Miss Murray on the Cattle Trail(20)
Alex would most definitely not be writing about this in the Chicago Times! She would also never mention it to Aunt Alice. Imagine explaining to her mother’s sister how she laid next to Zach Strickland in over-attentive silence, listening to...it.
But she had to admit it was certainly educational. So a woman cried out when... She pressed her fingers against her mouth. And a man shouted?
She wondered what it felt like.
Oh, no, she didn’t. She must stop thinking about it this instant!
And she did, for maybe four minutes. And then she lay staring up at the patch of star-studded sky visible through the small teepee opening over her head. Was Zach doing the same thing, thinking about...it? She couldn’t ask him. She couldn’t even admit she was awake and gazing up at the stars and having all these disturbing thoughts. It was too embarrassing.
She folded her hands across her midriff and closed her eyes. Dear God, please, please let me clear my mind and go to sleep.
Hours later she rolled over to find Zach’s hard, warm body lying beside her. In fact, he was snugged up right next to her on the fur-covered pallet, and he was sound asleep. His breathing was slow and even, and one arm was stretched above his head. The other arm was curved over her middle.
Well. So much for taking turns!
In spite of herself a spurt of laughter bubbled up. What a newspaper story this would make! Her readers would gobble up such an Indian camp episode and beg for more. She felt her cheeks grow warm, and then hot. The rest of her body did the same, and all the while Zach softly inhaled and exhaled beside her.
No one would ever know about this, not even the Chicago Times.
And no one would ever, ever know how it was making her feel.
* * *
Zach opened his eyes when sunlight pouring through the smoke hole at the top of the teepee hit his face. He groaned and started to roll over, but a soft, curvy body was in his way. It’s Dusty!
She was sound asleep, with her butt snuggled up against his groin, and for a fleeting moment he wondered if he’d died and gone to heaven.
Oh, heck no, he wasn’t dead! He was tantalizingly, achingly alive. Very gingerly, and with considerable regret, he edged off the fur pallet and away from her. Then he sat up.
What now?
Now he had to wake Dusty, find their horses and head back to the herd. He laid one hand on her shoulder and jiggled it.
“Dusty, wake up.”
She mumbled something and scooted away from him.
“Dusty. The chief wants to adopt you and keep you here with him for the next fifty years.”
“What?” She sat up so fast her head bumped his shoulder. “What did you say? The chief wants to...?”
He chuckled. “Woke you up, didn’t it?”
She scrubbed one hand over her face. “I swear you said—”
“Musta been dreaming,” he said. “Come on, get up. We’re ridin’ back to the herd.”
“Oh, thank the Lord, Zach. This has all been very interesting, but I am starting to miss all those silly cows.”
“Steers,” he corrected.
By the time he found their horses, saddled and ready, she was wide-awake, but Zach was feeling like he needed a good night’s sleep. He’d spent half the night trying to keep himself from crawling onto those furs and wrapping his arms around her, and the other half praying she wouldn’t wake up when he did.
“Mount up,” he ordered. To his surprise she obeyed without a word.
He shook hands with the Indian boy who had brought them to the camp, and then the chief motioned him aside and said some words Zach didn’t understand. Whatever it was, it made the boy laugh. The chief then tipped his head toward Dusty, grinned and made a motion with his hand that Zach understood instantly.
The boy’s laughter followed them until they rode out of camp and headed east. After no more than five minutes, Dusty twisted in the saddle.
“What did the chief say to you?”
“Haven’t a clue,” he said quickly. “I don’t understand their lingo.”
But he sure understood the chief’s hand gesture. He’d try not to think about it.
* * *
After six dry, dusty hours on the trail, they caught up with the herd bedded down at the edge of a broad sun-scorched meadow of brown tickle grass and tumbleweeds. It was almost suppertime, and both Zach and Dusty were saddle weary and hungry.
Cherry took their horses and clucked over the state of the animals. “Oughtn’t let a saddle set on a horse overnight,” he muttered.
“The Indians led our mounts off when we got to their camp,” Zach explained. “I figured they’d take care of them.”
“Indians don’t use saddles, boss. What would they know about takin’ care of ’em?”
