back.
“Dusty?”
“Y-yes?”
“Everything all right?”
“N-no. I mean, yes. Everything is just fine.”
She heard him chuckle. “I mean, did Roberto’s liniment help your sore backsi—your sore muscles?”
“Of course,” she answered.
“Good. Just checking whether you’re ready to throw in the towel tomorrow and hightail it back to a hot bath and a soft bed.”
She refused to dignify that remark with an acknowledgment of any kind. Instead, she wrapped her blankets more securely around her and purposefully closed her eyes.
* * *
Before the sun rose the next morning, the hands were lined up at the chuck wagon for Roberto’s thick-sliced bacon, fried potatoes and sourdough biscuits. Zach studied them as they lounged bleary-eyed around the campfire, warming their behinds and shoveling in their breakfasts. All nine men and one stubborn woman.
He watched Dusty more closely than anyone else. She’d tamed her long, wavy hair into one thick, glossy-looking braid that hung down her back and swung enticingly when she moved. She was wearing a form-fitting blue plaid shirt that hinted at lush breasts beneath the light cotton material, and he swallowed hard.
Didn’t help. After her half hour in the stream yesterday, her jeans had shrunk so tight across her butt that watching her move made his mouth go dry.
He couldn’t help wondering all kinds of things about her. What made her tick? What made a woman who looked the way she did, all soft and desirable, want to pal around with a hardened bunch of cowboys instead of staying home with a husband and a dozen children? What made Dusty prickly as a desert cactus with a spine stiff as a railroad tie?
She tucked into her fried spuds, crunched up the bacon slices like a hungry kid and carefully slipped two of Roberto’s float-off-your-plate biscuits into her shirt pocket. He tried not to smile. Looked like she’d learned something yesterday.
He tossed the dregs of his coffee into the fire and stood up. “Time to roll.”
Twenty minutes later, the chuck wagon lumbered off after Wally, the scout, to set up ten or fifteen miles farther on, somewhere with good grass and enough water for the herd. His wrangler, Cherry, followed with the rest of the horses in the remuda, and the two point men, José and Skip, uncovered the bell clapper on the lead steer and set off. A muddle of lowing animals thundered after the clanging bell.
Zach let out a satisfied breath and studied the pinkening sky over the mountains in the distance. God, he loved chasing steers across pretty country with the sunlight coming up and glinting off their horns.
He spurred forward and began calling out orders. “Curly, Juan, cover the flanks. Cassidy, you ride drag.”
He guessed stubborn, determined Miss Dusty Murray would tag along somewhere, at least until suppertime. Then he’d pry her off her horse, drop her into another cold stream, collect his silver dollar and send her back to the Rocking K. Kinda made him chuckle.
He had to admit he just plain didn’t trust a woman that pretty. Or that sassy. He set his eyes on the trail ahead and kicked his horse into a trot.
* * *
A cattle drive, Alex acknowledged as she guided her mount beside the mass of mooing cows, had to be one of the strangest endeavors ever conceived by modern man. No one would believe most of the things that went on, so her task as a newspaper reporter was easy: write about everything and make it interesting.
Today, for instance, she noticed strange little brown birds no bigger than sparrows that rode along on the backs of the steers, pecking insects off their hides. The sparrows weren’t the least intimidated by the lumbering animals beneath them, and the steers didn’t seem to mind. In a way, it was sort of like Zach Strickland and herself; she survived the best way she could, and Zach paid no attention.
This morning she’d gotten another taste of the strange habits of cowboys on a trail drive. Roberto rose before the moon had set and began to rattle around in the chuck wagon, cutting out biscuit rounds and frying bacon. Before the sun was up, the cowhands dragged themselves out of their bedrolls.
All except the scout, Wally Mortenson. Wally was an older man with laugh lines etched deep in his tanned face, and of all things, he woke up singing. Sometimes it was a hymn; sometimes it was a song so bawdy her ears burned. “Oh, my sweetheart’s not true like she should be,” he bellowed. “At night she lies close and she—”
His voice would break off and he would swear at whoever had kicked him into silence and start again.
The day started off well. Alex was riding a roan gelding that seemed to like her, his gait was gentle enough that her sore behind didn’t hurt too much, and the weather was clear and sunny. She rode for an hour, getting used to the dust clouds and the gnats and the heat, and then spurred her horse to join Juan and Curly, who were riding in the flank position.
All of a sudden the sun that had been blazing down on her only moments before slid behind a cloud. For a brief moment she welcomed the suddenly cooler air, and she lifted her face to the breeze and let it wash over her perspiration-soaked shirt. But when she raked off her wide-brimmed black hat, she felt droplets of water dampen her hair.
“Miss Alex!” Curly pointed to the sky. “Rainstorm.”
Very quickly it grew darker and wetter, and then thunder began to rumble overhead. Oh, heavens, a thundershower! She looked around for some shelter, but other than an occasional stand of spindly cottonwood trees, there was nothing to shield her from the rain, and it was now coming down in sheets.
Alex clapped her hat back on, snugged it down and tried to see through the mist enveloping them. The herd kept plodding forward, with Curly and Juan keeping pace with the animals. Good heavens, would they just keep going?
Yes, they would.
She tried to keep up. After another rain-soaked mile, large patches of boggy grass slowed her progress even more, and then there were big, wide puddles and stretches of mud-slicked ground that splattered when she rode over them.
