Miss Murray On The Cattle Trail

He had to admit he just plain didn’t trust a woman that pretty. Or that sassy. He set his eyes on the trail ahead and kicked his horse into a trot.

* * *

A cattle drive, Alex acknowledged as she guided her mount beside the mass of mooing cows, had to be one of the strangest endeavors ever conceived by modern man. No one would believe most of the things that went on, so her task as a newspaper reporter was easy: write about everything and make it interesting.

Today, for instance, she noticed strange little brown birds no bigger than sparrows that rode along on the backs of the steers, pecking insects off their hides. The sparrows weren’t the least intimidated by the lumbering animals beneath them, and the steers didn’t seem to mind. In a way, it was sort of like Zach Strickland and herself; she survived the best way she could, and Zach paid no attention.

This morning she’d gotten another taste of the strange habits of cowboys on a trail drive. Roberto rose before the moon had set and began to rattle around in the chuck wagon, cutting out biscuit rounds and frying bacon. Before the sun was up, the cowhands dragged themselves out of their bedrolls.

All except the scout, Wally Mortenson. Wally was an older man with laugh lines etched deep in his tanned face, and of all things, he woke up singing. Sometimes it was a hymn; sometimes it was a song so bawdy her ears burned. “Oh, my sweetheart’s not true like she should be,” he bellowed. “At night she lies close and she—”

His voice would break off and he would swear at whoever had kicked him into silence and start again.

The day started off well. Alex was riding a roan gelding that seemed to like her, his gait was gentle enough that her sore behind didn’t hurt too much, and the weather was clear and sunny. She rode for an hour, getting used to the dust clouds and the gnats and the heat, and then spurred her horse to join Juan and Curly, who were riding in the flank position.

All of a sudden the sun that had been blazing down on her only moments before slid behind a cloud. For a brief moment she welcomed the suddenly cooler air, and she lifted her face to the breeze and let it wash over her perspiration-soaked shirt. But when she raked off her wide-brimmed black hat, she felt droplets of water dampen her hair.

“Miss Alex!” Curly pointed to the sky. “Rainstorm.”

Very quickly it grew darker and wetter, and then thunder began to rumble overhead. Oh, heavens, a thundershower! She looked around for some shelter, but other than an occasional stand of spindly cottonwood trees, there was nothing to shield her from the rain, and it was now coming down in sheets.

Alex clapped her hat back on, snugged it down and tried to see through the mist enveloping them. The herd kept plodding forward, with Curly and Juan keeping pace with the animals. Good heavens, would they just keep going?

Yes, they would.

She tried to keep up. After another rain-soaked mile, large patches of boggy grass slowed her progress even more, and then there were big, wide puddles and stretches of mud-slicked ground that splattered when she rode over them.

Rain slashed at her face. Her thoroughly wet shirt stuck to her body as if glued on; her jeans felt cold as water soaked through the denim to her thighs. Despite the rain, she worked hard to keep up with Juan and Curly, who were still racing after straggling cows and whooping it up, as they always did.

She was thoroughly miserable, wet and cold, her clothes sodden and her hat dripping water onto her jeans. She had never felt so cold and clammy, so disheveled or so disheartened.

They rode on, pushing the herd along, for another hour, and then, as suddenly as it had started, the rain stopped and the sun burst through a cloud. Curly and Juan kept the herd moving as the puddles began to dry up, and her wet shirt and jeans began to steam in the sunshine. Now she felt hot and clammy.

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.”

“And we’re all gonna listen,” Cassidy drawled. “Ain’t we, boys?”

“This is okay with you, señorita?” José inquired politely.

“More important,” came Zach’s commanding voice, “is it okay with Curly? He might not want you hearin’ all his secrets.”

Jase snorted. “Heck, boss, twenty thousand people back East are gonna read all about ’m. After that, Curly won’t have any secrets!”

Curly settled his work-hardened frame next to Alex and sent her a shy smile. “Guess I’m ready, Miss Murray. Fire away.”

Quietly, Roberto set a brimming mug of coffee at her elbow. She took a sip, fished her notebook and pencil out of her shirt pocket and began.

“Your name is Curly, is that right?”

“Yeah. My real name’s Garner, miss. Thaddeus Garner.”

“Then why are you called Curly? I notice your hair is straight as a licorice whip.” The men guffawed.

“Dunno, ma’am. I’ve always been Curly, ever since I kin remember.”

“Very well, Curly. Now, tell me all about yourself, where you were born, where you grew up, how you came to be on this cattle drive.”

