Cowboy For Hire (22 page)

Trying to recover a modicum of his dignity,
Charlie said, “Yes, so I see.” Karen Crenshaw, he noticed with
gratitude, smiled and winked at him, as if she knew exactly what
agonies of embarrassment he was experiencing. He smiled back. “Is
there anything I can do to help you folks out?”

Dang, there was Horace Huxtable. Charlie
frowned at the miserable old ham, who was, naturally, making a
fuss.

“I can’t endure this!” Huxtable whined. Then
he sneezed.

Good. Maybe he’d catch some deadly disease
and do the world a favor by croaking. Charlie supposed he ought to
feel guilty for entertaining the mean-spirited thought, but he
couldn’t drum up an ounce of guilt to save himself.

Amy peered over her shoulder at the
commotion, wrinkled her nose, and stuck out her tongue, surprising
Charlie, who hadn’t anticipated anything of such a spontaneous
nature from this source. “That man ought to be forced to live like
other people for a few days and see how he likes it.”

Surprised by Amy’s comment, Charlie couldn’t
think of a response. Amy eyed him and frowned.

“Oh, I know,” she said, brushing her hair out
with angry vigor. She had gorgeous hair. Charlie wished she’d let
him brush it for a while Silly Charlie. “You think I’m a spoiled
rich girl, but I’m not. I’ve had a rather sheltered life since I
came to live with my aunt and uncle, but, believe me, before that I
was far from sheltered.

“Yeah?” Fascinated by this unexpected aspect
of Amy’s life, Charlie hoped she’d expound upon her background. In
truth, he had believed her to be a spoiled rich girl before he’d
gotten to know her. He was kind of afraid to ask her about it
because he sensed such questions would be considered impolite by a
lady from Pasadena.

In Arizona Territory, life was a good deal
more casual than it seemed to be here, and nobody minded others
asking stuff like that. If a man didn’t want anybody to know his
background, he’d either say so, make up another one, or shoot you
for asking, and most folks honored him for it. There was more than
one fellow who’d started over from a bad East Coast beginning in
the Western territories.

“Charlie!”

Charlie turned at his name, and realized
Karen had walked up to him. He tipped his drenched Stetson and
smiled at her.

“Would you mind helping us set up cots and
bedrolls in this tent so we can sleep here tonight? I guess the
cooks are going to fix some kind of soup and sandwiches for supper
in the kitchen area, but most of us are going to have to camp out
here since our tents are all wet.”

“We’re going to be camping out!” Amy
exclaimed.

Both Charlie and Karen looked at her, and
Charlie was charmed when she flushed.

“I’ve never camped out before,” Amy
explained, lifting her chin in a gesture Charlie had come to
recognize as one of defiance. He thought she was cute as a
button.

“By gum, that’s so,” he said, mainly to
encourage her. “This will be just like camping out, only we’ll all
be in a big tent instead of our under the stars.”

“If we were out under the stars,” Karen said
wryly, “I don’t suppose we’d any of us, get any sleep.”

“True,” said Amy, whose spirit had returned.
“We’d be too busy swimming.”

Both Charlie and Karen laughed, and Charlie
could tell that Amy was pleased with herself for being witty in
trying circumstances. He was pleased with her, too. In fact, he
realized there was very little about Amy Wilkes that didn’t please
him these days. He sighed, thinking he was a danged fool to fall
for a city girl.

Nevertheless, he set about arranging things
so that as many people as possible could fit into the chow tent to
sleep. He even rigged up a curtain behind which the ladies could
change their clothes, providing they could find warm dry clothes to
swap for their sopping ones.

“This is just like camp,” Karen said at one
point. She seemed mighty cheerful about it.

“Oh, how fun. I always wanted to go to a camp
in the wilderness somewhere,” Amy sounded cheerful, too.

Charlie watched them curiously. “It’s like a
storm on the trail, too,” he murmured, wondering what they’d make
of that.

“Oh, it is really? How interesting.” That was
Amy, and Charlie felt a potent combination of enchantment and
surprise mingling in his chest area.

“Yes, ma’am. Sometimes when we’re driving
cattle to market, it’ll storm. Thunder and lightning scares the
willies out of cattle.”

“My goodness.” She sounded breathless, as if
she’d never heard anything so fascinating in her life.

Wondering if she was pretending of if she
really found tales of ranch life interesting, Charlie went on
cautiously, ready to stop talking immediately if she began to look
the least bit bored. Maybe the dreams he’d begun to spin weren’t as
nonsensical as he’d believed them to be. “Yes, ma’am. It’s hard to
get a herd settled when there’s thunder in the air.”

“Is it the noise, do you suppose? I imagine a
cow wouldn’t know what thunder was and might be startled.”

Charlie grinned, but didn’t laugh, sensing
that Amy wouldn’t appreciate it but would believe that he was
laughing at her ignorance. And it wasn’t that, exactly. It was only
that she was so danged darling. “That is true, ma’am. Cattle are
pretty stupid. But there’s also something in the air that riles
them, even before the rain starts. Something they can sense that we
humans can’t. Reckon it might be the electricity or something.”

“My goodness.”

“Oh, yes,” Karen said. “My cat always gets a
little strange before a rainstorm. Although,” she added as if bent
upon telling nothing but the truth, “we don’t often get thunder and
lightning in the Pasadena area.”

“That’s true,” said Amy.

She
didn’t sound as if she were as terrified of thunder and lightning
as Charlie’d been led to believe city ladies were. He asked with
interest, “Do you
mind
the storm, ma’am?”