Rain slashed at her face. Her thoroughly wet shirt stuck to her body as if glued on; her jeans felt cold as water soaked through the denim to her thighs. Despite the rain, she worked hard to keep up with Juan and Curly, who were still racing after straggling cows and whooping it up, as they always did.
She was thoroughly miserable, wet and cold, her clothes sodden and her hat dripping water onto her jeans. She had never felt so cold and clammy, so disheveled or so disheartened.
They rode on, pushing the herd along, for another hour, and then, as suddenly as it had started, the rain stopped and the sun burst through a cloud. Curly and Juan kept the herd moving as the puddles began to dry up, and her wet shirt and jeans began to steam in the sunshine. Now she felt hot and clammy.
By dusk, the moving mass of cows and riders slowed and finally dribbled to a stop near the chuck wagon. The tired cowhands drove the herd to a broad green meadow and bedded them down for the night.
Alex rode straight for the rope corral where the wrangler, Cherry, had gathered the remuda. She left her roan in his care and made a beeline for the chuck wagon. Her boots squished. All she wanted to do was peel off her sticky garments and put on dry clothes.
But Roberto had an iron Dutch oven bubbling over a blazing fire and he clanged his spoon around and around in an iron triangle to announce that supper was ready. One by one, the hands straggled in, dismounted and handed their reins to the wrangler. Then they stumbled tiredly toward the fire and the tin plates the cook was loading up with beef stew and hot biscuits.
She had lived through her first thunderstorm on the trail, and she wanted to record the details right away, while they were still fresh in her mind. Her notebook was damp, but the words were still legible. She nibbled on her pencil and started to write.
“Ain’tcha gonna eat supper, Miss Alex?” Curly inquired.
“Yeah,” Skip echoed. “Good thing we had that thunderstorm today, huh?”
“You crazy?” Curly snapped. “Wet is wet and miserable, and steers don’t need washin’.”
“Aw, wise up, Curly. The boss couldn’t send Miss Alex back to the Rocking K during a thunderstorm. That’s good, ain’t it?”
Oh, yes, Alex thought. This rainstorm had come at a most fortuitous time. Being wet and miserable for a few hours was a small price to pay for continuing on this adventure.
Suddenly she found she was ravenously hungry.
* * *
After another bone-crunching day, Alex spied the chuck wagon pulled up in a grassy meadow overlooking a river. She was half dead with exhaustion and so hungry her stomach hurt, and she felt hot and grubby and short-tempered. She sent a longing glance at the serene blue-green river behind the wagon and immediately started to plan how she could indulge in a private, cooling bath with nine cowboys and a cook in the vicinity.
She’d think of something, anything, that would allow her to sponge away the sweat and the faint smell of Roberto’s liniment that still clung to her skin. She might not be a seasoned trail rider, but she was not without wiles. Her chance came after supper that evening when the hands were gathered around the fire.
“Gentlemen,” she began. “I have a proposition for you.”
Jase jerked upright, knocking over his mug of coffee. “Uh, what kind of proposition?”
“Not the kind you’re thinkin,’” Zach snapped. “Mind your manners, boys.”
Aha, she had certainly captured someone’s attention. “Very well,” she said in her best businesslike manner, “I will explain. In exchange for one hour of privacy, complete privacy, I will conduct my first interview with one of you for my newspaper column.”
“Which one of us?” Jase asked.
“You gentlemen will decide which one it will be,” she answered. “You will draw straws. The short straw wins.”
“Quick, Cherry,” Jase said. “Go get us some sticks!”
“Yeah,” Skip echoed. “Short ones.”
Alex turned her gaze on Zach, who was sitting across the fire pit from her. “Mr. Strickland, may I rely on you to supervise the drawing?”
“Maybe.”
She blinked. “Maybe? You do want it to be fair and square, do you not?”
“Sure.” He sent her a long look. “For a price.”
“Oh.” Her heartbeat faltered. “What price would you ask?”
“I don’t want to be included in your drawing. Don’t want you writin’ about me.”
“You don’t want to be interviewed? I cannot write a story if I have no, um, factual information.”
“I said I don’t want to be interviewed,” he repeated, his voice sharp. “That’s my price. Take it or leave it.”
She blinked again. What on earth ailed this man? Did he not want—oh, of course. He did not want her to write any newspaper stories at all. He wanted, he planned, to send her back to the Rocking K. Well, she would show him.
“Very well, I accept your condition.” She suppressed a grin of triumph. “On one condition of my own.”
One dark eyebrow went up. “Yeah? What condition?”
“Yeah,” came a chorus of male voices. “What condition?”
“That I am granted my hour of privacy first, before you all draw your straws. All except Mr. Strickland, that is.” She waited half a heartbeat. “And...” she caught a glimmer of something in Zach’s eyes “...that Mr. Strickland is the one who stands guard while I am, um, being private.”
“Fair enough,” Jase said. “Whaddya say, boss?”
He didn’t answer for so long Alex thought he hadn’t heard her proposal.
“Boss?” Jase prompted.
“Mr. Strickland?” she said, her voice as sweet as she could make it. “What is your decision?”
He stood and tossed the rest of his coffee into the fire. “Come on, Miss Murray. Let’s get your ‘privacy’ over with so the hands can draw their straws and turn in. Night’s half over.”
She shot to her feet. “Cherry, please gather your sticks. I will return in one hour.”
She walked downstream, away from the camp, looking for a sandy beach and a pool suitable for bathing. Zach walked five paces behind her, whistling through his teeth. Suddenly she stopped short. There it was, the perfect spot, a deep pool screened by willow trees.
