Cowboy For Hire (14 page)

“Sure,” he said. “We’re on a ranch, and we
have to drive the stock to market. It takes time to get from the
ranch to the rail heads, and we camp out on the way.”

“My goodness. It sounds so … so …”

“It’s like something out of the Wild West,”
supplied Karen, who didn’t sound as entranced by the tale as Amy
was.

“I reckon it kind of is the Wild West. Sort
of.”

Amy dared to glance at him again, since that
“sort of” had been somewhat dry. Charlie, who had continued to
regard her even after she’d looked away from him, said, “My
brother’s ranch isn’t like a lot of ranches.”

“No?”

He shook his head. Since Amy knew nothing at
all about ranching, she hardly knew enough to ask questions. She
figured a “Why?” was appropriate, so she gave him one.

Charlie shrugged. “Well, it’s … different, is
all. A different kind of ranch, so to speak.”

Amy couldn’t think of a single question to
ask. She didn’t know a solitary thing about regular ranches, much
less different kinds of ranches.

“Martin said your brother raises ostriches,”
said Karen with a laugh. “I thought he must have been making it
up.”

“Ostriches?” cried Amy. She, too, laughed.
“My goodness, what an idea!”

The lengthy silence from Charlie made her
laughter dry up, and she stared at him, oblivious to his masculine
beauty for the first time since they’d been introduced.
“Ostriches?” she repeated. “Honestly?”

“Well, hang it, it’s an experiment. I grew up
on a cattle ranch, and I think ostriches are a damn fool thing to
raise.” He shot Amy a guilty look. “Sorry for cussing, ma’am.”

She waved his apology aside. Ostriches.
Merciful heavens. Mirth bubbled up in her bosom, and she had a time
of it not to allow it to hit the air. But Charlie had looked
disconcerted about his brother’s ostriches, and Amy found in
herself a great reluctance to make him more uncomfortable.

After a few moments of silence, Karen sighed
and stood up. “I guess I’ll be off to bed. I hope the crew has the
tent repaired tomorrow so we can finish your costumes, Amy.”

“I do, too. Thanks so much for your help
today.”

Karen smiled down at her. “It’s my job.”

Amy felt a little silly. “Well, but it’s not
your job to be nice to actresses who don’t know what they’re doing,
and I appreciate it.”

The two women smiled at each other, Karen
waved at Charlie and was off, leaving Amy and Charlie side by side
on the log. Suddenly Amy felt ill at ease. She’d never been alone
with a personable young man for whom she felt some stirrings of
emotion. She and Vernon understood each other so completely that
she never felt any emotions at all with him. She didn’t know what
to do about Charlie Fox.

“You can sure
see the stars out here,” Charlie said after a moment or two.

Silently
blessing him for bringing up an innocuous topic, Amy said, “Yes,
you can. They’re ever so much brighter out here on the desert than
they are in Pasadena, even though we aren’t a very big city.”

“I reckon city
lights and smoke and so forth get in the way of the stars, even in
small cities.”

“I suppose so.
Er ... I imagine you can see them very well in Arizona
Territory.”

“Yup. They’re
like diamonds shining in the sky sometimes.”

Diamonds in the
sky. Wasn’t that a poetic analogy? Or did she mean metaphor?
Fiddle, she didn’t care. “I’d love to see Arizona Territory
someday.” She was surprised when she heard what she’d said, but
when she tested the words, she discovered they were the truth.

“You would?”
Charlie sounded surprised too, and Amy didn’t appreciate his
scepticism.

“
Indeed I
would. Just because I grew up in a city doesn’t mean I haven’t
often craved wide-open spaces. In fact, I’d love to see more of the
world.” Good heavens, did she mean
that
too? By heaven, she did. How astonishing. Perhaps she and
Vernon could travel abroad one day.

“Well,” Charlie
said in his slow drawl after several seconds, “Maybe we can see ‘em
together someday.”

Amy felt
her eyes widen enormously. Since she didn’t have a clue as to what
to say, she remained silent. Her insides, though, bubbled like
champagne. When she finally went to her tent—to which Charlie
walked her—and pulled the blankets up to her chin, she had a very
hard time getting to sleep for the excitement in her
soul.

