Chapter Fourteen
Three more long, scorching days dragged by. In the evening, lathered horses walked into camp, their heads drooping, and the tempers of all the hands grew short. Zach seemed unusually curt, especially to her. The heat was draining them all, and Alex worked extra hard not to let anything nettle her, especially Zach’s disinterest. She knew she would never survive many more weeks of this; every day was an ordeal worse than the preceding one. She began to worry that she could not last.
But what choice did she have? There was nothing to do but keep moving forward with the herd and hope for the best.
Now she had something else that nagged at her. Since the night Zach had questioned her about her parents and her work at the newspaper, he had changed. She would swear he was avoiding her, but she didn’t know why. She drew in a gulp of the gritty air and tried to stuff down her disappointment.
She had confessed to Zach something she had kept buried for years, how her father had wanted a boy and how Mama hadn’t wanted a child of either sex. And after that, the tall, rangy trail boss had taken to sleeping by the campfire, next to Cassidy of all people, and Roberto had continued to sleep next to her under the chuck wagon at night.
Zach seemed distant, as if he disliked something about her, but what? The fact that she came from a well-to-do background? The fact that she was a newspaper reporter? Or, more likely, that she was a female tagging along on an all-male cattle drive.
The next night after supper, when the hands had left the campfire and rolled out their bedrolls, she cornered him. “Zach, what is wrong?”
He looked up, and then focused everywhere but on her. “Nuthin’,” he said shortly.
She flinched at his tone. “I don’t believe that for one minute.”
“Got things on my mind.” He looked over her head, staring at the herd bedded down in a dry meadow a few dozen yards away.
“What things?” she persisted.
“Just...things.” He sent her a quick look, then studied the scuffed toes of his boots. “The men are gettin’ tired. And you already know I lost a hundred head of cattle to some damn rustlers.”
She knew instinctively it was more than that. Something else was bothering him. But what? Even Roberto shrugged his shoulders when she asked him. “Boss never act like this before. He maybe sick.”
The next night Alex watched Zach’s plate of beans and biscuits disappear as usual, along with three cups of black coffee, and she knew he wasn’t sick. Then, without a word, he stalked off to inspect the herd. Much later he returned to question Cherry about the remuda, and then he tramped around and around at the edge of the campfire until Juan intercepted him.
She couldn’t hear what was said, but Juan returned to the fire with a shrug, just as Roberto had. Alex decided to put it out of her mind and concentrate on her note-taking. Tonight, she decided, she would interview Roberto.
The chuck wagon cook told her he had come from Mexico when he was just a boy, worked as a vaquero until he married and then settled down in Arizona with his wife and baby son, José.
“José?” she asked. “Our José?”
“No, not this José. My José. He die of fever, and my wife, she die, too. And then I come to live with my sister, Consuelo. Our José,” he explained, “he is Consuelo’s son. My nephew. Juan, he is also my nephew.”
“How did you become the chuck wagon cook?”
Roberto laughed. “Consuelo, she teach me. Then Mr. Charlie, one year he take me on the roundup. You know what is roundup?”
Alex twiddled her pencil between her thumb and forefinger. “I think so. You ride around and stick those awful hot irons on all the cows, is that right?” She shuddered.
Roberto chuckled. “You know not much of cattle ranching, señorita.”
“I know absolutely nothing about cattle ranching. I belong in a big city, not on a ranch.”
“But, señorita, even in big city, one can know what happen in life. Que sera, no?”
Alex smiled into the older man’s dark eyes. “No, Roberto. Sometimes one doesn’t know what happens in life.” She flipped over a new page in her notebook. “Roberto, tell me something.”
“Anything, señorita. Is good to learn.”
“How do you decide what to cook for supper every night?”
“Ah, is easy, Señorita Alex. See that?” He tipped his gray head toward a large canvas-covered mound in one corner of the chuck wagon. “Is beef. I keep cool with water splashing so not dry out or spoil, and each night I slice off some.” He chopped his hand downward.
While he talked, Alex scratched notes.
“Then I cook chili with beans or beef stew or just plain beef steaks.”
