* * *
Two unforgettable hours passed, and at last they pulled on their clothes and walked quietly back into camp past the cowhands sound asleep in their bedrolls. Roberto snored a few yards away from the chuck wagon.
In silence they crawled underneath the bulky wood structure and wrapped themselves in a single blanket. Zach hooked an arm around her middle and pulled her close. “’Night, Dusty,” he murmured. He pressed a long, soft kiss behind her ear, then curled his body around hers and slept.
Chapter Twenty-One
In the morning, Alex managed to eat her biscuits and bacon without staring at Zach, at least not too obviously. He went about making his trail assignments as usual, but later, instead of riding alongside his point man as he usually did, he spurred his gray gelding to the back of the herd and fell in beside her.
He didn’t say anything, but she was acutely aware of his tall, rangy frame moving close to hers, and that was conversation enough. Surely her entire body was glowing! The cowhands must’ve seen the change in her; maybe they even guessed the reason why. But hour after hour passed on the trail and not a word or a look from any of them revealed that they knew anything unusual had happened.
But it had. She felt different today. She knew what it was like to be loved by a man.
As the day wore on, Zach rode beside her, and they spoke sporadically of the dust, the harsh sun, the hot wind that came up in the afternoon. Inconsequential things. Occasionally he galloped off, lariat swinging, after a rebellious steer straying from the herd. But he always returned.
All that afternoon, even though nothing particularly significant was said, she felt the unmistakable bond between them, and that had her smiling in spite of the heat and the hard saddle chafing her bottom.
Could Zach see the glow she felt inside? If he did, he gave no indication of anything unusual, other than the expression in his moss green eyes when he looked at her. At last she understood what the word poleaxed meant. He looked...well, dazed.
She herself must look positively besotted. She worked hard to keep her mind on something other than his body moving only a few feet from hers, and by suppertime, she was feeling a bit faint and dizzy with fatigue. Or maybe it was desire?
For dessert that night Roberto outdid himself by baking tarts made from dried cherries. And then Zach surprised everyone, most of all Alex, by volunteering for night-herding duty.
Curly goggled at him. “You serious, boss? You ain’t never rode night duty before. How come—”
“Gettin’ close to Winnemucca,” Zach responded, his voice even. “Want to do my fair share.”
Curly’s bushy blond eyebrows went up. “But you’re the boss!”
“Yep,” Zach said with a grin.
“Aw, well, I guess you kin do what ya want.”
“Gotta remember how to do it,” Zach replied with a laugh. “Next year I’ll be drivin’ my own herd to market.” He shot a look at Alex, then refocused on the cherry tart on his plate.
The truth was Zach didn’t think he could lie next to Dusty all night without touching her, and the thought of sleeping anywhere else didn’t sit well with him. He wanted to be close to her, even if he couldn’t...
Oh, Jupiter. At least night-herding would give him something to do besides sweat all night wanting her. For the hundredth time he wondered how he was ever going to stand watching her climb on board that train back to Chicago.
The three hours he spent riding in slow circles around and around the slumbering herd passed more slowly than he could ever remember. By two in the morning, when Juan came to relieve him, he was so wound up he couldn’t sleep anyway, so he crawled in next to Dusty under the wagon and just lay quiet, watching her breathe in and out.
The next morning he was completely wrecked. Served him right, he guessed. You damn fool. You had to go and tumble hat over spurs for someone you’re never gonna see again. Guess he was seventeen kinds of a fool.
But he wasn’t sorry. He would never be sorry.
* * *
As they got closer to Winnemucca, Alex noticed that the landscape began to change. The flat plain that had been punctuated with rivers and streams and trees and rolling green hills in the distance gave way to endless flat acres of wildflowers. It was still desert, but yellow and orange dandelions bloomed beside the trail, along with purple sage and something with tiny golden daisylike blossoms that covered rounded gray bushes and made them look almost fluffy.
Gradually the land began to look more populated. Neat little farmsteads and ranches were scattered here and there in the wide valleys and flat, dry landscape. An occasional herd of sheep or goats blundered into their path, followed by a single serape-draped sheepherder and his dog.
