Cowboy For Hire (20 page)

“All right!” Martin said with an anxious
overtone to his voice. “We’re about ready to … Now! Horace! Rush in
and save her!”

It continued to amaze Amy that Horace
Huxtable, who was about the most deplorable human being she’d ever
had the misfortune to meet, should be such a superb actor. He burst
into the supposed sawmill as if he were truly bent upon the
salvation of his own true love. Charlie, still standing by the
lever, managed a creditable expression of shock and dismay and ,
like the sneaky snake he was supposed to be, tried to slink away
Huxtable drew out his trusty six-gun, which, Amy prayed, he’d
loaded with trusty blanks—she personally wouldn’t trust Huxtable to
brush his own hair if he didn’t want to—and fired at Charlie.

As it had been scripted, Charlie staggered
and clutched his arm. He shook a fist at Huxtable and ran from the
set. Huxtable paused, as if torn between chasing the villain
Charlie and rescuing the lovely Amy. Then, exhibiting a good deal
of frustration, as he was supposed to do, he case one last baleful
look at the place where Charlie had been, shook his fist, shouted,
“To hell with you, Fox!” and charged toward Amy.

While the scene had been going forward, the
log to which she was strapped continued what probably looked like
its relentless progress toward the vicious blades of—a cardboard
saw. Amy was sure audiences would be thrilled. Really, the scene
looked pretty good to her, although her vantage point flat on her
back and tied to a log—wasn’t the best. She was glad she’d be freed
from her uncomfortable situation soon.

“Thank goodness. Now you can get me untied
from this bumpy log.”

“Oh, I don’t know,” returned Huxtable, who
still looked the part of a hero, although he didn’t sound like one
at all. “I think it wouldn’t hurt you to get sawed in half. It
would be awfully damned bloody, though.”

“You’re perfectly disgusting, Mr.
Huxtable.”

“I’m flattered, my lovely Miss Wilkes. I
didn’t think anyone was perfect.”

“You’re impossible.”

He laughed one of his oily, ugly laughs, and
proceeded to the side of the conveyor belt where, with great
dramatic gusto, he threw the lever to what was supposed to be its
“off” position. The man underneath the set stopped cranking the
saw, the other man stopped flinging sawdust, and Amy’s log halted
within an inch or two of a wicked looking set of cardboard saw
teeth.

With even more dramatic gusto, Huxtable drew
out what looked like a very sharp knife and began hacking through
her bonds. She eyed him with concern, although she tried not to
show it. “Be careful with that, if you will.”

“Don’t worry, sweetheart. I won’t nick your
precious skin.”

“I’m glad of that.” She was proud of the
acidic quality she managed to pour into her voice.

“Good! Good!” Martin encouraged from his
director’s chair. “That’s the ticket! As soon as the last knot is
cut through, haul her into your arms and kiss her! This is going to
be wonderful! Perfect!”

Yuck
, thought Amy, who wouldn’t have
cared to be kissed by Horace Huxtable even if he had rescued her in
truth. She wished Charlie were the hero of this piece. She’d much
rather be kissed by him.

But that was only because she wouldn’t find
it revolting to be kissed by him—she told her better nature when it
recoiled at her faltering moral resolve—as she would to be kissed
by Huxtable. No wonder actors had such dreadful reputations. They
were always required to kiss people to whom they weren’t married.
She knew that Vernon hadn’t merely been fussy when he’d written his
letter.

Her attitude toward Vernon Catesby softened
still further when Horace Huxtable, flinging aside a host of rope
ends and his knife, drew her up from the log and embraced her
tightly.

“Aha,” he said into her ear. “Now I’ve got
you. And I’m going to enjoy myself, too.”

Good heavens! He was actually
kissing
her! Amy, who’d had to force herself to struggle earlier in the
scene, started struggling ling a wildcat.

“No! No, Amy! Don’t try to get away from him!
He’s your lover! He’s the man you’re madly in love with! Kiss him
back!”

Fortunately for the scene, Martin’s
commonsensical words penetrated Amy’s seething brain in time for
her to stop her instinctual attempt to escape. She pretended to
melt into Huxtable’s embrace—the melting part was easy—but she
decided Martin was just going to have to be disappointed about the
kissing-him-back part. She’d be fricasseed and served with
dumplings before she’d kiss Mr. Horace, the most awful man she’d
ever met, Huxtable.

