Miss Murray on the Cattle Trail(16)
At that moment, Zach rode up and slid off his beautiful bay horse, slapping his rain-spattered hat against his thigh. Water droplets flew off into Skip’s face.
“Dammit, boss, watch where you—”
“Dry up, Skip,” Zach growled.
“Hey,” the rangy blond cowboy yelped. “What burr’s got stuck under your saddle?”
“No burr, just a tired, wet horse.” Zach strode past the circle of hands around the fire pit, whipped out his neckerchief and began rubbing down Dancer’s wet flanks. He knew his temper was short. With two days of rain slowing down the herd, any more unexpected delays and he’d miss the cattle buyer he’d arranged to meet in Winnemucca. He couldn’t afford to miss the man or he’d end up having to sell the steers at a loss.
And he couldn’t do that. He had to clear at least a thousand dollars from this drive to buy his own spread. He’d worked for seven long years to save up enough money for his own ranch, and he’d be damned if rain or anything else was gonna keep him from doing just that. He couldn’t afford any more delays.
Roberto’s throaty voice cut through his thoughts. “Vengan, por favor!”
Curly, Skip and the other hands crowded the chuck wagon, holding out their tin plates for generous dollops of the cook’s thick rabbit stew and dumplings. Zach stood last in line with Dusty just ahead of him. He thought he’d instructed the men to let her be first, but she was just stubborn enough to countermand his order and stand in line like everybody else.
A spatter of rain blew in under the canvas roof Roberto had stretched over the chow line, drenching one of the closed cabinet doors. Raindrops slid down the painted surface. Ahead of him, Dusty bent to study the descending droplets.
“I bet I can tell which one of those drops will reach the bottom edge first,” she remarked.
“Bet you can’t,” he said without thinking. He was tired enough not to even notice the wet cupboard doors, much less give a darn, but the words just slipped past his teeth. He rarely passed up a bet of any kind, even if it was about something as inconsequential as a raindrop.
“You’re on,” she quipped. She sent him a challenging sideways glance and pointed her forefinger at one fat blob of water sliding down the cupboard face. “If I win, you owe me an interview for my newspaper.”
“And if you lose?” he asked in a tired voice.
“Then...” she turned back to him and studied his face “...you can interview me.”
“Done.” He was too beat to talk her out of it.
“I pick that one,” she said. She pointed at a racing droplet that was leaving a wet track on the painted cabinet door. “Now, you choose one.”
He poked his thumb at the biggest, most promising-looking droplet, and they both bent to watch. He knew he’d win. His water drop was bigger than hers, so it would be heavier. He knew it would travel faster than her puny little rain driblet.
But it didn’t. Somehow his water drop got sidetracked and veered off toward one edge. Hers slid neatly to the bottom edge of the cabinet door.
She grinned up at him. “I won! I will be conducting my interview with you after supper.”
“Don’t think so,” he said.
“Oh,” she retorted, a triumphant note in her voice, “I do think so, Mr. Strickland.”
“Oh, yeah?”
She propped both fists on her hips. “Yeah.”
She sounded as if she was trying so hard to be tough he gave a tired laugh. “How ’bout some other night?”
“Nope. Tonight.”
“Uh, it’s been a long day, Dusty, so—”
“I am getting used to long days, Mr. Strickland. I will expect you to make yourself available at...” she squinted up at the fading twilight “...eight o’clock. Sharp.”
“Sorry. Got things to do at eight o’clock.”
“What things?” she shot at him.
Hell’s bells, didn’t she ever give up? “Um...well, I’ve got to make night-herding assignments, and...uh...talk to Curly about—”
“No, you don’t. Sending men out to night-herd takes you less than thirty seconds, and you’ve been yelling at Curly all day, so you can’t possibly have anything more to say to him.” She sent him a smile and waited.
Jumpin’ jennies. The last thing he wanted to do tonight, or any night in the foreseeable future, was talk about himself. There were things hidden so deep in his soul they’d never see daylight, and the last thing he wanted to do was poke at them.
“I said no, Dusty. No means no!”
She looked up at him with fire in her eyes. “Zach Strickland, I never took you for a coward. You’re bossy and hard to please and convinced you’re right about everything, but I’ve never seen you afraid of anything.”