“Here,” she announced. His whistling ceased, and she waited until he caught up with her.
“Right.” He tipped his head toward the copse of trees. “I’ll be over there.”
“Standing guard,” she reminded him.
“Yeah.” He strode off and disappeared. “Your hour starts now,” he called from somewhere behind the greenery.
Quickly she stripped off her shirt, boots and jeans, listening for telltale signs that he was creeping up to spy on her. He wouldn’t do that, would he? Well, he might, she acknowledged. On second thought, no, he wouldn’t. Zach Strickland was the most maddening man she’d ever come across, but something told her he was a man of his word.
She stripped off her camisole and underdrawers. Then she took three quick steps across the sandy creek bank and dived headfirst into the most blissful, cool bath she could imagine.
She swam and splashed, unwound her braid and washed the grit out of her hair, then floated on her back and gazed up at the purpling sky overhead. Dusk was beautiful out here, soft with tones of lavender and violet, and the air so sweet it was like wine.
“You’ve got ten minutes,” came Zach’s voice from somewhere.
She paddled to shore, dragged herself up on the narrow beach and stood shivering while a million crickets yammered at her. Drat! She had no way to get dry except to just stand still and let the water evaporate.
“Four minutes,” he called.
Double drat. Not enough time to air-dry. She grabbed her camisole to use as a towel. But when she’d blotted up all the water, the garment was too sodden to wear, so she wadded it up, stuffed it in the back pocket of her jeans and pulled on her drawers, followed by her shirt and trousers. Her wet hair dripped all over her shirt, but it couldn’t be helped. At least it was clean.
She heard Zach stalking toward her through the brush. “Time’s up. You ready?”
Well, no, she wasn’t, but at least she’d washed off the trail dust. “Look,” she teased when he appeared. She flipped her wet hair at him. “No grasshoppers!”
Unexpectedly he laughed out loud.
“Tomorrow night when I bathe—”
“Hold on a minute,” he interrupted her. “The hands don’t take a bath every night, and neither will you.”
“But we’ll all smell...well, funny after riding in the sun all day, won’t we?”
“Yeah. Get used to it. We don’t take baths unless there’s a river or a stream handy, and that isn’t too often. We sleep in our duds, too.”
“Oh.” That was another snippet of information she could put in her newspaper column, but it wouldn’t help her sense of smell for the next few weeks.
“So,” he continued, “when you’re close to anybody on a trail drive, just don’t breathe too deep. Or maybe hold your nose.”
“Oh,” she said again.
Back in camp the men sat around the fire, eyeing the fistful of twigs Cherry held in one roughened hand.
“All set, miss?” the graying wrangler inquired. The man was bent from years on the trail, she guessed, but there was something about him she liked. For one thing, he moved so gracefully and deliberately it was like watching a man do a slow sort of dance. And for another, he was the only one of the men who didn’t watch everything she did.
“All set,” she answered. “You may proceed with the drawing.”
The cowhands hunched forward, and one by one each of them drew a stick from Cherry’s gnarled fingers. Zach stood on the other side of the campfire, watching.
“Aw, my stick’s longer’n a steer’s horn,” Skip grumbled.
“Mine, too,” José said.
Some of the men held their sticks close to their chest. Others, disappointed, snapped theirs in two and tossed the pieces into the flames. At last a chortle rose from Curly, who leaped up and capered around the fire. “It’s me! I got the short stick! She’s gonna interview me first.”
“And we’re all gonna listen,” Cassidy drawled. “Ain’t we, boys?”
“This is okay with you, señorita?” José inquired politely.
“More important,” came Zach’s commanding voice, “is it okay with Curly? He might not want you hearin’ all his secrets.”
Jase snorted. “Heck, boss, twenty thousand people back East are gonna read all about ’m. After that, Curly won’t have any secrets!”
Curly settled his work-hardened frame next to Alex and sent her a shy smile. “Guess I’m ready, Miss Murray. Fire away.”
Quietly, Roberto set a brimming mug of coffee at her elbow. She took a sip, fished her notebook and pencil out of her shirt pocket and began.
“Your name is Curly, is that right?”
“Yeah. My real name’s Garner, miss. Thaddeus Garner.”
“Then why are you called Curly? I notice your hair is straight as a licorice whip.” The men guffawed.
“Dunno, ma’am. I’ve always been Curly, ever since I kin remember.”
“Very well, Curly. Now, tell me all about yourself, where you were born, where you grew up, how you came to be on this cattle drive.”
“Well, lessee, now. I was born in Broken Finger, Idaho. That is, I think I was. My momma could never remember. Some days she said it was Mule Heaven and other days she said it was Broken Finger. Pa died before I could ask him.”
“And did you grow up in Broken Finger? Or Mule Heaven?”
“Guess so, miss. Leastways Ma never moved whilst I was growin’ up. Went to school for a while, but I never seemed to learn much.”
Jase snorted. “Didn’t learn nuthin’, ya mean.”
“Didn’t learn anything,” Skip corrected with a grin.
“You neither, huh?” Jase shot back.
Alex tapped her pencil against the notepad. “Gentlemen, please. Let Curly finish his story.”
Curly talked and talked while Alex jotted down pages of notes. The man talked for so long that the other hands began to drift off and retrieve their bedrolls from the chuck wagon, lay them out around the fire and nod off to sleep. And still Curly talked.
Alex’s hand began to cramp, but she kept writing. Finally Curly ran out of steam. She thanked him profusely and he blushed like a schoolgirl.
