Cactus Flower (Gone-to-Texas Trilogy) (10 page)

      
Then, she noticed another item in the package, something white like the blouse—a night rail. It was cut in utmost simplicity with a ribbon to close the demure neck. The sleeves were long and it was floor length. It was also sheer. Why, a man could see right through it!
Now why did I think man,
she wondered in agitation as she held the nightgown up to herself. Well, no matter, here in the confines of her room she could sleep in whatever she liked. And she certainly liked this!

      
At the bottom of the package lay a pair of leather sandals, fashioned for very small feet, made of thin strips of leather. “Huaraches,” she said softly, slipping them on to find that they were a perfect fit. The clothing looked to be the same. She would just have to find the courage to wear the blouse and skirt when Jim Slade returned to Bluebonnet.

* * * *

      
Slade arrived on Monday with Tomasina Carver riding beside him. She was dressed in a mauve-gray riding habit. Mrs. Carver would stay for refreshments, thank you, Lena reported sourly to Charlee who was out in the backyard beating rugs. Covered with thick reddish-tan dust that stuck to every inch of her sweat-soaked skin, Charlee wiped the perspiration from her eyes and swore aloud.

      
“Lena, you'll have to serve. I'll run in and get some biscuits and preserves and make lemonade.” Quickly, she sluiced her arms and face in a bucket of clean water by the well, then dried off as best she could on her shirt, leaving Lupe to pound away with the heavy beating rod.

      
Once the tray was ready, Charlee called Lena to take it into the sala where Jim and Tomasina were waiting. “Oh—I almost forgot the butter,” she called to her friend. Reaching to pick up the neat golden round, her hand encountered orange fur. “Hellfire, you git! Honestly, that cat does love cream and butter,” she said absently, using her fingers to smooth the scratchy tongue marks from the top of the butter as she placed it on the tray. She licked her fingers, then knelt to let the cat have his turn, but he had suddenly disappeared.

      
Never one to miss an opportunity, Hellfire had surreptitiously slid through the kitchen door with Lena before either she or Charlee had seen him. Once in the hall, he had followed the heavenly scent of the butter that Lena carried. He slipped behind the long, low sofa in the sala, deciding to jump up on its back and spy out the best place from which to get at the butter.

      
However, once he landed silently on the wide, soft cushions, all thoughts of food instantly fled from his mind. He had a passion for play that sometimes exceeded even his love for food. There, not two feet away, was a long, rakishly curved peacock feather, gently swaying with each graceful movement of Tomasina Carver's head. The grand trophy was attached to a jaunty hat perched on her elaborate coiffure. He crouched low, tail straight out, rear end wiggling furiously, and canted at just the precise angle for the pounce. There, it moved again! So did the stalker. Claws out, he got a good lock on the center stem of the plume and succeeded in ripping it and the hat from Tomasina’s hair.

      
At her shriek of pain and dismay, Jim turned from staring out the window. Tomasina was holding the ruins of her coiffure in one hand, while furiously tugging on her hat with her other hand. Her rival in the tug-of-war had one razor-sharp claw firmly imbedded in the thick stem of the large feather. The screaming woman would not let go and the terrified feline could not.

      
Startled by Tomasina’s shrieks, Charlee came flying into the sala. A loud masculine oath rent the air when Slade's efforts to disentangle Hellfire earned him a stout slash across his knuckles.

      
Charlee eyed the disheveled, red-faced Tomasina, the kneeling man sucking a bleeding hand, and the cat, cornered with his now unwanted trophy dangling from an upraised paw while he snarled. “What in hellfire’s going on?” she asked.

      
“That's my line, remember?” Slade growled. “Get that refugee from a fiddle-string factory out of here—minus the lady's headgear, if you please!”

      
As Charlee knelt in front of the frightened cat, Tomasina continued her tirade. “That is a wild animal, a destructive, senseless brute! It should never, never be allowed in a house! You should have it destroyed! I've never been so frightened in—”

      
“If you want your fancy hat back, quit your yappin' and hand me the butter,” Charlee snapped none too gently. She had no patience with blubbery stupid female vapors. Sina Carver was spite-mean to boot!

