Miss Murray On The Cattle Trail

Chapter Three

Alex scrunched her eyes shut and prayed the horse would keep moving forward alongside the herd even if she wasn’t looking. After a minute she cracked open one eyelid. Puffy white clouds floated in the unbelievably blue sky over her head—faces, fantastical cats, even castles—and in the distance rose snow-capped mountains. Oh, how cool they looked!

Her mouth was crunchy with grit and dust, and she could scarcely draw the filthy air in through her nostrils. Tears streamed down her cheeks. She closed her eyes again.

Aunt Alice had been right. It had taken her only half a day on horseback to realize that a girl raised in the city should never, never, never go on a cattle drive. She had never been so tired, so filthy, so miserable in her entire life. And this is only the first day.

A glimmer of understanding about her mother penetrated her roiling thoughts. Mama had always refused to go outdoors unless it was to tea at the Savoy Hotel. Her mother liked to be warm and clean and dressed in the latest fashion, and she had always arranged her life for the maximum comfort with a minimum effort. Maybe Mama had known something Alex didn’t.

Something jostled her, and she snapped her lids open. Zach Strickland’s black horse was beside her mount. He tipped his head to indicate she should pull off to the side, then reined in and reached over to grasp her horse’s bridle.

She ran her tongue over her gritty teeth and opened her mouth. “Is something wrong?”

“Maybe.” He gave her a look and quickly glanced away, then poured water from his canteen over a blue bandanna and pressed it into her hand. “Tie this over your nose and mouth. Keeps out the dust.” He kicked his horse and trotted off.

“Thank you,” she called after him, but he gave no sign he’d heard. Hurriedly, she tied on the wet bandanna and drew in a mercifully grit-free breath. Oh, no. He would surely have noticed her tear-streaked face. Darn him! She hated it when she appeared weak and wishy-washy.

Like her mother.

With a groan she snatched up the reins and urged her mount forward. She hated Zach Strickland. Anyone who would revel in her distress was no gentleman.

But he wasn’t reveling. Actually, he had done her a kindness. It was a civilized gesture, she acknowledged. Well, she’d thanked him, hadn’t she? That was all the good manners she could summon up on this awful, scorching afternoon.

Oh, Aunt Alice, what have I done?

How many more hours were there before she could climb down off this animal and rest her aching thighs? And her bottom. She squinted up at the sun. Almost straight overhead, which must mean it was nearly noon. Did that mean lunch? She could endure anything if there was a meal at the end. She kicked her heels into the horse’s flanks and jolted forward over an expanse of tiny purple flowers.

But lunchtime came and went, and still the cowhands prodded the bellowing animals forward. She had long since gulped down the last of the lukewarm contents of her canteen, and her growling stomach didn’t let her forget for a single sunbaked minute that she was hungry. Desperately so. Right now she’d eat anything, a handful of cracker crumbs, a morsel of desiccated cheese, even a mouthful of the soft leather glove gripping her reins.

This was misery, all right. Aunt Alice hadn’t varnished the truth one bit. She thought longingly of the wide, shaded front porch at the Rocking K ranch house, then determinedly shook her thoughts back to reality. There must be shade ahead somewhere; tall trees with blue-green needles bordered their route, and underneath them she glimpsed a mossy green carpet and some sort of green, grassy plant no more than six inches high.

But there was no shade out here. Apparently there was to be no noon meal, either. She bit her lip. The bandanna helped some, but underneath it the hot air felt as if it were suffocating her. At least it kept out the gnats swarming around her head.

Then out of the dust emerged a sweat-streaked sorrel, and Juan, the young boy, was smiling at her.

He reined in close and thrust a hard biscuit into her hand. “Eat!”

“Thank you!” Oh, no, that was wrong, he was Mexican, wasn’t he? “Gracias!”

He flashed her a grin and galloped off through the dust. Why hadn’t she thought to bring a biscuit, or an apple, or something?

Her aunt had suggested packing a clean shirt and an extra pair of underdrawers in the drawstring canvas bag rolled up behind her saddle. She couldn’t blame her for forgetting to mention biscuits.