Her fingers ached, but it was a small price to pay for a long, cooling bath. And the notes for an excellent newspaper story.
Chapter Five (#u7f29011c-f6ff-5395-84cf-b633a27f70d8)
After Curly’s interview, Zach sent him off to night-herd with José, listened to his wrangler’s report about the remuda and grudgingly admitted that Miss Alexandra Murray—Dusty—had more sand than he’d thought. Today she’d ridden a full twelve hours across miles of sunbaked sagebrush and bunch grass without once complaining, or crying, or doing any of a dozen other things most women would under the circumstances. And she could still sit up and talk past suppertime.
Not only that, he’d learned more about Curly tonight than he’d gleaned in the seven years he’d known the man. Dusty had a way of asking questions that sort of drew forth information. And secrets. He’d never known before that Curly had once had a wife. Or that his newborn son had died at birth, along with the baby’s mother.
But he knew one thing for certain—he’d never let Dusty within twenty yards of himself with her pencil and that notepad in her hand. The woman was downright dangerous. He had secrets, too, things he’d never told a living soul.
He heard Roberto’s wheezy breathing from under the chuck wagon. Between his cook’s snoring and the scrape of crickets, the night seemed to close in around him in an unsettling net. Something was bothering him, but he couldn’t figure out what it was. Curly’s dead wife? Juan’s polite but pointed remark about the river they’d have to ford soon? Swollen, the kid said. “And the current muy swift, Señor Boss.”
Or was it the way his new hand, Cassidy, kept staring at Dusty and edging closer and closer to her while she sat talking with Curly?
Last night she’d rolled out her pallet as close to the chuck wagon and Roberto as she could get without scaring the cook out of a night’s sleep. Zach noted that tonight she’d done the same thing.
Cassidy always seemed to be there beside her around the campfire. Not good. And when Dusty climbed into her bedroll, there was Cassidy, throwing his blankets down right next to her.
Zach moved quietly to where she lay, her dark head poking out from her top blanket. Cassidy was sound asleep. Zach laid one hand on her shoulder.
“I’m not asleep,” she murmured.
“Get up and come with me,” he said. She slipped out of her bedroll, and he rolled the blankets up under his arm and tipped his head toward the opposite side of the fire pit. She nodded, picked up her boots and quietly followed him.
He positioned her bedroll parallel to the dying coals and motioned for her to crawl in. Then he rolled out his own pallet next to hers. Now no one could reach her without first stepping over him or wading through hot coals.
“Understand?” he whispered.
“Yes. That man, Cassidy, makes me uneasy.”
“Yeah. Me, too.” He laid his revolver under the saddle he used for a pillow, positioned his hat over his face and closed his eyes.
“Thank you, Zach,” she murmured.
“Yeah,” he said.
“And I’m still here,” she breathed. “You owe me a silver dollar.”
“Yeah,” he said again. He hated to admit it, but he was halfway glad. Dusty was fun to watch.
He tried like the devil to go to sleep, and he would have succeeded if it hadn’t been for the quiet breathing of the woman beside him. He was so aware of her his toes itched.
He damn well didn’t want to be aware of her. He didn’t want to notice her or find himself watching her or listening for her voice. A female could be a dangerous thing. And a female on a cattle drive, a female he couldn’t help admiring, made him sweat bullets.
* * *
The next morning, an incident occurred that brought him up short. It wasn’t what happened, exactly; it was his puzzling anger about it. He never lost his temper. He’d learned long before he came out West, before he’d learned to ride or shoot a rifle or sweet-talk a girl, how to stuff down rage. So his reaction surprised him.
At first light he saw Cassidy snatch up Dusty’s white camisole where it hung drying on the chuck wagon towel rack and caper around camp, twirling the garment over his head. It made Zach see red.
He grabbed the lacy thing out of Cassidy’s hand and laid him flat with one punch. Then he stuffed the garment inside his vest and stalked out of camp to cool off down at the creek bank. When he returned, the men were sitting around the fire, sleepily shoveling down bacon and biscuits, and he sent Cassidy out to relieve one of the night-herders.
Dusty sat between Juan and Curly, calmly sipping a mug of coffee. Zach couldn’t stop staring at her chest. Without her camisole, he knew her bare nipples were pressing against that thin blue shirt, and it was doing funny things to his insides. His outsides, too.
He slipped the bit of cotton and lace out of his vest and without a word knelt beside her, pressed it into her hand and folded her fingers over it. She gave a little squeak, and he bit back a chuckle.
She leaped up, marched over to the horse Cherry had brought up for her today and pulled herself up into the saddle. Lordy, he’d have to work hard to keep his eyes off that all-too-female body of hers this morning.
It wasn’t easy.
Sometime around noon they entered a stretch of red-brown rocks interspersed with clumps of tall mustard, blazing bright yellow in the hot sun. Pretty stuff in the wild. In the summertime, Consuelo used armloads of it to make a kind of spicy-hot spread for venison or baked ham. He watched Dusty slow her mount to admire a patch of the weed. Probably gonna draw a picture of it in her notebook.
She looked up and bit her lip. “How will I ever learn everything there is to know about a cattle drive?” she asked.
“Everything? You don’t need to know ‘everything,’ Dusty. You just need to know enough to stay alive.”
“But my newspaper...the readers are simply fascinated by the West. How will I ever report enough to keep them entertained?”
Entertained! Hell’s bells, this drive means life or death for me, and all she wants to do is entertain?
“Well, I’ll tell ya.” He sent her a look from under the brim of his hat. “Do what Charlie told me when I first came to work for him.”