      
Tomasina stood roofed to the floor in horror that a servant, this filthy tramp at that, was speaking to her in such a fashion. Jim handed Charlee the butter.

      
“Now, be quiet. He's scared. All critters are when they're cornered. For your information, he's
my
cat 'n no one destroys him without answering to me.” Charlee spoke in a quiet but firm voice, all the while easing the butter dish toward the twitching cat.

      
“Now, Hellfire, old lover, just you take a hairball treatment here while I...” Deftly she flexed the paw with one hand and yanked the plume free while the cat's attention was fixed on the butter. Scornfully, she tossed the hat at the black-haired woman, whose fiery, dark eyes radiated hate. Then, Charlee rose in one smooth movement, cat under one arm, butter dish in the other hand.

      
“Take a half pound of butter off my next month's pay,” she called defiantly as she sauntered down the hall.

* * * *

      
In the next few weeks, Hellfire and his mistress were to become the bane of Slade's existence. It seemed everywhere Jim went, he was either stepping on a screeching feline's tail or encountering a feisty urchin in boy's baggy clothes. Not the least disturbing thing was the way the girl was winning over his whole ranch. Weevils fairly doted on her, and Asa was downright fatherly; but the easy camaraderie between Lee and Charlee was particularly irksome to Slade.

      
The youth who had been Jim's shadow for years now seemed to spend an inordinate amount of time laughing and exchanging confidences with Charlee. Lee had tried to befriend that worthless cat when it had showed up at Bluebonnet and was amazed at how the beast had adopted Charlee.

      
One day Slade came on
 
the two of them while they were eating lunch beneath a live oak at the back of the ranch house. Charlee was laughing at the cat, who was occupied crouching over a mole hole across the yard, frozen in expectation of momentary triumph.

      
“Atta boy, Hellfire, you'll get that varmint sooner or later,” she praised.

      
Lee let out a good-natured snort. “Later is right,
chica
. He's been sitting still as a block of wood for at least four hours.”

      
“Oh, he knows what he's doing, all right. Sometimes, it takes him all day, but he always gets his mole in the end.”

      
“
Loco
,” Lee said teasingly, tapping his head. “Why not go after a nice fat mouse or a bird?”

      
“Why bother? To do that he'd have to chase around in the hot sun or climb a tree. This way, all he has to do is sit still in the shade. Oops! There, you see?”

      
The cat made a fast lunge with lethal claws and jaws, neatly extracting a mole from its refuge. The animal had finally made the error of seeing if the coast was clear. It wasn't.

      
Lee whistled in amazement as the cat proudly brought his treasure over to Charlee and dropped it at her feet, waiting to be praised. With a smirking “I told you so,” she lavished several affectionate thumps on Hellfire, who then reclaimed his prize and trotted off to the bushes to enjoy his lunch.

      
“I tried for weeks to get him to come to me and he wouldn't, even when I put out bowls of milk. How did you do it, Charlee? He lets you wrastle with him and pound on him just like he was a big loppy dog.”

      
“Secret,” Charlee said, her bright green eyes twinkling. “Only a body who grew up with cats knows how to tame a wild one. You have to figure out his name. I mean his
real
name, the one he gave himself, not the one humans gave him.” She looked solemnly at Lee, who stared in amazement for a minute, then burst out laughing.

      
“Just like the pony I've been teaching you to ride,” he said in mock cynicism. “I’ve fed him apples all winter and you make friends with him instantly, without so much as an ear of Indian corn in your hand. Tell me, Charlee, what is his real name? All this time I thought it was Liso.”

      
“I'll never tell,” she said, giggling, “but both Hellfire and Liso are right intelligent.”

      
“Why don't you tell him the truth,
niña
? It's not their names, or their dubious intelligence, it's you and your natural way with dumb animals.” Slade decided to enter the conversation. “This picnic open to anyone?” he asked, a glass of lemonade in one hand and a chunk of roast beef in the other. He reclined casually across from Charlee and began to eat.

      
Bristling, she said defensively, “Hellfire and Liso are not dumb animals, ‘specially not Hellfire. He really understands people...leastways them worth understanding,” she added tartly.

