Miss Murray on the Cattle Trail(6)
By dusk, the moving mass of cows and riders slowed and finally dribbled to a stop near the chuck wagon. The tired cowhands drove the herd to a broad green meadow and bedded them down for the night.
Alex rode straight for the rope corral where the wrangler, Cherry, had gathered the remuda. She left her roan in his care and made a beeline for the chuck wagon. Her boots squished. All she wanted to do was peel off her sticky garments and put on dry clothes.
But Roberto had an iron Dutch oven bubbling over a blazing fire and he clanged his spoon around and around in an iron triangle to announce that supper was ready. One by one, the hands straggled in, dismounted and handed their reins to the wrangler. Then they stumbled tiredly toward the fire and the tin plates the cook was loading up with beef stew and hot biscuits.
She had lived through her first thunderstorm on the trail, and she wanted to record the details right away, while they were still fresh in her mind. Her notebook was damp, but the words were still legible. She nibbled on her pencil and started to write.
“Ain’tcha gonna eat supper, Miss Alex?” Curly inquired.
“Yeah,” Skip echoed. “Good thing we had that thunderstorm today, huh?”
“You crazy?” Curly snapped. “Wet is wet and miserable, and steers don’t need washin’.”
“Aw, wise up, Curly. The boss couldn’t send Miss Alex back to the Rocking K during a thunderstorm. That’s good, ain’t it?”
Oh, yes, Alex thought. This rainstorm had come at a most fortuitous time. Being wet and miserable for a few hours was a small price to pay for continuing on this adventure.
Suddenly she found she was ravenously hungry.
* * *
After another bone-crunching day, Alex spied the chuck wagon pulled up in a grassy meadow overlooking a river. She was half dead with exhaustion and so hungry her stomach hurt, and she felt hot and grubby and short-tempered. She sent a longing glance at the serene blue-green river behind the wagon and immediately started to plan how she could indulge in a private, cooling bath with nine cowboys and a cook in the vicinity.
She’d think of something, anything, that would allow her to sponge away the sweat and the faint smell of Roberto’s liniment that still clung to her skin. She might not be a seasoned trail rider, but she was not without wiles. Her chance came after supper that evening when the hands were gathered around the fire.
“Gentlemen,” she began. “I have a proposition for you.”
Jase jerked upright, knocking over his mug of coffee. “Uh, what kind of proposition?”
“Not the kind you’re thinkin,’” Zach snapped. “Mind your manners, boys.”
Aha, she had certainly captured someone’s attention. “Very well,” she said in her best businesslike manner, “I will explain. In exchange for one hour of privacy, complete privacy, I will conduct my first interview with one of you for my newspaper column.”
“Which one of us?” Jase asked.
“You gentlemen will decide which one it will be,” she answered. “You will draw straws. The short straw wins.”
“Quick, Cherry,” Jase said. “Go get us some sticks!”
“Yeah,” Skip echoed. “Short ones.”
Alex turned her gaze on Zach, who was sitting across the fire pit from her. “Mr. Strickland, may I rely on you to supervise the drawing?”
“Maybe.”
She blinked. “Maybe? You do want it to be fair and square, do you not?”
“Sure.” He sent her a long look. “For a price.”
“Oh.” Her heartbeat faltered. “What price would you ask?”
“I don’t want to be included in your drawing. Don’t want you writin’ about me.”
“You don’t want to be interviewed? I cannot write a story if I have no, um, factual information.”
“I said I don’t want to be interviewed,” he repeated, his voice sharp. “That’s my price. Take it or leave it.”
She blinked again. What on earth ailed this man? Did he not want—oh, of course. He did not want her to write any newspaper stories at all. He wanted, he planned, to send her back to the Rocking K. Well, she would show him.
“Very well, I accept your condition.” She suppressed a grin of triumph. “On one condition of my own.”
One dark eyebrow went up. “Yeah? What condition?”
“Yeah,” came a chorus of male voices. “What condition?”
“That I am granted my hour of privacy first, before you all draw your straws. All except Mr. Strickland, that is.” She waited half a heartbeat. “And...” she caught a glimmer of something in Zach’s eyes “...that Mr. Strickland is the one who stands guard while I am, um, being private.”