“I’m so glad you haven’t been able to drink
lately, Mr. Huxtable,” she hissed into his ear. “Your breath is not
nearly so foul as it is when you’ve been drinking.”

“Bitch,” Huxtable growled. “You’re a pretty
little bitch, though, and I wouldn’t want you to think you’ve won
your game, sweetheart.”

And with that, he whirled around so that they
both faced the camera, dipped her in a manner Amy had only seen
illustrated in magazines, and kissed her with what she might have
sworn was genuine mad passion if she’d seen it on the screen. She
undertook manfully to hide her revulsion—and she successes for the
first thirty or forty seconds. Unfortunately, the kiss went on. And
on.

Finally, Amy decided she’d taken enough.
Wrenching her lips from Huxtable’s, she whispered furiously,
“That’s enough, Mr. Huxtable!”

He didn’t alter his position one iota except
to chuckle hatefully and say, “We go until the director cuts the
scene, my lovely Miss Wilkes. It’s our job.”

Fiddle. He was right. “You don’t have to bend
me over so far. My back is hurting.”

“What a shame.” He dipped her lower.

“Fiend!”

“Bitch!”

“Cut!” cried Martin at long, long last.

Amy breathed a relieved sigh that lasted long
enough for her to feel Huxtable withdraw the hands from her back.
He didn’t bother to lift her up first, but let her fall, whack on
her back, onto the bumpy log from which he’d just “rescued” her.
She banged her head and elbow on the log, scrambled madly for a
purchase on the conveyor belt, didn’t find any, and rolled off of
the raised set.

She landed with a thud on the floor with her
skirt up around her knees, her bottom bruised, and her
mortification complete. When she raised her head to see what had
happened, she viewed Huxtable’s ironically smiling face peering
down at her. What was more, he was twirling his mustache like a
real celluloid villain.

“Oh, I say, how terribly clumsy of me.”

Amy’s temper flared up like a skyrocket. “You
wicked brute! You did that on purpose!”

“Horace, if you’ve hurt her….”

Amy heard Martin’s angry voice trail off as
his feet began pelting toward her.

“You lousy son of a bitch.”

That was Charlie, and as soon as Amy heard
the words, she saw Huxtable’s face vanish from above. She clambered
to her feet and tried to run around the set to see what the two men
were doing. She hoped Charlie was beating the horrible actor to a
pulp.

Her effort to run was hampered by her
muscles, which didn’t seem to want to cooperate. First they’d been
cramped into an uncomfortable position on the log, then they’d been
flung from a high precipice—well, a semi-high precipice—and they
rebelled now. So she limped around the set, hoping there would
still be some excitement going on.

She heard lots of noises. She heard what
sounded like flesh meeting flesh, several muttered curses, and the
grunts of men who were, with luck, pounding each other to dust. Or,
she amended, with luck, Charlie was pounding Horace Huxtable to
dust.

It occurred to her that she’d never
experienced bloodthirsty impulses before she’d taken to acting.
This job of hers was definitely damaging her character. She
resolved to write a conciliatory letter to Vernon this evening
after supper.

In the meantime, it was gratifying, when she
finally struggled to the front of the set, to find that Charlie had
taken Huxtable by the front of his shirt and was shaking him
violently. Martin and several crew members tried to pull the men
apart.

“Stop him!” Huxtable screamed, his words
falling like corrugated cardboard from his mouth. “He’s trying to
kill me!”

“It’s what you deserve, you filthy bastard,”
declared the valiant Charlie, who was resisting interference
fiercely.

“I didn’t mean to drop her!” Huxtable
screamed. “Honest.”

“Don’t make me laugh,” said Charlie, who
sounded far from laughter.

“You did, too, mean to drop me,” Amy cried,
indignant that Huxtable should voice so blatant a lie. She’d seen
his face. She knew he’d planned exactly what would happen at the
end of their kiss. “You’re lucky you didn’t hurt me badly, you
horrible man!”

“There! Did you hear that?” roared Charlie.
He hauled his bunched fist back, intending, Amy was sure, to crush
Huxtable’s jaw with it. Fortunately for her, the problems
associated with the star’s broken jaw paraded across her mind’s eye
in the split second she had to think about thing, and she leaped
for Charlie’s fist, grabbing it with both of her hands.