They didn’t stop until late afternoon, and by then Alex’s throat was so parched she couldn’t even spit. Ahead of her stretched lush green grass and a stand of leafy willow trees and...surely she was beginning to hallucinate...the chuck wagon, parked next to a burbling stream.

She blinked hard. She must be dreaming.

She edged her mount close to the rear wagon wheel and dismounted. The instant her boots touched the ground her knees buckled. She grabbed the saddle and hung on.

“Señorita,” Roberto said at her shoulder. “You must put horse in corral, not dismount next to cook wagon.”

She groaned. “I can’t let go, Roberto. I can’t walk.”

Carefully he pried her fingers off the saddle, grasped her around the waist and settled her on the ground with her back propped against the wheel. “Cherry!” he shouted to the wrangler. “Come get the señorita’s horse.”

Alex leaned forward and dropped her aching head onto her bent knees. Footsteps approached, and the next minute her saddle plopped down beside her and she heard the horse’s hooves clop away.

“Thank you!” she called after whoever had taken her mount.

“Ride too long today,” Roberto observed. She nodded, her forehead pressed against her jeans.

“Be plenty sore mañana. I go get boss.”

“No!” She jerked her head up. “Don’t get him.” She didn’t want to appear weak in front of Mister I-Told-You-So Strickland.

Roberto stood surveying her, his hands propped at his waist. A stained homespun apron covered his bulky form. “I think yes, señorita. You hurt much, no?”

She sighed. “Yes, Roberto. Much. Very much.”

“Ay de mi,” the old man murmured. He moved away and Alex concentrated on straightening one leg, then the other. She tried three times before she gave up.

Then Trail Boss Zach Strickland was standing before her, his long legs spread wide and a stony hardness in his green eyes that made her shudder. He was not smiling. “Sore, huh?”

She clamped her teeth together and nodded.

“Not surprised,” he said. “We covered ten miles today.”

“Ten miles!” Ten whole miles? In her entire life she hadn’t ridden more than two miles, and that was along a shaded bridle path.

“Do you always ride this many miles in a single day?”

He shook his head, the dark hair streaked with gray dust. “Nope. Usually ride twelve to fifteen miles each day, but today bein’ our first day out, the cattle need some trail learning. And you, bein’ a tenderfoot, need some trail learning, too. We’ll ride more miles tomorrow.”

“Where did all these cows come from? Surely Uncle Charlie’s ranch is not big enough for—”

“Huh! Charlie’s ranch is plenty big, plus we picked up some steers from neighboring ranches.” He leaned forward. “Don’t call ’m ‘cows’ on a trail drive unless you wanna get laughed at.” He shot her a hard look. “But as for where they came from, Miss City Girl, cows come from other cows. And a bull, of course.”

“I see.” How could she ever explain about cows and bulls in a city newspaper?

“Got any more dumb questions, Dusty?”

Dusty? She must look a frightful mess for him to call her that. She wiped her sweaty, gritty hands on her shirtfront. “No, no more questions. But...but I, um, I find that I...I cannot walk,” she confessed.

“Not surprised,” he said again. “Well, let’s get it done.” He reached down, grasped her under the arms and heaved her to her feet.

“Ouch-ouch-ouch!”

“Yeah,” he said, his voice dry. “Come on.” He swung her aching body up into his arms and strode away from the chuck wagon and past the roped-off horse corral. When he came to the stream, he paced up and down the bank and suddenly halted, stepped forward and dropped her, bottom first, into the cold water.

“What are you doing?” she screeched. She tried to scramble to the bank, but he laid one hand on her shoulder and pressed down. “Stay there,” he ordered. “Cold water will help. I’ll be back in thirty minutes.”

She had no choice. She could barely move.

Chapter Four

Zach tramped away from the stream where he’d dumped Miss Murray, or Dusty, as he now thought of her, and halted at the chuck wagon. “Save her some supper, Roberto.”

“Si, boss. But she will not be much hungry.”

“She’ll eat.” He left the aging cook chuckling over his pot of beans and settled himself at the campfire next to Juan.

The young man leaned toward him. “The señorita, she is okay?”

“She is okay, yes. Mad, but okay.”

