Miss Murray on the Cattle Trail(25)
The far side of the chuck wagon, where Roberto lay snoring, was shrouded in darkness. She was moving quietly through the shadows when suddenly someone stepped into her path.
“Where ya goin’, pretty lady?”
Cassidy! Her blood went cold.
“Been waitin’ for ya.”
She couldn’t bring herself to look at him, so she kept her head down, her eyes focused on the toes of her boots.
“C’mon, say somethin’.” He laid one thick hand on her arm.
She yanked it away. “Leave me alone.”
“Aw, don’t be that way, honey.” He grabbed her shoulder, and before she could cry out, he planted a wet, sloppy kiss on her cheek.
She pummeled the arm holding her, but he tightened his grip. She lifted her boot, intending to stomp on his toes, but suddenly she felt his smelly body jerk away from her.
“Take your hands off her,” Zach ordered, his voice tight.
“Aw, boss, I was just—”
“I said let her go.”
“Hell if I will. You kin go to—”
The next thing she heard was the crack of a fist hitting something solid. Bone, she hoped.
“Here’s your pay,” Zach snarled to the unsteady cowhand. He flipped a twenty-dollar gold piece at him. “Now get out.”
“Wait a damn minute, boss...”
“You heard me,” Zach said. “You’re fired.”
Cassidy sullenly moved away.
Zach turned and laid a hand on her shoulder. “You all right, Dusty?”
“Y-yes.”
“You sure? You look kinda pinched.”
“Well, perhaps I am not really all right.”
He gave her a long look. “Don’t worry about Cassidy anymore. He won’t be back.”
At least, he hoped he wouldn’t. He’d hate to have to kill the man.
* * *
The next night during supper, Cherry appeared unexpectedly at the campfire. Usually he stole off to the remuda at night, preferring the company of his beloved horses to that of a bunch of sweaty cowhands.
“Boss,” the old man panted. “Ya gotta come with me.”
Zach looked up from his plate of beans and corn bread. “What’s up, Cherry? Got a sick mare?”
“Naw. Horses are all fine. But somethin’ ain’t so fine, so you’d better come have a look-see.”
Zach knew better than to second-guess his wrangler, so he set his plate aside, got to his feet and walked with him out to the rope corral where the horses were bedded down for the night.
Cherry stopped and pointed ahead.
Zach blinked at the two figures facing him. He recognized one, the young Indian boy who’d guided him to his camp. The other was a full-grown man with a turkey-feather headdress and a necklace of what looked like buffalo teeth. Not the chief, who Zach would recognize. Another Indian. Both were mounted on sleek Indian ponies.
“Look hostile to you?” Cherry murmured.
“Maybe. Maybe not. Sure wish you spoke their lingo.”
“Me, too. Don’t fancy losin’ any of my horses just ’cuz I cain’t understand a word they’re sayin’.”
“How’s your sign language?”
“Better’n most, I guess.”
The tall man dismounted and walked toward them. The boy followed, then caught up, and the man laid his hand on the boy’s scrawny shoulder. Maybe father and son.
“Neither one of them look too well fed,” Zach intoned. “But if they’d wanted food, they would have come into camp.”
“Mebbe,” Cherry muttered.
Zach moved forward and raised one hand. The man pointed to himself, then to the boy, and then swept his arm toward the hills to the north.
Zach nodded. “I think the camp’s in those hills. Might be they moved it after that powwow they invited me to.”
“Mebbe,” Cherry said.
The boy pointed to his pony, then to the man’s horse and pantomimed riding.
Zach nodded again. “They were riding somewhere,” he said to Cherry.
The man pointed then to the herd of cattle bedded down nearby, then back to his horse.
“Whazzat mean?” Cherry wondered. “They want another cow?”
Zach shook his head. “No. If they did, they’d just take it and make no fuss. I think they’ve seen something. Maybe some of our cattle.” He gestured to the east and then west.
The man shook his head.
Zach then pointed south. Another shake. “North?” He pointed.
This time both the man and the boy nodded. The boy broke into a stream of unintelligible words and held up three fingers.
“Three men, I’d guess,” Zach breathed. “They’ve seen something, all right.” He watched the boy’s motions a moment longer. “On horseback.”
