Читать книгу Miss Murray On The Cattle Trail - Lynna Banning, Lynna Banning - Страница 12
ОглавлениеZach 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.
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.