By the time they rode into Winnemucca, Alex was so tired and sweaty she didn’t care if she ever saw another cow again for the rest of her life.
The town was made up of mostly wind-scoured wooden buildings with false fronts, including at least a dozen saloons and the Silver Spur Hotel. Huge livestock holding pens sprawled near the rail yard. It was the driest, windiest place she had ever visited, and after ten minutes of riding along the main street behind a thousand head of cattle, all she wanted was a long hot bath to wash off the dust. She also needed to pay a visit to the dressmaker, if there was one.
Roberto had arrived hours before with Cherry and the remuda, which now filled three large stables at the edge of town. The cowhands spurred forward, driving the herd toward the holding yards where the lowing steers and heifers would be jammed in head to tail, waiting to be loaded into the chute.
When the last cow had joined the rest of the penned herd, Alex walked her roan to the stable, where Cherry stood waiting. She slipped out of the saddle, handed her horse over to the wrangler and turned to find Zach at her side.
“Some of the boys are stayin’ out at camp with Roberto and the chuck wagon. I want you in the hotel.”
“Is there some reason? I could stay with the cowhands, too, Zach. After all these weeks I feel at home with them.”
He took her elbow and walked her out of earshot. “I’m stayin’ at the hotel, Dusty. I want you there, too.”
Her heart kicked. “Oh. Yes, then I will stay at the hotel.” She resisted adding “where you are,” but from the look on his tanned face, he knew this.
“Come on, then. I’ll walk you over.”
When the gray-haired clerk at the hotel desk spied them, he flipped open a fresh page on the register. Alex stepped away and stood apart, watching out the front window as the wind kicked up the ruffles of a child’s pinafore. That reminded her that she needed some ruffles of her own. She hoped the dressmaker would be accommodating.
“How many rooms you want, mister?” the hotel clerk inquired.
“Two,” Zach said. “One for me and my men, here...” he gestured at Curly and Skip standing next to Alex “...and one private room.”
“Fer yourself, huh? Must be the trail boss of yer outfit.”
“Not for me, no. For the lady.”
The clerk’s salt-and-pepper eyebrows rose. “Oh, yeah? What lady would that be, mister? Some fancy lady, I reckon. We don’t allow no fancy—”
“Dusty?” Zach gestured for her to join him at the hotel desk. “This is Miss Alexandra Murray, a reporter for the Chicago Times,” he told the clerk. “The private room is for her.”
The clerk frowned at her. “‘Miss,’ huh? You sure don’t look like any lady I’ve ever seen.”
Alex sent him a tired smile. “What kind of ladies have you seen?” she asked sweetly.
“Real ones,” he blurted out. “You know, ones wearin’ skirts and petticoats an’ hats an’ proper gloves, not grubby jeans and dusty shirts.”
Her eyebrows went up. “That makes one a lady, does it? Petticoats and hats?”
“Well, yes, ma’am, it surely does.”
“Have you ever heard the old saying ‘beauty is only skin deep’?”
“Sure I have,” he snapped. “So what?”
She smiled at him. “And what about this one. ‘Clothes don’t make the man.’”
“Uh...” His plump, smooth-shaven cheeks grew pink.
Dusty’s smile widened. “Clothes don’t make the lady, either. Just because I am wearing jeans and a shirt and leather boots doesn’t mean I am not a lady, now, does it?”
The clerk shot Zach a harried look and swallowed. “No, ma’am, I agree, it don’t.”
“Doesn’t,” she corrected. She planted both elbows on the counter in the most unladylike gesture Zach had ever seen her make and fluttered her eyelashes, something else he’d never seen her do.
“Well, then, sir,” she said, her voice like rich cream, “along with my private room I would like a bath brought up. We ladies like to keep clean.”
Curly and Skip guffawed. Zach managed to keep a straight face, but he let Dusty go on with her teasing until the clerk was apoplectic, and then he stepped in.
“Okay, Mr....?”
“McMullen,” the harried clerk blurted out.
“Mr. McMullen,” Zach acknowledged. “That’s two rooms we need, one of them a single. And a bath. I assume you have hot water?”
“Oh, yessir, sir. And maid service. One hot bath comin’ right up.”