“And what would that be?”
“Keep your eyes and ears open, and your mouth shut.”
She gave him a sharp look, her lupine-colored eyes widening.
“Got it?” he snapped.
“Yes, sir, I have most certainly ‘got it.’ In order to keep my readers riveted to their morning newspapers, I thank the Lord I can scribble my notebook full of interesting facts while joggling along on the back of a horse. Nothing will escape me.” Her voice was so frosty it made him wince. “I do keep my eyes and ears open,” she continued. “And that includes noticing your...your insufferable rudeness. You will not hear another question out of me.”
He laughed out loud. “I’ll believe that when steers can fly.”
She sent him a smoldering look and gigged her mount away from him.
Sure hope you remember the “mouth shut” part, Dusty.
He reined away, but her horse started acting funny, and that caught his attention. She urged it closer to the rocks and all at once the animal shied and danced sideways. What the—Then the sorrel arched its back and bucked her out of the saddle.
She landed flat on her back. By the time he reached her, the horse had skittered off a ways, and out of the corner of his eye he saw what had startled it. Rattlesnake.
Dusty laid without moving. Zach pulled out his gun, shot the snake, then dropped out of the saddle and raced over to her. Her eyes were open, but she wasn’t breathing. Had the wind knocked out of her, he guessed. When he knelt beside her, she grabbed for his arm. Her face was white as flour and she was struggling to draw in a breath.
“You’re okay,” he barked. “You’re winded. Just lie easy.”
She tried to sit up, then sucked in a huge breath and started to cough, gasping for breath at the same time. “C-can’t breathe!” she choked out.
Zach rocked back on his heels. “Not surprising since you got thrown. Your horse shied at a rattler.”
Her eyes widened. “A s-snake?”
“Yeah. Horses are afraid of snakes.”
“P-people, t-too,” she said. “Oh, my s-stars, a snake!” She shuddered visibly.
Now that she was breathing better, he found himself mad as hell. “Dusty, there’s a whole lotta things out here that’ll spook a pilgrim like you. It’s time you turned tail and—”
She jerked upright and jabbed her forefinger into his chest. “Pilgrim! I am not a ‘pilgrim’ by any stretch of your minuscule imagination, Mr. Strickland.”
Hell, she sure had plenty of breath now. He caught her chest-poking hand and held it out to one side. “Damn right you’re a pilgrim. You’re a real beginner out here in the West. Oughtta know better than to ride close to the rocks on sunny days. And that’s another reason why—”
“I am most certainly not going back!” she hissed. “I can learn about snakes and rocks and...and other things. I intend to complete this cattle drive, and my newspaper assignment, so you can just stop yammering and let me get on with it!”
He stared at her.
She jerked her hand out of his grasp. “Did you hear me?”
“I heard you, all right. You’re more stubborn than a whole passel of mules, Dusty, but I’m the trail boss of this outfit, and I say you’re just too much damn trouble out here. I say you’re going back to the Rocking K.”
Before she could speak, Juan cantered up on his bay. “Is problema?”
“No!” Dusty yelled up at him.
“I’ll say,” Zach contradicted. “Horse threw her.”
“It wasn’t my fault,” she protested. “It...it was the snake!”
“Si,” Juan acknowledged with a sidelong glance at Zach. “The snake. And the horse, he did not like, so...” He made an eloquent somersaulting motion with his hand.
“Exactly,” Dusty said. She got to her feet, dusted off her jeans and advanced on her horse. Juan walked his mount forward, leaned over to grab the reins and laid them in her hand.
With a nod of thanks, she stuffed her boot into the stirrup and clawed her way up into the saddle. Then she tossed her head, stuck her nose in the air and kicked the horse into a gallop.
Juan and Zach looked at each other. “Mucho woman,” the young man breathed.
Zach shook his head. “Mucho trouble, you mean.”
“Si, maybe so. But ees ver’ pretty trouble, no? Like I say, Señor Boss, mucho woman.” Chuckling, he kicked his gelding and rode off.
Zach stomped over to remount, but instead stood looking after Dusty. Mucho problem. Very mucho.
* * *
Long days followed long days, one after the other, with nothing happening except endless hot, boring hours plodding after a herd of noisy cows, and listening to the thunder of hooves and the yipping of cowhands trying to keep them moving forward. Sometimes she wondered what the cowhands thought about during the interminable hours on horseback with nobody to talk to and nothing to do but chase after wandering animals.
They all smelled sweaty at the end of a day on the trail. When they could, the men bathed in creeks and rivers, and on Sundays, if Zach held the drive over for a day, they’d grab a cake of yellow lye soap and wash out their filthy garments. Like everyone else, she had only one pair of jeans plus an extra shirt and another pair of drawers, so every day she prayed for a camp beside a creek.
Did people in Chicago or Philadelphia or New York have any inkling what whole days lived like this were really like? She knew her readers would want to “see” what happened on a cattle drive, so part of the hours she spent on horseback she planned how she would write about it.
I’ll start out by describing the meadows full of red and yellow wildflowers that get trampled by thousands of animal hooves, and how the sky looks in the morning when the sun comes up, all pinky-orange, and how hot it gets at noon, and how the dust smells after it rains. And then I’ll...
* * *
A day later Zach’s frustration reached the boiling point. He told himself he was just tired, worried about getting a thousand head of prime beef to market, concerned about Cassidy and his over-interest in Dusty and just plain disgusted about nursemaiding a city girl who had no business on his cattle drive. He’d taken to watching her struggle to keep up with the herd as it lumbered along. Kinda enjoyed it, if he was honest about it.
