Читать книгу Miss Murray On The Cattle Trail - Lynna Banning, Lynna Banning - Страница 14

Chapter Six

The day started out like all the others, but after breakfast Cherry told Zach the remuda was worrying him. “Been awful hot and dry the last few days, boss. Mebbe they smell somethin’ on the wind.”

Zach patted the old man’s shoulder. “You’ll figure it out, Cherry. Maybe they’re just thirsty.” He reined away and rode toward the herd. He’d assigned Dusty to ride drag, and he sure didn’t envy her on a scorcher like today. But the damn little fool insisted she wanted to do “her fair share” of the work just like the other hands, so he gave in. Riding drag might teach her a lesson.

Still, he’d keep an eye on her. And he might as well start now. There she was, twenty yards in back of the lumbering herd, the blue bandanna he’d given her pulled up over her nose and mouth, trotting along and yipping like any seasoned cowhand. Guess her arm felt better.

He fell in beside her horse without speaking, and she gave him the barest of nods to acknowledge his presence. It was so hot and still she probably didn’t have the energy to talk, so she didn’t. She wasn’t quiet that often, and he had to smile.

They rode in silence for a mile or so and then she glanced up to the sky. “Oh, look, we’re in for a thunderstorm!” She pointed at a huge cloud that was moving toward them. It looked dark and menacing, and it had an odd yellow-brown tinge to it.

Oh, my God. He wheeled his horse forward toward the herd.

“Skip! Cherry!” By the time he clattered up, the hands were already staring at the cloud overhead.

“Turn the herd,” Zach yelled. “Get them down. Hurry!” He pointed at the cloud bearing down on them, and they jolted into action, spurring hard to round up the steers.

He couldn’t leave Dusty alone back there, so he turned and kicked his mount into a gallop.

“What’s wrong?” she shouted when he reached her. “Is a thunderstorm coming?”

“Not a thunderstorm,” he shouted. “It’s a dust storm.” She pulled her horse to a halt and sat staring up at the advancing cloud.

The sky darkened to a dirty brown. Zach dismounted, then reached up and pulled her off the gelding. He positioned Dancer next to her mount. “Stand between the horses,” he ordered.

“What? But—”

“Don’t argue, just do it!”

“Not until you explain—”

“Dusty, shut up and move! Now!” He shoved her toward the animals. Then he grabbed both bridles and pulled her forward.

“Zach, I don’t understand. Why—”

“You will,” he said shortly. He grabbed her arm, dragged her next to him and pushed her against Dancer’s neck. Then he jockeyed the horses closer together to serve as buffers.

“They’ll squash us!” she protested.

“No, they won’t.” He moved in back of her and pressed her body hard into Dancer’s quivering form. “A dust storm is dangerous. Can’t see. Can’t breathe. It’s important not to panic.”

She started to say something, but at that moment the first gusts of wind hit. “Tie your hat on,” he ordered. “Use your bandanna.”

When she fumbled, he reached over and pulled the square of cotton tight over her Stetson and knotted it under her chin.

Dirt and sand pelted them, and the air filled with swirling grit. He snugged his own hat down as tight as he could, lifted his arms and positioned them around her head. Then he stepped in close and pressed his chest against her back.

“Breathe through your mouth,” he yelled.

He felt her head dip in a nod, and then the storm hit.

The air grew so thick it was hard to see. To Alex it felt as if night was falling, and a bolt of panic stabbed through her. She jerked, and Zach pushed her hat down to shield her face and tightened his arms over her head.

“Don’t panic,” he said, his voice calm. “It’ll get dark but it will pass. Just hang on, okay?”

She tipped her head up and down and felt his warm breath against the back of her neck. In the next minute, the air grew so gritty she couldn’t keep her eyes open, and then all at once she was suffocating.

Choking, she reared back and heard Zach’s voice against her ear. “Keep breathing,” he ordered. “It’s thick and dirty, but it’s air. Just breathe.”

How was he able to breathe? she wondered. He was sheltering her with his body, but the air was just as thick and dirty for him.

The wind screamed around them with a strange, eerie cry, and suddenly she was more frightened than she had ever been in her life. She began to tremble and felt his hard body press more tightly against her back.

“You’re all right, Dusty. Just hang on.” He brought his mouth closer to her ear. “Hang on.”

“But I can’t breathe!” She felt as if she was drowning. Could a person drown on dry land?

“Dusty, take real slow breaths. Don’t hurry it.”

She wanted to scream, but that would take precious air. She opened her mouth wide to gulp in air, and shut her eyes.

Zach’s breath rasped in and out at her back, wafting against her cheek every time he exhaled. Could people choke to death in dust storms?

Don’t think about it. As long as she could feel him breathing she would be all right, wouldn’t she?

“Dusty, stay quiet. Stop thinking.”

How could he know that I’m thinking?

She wanted to ask him how long this would last.

She wanted to thank him for protecting her.

She wanted to stay alive!

Zach could feel her shaking, sending little tremors against his chest, but instead of making him feel protective it made him mad. Damn mad. She was scared? She shouldn’t be out here in the first place. Newspaper reporter or not, she had no business on a cattle drive. It put his men at risk. It put his cattle at risk. And, goddammit, it put him at risk!