He was certainly a strong man. Amy could
hardly credit the fact that, even with all of her weight dangling
from his fist, he still managed to hit Horace Huxtable. It was her
misfortune that it was the back of her head that connected with
Huxtable’s jaw.

“Aaaaah!” bellowed Huxtable in what sounded
very much like excruciating pain.

“Aaaaah!” cried Amy in what was certainly
awful pain.

“Oh, shit,” hollered Charlie, who seemed to
understand all at once what had happened. “Amy! Amy, are you all
right?”

He dropped Horace Huxtable like a rock and
drew Amy into his arms. Amy caught the merest flash of Martin Tafft
before her face was buried in Charlie’s shirtfront. Martin was
tugging his hair, and his expression conveyed his
consternation.

“Oh, God, Amy, did I hurt you?” Charlie
cried.

She tried to shake her head, but Charlie’s
hand was pressing the back of her head too firmly against his chest
for her to do so. She feared she might smother if this kept up much
longer, so she made a big effort and got her nose free. Her mouth
was another matter, but she did succeed in uttering a muffled,
“Nomph.”

It was good enough for Charlie, who breathed,
“Thank God, thank God,” in what sounded like a truly heartfelt
prayer of relief.

As much as she appreciated Charlie Fox’s
acting as her champion—again—Amy was awfully tired of being mauled
and manhandled on such a miserably hot day in such a hellishly hot
building. She ground out, “Please let me go, Mr. Fox. I’m fine
now.”

Charlie must have heard an edgy quality in
her voice, because he let her go. He blinked down at her, though,
and looked worried. “You sure you’re all right?”

She pulled her shirtwaist down and made a
stab at straightening her skirt. She was certain her makeup had
been smeared beyond redemption when she saw the mess it had made of
Charlie’s shirtfront. “Yes. Thank you.”

Karen rushed up and began helping her tidy
up. The two women exchanged a smile. Amy couldn’t recall another
time in her life when she’d appreciated a person’s friendship more.
She wished foolishly that Karen had been around when her parents
died.

Martin hurried over to her. “I guess he’ll be
all right once he calms down.”

Amy assumed he was referring to Horace
Huxtable, and she didn’t care. She frowned at Martin to let him
know it. As far as she was concerned, Martin ought to be spending
his thoughts on her.

Martin still appeared flustered. He’d stopped
pulling at his hair, but it stuck out all over his head. He was
chewing his lower lip as he gazed a Amy, critically surveying her
person. “Are you all right, Miss Wilkes? I’m terribly sorry about
what happened. I’m sure it was an accident.”

“It wasn’t an accident,” Amy told him flatly.
“He did it on purpose.”

She almost wished she’d lied when Martin
started tugging at his hair again. Charlie and Karen helped her off
the set and outside, where, even though the weather still hovered
in the upper nineties, it was relatively cool compared to the
sawmill.

But, according to the crew, the scene had
gone very well. Amy supposed that counted for something. She’d
never been so happy to see a day end in her life.

Ten

The first fat droplets of rain spattered down
on the exhausted cast and crew of
One and Only
as the crew
members were packing up to return to the Peerless Studio’s tent
village. The air smelled of rain, which was a refreshing change
from selling like dust.

When Charlie glanced around, he saw Martin
Tafft peering at the lowering sky. He was surprised that Martin was
now looking even more worried than when he’d been dealing with
Horace Huxtable earlier in the day. As far as Charlie was
concerned, weather was no problem at all compared to Huxtable.

“What’s wrong?”

Martin, still squinting at the sky, chewed on
his lower lip. “It’s raining.”

Charlie squinted at the sky, too. A couple of
drops of rain, in his estimation, didn’t mean it was raining, but
he wasn’t accustomed to California ways. Perhaps this was
considered “raining” in California.

Amy Wilkes walked up to them. She looked hot
and tired and bruised, although her spirits were good and she’d
finally washed the rest of her makeup off. She looked much better
without it. Fresh. Pretty. More lovable than any other girl
Charlie’d ever met.

He’d apologized at least fifty times for
hitting Huxtable with her head, and she’d accepted his apologies,
but he was still worried about her. Huxtable was a tough customer.
Charlie feared for internal damage inside of Amy’s lovely head.
Huxtable himself hadn’t spoken a word to either Charlie or Amy
since the incident occurred. That was fine and dandy with Charlie.
He suspected that Amy wasn’t offended by Huxtable’s silence
either.