“Madre mia. She will not be smile tomorrow.”

“Not much,” Zach agreed. Maybe not at all. He kinda felt sorry for her, but kinda not sorry at the same time. Damn Charlie for insisting she come along on this drive. It was no place for a woman. A fancy-assed, citified, back-East newspaper reporter woman was about as welcome as a swarm of locusts.

The clang of a steel triangle announced supper, and the hands around the campfire stampeded to the chuck wagon and lined up with tin plates in their hands. Roberto slapped thick slices of beef onto them, ladled on beans and topped the pile with his special warm tortillas.

Zach brought up the rear of the line, ate leisurely and mentally calculated when Dusty’s half hour would be up.

“Hey, boss,” someone called. “Where’s our newspaper lady?”

Zach laid down his fork and shoved to his feet. “Comin’ right up.”

* * *

Footsteps crunched over the sandy stream bank, and Alex clenched her fists as tall, rangy Zach Strickland came toward her.

“I want you to get me out of here!” she sputtered. “Right now!”

“Yes, ma’am!” He splashed into the water, grabbed her shoulders and jerked her upright.

“Ow! Ow, that hurts!”

“Roberto’s got some liniment in one of his secret cubbyholes. Might help some.”

“Oh, yes, please.”

He swung her upright and half dragged, half walked her onto dry ground. “Not so fast,” she pleaded.

He propped her against a thick pine trunk and stood surveying her. “Look, Dusty, you shouldn’t be out here with us. A cattle drive is rough, even on a seasoned cowhand. For a greenhorn it’s suicidal.”

She said nothing, just stared at the trail boss she was coming to detest. He had overlong black hair that brushed the tips of his ears and eyes the color of moss. Right now they were narrowed at her.

“Tomorrow you’re going back to the Rocking K,” he announced. “I’ll send Curly with you, and he can catch up with us before we hit the river. Right now, though, supper’s on, and you don’t want to miss Roberto’s beans and tortillas.”

“No,” she said.

His dark eyebrows went up. “No, what?”

“I’m not going back.” She tried to shove away from the tree trunk, but her legs still felt like jelly.

He propped his hands on his hips. “In case you forgot, Miss Murray, I’m the trail boss on this drive. You do what I say.”

“No,” she repeated. “I don’t work for you, Mister Trail Boss. I work for the Chicago Times. And that’s who I take orders from.”

“Nope, don’t work that way, Dusty. On the trail you take orders from me.”

She raised her chin. “When we’re ‘on the trail,’ I will take orders from you, but that does not include sending me back to the ranch. That is tantamount to firing me, and as I said, I don’t work for you.”

He stared at her for a long moment with those unnerving gray-green eyes. “I don’t fancy nursemaiding you, whining and stumbling over your boots, for the next four hundred miles. Cattle driving is a tough business. You’re gonna get river mud up your nose and grasshoppers in your hair. By tomorrow night, you’ll have spent another ten or twelve hours in the saddle and we’ll just see what tune you’re playin’ then.”

“Are you a betting man, Mr. Strickland?” She put as much frost in her voice as she could manage. “I will wager you one silver dollar I will be playing my own tune. And that means I will be riding on to Winnemucca with the rest of you.”

Zach rolled his eyes. “I never bet with a fool, Dusty, but in your case I’m makin’ an exception.”

He walked her back to camp and sat her down at the campfire. Roberto brought her a tin plate and a fork and settled it on her lap, then balanced a mug of coffee on a flat rock beside her. “There ees whiskey, señorita,” he whispered. “You wish?”

“No, thank you, Roberto. I do not drink spirits.”

“Long night tonight,” he murmured. “Long day mañana.”

She shook her head. “I will manage.” Somehow.

Zach looked up. “Roberto, after supper, give her some of that liniment you squirrel away.”

“Si. Good idea.”

“Hey, Miss Murray?” Jase called from across the smoldering fire pit. “You gonna write about us?” Jase was the one with the unruly blond hair. She wondered if he got grasshoppers in it.

“Why, yes, I am.”

“Whoo-eee,” he exulted. “You hear that, boys? We’re gonna be in the newspaper. We’re gonna be famous!”