Since she
couldn’t sleep, she got up and dutifully wrote her letter to
Vernon, but the image of Charlie Fox kept sneaking into her brain
and she tried to shake it loose. Charlie Fox was an unknown
quantity, but Amy knew good and well that he wasn’t established
securely, like Vernon was. Amy didn’t need any mysteries in her
life. Mysteries had always meant misery to her. She did notice that
she didn’t mention Charlie Fox in her letter, although it was
filled to the brim with tales of Horace Huxtable.

She didn’t
mention Charlie’s shirt, either.

After she
sealed the envelope and affixed a stamp, she still didn’t feel
sleepy. Instead, she lay under her quilt and thought about what it
might be like to live on a ranch in Arizona Territory. With Charlie
Fox, the happy-go-lucky cowboy.

And when the
occasional disruptive ostrich thrust its ungainly head into her
pleasant fantasy, her brain immediately turned it into a cow. While
Amy’d had almost as little to do with live cows as she’d had with
live ostriches, they weren’t’ as disquieting somehow.

The image of
Vernon Catesby in cowboy garb, riding a horse and chasing an
ostrich, galloped into her head right before her eyelids finally
grew heavy, and she went to sleep giggling.

Seven

The guards who
had been assigned to dog Horace Huxtable’s footsteps were right
there beside him when he showed up for the next day’s rehearsal.
Charlie could clearly tell that Huxtable was trying to make the
best of a bad situation. He even felt a little sorry for the
obnoxious old coot.

He could
also tell that Huxtable was feeling none too chipper today, due to
yesterday’s excesses. Served him right.

Of course,
Charlie himself wasn’t too well rested this morning, either. Which
served him right, too, for lying there in his bed, spinning
impossible daydreams about Amy Wilkes.

He thought it
was a dirty shame that he should have had the opportunity both to
see and to feel Amy in so few clothes the day before. Things like
that rattled a man’s balance. Hell, the finest, most upright fellow
might allow his thoughts to slip from the straight and narrow when
forced not merely to confront, but to touch, such blatant and
lovely femininity.

Charlie
considered it right unkind of God to have thrust him into that
situation. Maybe it was a test, although if it was, he couldn’t
conceive why the good Lord was testing him so blamed hard. What
possible purpose could it serve God to have Charlie Fox in a state
of frustrated sexual arousal for the next few weeks? Charlie
resented it.

Martin had
called this rehearsal for nine o’clock, and it was to have been a
dress rehearsal. Charlie had heard of dress rehearsals. Since
Huxtable had ruined the costume tent, a dress rehearsal wasn’t
possible this morning, so they’d had to delay the shooting schedule
for a day, although Martin said he had hopes they could make things
go faster after they achieved smooth sailing. Charlie thought that
was a diplomatic way of phrasing it, not to mention highly
optimistic, all things considered.

Actually,
this movie crew was working amazingly hard to get everything put
back together again. They were efficient at it, too. The costume
tent had been righted already, and now poor Miss Crenshaw was
rooting around in it, with assistants, trying to get it back into
some kind of shape. Charlie had heard folks voice concerns about
some newfangled sewing machine that had got knocked around some. He
hoped that, if the machine was broken and needed to be replaced,
the cost would come out of Huxtable’s pocket. The man was a
confounded carbuncle on the seat of society, if you asked
Charlie.

“Places,
everyone,” Martin called through his megaphone. He looked haggard
this morning, too, and Charlie vowed to do his best to make
Martin’s life easier. This was the opening scene, so he had to be
in the shot. His job here was to stare soulfully at Amy.

No problem
there, dagnabbit.

This
morning Amy was clad in a sensible white shirtwaist and a sensible
brown skirt. Someone had convinced her that her collar didn’t
really need to be buttoned up to her chin and she didn’t
have
to wear her tie with it since
the weather was hot and there was lot of standing-around-in-the
sun-and-waiting to be done on a movie set. Charlie suspected that
Miss Crenshaw, who seemed like a pragmatic sort even if she did
smoke cigarettes—Charlie, too, had been a tiny bit shocked to see a
lady smoke, since up until now he’d only seen sporting girls light
up—was the one who’d suggested that Amy go a little easier on
herself, clothing-wise.

He also
suspected that Amy still wore a corset, even though the day
promised weather in the 100’s. Hot on that thought’s heels came the
idea that he’d like to investigate her underpinnings and find out
for himself.

