Miss Murray on the Cattle Trail(14)

“Come on, then.” He walked for half a mile or so, leading the horse, then swung up behind her and snugged the blanket around her shoulders. Halfway back to camp he could still feel her trembling with cold, and he snaked one arm around her waist and pulled her back against his chest. Her head fit just under his chin. Her hair smelled of violets.

To his surprise she didn’t say a word all the way to camp, just snuggled back against him like a scared kitten. Made him feel funny inside.

When they arrived, she slipped off the horse and stood uncertainly. Zach dismounted and walked her over to the fire pit.

Six cowhands leaped to their feet, but not one of them commented on his red plaid shirt, which she wore with the sleeves rolled up around her wrists. All of them offered to fetch her a plate of supper.

Zach knew better than to acknowledge the eyebrows the men raised at the bare skin of his chest, which they could see plain as day under his leather vest. He also knew better than to drape her still-damp shirt where the hands could see it. He took the rolled-up garment over to Roberto, who accepted it without a word and offered him a dry shirt.

“Tuviste mucha suerte!” Juan said when he sat down at the campfire. “God is good.”

“Yeah, she was very lucky,” Zach said shortly. He wasn’t sure about the God part.

He watched her across the campfire for over an hour before he figured out what was bothering him. Sure, she’d had the starch pretty well knocked out of her britches, but he’d bet half his herd there was more to it than that icy dunking in the river.

But what? She sure wasn’t eating very much. Or paying any attention to the cowhands sitting around the fire pit. Her eyes were focused on something beyond the flames. In fact, even though she was staring straight at it, he’d swear she wasn’t seeing the fire at all.

She was a puzzle, all right. And he noticed something else. Cassidy positioned himself next to her on the log she was perched on. Every time the man stood up to toss another chunk of wood on the fire, he managed to sit back down a few inches closer to her. She kept scooting away, and he kept on crowding her.

She stared into the fire like she was a million miles away on some different planet. Maybe thinking about Chicago and that newspaper she wrote for, what was the name, the Chicago Times? He’d bet another silver dollar she wished she’d never stepped off Alice’s front porch to go haring off on a damn cattle drive. Especially after her unplanned swim this afternoon.

Cassidy got up again and once more resettled himself way too close to her. This time when she edged away, he edged right after her. That did it.

“Cassidy,” he barked.

“Yeah?”

“Go relieve Skip on night-herding.”

“Aw, boss, do I have—”

“Now.” He kept his voice quiet, but suddenly everyone stopped talking. Sparks cracked out of the fire pit.

Cassidy stomped off to saddle his horse, and José went to the chuck wagon for his guitar. He strummed idly through some Spanish-sounding tune until Cherry dug his harmonica out of his vest pocket and joined him with a mournful wail.

Zach moved around the fire pit to claim the space Cassidy had vacated. He waited until a song got going before he spoke.

“What’s wrong, Dusty?”

“What? Oh, nothing.”

“I don’t buy that. You’re rolling something around in your head, and if it’s not too private, I’d like to know what it is. Something about what happened today, maybe?”

She didn’t answer for so long he thought she was going to ignore the question. He leaned toward her and lowered his voice. “Dusty?”

“Yes. Well, actually, I was thinking about what happened today. About what an incompetent thing it was for me to do, falling off my horse in the middle of a river.”

“Most of us have done that once or twice. Nuthin’ to be ashamed of.”

“Well, I’m not ‘most of us.’ I hate not doing things right.”

He listened to José’s soft guitar for a long minute and then cleared his throat. “Kind of a perfectionist, huh? Don’t like to make mistakes?”

“Exactly. That is why I am a good journalist. I like to fix things. I have all my life. I dislike making them worse.”

“Always like to be in control, is that it?”

She nodded.

“I hate to tell you this, Dusty, but that’s a real poor attitude on a cattle drive. You can’t ever predict what’s gonna happen with horses and men and steers and the weather. You gotta learn to roll with it.”

She looked up from her boot tops just long enough to frown at him.

He cleared his throat. “There is one thing that’s going on that is predictable, though. Want to know what it is?”

She nodded again.