Curly sat bolt upright. “Yeah? How famous?”

Alex studied the rapt faces around the fire. “Well...” She paused for dramatic effect and sneaked a look at Zach Strickland’s unreadable countenance. “More than twenty thousand people read the Chicago Times every day.”

“No funnin’?” Curly asked.

“No funning,” Alex assured him. “And I will want to interview each one of you for my articles.”

She could scarcely hear herself think over the cheers. Yes, she would most certainly write about them. And she’d also write about the body-breaking punishment of a trail drive. That is, she would if she could get her tortured body over to the chuck wagon to retrieve her notebook and pencil.

She groaned and stared at the plate of cold beans in her lap. She would last until she rode down the streets of Winnemucca with all those cows or she would die trying.

* * *

Zach kicked a hot coal back into the fire pit and surveyed the camp. Roberto had long since splashed water on the canvas-wrapped carcass of the calf he’d slaughtered and hung on a hook in the chuck wagon, washed up the supper plates and crawled under the wagon to sleep. All but two of the cowhands had rolled out their bedrolls. Curly and Cassidy, the new man, were night-herding, riding around and around the steers bedded down in the meadow, moving in opposite directions and singing songs to keep them calm. The kind of songs a mother would sing.

He’d always liked night-herding. It gave him a chance to talk to Dancer, reflect on the day’s events and plan for tomorrow’s, at least as much as anyone driving a thousand head of prime beef could plan. Usually, whatever could go wrong, did.

In spite of all the problems, Zach liked this life. When he’d come West as a boy, right away he’d liked the freewheeling, easy existence of a cowboy, and later, when he’d risen to be Charlie Kingman’s top hand, he liked the admiration working for the Rocking K brought him. He liked being in charge, doing his job and doing it well. I’m responsible only to myself, my cattle and my ranch hands.

A successful drive brought him the gratitude and respect of people he cared about, Charlie and Alice Kingman. And this drive would bring him something else, something he’d dreamed about ever since he was a scrawny kid with no home; it would bring him enough money to buy a spread of his own and start his own ranch.

He sucked in a lungful of sagebrush-scented air and surveyed the camp. Dusty sat as close to the chuck wagon as she could get without nuzzling right up to Roberto. He guessed Dusty didn’t trust his cowhands. Zach did, though. Had to, on a long drive like this.

After supper he’d watched her limp off behind the chuck wagon with the bottle of Roberto’s liniment clutched in her hand. When she returned, her gait had evened out some and she was walking easier, at least easier enough to let her climb back on her horse tomorrow. He knew she’d be sleeping in wet jeans; by morning they’d still be pretty clammy. That ought to hurry things up a bit for her deciding she ought to hightail it back to the Rocking K.

He’d sure hate to take that silver dollar off her, but he guessed that by tomorrow she’d yell uncle and turn back, and then he’d be a buck richer.

* * *

Alex huddled by the campfire, sipping from a mug of coffee Roberto kept refilling from the blackened metal coffeepot and staring into the flames. What have I gotten myself into? She could never, never admit it to Mister Know-It-All Strickland, but she was starting to feel just the tiniest bit uneasy. The night was so dark out here in the middle of nowhere.

All around the fire pit were sprawled-out cowboys shrouded in their blankets—a lump here, and one over there, and there. They lay without moving, probably too tired to even twitch.

The trail boss was tramping around out there in the dark somewhere, and while she could hear him, she couldn’t see anything beyond the circle of dying firelight where she sat.

She pulled out her notebook and began writing.

First she described the camp and the dwindling campfire, the dark shapes of the sleeping cowhands, even how the camp smelled after their supper of tortillas and beans. But she did not write about how frightened she felt at the huge expanse of black, black sky overhead. Or the stinging mosquitos. Or her aching muscles.

Finally she admitted she was exhausted and she needed to sleep. She tiptoed to the chuck wagon, scrabbled around in the back and pulled out her roll of blankets. Just one other unclaimed bedroll remained. Roberto had long since crawled under the wagon to sleep, so this one had to belong to Zach Strickland.

