Miss Murray on the Cattle Trail(11)
After two tries she managed to link up the two animals. “Sure hope you tied a square knot,” he called.
She propped both hands on her hips and frowned up at him. “What’s a square knot?”
Instantly he dismounted and came back to check the rope. Well, hell, nice and tight and square as you please. He remounted, settled her in front of him and kicked Dancer’s flank. The horse jolted ahead and she jerked backward against his chest.
Dusty’s body was hot and sweaty, but her hair smelled like some kind of spicy soap. The single thick braid that hung down her back was trapped between her spine and his rib cage. She kept jostling her body up and down, trying to get comfortable, he guessed, but that sure kept reminding him she was female. After ten minutes she calmed down some.
“I am sorry to cause you all this trouble,” she ventured.
“Not half as sorry as I am.”
“Why, how ungracious! I really am sorry. What makes you think—”
“Because you don’t think, Dusty. You’re a damn hazard on a drive like this. Now shut up or we’ll both miss supper.”
Stung, Alex bit her lip and gripped the saddle horn so hard her knuckles ached. Odious man. Arrogant, bossy and...bossy. She tried to think how she would describe him in her newspaper. Rude, she decided. And all the other negative adjectives she could come up with.
But if she wanted another bath after supper, she’d better hold her tongue. At least he was no longer threatening to send her back to the Rocking K.
They rode in tense silence until he drew rein in front of the rope corral. “Swollen leg,” he said to Cherry.
The wrangler peered up at him. “Bad?”
“Could be worse,” Zach said, his voice flat. Cherry helped Dusty climb down, waited for Zach to dismount, then led her beautiful sorrel away.
“Will she be all right?” she called.
“He,” Cherry said over his shoulder. “Gelding, remember?”
Embarrassed, Alex nodded. How could she forget? Almost every living creature on this drive was male. And some of them needed to improve their manners. One of them in particular.
She sat quietly all through Roberto’s tasty supper of beans and bacon and tortillas, and when they all gathered around the campfire, she told Zach she was going to go take a bath.
She expected Zach to guard her privacy from behind some trees, as he had before, but tonight he annoyed her by insisting on a much closer vantage point.
“Current’s swift,” he said at the river’s edge. “Might be dangerous to swim.”
“Oh?” She eyed the roiling water. He was right. It looked a bit muddy, too.
“I’ll bring a bucket of warm water from Roberto’s stove.” He strode off, returning in a few minutes lugging a tin pail of sloshing water. He plunked it down in front of her and stepped back.
“Where are you going to be?” she asked.
“Close by.”
She shot a quick look at him. “How close?”
He chuckled. “Close enough,” he said drily.
“And far enough away,” she said. “I do not wish for an audience, Mr. Strickland.”
“Trust me.”
Gracious heavens, she’d be a fool to do that! But, she reasoned, she really had no choice. Very well, she would take the fastest bath of her life.
She heard his footsteps moving back and forth just behind the only tree in sight, a wind-twisted juniper. They didn’t stop, or slow down, or pause, and she prayed his eyes were glued on his boots and not her.
She stripped, sponged off with the washcloth Roberto had thoughtfully included, dried herself off and donned her clothes again in four minutes flat. “All done,” she called.
He stepped from behind the tree so quickly it gave her pause. Had he been watching her?
“Find any grasshoppers in your hair?” His voice held a hint of laughter.
“What? Oh, I have no idea!” She shivered at the thought. “There wasn’t enough water to wash my hair.”
“Too bad,” he said.
“I beg your pardon?” She spun to face him and would swear a flush tinged his cheeks, but in the dim light of dusk she couldn’t be sure.
Without looking at her, he grabbed the bucket and started back to camp. She wished he would look at her. She liked his eyes. They were the most startling shade of green, and his eyebrows were dark, almost black. She also liked his hands, the fingers long and purposeful-looking, and tanned brown as his exposed forearms.
She watched his long legs eat up the distance back to the chuck wagon. And had a disconcerting thought.
She liked some things about Zach Strickland. But was there anything, anything at all, that Zach Strickland liked about her?
Chapter Eight
When Cherry came barreling toward him the next evening, waving his once-reputable brown Stetson, Zach knew something was wrong. “Boss! Come quick! Ya got a big problem.”