“Well, lessee, now. I was born in Broken Finger, Idaho. That is, I think I was. My momma could never remember. Some days she said it was Mule Heaven and other days she said it was Broken Finger. Pa died before I could ask him.”

“And did you grow up in Broken Finger? Or Mule Heaven?”

“Guess so, miss. Leastways Ma never moved whilst I was growin’ up. Went to school for a while, but I never seemed to learn much.”

Jase snorted. “Didn’t learn nuthin’, ya mean.”

“Didn’t learn anything,” Skip corrected with a grin.

“You neither, huh?” Jase shot back.

Alex tapped her pencil against the notepad. “Gentlemen, please. Let Curly finish his story.”

Curly talked and talked while Alex jotted down pages of notes. The man talked for so long that the other hands began to drift off and retrieve their bedrolls from the chuck wagon, lay them out around the fire and nod off to sleep. And still Curly talked.

Alex’s hand began to cramp, but she kept writing. Finally Curly ran out of steam. She thanked him profusely and he blushed like a schoolgirl.

Her fingers ached, but it was a small price to pay for a long, cooling bath. And the notes for an excellent newspaper story.

Chapter Five

After Curly’s interview, Zach sent him off to night-herd with José, listened to his wrangler’s report about the remuda and grudgingly admitted that Miss Alexandra Murray—Dusty—had more sand than he’d thought. Today she’d ridden a full twelve hours across miles of sunbaked sagebrush and bunch grass without once complaining, or crying, or doing any of a dozen other things most women would under the circumstances. And she could still sit up and talk past suppertime.

Not only that, he’d learned more about Curly tonight than he’d gleaned in the seven years he’d known the man. Dusty had a way of asking questions that sort of drew forth information. And secrets. He’d never known before that Curly had once had a wife. Or that his newborn son had died at birth, along with the baby’s mother.

But he knew one thing for certain—he’d never let Dusty within twenty yards of himself with her pencil and that notepad in her hand. The woman was downright dangerous. He had secrets, too, things he’d never told a living soul.

He heard Roberto’s wheezy breathing from under the chuck wagon. Between his cook’s snoring and the scrape of crickets, the night seemed to close in around him in an unsettling net. Something was bothering him, but he couldn’t figure out what it was. Curly’s dead wife? Juan’s polite but pointed remark about the river they’d have to ford soon? Swollen, the kid said. “And the current muy swift, Señor Boss.”

Or was it the way his new hand, Cassidy, kept staring at Dusty and edging closer and closer to her while she sat talking with Curly?

Last night she’d rolled out her pallet as close to the chuck wagon and Roberto as she could get without scaring the cook out of a night’s sleep. Zach noted that tonight she’d done the same thing.

Cassidy always seemed to be there beside her around the campfire. Not good. And when Dusty climbed into her bedroll, there was Cassidy, throwing his blankets down right next to her.

Zach moved quietly to where she lay, her dark head poking out from her top blanket. Cassidy was sound asleep. Zach laid one hand on her shoulder.

“I’m not asleep,” she murmured.

“Get up and come with me,” he said. She slipped out of her bedroll, and he rolled the blankets up under his arm and tipped his head toward the opposite side of the fire pit. She nodded, picked up her boots and quietly followed him.

He positioned her bedroll parallel to the dying coals and motioned for her to crawl in. Then he rolled out his own pallet next to hers. Now no one could reach her without first stepping over him or wading through hot coals.

“Understand?” he whispered.

“Yes. That man, Cassidy, makes me uneasy.”

“Yeah. Me, too.” He laid his revolver under the saddle he used for a pillow, positioned his hat over his face and closed his eyes.

“Thank you, Zach,” she murmured.

“Yeah,” he said.

“And I’m still here,” she breathed. “You owe me a silver dollar.”

“Yeah,” he said again. He hated to admit it, but he was halfway glad. Dusty was fun to watch.

He tried like the devil to go to sleep, and he would have succeeded if it hadn’t been for the quiet breathing of the woman beside him. He was so aware of her his toes itched.

He damn well didn’t want to be aware of her. He didn’t want to notice her or find himself watching her or listening for her voice. A female could be a dangerous thing. And a female on a cattle drive, a female he couldn’t help admiring, made him sweat bullets.

* * *

The next morning, an incident occurred that brought him up short. It wasn’t what happened, exactly; it was his puzzling anger about it. He never lost his temper. He’d learned long before he came out West, before he’d learned to ride or shoot a rifle or sweet-talk a girl, how to stuff down rage. So his reaction surprised him.

