Cactus Flower (Gone-to-Texas Trilogy) (6 page)

      
Before the big stranger in greasy buckskins could reply, another masculine voice spoke. “What in the hell is going on, Weevils? Sina and I heard the screaming and swearing even before we dismounted at the far corral!” As he observed the complacently washing cat and the bedraggled urchin sprawled beneath the tree, Jim Slade's face was a thundercloud.

      
The dog, who had returned from hiding and sneaked behind the fat man called Weevils, began to shake, spraying both men generously with water.

      
“Get that damn hound out of here before he ruins Mrs. Carver's riding habit,” Slade ordered. Weevils nodded and reached for the black beast, who allowed himself to be led away quietly.

      
While this exchange was going on, Charlee remained on the ground, staring in rapt fascination at the tall, slim man who was the most striking male she had ever seen. He was dressed in form-fitting buckskin pants and a white shirt that was open at the throat, partially revealing a sun-bronzed, gold-furred chest. His hair was that same dark, dazzling gold, dense and straight, falling in one unruly swatch across a high forehead. The planes of his face were chiseled and hard, with a long, straight nose, high cheekbones, and square jaw. The late afternoon light accented his arresting golden eyes beneath thick brows of the same color. Now, as he turned to her, his brows rose and his eyes skewered her. A slowly warming smile spread across his broad mouth, revealing even, white teeth.

      
“Well, what have we here, scamp? This is hardly the way for a boy to get himself a job,” Slade said with mock sternness.

      
Charlee had pulled the shirt free of her breasts while Weevils and Slade talked. He thought she was a boy! Charlee wanted to dig a hole and crawl into it. She was filthy and bedraggled in front of this fascinating stranger. Never before had she wished to appear feminine and pretty!
What in tarnation is wrong with me?

      
Charlee scooted toward the nearby tree and carefully got to her feet, her back to the trunk. Her attempt to stand straight only made matters worse, because the wet shirt once more adhered to her breasts, while the loosened layers of the binder thickened her waist so as to give the appearance of a middle-aged spread on an otherwise coltishly slim body.

      
“I’m no boy, for your information, mister. I'm Charlee McAllister, Richard Lee's sister. He's the foreman here, so you'd better not mess with me,” she spat furiously. The amused smile on his face broadened while he eyed her. Charlee could feel the burning heat of her flushed cheeks and cursed herself for the strange new way this man made her react. She added, “Who in hell do you think you are, insultin' a lady?”

      
“The only lady present here is Mrs. Carver, and I don't appreciate your swearing in her presence!” Slade indicated the woman who stood a little to one side in obvious dismay at the debacle. She was elegantly dressed in a dark green riding habit and matching plumed hat. Her lustrous black hair was faultlessly coiffed, and she possessed coolly perfect cameo features.

      
“Diego, you must straighten out this mess.” She stepped daintily up to her handsome escort and placed her slim ivory fingers possessively on his arm.

      
Never in her eighteen years had Charlee hated another woman with such a sudden burst of intensity.

      
“This is Mrs. Tomasina Carver, who owns an adjacent ranch. And in answer to your earlier impertinent question, Miss McAllister, I'm Jim Slade.” Briefly the gold eyes had softened as he gazed at the beautiful woman, then hardened as he returned his attention to Charlee.

      
“The...the owner?” she croaked. “But you're supposed to be Mexican!” The minute the words were out she could have shinnied up the tree. The exposure of her bare backside would be a lesser humiliation than her verbal blunder.

      
“If by that you mean I should look swarthy and menacing, I'm sorry to disappoint. I take after my pa,” he replied glacially.

      
She thought he did well enough on the menacing part, even if he was blond; but she would never give him the satisfaction of saying so. The regal lady by his side was obviously Hispanic.
Well, if I scorched her royal ass, I'm glad!
Charlee told herself.

      
Slade said a few hurried words in Spanish to Mrs. Carver, who replied in English, with a mock pout, “You can't be serious, Diego! Why, I do believe she is a girl.” Sina's earlier annoyance now turned to amusement as she inspected the filthy, shredded remains of Charlee's attire. She was well aware that the slim, high-bosomed frame concealed beneath the mud and rags was female, but hardly one of which to be jealous. Kissing Slade lightly on one cheek, she departed as he had asked, leaving him to deal with the waif.

