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.