She stood uncertainly near the remains of the campfire, wondering where to spread out her blankets. It would be most improper to curl up next to one of the cowhands, even one who was sound asleep, but out beyond the haphazard sprinkling of bedrolls it was pitch black. Wild animals could be lurking out there. Wolves, even.

Or... She caught her breath. Even wild Indians.

She crept forward to an unoccupied space and spread out her blue wool blanket. The other, a forest green one Aunt Alice said wouldn’t show the dirt, she wrapped around her body. Then she lay down on the hard ground and pulled the edges of the blue blanket over herself.

She couldn’t close her eyes for a long time, and when she did they popped open at the slightest sound. Never in her life had she realized nighttime could be so noisy!

She listened to the faint hoofbeats of the horses ridden by the two night-herders Mr. Strickland had assigned. One of them was singing something; she couldn’t identify the song, but it was soothing. Which was no doubt what that herd of cows out there somewhere was feeling. She, however, was feeling anything but soothed.

Something made a whoohing sound off in the dark. An owl. She hoped. Indians made wolf calls, didn’t they? Not owl calls. At least that’s what she’d read once in a dime novel she’d found in Uncle Charlie’s bookcase.

Something rustled out beyond the fire pit. Oh, mercy! What was that? A... What did they call them? A mountain lion? She tugged her blankets more securely around her.

Suddenly she became aware of another sound, a crunching noise. She lay still, listening. Footsteps, that was it! They came closer, and then she was startled by a low voice at her back.

“Dusty?”

“Y-yes?”

“Everything all right?”

“N-no. I mean, yes. Everything is just fine.”

She heard him chuckle. “I mean, did Roberto’s liniment help your sore backsi—your sore muscles?”

“Of course,” she answered.

“Good. Just checking whether you’re ready to throw in the towel tomorrow and hightail it back to a hot bath and a soft bed.”

She refused to dignify that remark with an acknowledgment of any kind. Instead, she wrapped her blankets more securely around her and purposefully closed her eyes.

* * *

Before the sun rose the next morning, the hands were lined up at the chuck wagon for Roberto’s thick-sliced bacon, fried potatoes and sourdough biscuits. Zach studied them as they lounged bleary-eyed around the campfire, warming their behinds and shoveling in their breakfasts. All nine men and one stubborn woman.

He watched Dusty more closely than anyone else. She’d tamed her long, wavy hair into one thick, glossy-looking braid that hung down her back and swung enticingly when she moved. She was wearing a form-fitting blue plaid shirt that hinted at lush breasts beneath the light cotton material, and he swallowed hard.

Didn’t help. After her half hour in the stream yesterday, her jeans had shrunk so tight across her butt that watching her move made his mouth go dry.

He couldn’t help wondering all kinds of things about her. What made her tick? What made a woman who looked the way she did, all soft and desirable, want to pal around with a hardened bunch of cowboys instead of staying home with a husband and a dozen children? What made Dusty prickly as a desert cactus with a spine stiff as a railroad tie?

She tucked into her fried spuds, crunched up the bacon slices like a hungry kid and carefully slipped two of Roberto’s float-off-your-plate biscuits into her shirt pocket. He tried not to smile. Looked like she’d learned something yesterday.

He tossed the dregs of his coffee into the fire and stood up. “Time to roll.”

Twenty minutes later, the chuck wagon lumbered off after Wally, the scout, to set up ten or fifteen miles farther on, somewhere with good grass and enough water for the herd. His wrangler, Cherry, followed with the rest of the horses in the remuda, and the two point men, José and Skip, uncovered the bell clapper on the lead steer and set off. A muddle of lowing animals thundered after the clanging bell.

Zach let out a satisfied breath and studied the pinkening sky over the mountains in the distance. God, he loved chasing steers across pretty country with the sunlight coming up and glinting off their horns.

He spurred forward and began calling out orders. “Curly, Juan, cover the flanks. Cassidy, you ride drag.”

He guessed stubborn, determined Miss Dusty Murray would tag along somewhere, at least until suppertime. Then he’d pry her off her horse, drop her into another cold stream, collect his silver dollar and send her back to the Rocking K. Kinda made him chuckle.