She was green as grass on a horse, stiff in the saddle and inconsistent with the reins. Often the poor animal couldn’t read her contradictory signals and stopped dead in the middle of a meadow. Dusty had assured him she knew how to ride, but when he watched her, he sure doubted it. She probably rode on tame, city park bridle paths, ambling along with some poor dude she’d roped into an outing.
This afternoon was no different. There she was, trotting parallel to the herd through a meadow dotted with dandelions and patches of bright yellow mustard, pulling so hard on the reins he winced at what the bit was doing to the poor horse’s mouth. He spurred Dancer away and came up on the other side of the herd so he wouldn’t have to watch it.
Juan and Jase were riding flank, working hard because the herd seemed restless today. Probably the weather—part sun, part clouds and lots of wind. Juan tipped his hat. Jase started to say something, then broke off to chase a wandering steer.
Zach reined up and waited for the herd to pass, planning to relieve Curly, who was riding drag. The last animal lumbered past, and through the haze of dust behind them he glimpsed Dusty’s roan standing stock-still in the middle of a patch of grass. Riderless.
Guess the horse had had enough.
He trotted closer and sure enough, there was Dusty, in a heap on the ground. “You okay?” he shouted as he rode up.
“Yes, I think so. I fell off my horse.”
Zach snorted. Got bucked off, more likely. He dismounted and stood beside her. “Want a hand?”
“Yes, thank—” She started to reach up and gave a yelp of pain. “My arm hurts! And my shoulder.”
He knelt at her elbow. “Probably bruised it. Let me see.” He rolled back her shirt-sleeve to see if her arm was broken.
“Just sprained.” But when he touched her shoulder she cried out again.
“That hurt?”
“It most certainly does hurt,” she said through clenched teeth. “And I can’t move my arm.”
Oh, hell.
“Okay, let’s get you back on your horse.”
She sucked in a breath. “I—I don’t think I can ride. I’m right-handed and I won’t be able to hold the reins.”
“Gotta get you on your feet,” he said in a resigned tone. “You hold on to your hurt arm with your left hand.” He slid his hands around her waist and lifted her upright. “Ouch!” she cried. “That hurts!”
He walked the roan over and lifted her into the saddle as carefully as he could while she grabbed her injured arm and gave little groans of distress. Then he had to pry her left hand away from her right arm, which she was clutching, and lay the reins in her hand.
“Wait! I told you I’m right-handed, so how—”
“Any good cowhand can ride with the reins in either hand. So do it. And don’t jerk on the lines. Tossing you out of the saddle is the horse’s way of telling you that you’re not doing it right.”
“Oh.” Her voice sounded funny. “All right, I’ll try.”
Good girl. She might be green, but she had guts.
She urged the horse forward, and after the animal took a few halting steps, Zach strode over to where he’d left Dancer and hauled himself into the saddle. It was going to be a long, achy day for her. Part of him felt okay about that. Might teach her a lesson. The rest of him felt halfway sorry for her. He’d bruised a few shoulders in his time. Hurt like hell.
Hours later they came upon the chuck wagon and Cherry’s remuda on a rise overlooking a long valley. The herd plodded to a halt and the hands began turning their horses over to Cherry and washing up for supper. Almost against his will, Zach kept his eye on Dusty.
Curly lifted her out of the saddle, and she moved very slowly toward the wash bucket. Roberto stopped her.
“Señorita Alex, let me fix your arm.”
She followed him to the chuck wagon, where he pulled a clean dishtowel from one of his drawers and expertly fashioned it into a sling. Then he pressed the bottle of liniment into her hand.
“Tonight you must use this again. Make better.”
“Thank you, Roberto. I’m sorry I won’t be able to help you wash up the plates tonight.”
“No problema, señorita. I get José to help.” He spooned a big dollop of beans onto a tin plate and added a chunk of corn bread, then folded her left hand around the edge.
Zach watched her thank the old man again and settle herself on a log by the fire pit. The hands dug into their suppers, and Zach took his plate and a fork and went to stand outside the circle of firelight.
But Dusty just sat there, staring down at her plate.
Roberto noticed. “What is wrong, Señorita Alex? No hungry for my chili beans?”
“I...I can’t eat with my left hand. I can’t control the fork.”
The cook frowned. “I give you a spoon, okay?”
But after she dribbled beans down the front of her shirt it was clear she couldn’t manage the spoon, either.
Suddenly Zach couldn’t stand it one more minute. “Move over,” he ordered, settling himself next to her. He grabbed her spoon and loaded it up with beans. “You’re a lot of trouble, you know that? Open your mouth.”
Obediently she did so, and he shoveled some beans past her lips. She swallowed them down and looked up at him.
“Thank you, Zach.”
He gritted his teeth, broke off a bit of the corn bread and motioned for her to open her mouth again.
“Just like feeding a baby bird,” he muttered when the corn bread disappeared. Then he wished he hadn’t said it because her cheeks got pink, and when she glanced up there was real pain in her eyes.
Blue eyes, he noted again. Dark blue, like the morning glories Alice grew on the Rocking K porch trellis.
He bit his lip and loaded up her spoon again.
Chapter Six (#u7f29011c-f6ff-5395-84cf-b633a27f70d8)
The day started out like all the others, but after breakfast Cherry told Zach the remuda was worrying him. “Been awful hot and dry the last few days, boss. Mebbe they smell somethin’ on the wind.”