“Fair enough,” Jase said. “Whaddya say, boss?”
He didn’t answer for so long Alex thought he hadn’t heard her proposal.
“Boss?” Jase prompted.
“Mr. Strickland?” she said, her voice as sweet as she could make it. “What is your decision?”
He stood and tossed the rest of his coffee into the fire. “Come on, Miss Murray. Let’s get your ‘privacy’ over with so the hands can draw their straws and turn in. Night’s half over.”
She shot to her feet. “Cherry, please gather your sticks. I will return in one hour.”
She walked downstream, away from the camp, looking for a sandy beach and a pool suitable for bathing. Zach walked five paces behind her, whistling through his teeth. Suddenly she stopped short. There it was, the perfect spot, a deep pool screened by willow trees.
“Here,” she announced. His whistling ceased, and she waited until he caught up with her.
“Right.” He tipped his head toward the copse of trees. “I’ll be over there.”
“Standing guard,” she reminded him.
“Yeah.” He strode off and disappeared. “Your hour starts now,” he called from somewhere behind the greenery.
Quickly she stripped off her shirt, boots and jeans, listening for telltale signs that he was creeping up to spy on her. He wouldn’t do that, would he? Well, he might, she acknowledged. On second thought, no, he wouldn’t. Zach Strickland was the most maddening man she’d ever come across, but something told her he was a man of his word.
She stripped off her camisole and underdrawers. Then she took three quick steps across the sandy creek bank and dived headfirst into the most blissful, cool bath she could imagine.
She swam and splashed, unwound her braid and washed the grit out of her hair, then floated on her back and gazed up at the purpling sky overhead. Dusk was beautiful out here, soft with tones of lavender and violet, and the air so sweet it was like wine.
“You’ve got ten minutes,” came Zach’s voice from somewhere.
She paddled to shore, dragged herself up on the narrow beach and stood shivering while a million crickets yammered at her. Drat! She had no way to get dry except to just stand still and let the water evaporate.
“Four minutes,” he called.
Double drat. Not enough time to air-dry. She grabbed her camisole to use as a towel. But when she’d blotted up all the water, the garment was too sodden to wear, so she wadded it up, stuffed it in the back pocket of her jeans and pulled on her drawers, followed by her shirt and trousers. Her wet hair dripped all over her shirt, but it couldn’t be helped. At least it was clean.
She heard Zach stalking toward her through the brush. “Time’s up. You ready?”
Well, no, she wasn’t, but at least she’d washed off the trail dust. “Look,” she teased when he appeared. She flipped her wet hair at him. “No grasshoppers!”
Unexpectedly he laughed out loud.
“Tomorrow night when I bathe—”
“Hold on a minute,” he interrupted her. “The hands don’t take a bath every night, and neither will you.”
“But we’ll all smell...well, funny after riding in the sun all day, won’t we?”
“Yeah. Get used to it. We don’t take baths unless there’s a river or a stream handy, and that isn’t too often. We sleep in our duds, too.”
“Oh.” That was another snippet of information she could put in her newspaper column, but it wouldn’t help her sense of smell for the next few weeks.
“So,” he continued, “when you’re close to anybody on a trail drive, just don’t breathe too deep. Or maybe hold your nose.”
“Oh,” she said again.
Back in camp the men sat around the fire, eyeing the fistful of twigs Cherry held in one roughened hand.
“All set, miss?” the graying wrangler inquired. The man was bent from years on the trail, she guessed, but there was something about him she liked. For one thing, he moved so gracefully and deliberately it was like watching a man do a slow sort of dance. And for another, he was the only one of the men who didn’t watch everything she did.
“All set,” she answered. “You may proceed with the drawing.”
The cowhands hunched forward, and one by one each of them drew a stick from Cherry’s gnarled fingers. Zach stood on the other side of the campfire, watching.
“Aw, my stick’s longer’n a steer’s horn,” Skip grumbled.
“Mine, too,” José said.
Some of the men held their sticks close to their chest. Others, disappointed, snapped theirs in two and tossed the pieces into the flames. At last a chortle rose from Curly, who leaped up and capered around the fire. “It’s me! I got the short stick! She’s gonna interview me first.”