She nodded. “I do like your chili, Roberto. I never tasted anything so spicy back in Chicago.”
He laughed and reached out a work-gnarled hand to pat her shoulder. She wanted to ask him again about Zach, why he was suddenly so unfriendly, but the cook got to his feet, gathered up his roll of bright-colored blankets and headed for the chuck wagon. “Buenas noches, señorita.”
Alex closed her notebook and stared into the campfire. How many days had she been following these noisy, smelly cows around this godforsaken countryside? Three weeks? Four? Funny how easy it was to lose track of time out here so far away from civilization. No clocks. No deadlines. No late hours spent proofreading her newspaper columns.
And no concerts. No theatrical performances. No libraries. And not one horse race!
But she couldn’t say she was bored, not with colorful characters like Cherry and Roberto and Curly, whose hair was as long and straight as a sheet of newsprint. And, she had to admit, the most interesting activity of all was watching the trail boss, Zach Strickland.
Or it had been until he got so moody and standoffish.
She massaged the back of her neck. She would thank all the powers of the universe when they reached Winnemucca and she would have a hotel room with a bathtub. And the train. Oh, my, yes...the train that would carry her back to civilization. She would put all this aggravation behind her, gather up her overflowing notebooks, travel back to Chicago and write her newspaper columns. She intended to impress the socks off her editor at the Times.
Then she would put her sore bottom and her stiff shoulders and her hurt feelings behind her. She wouldn’t miss any of this one bit. And that included Zach Strickland!
* * *
Endless long hot days without water had Zach gritting his teeth and praying, something he never did. For one thing, the good Lord couldn’t care less about one herd of cattle, and for another, the good Lord couldn’t care less about him. All his life he’d had to fight, for respect, for acceptance, even for survival. He hadn’t believed in “turn the other cheek” since he was ten years old and had left home for good.
And now he was fighting for the money to start his own ranch. He reached to pat his mount’s sleek neck. “You hear that, Dancer? We’re workin’ damn hard for this, aren’t we? We might not be rich, but we sure as blazes can be independent.”
A steer veered away from the herd and lumbered off toward the hills. Zach touched Dancer’s flanks, grabbed his lariat and raced across the plain after the animal. It was full-grown, four hundred pounds of grass-fed beef on four hooves, and it wasn’t easy to run down.
He galloped beside it for a dozen yards, then loosed his rope. The lariat sailed out and settled neatly over the horns, and Zach yanked it tight. Dancer backed away and the steer bawled. Zach lifted the rope off the horns and re-coiled it as the animal headed back toward the herd.
“Good work, boy. That’s another forty dollars for our ranch.” He began to ride parallel to the herd, whistling as he thought about the spread he planned to buy when he returned to Oregon with his share of the profits.
He’d build a big barn to start with, then a bunkhouse with a potbellied stove for heat and later a ranch house.
He kicked Dancer into a gallop and headed off in a wide circle to work off his excitement. Just as he turned back toward the plodding herd, his mount stumbled hard and Zach was thrown out of the saddle. He landed flat on his back and for a minute he couldn’t draw breath.
He turned his head to one side to see Dancer not three yards away, waiting for him to get up. It took him another minute before his lungs started to work again; then he picked himself up, dusted off his hat and took a step toward his horse.
Dancer did not move. And then he noticed that the black gelding was standing perfectly still, but his foreleg was bent funny.
Zach felt like throwing up.
* * *
Curly stopped his story mid-sentence, staring at something past her shoulder, and Alex looked up. Slowly the cowhand stood up. “Damn,” he said under his breath.
She twisted to see behind her and heard José mutter, “Madre mia.”
Zach was coming across the meadow, walking very slowly and leading his black horse. Even from here she could see the animal was limping badly.
One by one, the men around the campfire rose in silence.
“Aw, no, not Dancer,” Skip whispered. “Zach’s practically married to that horse.” He started forward.
“Don’t,” Cherry snapped. “Let him alone.”
“Gosh, Cherry, you can see that black’s leg is busted.”