“Dusty, hush up, will you? I’m tired and—”
“No, I will not hush up! We made a wager, an honest, no-strings-attached wager. And when somebody agrees to a wager, and that someone loses that wager, that someone honors the agreement that was made.” She paused for breath. “Is that not true?”
“Dusty—”
She propped her hands on her hips. “Well, isn’t it?”
He shook his head and turned away. But she wasn’t giving up. She grabbed his sleeve and pulled him back to face her. Her narrowed eyes looked like two drops of molten sapphire as she spit a question at him. “Do you or do you not keep your word?”
By this time both Roberto and Jase were listening, and Zach knew he was trapped. On the other hand, maybe after a day like today, with wind and rain and more wind, Dusty would be so tired she wouldn’t have the sand after supper to ask him even one question. Maybe he’d be safe from her prying into things that he wanted to keep private.
He tried to put it out of his mind, but after the men had cleaned their tin plates and dropped them into Roberto’s wash bucket, he found he was wrong again. She wasn’t too tired. She had plenty of energy left to bedevil him. When the last spoonful of stew passed her lips she jumped up, dunked her plate into the bucket of hot soapy water and poked her face close to his.
“In private,” she said near his ear. “You won’t want to answer my questions in front of your men.”
Under his wool shirt Zach began to sweat.
Chapter Ten
Alex tried to suppress her feeling of triumph at having jockeyed their stiff-upper-lip trail boss Zach Strickland into a corner, and now she planned to pounce on him with her interview questions.
A more reluctant subject she had never known. Most men loved to talk about themselves, but not Zach Strickland. Most men bragged about their heroic adventures. But not Zach. Most men, she knew from her shameless eavesdropping on late-night talk around the campfire, liked to talk about women they’d known or wish they’d known, or women they’d loved or left or lost or missed or regretted. But not Zach.
She nibbled the end of her pencil and launched her attack. “Tell me where you were raised, Zach.”
They laid next to each other on their bedrolls underneath the chuck wagon, Zach on his back, staring up at the wagon underbelly, Alex on her stomach, propping herself up on both elbows and poking her face close to his.
Roberto snored softly just outside the rear wheel. She could hear José singing something lilting in Spanish as he circled the herd on night duty. It was a mournful song, something about a cowboy and a lost horse...or was it a lost love?
“Zach?” she reminded him.
He heaved a long sigh. “Dusty, it’s been a helluva long day. Can’t you do this some other time?”
“No, I cannot. I have cornered you at last and you’re not going to wriggle out of it.” She tapped the pencil against her open notebook. “You can start by telling me about your boyhood.”
He sighed. “Didn’t have much of a boyhood. I was born in West Virginia. In a cabin on the wrong side of everything. It had a dirt floor and no windows and only two rooms.”
He stopped. She waited, and waited some more, until she thought she’d scream with frustration. Finally she nudged his arm with her notebook. “Go on, I’m listening.”
He groaned, closed his eyes and continued. “When I was real young, maybe six or seven years old, my daddy sent me to work in a coal mine.”
She sucked in her breath. A coal mine? At six years old? “Go on.”
“It was dark down there. Cold, too. Closed in. And God knew it was hard work pickin’ at a coal seam fourteen hours a day.”
She winced. “Fourteen hours a day?”
He swallowed. “Soon as I could, I ran away. My...” He stopped and took a breath. “My daddy was drunk most of the time anyway, so I figured he’d never miss me.”
“How old were you then?” she asked softly.
“’Bout nine, I guess. Maybe ten. I left home one night in a snowstorm, just lit out and caught a wagon train goin’ west.”
“That must have been difficult at such a young age.”
“Yeah. Well, I didn’t have a choice, really.” He stopped again and closed his eyes.
“Why didn’t you have a choice?”
He didn’t answer.
“And then what happened?” she prodded.
He let out a long, ragged breath. “I ended up tired and hungry on a hardscrabble ranch in Colorado in the middle of winter. Started at the bottom, muckin’ out horse stalls and hauling water. Worked up to bein’ a ranch hand, and after—”