Zach patted the old man’s shoulder. “You’ll figure it out, Cherry. Maybe they’re just thirsty.” He reined away and rode toward the herd. He’d assigned Dusty to ride drag, and he sure didn’t envy her on a scorcher like today. But the damn little fool insisted she wanted to do “her fair share” of the work just like the other hands, so he gave in. Riding drag might teach her a lesson.
Still, he’d keep an eye on her. And he might as well start now. There she was, twenty yards in back of the lumbering herd, the blue bandanna he’d given her pulled up over her nose and mouth, trotting along and yipping like any seasoned cowhand. Guess her arm felt better.
He fell in beside her horse without speaking, and she gave him the barest of nods to acknowledge his presence. It was so hot and still she probably didn’t have the energy to talk, so she didn’t. She wasn’t quiet that often, and he had to smile.
They rode in silence for a mile or so and then she glanced up to the sky. “Oh, look, we’re in for a thunderstorm!” She pointed at a huge cloud that was moving toward them. It looked dark and menacing, and it had an odd yellow-brown tinge to it.
Oh, my God. He wheeled his horse forward toward the herd.
“Skip! Cherry!” By the time he clattered up, the hands were already staring at the cloud overhead.
“Turn the herd,” Zach yelled. “Get them down. Hurry!” He pointed at the cloud bearing down on them, and they jolted into action, spurring hard to round up the steers.
He couldn’t leave Dusty alone back there, so he turned and kicked his mount into a gallop.
“What’s wrong?” she shouted when he reached her. “Is a thunderstorm coming?”
“Not a thunderstorm,” he shouted. “It’s a dust storm.” She pulled her horse to a halt and sat staring up at the advancing cloud.
The sky darkened to a dirty brown. Zach dismounted, then reached up and pulled her off the gelding. He positioned Dancer next to her mount. “Stand between the horses,” he ordered.
“What? But—”
“Don’t argue, just do it!”
“Not until you explain—”
“Dusty, shut up and move! Now!” He shoved her toward the animals. Then he grabbed both bridles and pulled her forward.
“Zach, I don’t understand. Why—”
“You will,” he said shortly. He grabbed her arm, dragged her next to him and pushed her against Dancer’s neck. Then he jockeyed the horses closer together to serve as buffers.
“They’ll squash us!” she protested.
“No, they won’t.” He moved in back of her and pressed her body hard into Dancer’s quivering form. “A dust storm is dangerous. Can’t see. Can’t breathe. It’s important not to panic.”
She started to say something, but at that moment the first gusts of wind hit. “Tie your hat on,” he ordered. “Use your bandanna.”
When she fumbled, he reached over and pulled the square of cotton tight over her Stetson and knotted it under her chin.
Dirt and sand pelted them, and the air filled with swirling grit. He snugged his own hat down as tight as he could, lifted his arms and positioned them around her head. Then he stepped in close and pressed his chest against her back.
“Breathe through your mouth,” he yelled.
He felt her head dip in a nod, and then the storm hit.
The air grew so thick it was hard to see. To Alex it felt as if night was falling, and a bolt of panic stabbed through her. She jerked, and Zach pushed her hat down to shield her face and tightened his arms over her head.
“Don’t panic,” he said, his voice calm. “It’ll get dark but it will pass. Just hang on, okay?”
She tipped her head up and down and felt his warm breath against the back of her neck. In the next minute, the air grew so gritty she couldn’t keep her eyes open, and then all at once she was suffocating.
Choking, she reared back and heard Zach’s voice against her ear. “Keep breathing,” he ordered. “It’s thick and dirty, but it’s air. Just breathe.”
How was he able to breathe? she wondered. He was sheltering her with his body, but the air was just as thick and dirty for him.
The wind screamed around them with a strange, eerie cry, and suddenly she was more frightened than she had ever been in her life. She began to tremble and felt his hard body press more tightly against her back.
“You’re all right, Dusty. Just hang on.” He brought his mouth closer to her ear. “Hang on.”
“But I can’t breathe!” She felt as if she was drowning. Could a person drown on dry land?
“Dusty, take real slow breaths. Don’t hurry it.”
She wanted to scream, but that would take precious air. She opened her mouth wide to gulp in air, and shut her eyes.
Zach’s breath rasped in and out at her back, wafting against her cheek every time he exhaled. Could people choke to death in dust storms?
Don’t think about it. As long as she could feel him breathing she would be all right, wouldn’t she?
“Dusty, stay quiet. Stop thinking.”
How could he know that I’m thinking?
She wanted to ask him how long this would last.
She wanted to thank him for protecting her.
She wanted to stay alive!
Zach could feel her shaking, sending little tremors against his chest, but instead of making him feel protective it made him mad. Damn mad. She was scared? She shouldn’t be out here in the first place. Newspaper reporter or not, she had no business on a cattle drive. It put his men at risk. It put his cattle at risk. And, goddammit, it put him at risk!
Well, now, Strickland, just how do you figure it puts you at risk?
He tried to shut his mind down and concentrate instead on the wind. And the dust. And the...
Oh, hell and damn, it was hard not to think about Dusty when he could feel every little hitch in her breathing and every shudder traveling along her spine.
He had to admit she didn’t complain. She didn’t cry. She didn’t shirk her share of the work. She didn’t ask for special treatment because she was female. Dusty was maddeningly agreeable. He hated to admit it, but she was good company.
And, oh, God, she smelled good.