      
“Now, Miss McAllister, you and I are going to have a little talk, but first I want you out of those vile-smelling clothes. Weevils!”

      
The fat ranch cook reappeared instantly from behind the cabin, minus the hound. “She's Dick's sister, Mr. Slade. Whut yew gonna do?”

      
“So she said. I'll handle that, just you see to some bath water and clean clothes. And, Weevils, get that damn cat out of here. He's nothing but trouble!”

      
The feline in question sauntered toward the woods in back of the foreman's cabin as if he fully comprehended the message but considered it unworthy of his attention. Only a rigidly straight orange tail attested to his pique.

Chapter Three

      
“Richard Lee can't be dead! He just can't!” Charlee's face was chalk-white, her freckles even more pronounced. She jumped up from the chair in Slade's study and nearly leaped across the room at him. “He couldn't have drowned, for God's sake! He taught me to swim!”

      
Slade poured a stiff shot of brandy into a glass and forced the hysterical girl to sit down and take a sip.

      
She obeyed, sputtering and coughing. “Why that's worse 'n old man Scruggs's corn likker Richard Lee and me used to steal back in St. Genevieve! Oh, Richard Lee!” she sobbed.

      
“It happens to be good French brandy, but I guess that's an acquired taste. Look, I'm sorry about your brother, but accidents do happen, even to the best swimmers. It was a hot day and I guess he just took a rest from searching for strays. When he dived in he must have hit his head on a rock. That's what Luke Pile thought. He's the one who found him, Miss McAllister. I was away at the time, in Houston on business, but Asa handled all the details for burial. He wrote you, but I guess you'd already left Missouri by then.”

      
Slade regarded her cynically. How in hell did a girl get all the way from St. Genevieve to San Antonio by herself? he mused. He didn't want to ponder the answer to that question in the least. Why, she was just a kid!

      
“Asa...you mean Mr. Ketchum, your foreman?” It still rankled her that Richard Lee had lied about being foreman of Bluebonnet. No wonder that dog of Ketchum's almost ate her alive. It was his porch she was intruding on, not her poor brother's. Richard Lee had been just an ordinary cowhand. Small wonder he could not afford to send for her and Mama. He may have been a dreamer, even fanciful and weak in some ways; but he damn well could swim, and had the sense to look before he dove. Something just didn't add up. As she sat clenching the brandy glass in her fingers, Charlee vowed she would find out exactly what had happened to Richard Lee McAllister.

      
Slade lounged against his desk, watching the play of emotions across the young waif’s face. Now that she had bathed and changed into a dress, albeit a very ill-fitting one, she looked like a girl at least. She was rather scrawny, if the loose folds of the shapeless gingham could reveal anything to his measuring eye. Her face was unnaturally pale and pinched, her eyes red-rimmed from crying. Although her hair was an interesting shade of golden brown, it was drawn back in an unbecoming, hastily pinned knot of braids. All in all no beauty, he judged, but she must have some earthy appeal to have worked her way all this distance to Texas.

      
The girl had already admitted she had no money. Neither had her charming but lazy brother. What the hell could he do with her? Just then she spoke in a low whispered voice, its husky tenor interrupting his troubled thoughts.

      
“I'd like to see his grave now, if you don't mind, Mr. Slade.” Her voice was raw with pain, but her stiff back was the epitome of resolution.

      
As he nodded and stood up, Charlee watched. Every move he made was sinuously graceful. While she followed him down the long hallway and out the back of the house, she found herself blushing as her eyes stared at his long legs and traveled upward to the slim, taut buttocks, narrow waist, and broad shoulders, then down again. What was wrong with her! Sorrowing and alone, her only kin dead, what was she staring at—some strange man's backside!
I must be having grief-stricken vapors,
she mused.
That's the only reason I'd even look twice at a man like him. Why, I don't even like him!

      
When all the girls her age back home began to have callers, Charlee had been out stalking squirrels. She had always viewed men as hunting companions, never as suitors. She was far more comfortable blaming the sudden attraction on grief than in putting another name to it.