Well, now, Strickland, just how do you figure it puts you at risk?

He tried to shut his mind down and concentrate instead on the wind. And the dust. And the...

Oh, hell and damn, it was hard not to think about Dusty when he could feel every little hitch in her breathing and every shudder traveling along her spine.

He had to admit she didn’t complain. She didn’t cry. She didn’t shirk her share of the work. She didn’t ask for special treatment because she was female. Dusty was maddeningly agreeable. He hated to admit it, but she was good company.

And, oh, God, she smelled good.

He could feel grit and sand sifting through his shirt and into his jeans, making his sticky skin itch. He heard the wind pick up. A dust storm could blow for half a day or longer, and this one showed no sign of letting up.

One of the horses tossed its head, but it didn’t move. He tried to keep his mind on the animal, but his thoughts kept coming back to Dusty. What was it about her that he found so maddening?

And how much longer can you stand here with her trim little butt snugged into your groin?

Guess he had a bad case of Dusty getting under his skin.

Suddenly she pulled away from the horse she was leaning against and with a half sob turned into his arms.

“Zach, I’m scared.”

Well, maybe she did cry sometimes. He pressed her head against his neck and wrapped his arm around her.

“H-how long will this last?”

“Don’t know. Sometimes an hour. Sometimes a day.”

She gave a little jerk. “A day? A whole day?”

“Sometimes. Forget about the dust storm. Just standing here in one spot for twenty-four hours will probably kill us.”

“Oh, but—It couldn’t really go on for a whole day, could it? What if I have to, um, relieve myself?”

That made him laugh out loud. He pressed her face back against his neck. “Dusty, stop talking. It takes air.”

He let ten minutes go by while the wind screamed across the plain and threw dirt in their faces. After another ten minutes she raised her head and wasted some more air.

“I can’t wait to write down some notes about this windstorm!”

Zach just shook his head. She was either crazy or she was a great newspaper reporter. Maybe both.

The storm finally moved off to the north, and Zach heaved a sigh of relief. Their ordeal was over. He took a step away from her, and she moved out of his arms and began brushing dirt off her clothes. Yeah, he was relieved it was over, but maybe he was the crazy one, because part of him was sorry.

Everyone gathered around, and they decided to set up camp for the night. Dusty immediately began scribbling away in her notebook and Zach took stock of the damage. The storm had left his hands gritty but uninjured and his herd of cattle was still intact. Cherry assured him the remuda was restless but untouched, and he was already brushing the animals down.

The men were all filthy and the chuck wagon was gritty with sand and dirt. Roberto was beside himself.

“Señor Boss, I cannot cook with dirt in pans, and the wagon—ay de mi—it must be scrubbed before supper.”

Dusty looked up from her writing. Her face was dirty, and when she stood up, grit sifted from her jeans. “Roberto, give me a bucket of water and a scrub brush. I’ll help you clean up.”

Zach grinned all the way out to check on the herd, and when he’d ridden twice around the subdued steers, he was still smiling.

She might be green and scared and a little bit crazy, but maybe she was worth riding the trail with.

That night Alex interviewed the scout, Wally. He told her some of his adventures over his considerable years “on the drover’s trail,” as he termed it.

“Kinda hard to get used to it at first, scoutin’ for a cattle outfit. Gotta ride ahead of ever’body, and it kin get mighty lonesome with nobody to talk to ’cept my horse. Got to be purty good friends with my horse after a while, but...aw, heck, Miss Alex, you don’t want to hear about this stuff.”

“But I do, Wally. Honestly I do. And just think, thousands of readers back East will want to hear about ‘all this stuff,’ too. You’ll be famous!”

“Aw, heck, Miss Alex. I don’t want to be famous. Somebody might come after me for money I owed in a poker game somewhere. Golly, I remember one time down in Texas...” And he was off again.

When Wally stopped regaling her with his wild tales, the hands began to spin their own yarns. Nothing was too outlandish or unbelievable. Skip recalled one cattle drive when they ate “nothin’ but oatmeal and bugs” for four days straight. Curly told about riding two days on a spring roundup with a broken foot; it had happened when his horse stepped on his boot, but he’d wanted to stick it out because one of the riders was “a pretty little filly” from a neighboring ranch.

“Aw, that’s nuthin’,” Jase challenged. “One time I was night-herdin’ during a blizzard and my fingers froze up. Had to chop ’em off myself the next morning. Had to, or they’d a got the gangrene.”

Alex didn’t know whether to believe him or not, but when she noticed his middle two fingers on one hand were missing, she decided he was telling the truth. She dug out her notepad again. This was wonderful human-interest material about the type of people who worked these cattle drives. She could see a whole series of pieces about the men on the trail; maybe she should get to know them better.

After an hour of after-supper talk, she acknowledged she was certainly getting a good education about life on a cattle drive. And it wasn’t just about the men. Cherry was constantly instructing her about the horses in his remuda.

“Don’t never walk up to a hoss what’s pullin’ yer rope tight, Miss Alex. Good way to git stomped. Why, I remember one time...” And, like Wally, the wrangler talked nonstop for half an hour.