“Cassidy. I don’t like the way he keeps edging around you, pushing himself at you. Tonight I want you to roll out your pallet under the chuck wagon, next to mine.”

“Yes,” she said quickly. “I will.”

“Not next to Roberto,” he added in a low tone. “Next to me. Got it?”

Curly and José began to sing. As I walked out in the streets of Laredo...

Out of the corner of his eye, Zach saw a big fat tear start down her cheek. Dammit, she was more shaken about what happened today than she wanted to admit. He wanted to reach over and brush the moisture away with his thumb, but the thought of feeling her soft, smooth skin paralyzed him.

I spied a cowpuncher all dressed in white linen,

Dressed in white linen and cold as the clay.

He watched José’s fingers caress the guitar strings and thought of the times he’d touched a woman. Not many. Mostly dance hall girls. Women who were as unlike Dusty as a rusty water bucket was to the moon.

* * *

Alex stretched out on her blanket and listened to the rhythmic, slightly wheezy breathing of Roberto outside the wagon wheel. He’d been sound asleep when she laid out her bedroll. She folded her hands across her middle and stared up at the belly pan on the underside of the chuck wagon. Made of dried cowhide, the sling held fuel, wood and something called buffalo chips, which Roberto used to cook with.

Zach was right; she did want to do things perfectly. She always had. It gave her a sense of worth, a sense that her life was something more than the silly, useless existence she’d watched her mother lead. She was nothing like her mother. She needed to excel, she admitted. She wanted her life to matter.

But maybe Zach was right. No one succeeded all the time, not even her. She thought about that until her eyelids drooped shut and her breathing evened out. She woke only once, and that was when Zach crawled in next to her.

He smelled good, like wood smoke.

* * *

The next morning it started to rain. Roberto scrambled out of his blankets before it was light, covered himself with a yellow slicker and in half an hour piled biscuits and bacon onto their plates and poured out coffee from the huge speckleware pot he kept on the fire. He washed up the dishes so fast the hands barely had time to finish eating.

Zach watched the chuck wagon pull out in the downpour, followed by Cherry and the remuda. The wrangler didn’t mind the rain, Zach guessed. Cherry trotted his mount alongside his band of horses, singing something. Whatever it was, the horses seemed to like it. Cherry had a real connection with his animals.

Before the cattle had covered four miles, the rain turned to hail. Stinging bits of ice drove into Zach’s face and he couldn’t pull his hat down far enough to protect his cheeks. The wind nibbled its way inside the collar of his sheepskin jacket and coated Dancer’s hide with little slushy white balls.

“Sorry, fella.” He patted the gelding’s neck. “I’ll make it up to you tonight.” Many times he’d spent an extra long hour rubbing down his horse, sometimes because of bad weather, like today; and sometimes he spent the extra time just because he and Dancer were friends. More than friends. Zach loved the big bay, with his intelligent black eyes and his fondness for ripe apples.

He’d never loved anything in his life more than this horse, not even his first girl back in Colorado, and that was saying something. That flirty female had gobbled him up body and soul and spit him out like a bite of moldy garbage.

But Dancer just loved him back.

Skip galloped past, bundled in a sheepskin jacket with a scarf tied over his hat and under his chin. Zach had to laugh at his point rider; he looked like an old Indian squaw.

The bell steer plowed steadily forward through the mud and the downpour, and the rest of the herd followed, driven on by the shouted commands of the cowhands riding alongside them. Wally, his scout, had ridden in last night and reported that, even with the rain, there was no water in Lost Acres Creek, and that meant an extra-long push to Horse Lake some miles beyond. He wondered where Roberto would set up camp.

Behind him, a subdued Dusty rode her sorrel through a flattened, aromatic patch of wild onions. Zach watched her for a full minute and she never once lifted her head—just stared at the muddy ground. She’d better watch the trail, he thought. Except for Dancer, horses didn’t know everything. He’d never ridden a more intuitive mount than the gelding under him.

Dusty began to lag farther and farther behind, but maybe she didn’t mind riding drag on a day like this. At least there wouldn’t be much dust. There’d be mud, though, and after today’s ride she’d sure want a bath. With all this rain, she could just strip and run naked...