      
Richard Lee's grave was behind the big house, in the Slade family cemetery, where not only the owner's kin but also his employees were buried. The shady knoll was peaceful and pretty, Charlee thought, taking some solace in that as she knelt and stared at the small stone marker. She let the tears slip down her cheeks freely now while Slade waited some distance away, letting her do her private mourning.

      
Finally, she rose and walked steadily down the knoll to rejoin him. Almost grudgingly, she remembered her manners and said, “I thank you for the headstone. Back home we only had wooden crosses for Pa and Ma.”

      
Gruffly he replied, “You're welcome, Miss McAllister. All our markers are made of stone here. Every man deserves that much permanence in this harsh land.”

      
As they walked slowly to the big house, Slade pondered what to do about his unwanted charge. Rather more brusquely than he intended, he asked, “What do you plan to do now, Miss McAllister? Do you have any family left in St. Genevieve?”

      
“No. My parents are gone and now so's my only brother.” She omitted mentioning the hateful cousins in St. Louis as a plan began to form in her mind. “I got no kin and no money, Mr. Slade.” Did he wince just an infinitesimal bit? Grinning to herself, she continued, “I suppose I need a job. If that man Weevils cooks anything as bad as his name sounds, well, I bet a new rifle against a kick in the ass he could use a helper. I can cook, clean, do laundry, even skin a mule. I'm a crack shot—”

      
“Whoa! I believe you.” Slade threw up his hands in mock surrender as he smiled in a dazzling, boyish fashion. “I suppose the kitchen could use a woman's touch. Ever since Etta Tall Tree left us to marry a Cherokee chieftain, Weevils has been filling in as cook. He's all right on the trail as a camp cook for the hands, but when I have guests to dinner, well, he leaves much to be desired. You're hired, Charley...is it?” He quirked an eyebrow.

      
“Yep, Charlee, spelled with two e's,” she replied defiantly.

      
“I never heard of such a name for a girl,” he replied dubiously. “What's your real name?”

      
“I won't tell you er anyone else in Texas my given name. I hate it! Anyway, everyone's always called me Charlee since I was a tadpole. I like it just fine.”

      
“Good enough. Forgive my inquisitiveness, Miss Charlee.” His grin was disarming, softening the grim lines of his face, erasing the hardness that he seemed to wear like protective armor most of the time.

      
She found herself smiling back, hypnotized by those marvelous golden eyes, dazzled by the white slash of teeth.

      
Slade was surprised. When her face lit up like that, she was almost pretty in a gamin way. She had good straight teeth, clear skin, and delicate features, but these were overwhelmed by the pallor of her complexion and those freckles, not to mention the awful hair style and that atrocious dress! He chuckled to himself. At least Sina couldn't be jealous.

* * * *

      
If Tomasina wasn't jealous, Weevils was. When he was told that the muddy urchin who attacked Asa's dog would work in his kitchen, the old man sulked through breakfast. Briskly telling her he was going fishing, he vanished for the day. She decided to win him over later and set out at once to prove her worth to her new boss by cooking a memorable midday meal.

      
Right after breakfast, she ran down two spry young chickens, wrung their necks, then plucked and cleaned them. While they were slowly roasting with spicy sage dressing, she baked a lady cake for dessert. Fresh snap beans cooked with fatback and light, airy rolls completed the meal. She could not ever remember putting so much effort into lunch. But watching Jim Slade, Asa Ketchum, and Leandro Velasquez devouring every morsel, she knew it was worth the trouble.

      
“Where did you learn to cook like this, miss?” the courtly old foreman, Asa, inquired as he polished off a second piece of the sweet white cake.

      
“Our cook Lizzie taught me, mostly. When my pa was alive, he and Richard Lee were always bringing friends home for dinner. I liked helpin' all I could.” Charlee remembered her childhood lessons in Mose and Lizzie's comfortable little cabin, where she and her brother ate sweets and listened to old Mose's woods lore. The cleaning and cooking of wild game and fowl seemed a natural accompaniment to hunting. Even Richard Lee had learned the basics of biscuit making and frying breakfast meats and eggs. Thinking of him now made her want to cry, but she quickly forced the thought aside. She vowed,
I'll deal with his killer when I find out who he is.