He could feel grit and sand sifting through his shirt and into his jeans, making his sticky skin itch. He heard the wind pick up. A dust storm could blow for half a day or longer, and this one showed no sign of letting up.
One of the horses tossed its head, but it didn’t move. He tried to keep his mind on the animal, but his thoughts kept coming back to Dusty. What was it about her that he found so maddening?
And how much longer can you stand here with her trim little butt snugged into your groin?
Guess he had a bad case of Dusty getting under his skin.
Suddenly she pulled away from the horse she was leaning against and with a half sob turned into his arms.
“Zach, I’m scared.”
Well, maybe she did cry sometimes. He pressed her head against his neck and wrapped his arm around her.
“H-how long will this last?”
“Don’t know. Sometimes an hour. Sometimes a day.”
She gave a little jerk. “A day? A whole day?”
“Sometimes. Forget about the dust storm. Just standing here in one spot for twenty-four hours will probably kill us.”
“Oh, but—It couldn’t really go on for a whole day, could it? What if I have to, um, relieve myself?”
That made him laugh out loud. He pressed her face back against his neck. “Dusty, stop talking. It takes air.”
He let ten minutes go by while the wind screamed across the plain and threw dirt in their faces. After another ten minutes she raised her head and wasted some more air.
“I can’t wait to write down some notes about this windstorm!”
Zach just shook his head. She was either crazy or she was a great newspaper reporter. Maybe both.
The storm finally moved off to the north, and Zach heaved a sigh of relief. Their ordeal was over. He took a step away from her, and she moved out of his arms and began brushing dirt off her clothes. Yeah, he was relieved it was over, but maybe he was the crazy one, because part of him was sorry.
Everyone gathered around, and they decided to set up camp for the night. Dusty immediately began scribbling away in her notebook and Zach took stock of the damage. The storm had left his hands gritty but uninjured and his herd of cattle was still intact. Cherry assured him the remuda was restless but untouched, and he was already brushing the animals down.
The men were all filthy and the chuck wagon was gritty with sand and dirt. Roberto was beside himself.
“Señor Boss, I cannot cook with dirt in pans, and the wagon—ay de mi—it must be scrubbed before supper.”
Dusty looked up from her writing. Her face was dirty, and when she stood up, grit sifted from her jeans. “Roberto, give me a bucket of water and a scrub brush. I’ll help you clean up.”
Zach grinned all the way out to check on the herd, and when he’d ridden twice around the subdued steers, he was still smiling.
She might be green and scared and a little bit crazy, but maybe she was worth riding the trail with.
That night Alex interviewed the scout, Wally. He told her some of his adventures over his considerable years “on the drover’s trail,” as he termed it.
“Kinda hard to get used to it at first, scoutin’ for a cattle outfit. Gotta ride ahead of ever’body, and it kin get mighty lonesome with nobody to talk to ’cept my horse. Got to be purty good friends with my horse after a while, but...aw, heck, Miss Alex, you don’t want to hear about this stuff.”
“But I do, Wally. Honestly I do. And just think, thousands of readers back East will want to hear about ‘all this stuff,’ too. You’ll be famous!”
“Aw, heck, Miss Alex. I don’t want to be famous. Somebody might come after me for money I owed in a poker game somewhere. Golly, I remember one time down in Texas...” And he was off again.
When Wally stopped regaling her with his wild tales, the hands began to spin their own yarns. Nothing was too outlandish or unbelievable. Skip recalled one cattle drive when they ate “nothin’ but oatmeal and bugs” for four days straight. Curly told about riding two days on a spring roundup with a broken foot; it had happened when his horse stepped on his boot, but he’d wanted to stick it out because one of the riders was “a pretty little filly” from a neighboring ranch.
“Aw, that’s nuthin’,” Jase challenged. “One time I was night-herdin’ during a blizzard and my fingers froze up. Had to chop ’em off myself the next morning. Had to, or they’d a got the gangrene.”
Alex didn’t know whether to believe him or not, but when she noticed his middle two fingers on one hand were missing, she decided he was telling the truth. She dug out her notepad again. This was wonderful human-interest material about the type of people who worked these cattle drives. She could see a whole series of pieces about the men on the trail; maybe she should get to know them better.
After an hour of after-supper talk, she acknowledged she was certainly getting a good education about life on a cattle drive. And it wasn’t just about the men. Cherry was constantly instructing her about the horses in his remuda.
“Don’t never walk up to a hoss what’s pullin’ yer rope tight, Miss Alex. Good way to git stomped. Why, I remember one time...” And, like Wally, the wrangler talked nonstop for half an hour.
Chapter Seven (#u7f29011c-f6ff-5395-84cf-b633a27f70d8)
Night after night she watched the men around the campfire, how they teased one another and played practical jokes and sang and told stories about other cattle drives they had been on. Sometimes one of them would start to talk about a girl “back home,” or a woman of questionable reputation, and then Alex noticed the men would tip their heads in her direction and quickly shush the speaker. She guessed they didn’t want to offend her.
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Lynna Banning
Тип: электронная книга
Жанр: Современная зарубежная литература
Язык: на английском языке
Издательство: HarperCollins
Дата публикации: 16.04.2024
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О книге: A cattle drive is no place for a greenhorn……but this city miss is here for the ride!Cowboy Zachariah Strickland should put Alexandra Murray on the first eastbound train home. But he has no choice other than to take her on his cattle trail. She hasn’t ridden a horse to death, nor shot anybody, but she does drives him furious with longing… Is it possible Alex belongs right here in the Wild West—with Zach?