Again the man pointed back to the herd of steers.
“With some cattle. Cherry, they’ve just told us our cattle were rustled by three men, and we can find them someplace north of us.”
“North! But we’re headin’ east, aren’t we?”
“I think it might pay us to take a detour for a few miles.”
He strode toward the man and offered his hand. Then he signaled for the boy to follow him. When he reached the two riders on night duty, he called out an order. “Curly, cut out a heifer and get a rope around its neck.”
“Sure, boss.” Curly eyed the young Indian boy. “Still hungry, huh?”
Zach watched the boy lead the cow back to what must be his father, and they both mounted their ponies. Before they rode off, the man trotted his horse up to Zach, leaned down and extended his hand again. Then the two reined away.
Zach watched them ride off, the calf trotting along between them. “I’ll be damned,” he breathed. “You just never know about people, do you?”
“Sure don’t,” a beaming Cherry exclaimed. “Look what that Indian feller gave me!” He held up the buffalo-tooth necklace.
“Let’s go back and finish our supper,” Zach suggested.
Back in camp, Cherry took a good deal of joshing about his new necklace, but he just grinned. “Didn’t know I could speak such good Injun lingo, didja, boys?”
“Nope,” José returned with a laugh. “Now you learn Spanish, no?”
“Naw,” Skip offered. “Now Cherry gets to practice readin’ Indian signs so’s he can track our missing steers.”
“Already done that,” Cherry crowed. “Our missing cattle’s north of here, right, boss?”
At Zach’s amused nod, Cherry rose dramatically and pointed toward the hills in the distance. “That’s where we’re headin’!”
“That true, boss?” Skip queried.
“Yeah,” Zach said.
“How come?”
Zach caught Cherry’s eye. “Indian savvy.”
“Huh? Whazzat mean?”
Zach turned toward a jubilant Cherry. “You tell ’em, Cherokee. I’m going to bed.”
Chapter Sixteen
At the end of another long, hot, miserable day, Alex rode up on a little rise and suddenly there was a sparkling clear stream ahead of her. Cottonwoods and gray-green willows grew in a frothy border along the banks, and sparrows chattered among stands of chest-high cattails and wild plum bushes.
She rode toward it for another quarter hour, dragged herself out of the saddle and stumbled over to the chuck wagon where she gobbled a double helping of tortillas and beans. She had just finished when Zach dusted off his hands and came toward her.
“You okay, Dusty?”
“Yes, I’m fine, just tired. And filthy. And at the end of each day my—I’m sore.”
He just looked at her, and she could see he was trying not to smile.
“I know exactly what you’re thinking, Zach.”
“Yeah?” He reached around her to slide open one of the drawers in the chuck wagon. “What am I thinkin’?”
“That you were right. That I’m a...how did you put it? A city girl. A green head.”
“Greenhorn,” he corrected.
“Greenhorn,” she acknowledged. She watched him lift a flask of whiskey out of the drawer, uncork it and offer it to her.
“Here, have a swig of this. Might help your sore—Might help some.”
She tipped the bottle to her lips, swallowed and began to cough. “I find it amazing that cowboys drink this awful-tasting stuff,” she said when she could talk.
Zach chuckled. “You’re not a—”
“I know,” she said. “I’m not a cowboy. Believe me, I know that. But never in a million years did I think a cattle drive would be so...well, so...difficult. Full of heat and dust and...difficulties.”
He laughed and downed a gulp from the flask, re-corked it and then uncorked it again and took another long swallow. “Yeah, you’re a real greenhorn, Dusty. Cattle drives can be rough.” He again handed her the whiskey.
“But,” he continued, “I’ve watched you for almost two hundred miles. You’ll do to ride the river with.”
“Wh-what does that mean, ‘ride the river with’?”
He looked at her for so long with those mossy green eyes she felt goose bumps pop out on her arms.
“It means you haven’t whined or ridden a horse to death or gotten drunk or shot anybody. It means you’ll do to ride the trail with.”
“Oh,” she said softly. “Oh.” His words made her dizzy with happiness. She couldn’t stop smiling at him. Yes, I would like that, riding a trail with—