“Shoot, man,
you’re hopeless.” He chucked his toothpick aside and strode onto
the set.

Huxtable
didn’t even look at him—ashamed of himself, Charlie hoped—but Amy
gave him a nice smile. She appeared a bit shy, but her eyes were
shining like stars. Charlie swallowed, removed his Stetson, and
said, “Howdy, ma’am.”

She said
“Howdy” back, but she wasn’t comfortable with the word. Charlie
didn’t know whether to consider such a lack of sophistication about
the language of his world sweet or unfortunate. His romantic side
endorsed the former, but his larger, no-nonsense side leaned toward
the latter.

He jumped when
he heard his name called and realized he’d been mooning at Amy and
not paying attention to Martin. Huxtable snickered. Amy blushed.
Charlie, knowing from experience that there was no gainsaying
Providence and it was foolish to deny an error that twenty persons
had seen, grinned sheepishly. “Sorry, Martin. Got a little
moonshine in my eyes this morning and my mind went
gallivanting.”

“
This
morning?”
Huxtable said under his breath but fully loud enough for Charlie to
hear.

“Stop that, Mr.
Huxtable,” Amy said sharply, scowling at the man.

“No problem,
Charlie,” said Martin, who either didn’t hear Huxtable or chose to
ignore him. “Would you move a little closer to the fence? That will
make a more artistic shot.”

“Artistic,
faugh. Not with that big lummox in it.” Huxtable sneered.

“
Mr.
Huxtable,
will
you be
quiet?” Amy scowled.

Hmmm
. It sounded
to Charlie as if his two co-stars weren’t ready to toss out their
grievances yet. He feared their mutual dislike might affect the
rehearsal. While he wouldn’t mind being in Amy’s company for hours
or even days, he’d rather do it somewhere that wasn’t so blasted
hot and public—and so filled with strife and animosity. He smiled
at her and mouthed, “Don’t get riled. He’s just an old
poop.”

He wasn’t sure
if his assessment of Huxtable shocked or amused her, but she did
give him an answering smile, so that was fine and dandy. He moseyed
to the fence and turned. “This okay?”

“The pose is
fine. Look casual,” Instructed Martin.

Charlie decided
the best way to do that was to adopt a pose familiar to everyone on
an Arizona ranch. He hitched his elbow over the top rail, lifted
his left boot and rested it on the lowest fence board, and sort of
draped himself. In Charlie’s experience, which was considerable,
that was the most comfortable posture a man could assume while
standing.

“All right,”
said Martin. “Perfect. Horace, you come into the picture from the
left and go over to talk to Charlie. He’s your foreman, remember,
and you trust him.”

“The more fool,
I,” Huxtable growled.
Charlie had to give the great oaf credit. As soon as he set foot
onto the set, he was his character. Damned if he didn’t look
exactly like this Luke McAllister fellow whom he was supposed to
be. Since Charlie’s character was supposed to be trying to
undermine McAllister’s ranching operation while attempting to steal
McAllister’s girl from him, Charlie guessed it wouldn’t be amiss to
try to look the part. He recalled a fellow named Eli Grant who had
turned out to be a thorough-going scoundrel although everyone, at
first, had believed him to be a nice man. Charlie did his best to
emulate old Eli.

“Don’t look so
sinister, Charlie. At this point, nobody knows you’re a snake in
the grass.”

“
I do,”
said Huxtable—to no one’s surprise, evidently, because nobody
called him to task. Amy humphed off-screen, but that was all right.
Charlie’d talk to her later.

“But the guy is
sinister, isn’t he?” Charlie would never argue with Martin, who
knew what he was doing, but he thought the question wouldn’t be out
of place since he wanted to do a good job here and he really needed
to know.

“Right. But
nobody knows it yet except you. Remember, the audience hasn’t read
the script.”

“Right.” That
made sense to Charlie.

Huxtable gave
him a superior smirk. That made sense to Charlie, too, since
Huxtable was a miserable, low-life, belly-crawling polecat. He
didn’t react, but smoothed his sinister expression out to reflect
nothing but blandness and goodwill. The way Eli Grant had appeared
when he’d first arrived on the scene and before he’d proven his
snakishness beyond all doubt.