At first light he saw Cassidy snatch up Dusty’s white camisole where it hung drying on the chuck wagon towel rack and caper around camp, twirling the garment over his head. It made Zach see red.

He grabbed the lacy thing out of Cassidy’s hand and laid him flat with one punch. Then he stuffed the garment inside his vest and stalked out of camp to cool off down at the creek bank. When he returned, the men were sitting around the fire, sleepily shoveling down bacon and biscuits, and he sent Cassidy out to relieve one of the night-herders.

Dusty sat between Juan and Curly, calmly sipping a mug of coffee. Zach couldn’t stop staring at her chest. Without her camisole, he knew her bare nipples were pressing against that thin blue shirt, and it was doing funny things to his insides. His outsides, too.

He slipped the bit of cotton and lace out of his vest and without a word knelt beside her, pressed it into her hand and folded her fingers over it. She gave a little squeak, and he bit back a chuckle.

She leaped up, marched over to the horse Cherry had brought up for her today and pulled herself up into the saddle. Lordy, he’d have to work hard to keep his eyes off that all-too-female body of hers this morning.

It wasn’t easy.

Sometime around noon they entered a stretch of red-brown rocks interspersed with clumps of tall mustard, blazing bright yellow in the hot sun. Pretty stuff in the wild. In the summertime, Consuelo used armloads of it to make a kind of spicy-hot spread for venison or baked ham. He watched Dusty slow her mount to admire a patch of the weed. Probably gonna draw a picture of it in her notebook.

She looked up and bit her lip. “How will I ever learn everything there is to know about a cattle drive?” she asked.

“Everything? You don’t need to know ‘everything,’ Dusty. You just need to know enough to stay alive.”

“But my newspaper...the readers are simply fascinated by the West. How will I ever report enough to keep them entertained?”

Entertained! Hell’s bells, this drive means life or death for me, and all she wants to do is entertain?

“Well, I’ll tell ya.” He sent her a look from under the brim of his hat. “Do what Charlie told me when I first came to work for him.”

“And what would that be?”

“Keep your eyes and ears open, and your mouth shut.”

She gave him a sharp look, her lupine-colored eyes widening.

“Got it?” he snapped.

“Yes, sir, I have most certainly ‘got it.’ In order to keep my readers riveted to their morning newspapers, I thank the Lord I can scribble my notebook full of interesting facts while joggling along on the back of a horse. Nothing will escape me.” Her voice was so frosty it made him wince. “I do keep my eyes and ears open,” she continued. “And that includes noticing your...your insufferable rudeness. You will not hear another question out of me.”

He laughed out loud. “I’ll believe that when steers can fly.”

She sent him a smoldering look and gigged her mount away from him.

Sure hope you remember the “mouth shut” part, Dusty.

He reined away, but her horse started acting funny, and that caught his attention. She urged it closer to the rocks and all at once the animal shied and danced sideways. What the—Then the sorrel arched its back and bucked her out of the saddle.

She landed flat on her back. By the time he reached her, the horse had skittered off a ways, and out of the corner of his eye he saw what had startled it. Rattlesnake.

Dusty laid without moving. Zach pulled out his gun, shot the snake, then dropped out of the saddle and raced over to her. Her eyes were open, but she wasn’t breathing. Had the wind knocked out of her, he guessed. When he knelt beside her, she grabbed for his arm. Her face was white as flour and she was struggling to draw in a breath.

“You’re okay,” he barked. “You’re winded. Just lie easy.”

She tried to sit up, then sucked in a huge breath and started to cough, gasping for breath at the same time. “C-can’t breathe!” she choked out.

Zach rocked back on his heels. “Not surprising since you got thrown. Your horse shied at a rattler.”

Her eyes widened. “A s-snake?”

“Yeah. Horses are afraid of snakes.”

“P-people, t-too,” she said. “Oh, my s-stars, a snake!” She shuddered visibly.

Now that she was breathing better, he found himself mad as hell. “Dusty, there’s a whole lotta things out here that’ll spook a pilgrim like you. It’s time you turned tail and—”

She jerked upright and jabbed her forefinger into his chest. “Pilgrim! I am not a ‘pilgrim’ by any stretch of your minuscule imagination, Mr. Strickland.”

Hell, she sure had plenty of breath now. He caught her chest-poking hand and held it out to one side. “Damn right you’re a pilgrim. You’re a real beginner out here in the West. Oughtta know better than to ride close to the rocks on sunny days. And that’s another reason why—”