Dusty headed for the shallow stream near camp to wash the grime off her face, and Zach talked to Curly and the other hands and tried not to smell whatever Roberto had bubbling in the Dutch oven hung over the campfire.
Skip clapped him on the back. “Hey, boss, what did them Indians want, anyway?”
“Wanted to thank us for that cow we sent them.”
“Did they feed you?”
“Yeah. Good supper. Not as good as Roberto’s beans, though. We’ve had no breakfast and nothing but a few rounds of jerky all day, so we’re pretty much famished.”
“Famished, huh? Sure came to the right place, boss. Roberto made cherry pie for dessert.”
Dusty popped up at his elbow. “Pie?”
Zach swallowed a laugh. “You sure you don’t want some more of that good Indian stew instead?”
She swatted him with her hat.
Chapter Twelve
For the next few days the sun poured down like maple syrup, making the air thick and heavy and hot as blazes. It was hard to breathe. Things were pretty much dried out; the wild buckwheat fields were already going to seed and rabbit brush was beginning to thin out.
They covered seventy miles without finding water. Creeks were dried up. Water holes were so low there wasn’t enough for the herd and all the horses, too. Zach shook his head. Cattle could only last three days without water.
It was good it wasn’t raining, but now it was beginning to look like a real honest-to-God midsummer drought. Guess the storms had moved off to the south. Well, it figured. The closer they got to the Nevada border, the closer they were to the high desert, and that was dry as old buffalo bones.
He gazed around him and let out a long breath. It was six o’clock in the morning and already the sky looked like a big blue bowl tipped upside down over his head. The air smelled of dust and sagebrush.
He turned Dancer away from the herd to check on Dusty. Idiot girl was riding drag along with José and Jase. That left a sour taste in his mouth, but he couldn’t talk her out of it. And by now he knew better than to give her an order. She’d just stick her chin up and insist she was making notes for her newspaper. Then she’d go on doing whatever she pleased.
Dusty always wanted to experience everything, and that included riding at the back of the herd with the stink and the dust and the flies. He shook his head again, and wished he could stop thinking about her.
* * *
That evening after Juan filled his supper plate he settled himself at the campfire next to Alex. “Cattle nervous tonight,” he remarked.
She sent him a glance. “It’s been an extra-long day with no water to drink. I’d be nervous, too.”
“Boss send extra men out for night duty.”
She wondered who he had sent. Cassidy, she hoped. When that man was anywhere near her she felt her skin crawl; he never seemed to stop staring at her.
She focused her attention on the beans and biscuits on her tin plate and tried to decide who to interview after supper for her newspaper column. Anyone but Cassidy.
Zach was pacing back and forth at the edge of the campfire, his hands jammed in his back pockets while she and the young cowhand ate in companionable silence.
Suddenly Juan leaned toward her. “Boss have also nerves.”
“Oh? What about?”
Just as Juan opened his mouth to reply she heard a sharp crack, like a tree branch breaking off. Juan frowned, and then everything happened at once. She heard a low rumbling sound, and suddenly he leaped up, his plate clattering onto the ground.
“Stampede!” someone yelled.
Juan began to run. The next thing she knew Zach was beside her, grabbing her arm and yanking her upright. Her supper plate spilled beans all down the front of her jeans.
“Get in the wagon!” he shouted. He dragged her away from the fire and shoved her toward the chuck wagon. “Roberto! Take her!”
The gray-haired cook scrambled up past his cabinets and cupboards and extended his arms down to her. Zach gripped her around the waist and shoved her up toward him.
“Hurry, señorita!” The cook tugged her up and pushed her into the cramped wagon interior.
Zach spun away and raced for his horse, along with all the cowhands around the fire. The men grabbed their mounts, flung themselves into the saddle and pounded off, kicking up clouds of dust.
She saw Cherry struggling to drive the remuda away to the north, and then she heard a noise, a grumbling wave of sound that grew louder with each passing second.
“What’s happening?” she screamed to Roberto.
“The cows, they run,” he shouted.
* * *
Zach kept wondering why he wasn’t getting trampled by the maddened animals on his right. He could feel the heat of their massed bodies, hear the sickening thunder of hooves in his ear. Damn, but he didn’t need this. He needed to sell every last steer in Winnemucca.