Zach leaned down. “Yeah? What problem?” Probably something about Dusty. That girl could get into trouble just by looking at it.
“It’s Roberto,” his wrangler shouted. “He done clonked hisself in the head with a piece of wood an’ he’s out colder’n a witch’s—” He broke off and cleared his throat. Zach ran toward the chuck wagon with Cherry at his heels.
He found Roberto down on his hands and knees, shaking his head back and forth. “Roberto!” He squatted next to the dazed man.
Roberto ran one hand over his forehead. “Señor Boss,” he said, his voice unsteady. “Was bringing wood for fire, but maybe I stumble.”
“Lordy no, ya didn’t stumble!” Cherry exclaimed. “A big hunk of pine done smacked yer head.”
Zach helped the man stand up, but the cook was so unsteady on his feet he walked him over to the fire pit and sat him down. “Cherry, get that bottle of whiskey Roberto keeps in the chuck wagon.” When the wrangler thrust it into his hand, Zach pried out the cork and held the bottle to Roberto’s lips.
“I no need this, Señor Boss. Must cook supper.”
“You do need this, Roberto. Forget about supper.”
The cook swallowed a big mouthful of whiskey, coughed and again tried to stand up. His legs wouldn’t support him. Cowhands began to gather in a circle around them, surprised into silence by the sight of their cook with a whiskey bottle in his hand.
“Is he drunk?” Curly asked.
“He got hit in the head,” Cherry explained. “He’s okay, just woozy.”
“Supper ready?”
Jase jabbed Curly’s arm. “God, all you think about is your belly. The man is hurting!”
“But he’s got a point, boss,” Cherry said. “Somebody’s gotta finish cookin’ supper.”
At that moment Dusty rode up and dismounted. Cherry walked over to take the reins. “Miss Alex, can ya cook?”
Zach almost laughed at the expression on her face.
“Me? My gracious, no. I can boil water for tea, but...”
“Roberto’s hurt. He hit his head,” he explained. “And supper’s not started.”
“Hurt?” Instantly she spun and knelt at the cook’s side. “Roberto, what happened?”
“Ees nothing, Señorita Alex. Head ache just a leetle.”
Her gaze landed on the whiskey bottle. “Spirits! No wonder your head aches. Don’t you carry any powdered willow bark in your medicine kit?”
“Si, but—”
Before he could finish Curly was rummaging through the drawers in the chuck wagon. He found the bottle of willow bark powder and shook a dose into his palm. Before Zach could stop him, Roberto washed it down with a big gulp of whiskey.
Curly stuck both hands in his back pockets. “So, who’s gonna cook supper?”
“Not me,” Jase said quickly. “How ’bout you, Curly?”
“Huh! Me, neither. What about you, Skip?”
“Not on yer life!” Skip yelled. “Last thing I ever wanna do is pick up a fryin’ pan.”
For a long minute the hands looked at each other in silence. And then Dusty stepped forward.
“I will cook supper,” she announced.
Zach stared at her. “Thought you said you didn’t know how to cook, Dusty.”
She bit her lip. “Well, I don’t know how. But Roberto can tell me what to do.”
“Si, I can do,” the cook said.
Dusty smiled. “However, I will need an assistant.” She looked straight at Zach and waited.
Zach looked right back at her.
She tipped her head and grinned at him. “Mr. Strickland?”
And that was how Zach ended up with a dishtowel apron tied around his waist, chopping up onions and carrots for the stew pot.
The hands drifted off to tend the fire; Cherry returned to his roped-off corral to tend the horses, and Roberto called out instructions to Dusty from the chuck wagon. She began snapping out rapid-fire orders so fast Zach couldn’t keep up. “Dump all those onions in the Dutch oven. Now, stir them around. No, not like that, Zach! Gently!”
“I feel like saluting,” he grumbled.
“And I feel like a trail boss!” she retorted with obvious delight.
Zach said nothing. He didn’t know what he was doing, and he was certain that she didn’t, either. Tonight’s supper was gonna be one big gamble. He figured there was nothing he didn’t know about driving a herd of cattle to a railhead, but maybe he’d figured wrong. He didn’t know how to make supper. That had always been Roberto’s mysterious kingdom, and wearing a damn apron had never crossed Zach’s mind.