      
“Prickly little thing, isn't she?” Slade said conversationally to Lee. “And it's ‘those,’ not ‘them.’ You know decent grammar when you want to use it,” he said to Charlee.

      
“A body can't even speak her piece around here without getting a lecture like she was in school,” she fumed.

      
Lee watched their exchange, not for the first time aware of the way they seemed to antagonize each other. Charlee always got her back up when Jim came around, just like that skittery orange cat, and Jim was always teasing and patronizing her as if she were a child. Lee had been a shrewd observer of human nature since he was a small boy. Could it be these two opposites were attracted to one another? Lord knew, fancying Doña Sina as he did, Jim had a completely different image of what a woman should be.

      
Charlee certainly wasn't a lady. She wrestled in the mud with Asa's dog Mutt, baited fishhooks with big juicy worms, shot and cleaned squirrels like a real Texian, and even swore like one, too. And for sure she wasn't all curvy and sweet smelling. Still, he and the men on Bluebonnet liked her better than Tomasina Carver. Come to think of it, Lupe and Lena liked her, too. Everyone did. Maybe Jim was smitten and just didn't know it yet. Sitting back with a grin, Lee watched the two of them argue. It was proving to be a very interesting summer.

* * * *

      
The next morning dawned hot and bright. Charlee awoke at sunrise as she always did and decided it was a good day to walk down to the creek and knock a few squirrels out of the overhanging trees. She and Mutt had made friends after their unfortunate initial encounter, and he was a first-rate squirrel dog.

      
Noon found her and the old black mongrel slogging beside the cool rushing water. Three squirrels were already swinging from her belt. ‘‘Let's us set a spell, Mutt, 'n give Beulah here a rest.” She set the old Springfield musket carefully against a tree and stretched out in the grass beside the water.

      
Beulah was the antique firearm she had found in the kitchen, an old weapon belonging to Weevils, which he had taken indifferent care of over the years. When she asked if she could clean and repair it, he had gladly given it to her. One of her most difficult decisions upon leaving Missouri had been to give up her beloved hunting musket. It was simply too big and cumbersome to carry on the riverboat. On the wagon train, she had borrowed weapons
 
with which to hunt. Once repaired, Beulah had become Charlee's pride and joy.

      
Of course, smarty pants Slade had not believed she knew which end of the gun the shot came out of until the day she brought in half a dozen headshot squirrels for dinner. She could still see the amazed expression that he tried unsuccessfully to conceal. Recalling the incident, she laughed gleefully and kicked off her shoes to dangle her small, rather dirty feet in the cool water.

      
“Ooh, that feels good. Hmm..,” Charlee looked over toward a stand of willows across the creek. Beyond the bend in the stream was the pool where Richard Lee had supposedly drowned. Hit his head diving—bunk! It was a hot day, a good day for a swim, and she could scout the lay of the land at the same time. Why not? Instructing the patient dog to stay with her gun and game, she went to the knoll.

      
Slade took off his wide-brimmed hat and wiped the perspiration from his brow. Damn, it was hot. He had spent the morning with a crew of men running down a nice bunch of wild mustangs. It was hard, scorching work and he had swallowed a barrel of dust. When the men broke for a midday meal, Jim decided to head down to the pond for a fast sluicing. He felt as sweaty and grimy as his big buckskin,
Diablo del Polvo
or Dust Devil, aptly named both for his color and disposition. A cool swim was just what a man needed to soothe his frayed nerves and aching body.

      
Approaching the meandering creek, Polvo kicked small pebbles in its crystal shallows as Slade guided the big horse toward the pond around the hill. Just then, the buckskin whickered and pricked up his ears, coming to a halt in midstream.

      
“What is it, Polvo? Oh, you, Mutt,” Jim said, spying the black dog half hidden in the shadows of a large live oak. “What are you doing so far from the house? Asa'll skin you. Say, whose gun?” No more was the question asked than it answered itself. He recognized the old weapon Charlee had resurrected from Weevils' junk heap. He also noted the squirrels. But where was the owner of the paraphernalia? Swearing at the independent way such a young girl went off by herself, heedless of danger, Slade dismounted and tied Polvo's reins to a bush. He must search her out and see that she was all right.