He stood
on a chair, grabbed the rope Amy tossed to him, and wrapped it
around a tent beam. He tied a square knot in the rope so he’d be
able to untie it again come morning if they didn’t need it any
longer.

Amy shrugged.
“Not really. I mean, I’m not scared, if that is what you mean. It
would be rather more pleasant to be listening to it from inside a
nice, warm house, I guess.”

“You can say
that again,” said Karen. “With a cup of hot cocoa and a big fire in
a fireplace.” She sighed.

“On a soft
bearskin rug,” Amy said dreamily.

“With a plate
of macaroons to nibble on.”

“That sounds
lovely,” Amy said, and Charlie noted a hint of wistfulness in her
voice.

“It sounds a
whole lot more comfortable than being rained on while you’re
driving a herd of cattle to market,” he said, uncoiling the rope as
he walked across the chow tent floor. Amy followed with the chair.
“And trying to keep the critters from getting spooked by the
thunder is no fun, either.”

“I suppose
not.” Amy looked thoughtful, and Charlie got the impression she
didn’t mean it, that she believed she’d enjoy the excitement of
driving cattle through a storm. She set the chair down on the other
side of the tent. Charlie climbed on it and tied the rope to a tent
pole on that side. Karen, with her arms full of blankets, stood
next to Amy. She handed Charlie a blanket, which he arranged over
the rope, securing it with a clothespin Amy handed him.

He went
on, testing Amy and her interest in things outside her frame of
reference. Maybe she honestly wouldn’t mind life on a cattle ranch.
“Sometimes you’ll see lightning do weird things. It’ll flash on the
cattle horns and roll from steer to steer. It’ll look like blue
balls of electricity running through the herd.”

“My goodness!”
Amy’s eyes were as round as robins’ eggs. She’d taken up the bucket
full of clothespins, and she handed another one to Charlie.

“Really?” Karen
was interested, too. Somehow, Charlie didn’t care.

“Yup.” He
shoved a clothespin onto the blanket to hold it in place, and took
another one from Amy’s delicate fingers. He peered at those fingers
hard, wondering if they were capable of doing the kind of work a
ranch wife had to do.

“Doesn’t the
lightning kill the cows?” Amy asked, handing him yet another
clothespin.

“Sometimes.” He
jabbed that clothespin at the end of the blanket and reached for
another blanket from Karen, which he swung over the rope. Their
goal was to create separate sleeping quarters for the men and the
women. Inelegant, perhaps, but more proper than having all of them
sleep together. “But not that blue-ball lightning. It’s the bolts
of lightning hitting an animal that will kill it. The ball
lightning only plays with their horns. I saw it happen with a herd
of longhorns once. It was something to see, you bet.”

Amy and
Karen looked at each other while Charlie clipped another couple of
clothespins onto the latest blanket. Karen said, “Do you suppose
he’s teasing us, Amy?”

“I’m not
sure.”

“I’m not!”
Charlie cried, stung. “Honest Injun, it happens all the time.
Well,” he amended, honesty having overcome him, “not all the time.
But it happens. You can ask anybody.”

“I supposed we
could ask anybody,” said Amy with a grin. “But I doubt that would
help any, since nobody from around here would know what we’re
talking about.”

Both girls
laughed. Charlie joined them, but he didn’t mean it. He didn’t like
having his word doubted.
“I’d love to see that blue-ball lightning,” Amy murmured.

Charlie
eyed her. “Maybe you will someday.” She gazed at him, his eyes
stuck in place staring into hers, and Karen had to clear her throat
twice to unlock the spell. Amy jerked and looked into her
clothespin bucket. Charlie cleared
his
throat and turned away to secure another
blanket.

They finished
hanging the blanket curtain shortly before the cooking crew
hollered out that chow was ready to be dished up. The seating
arrangements were casual and crowded, but since Amy and Karen
didn’t seem inclined to leave him, Charlie didn’t mind that. In
fact, he offered to fetch both young ladies their soup and
sandwiches, an offer the declined.

“You couldn’t
hold three bowls of soup and however many sandwiches you aim to eat
tonight, Charlie Fox, much less a couple for us, too.”

The look
Amy gave him—coquettish and full of humor—nearly felled Charlie. He
didn’t argue, because he wasn’t sure what would come out of his
mouth if he let it operate while his brain was in such a muddle. He
feared he’d say something really idiotic, like “Please marry me.”
Considering silence prudent, he laughed and let the two ladies
precede him in the chow line.

They
found a bench not too far from a warm stove where there was room
for the three of them, and sat together there. Charlie hadn’t
realized quite how hungry he was, and all but inhaled his soup and
sandwiches. Both Karen and Amy offered him half of theirs, which he
took with many thanks. “I’m used to eating a lot,” he said
simply.

“I imagine so,”
said Amy. “You must work very hard at ranching.”

“
Yes,”
Karen put in. “I guess it’s a harder life than we who live in the
city have. Well, unless you’re one of those poor unfortunate people
crowded together in a New York slum or something.”

“
My
goodness, yes!” Amy exclaimed. “Why, I’ve read articles describing
the terrible conditions some of those poor immigrant families
endure. It’s awful.”

“Sure is,”
Charlie agreed after he’d swallowed. He know that Amy didn’t
approve of people talking with their mouths full. Which was only
good manners, as his mother had tried to teach him and his brothers
for years. This was the first time Charlie’d ever had reason to be
thankful that his mother was a strict woman who didn’t let her sons
get away with stuff. “I don’t think I’d like to live in a big city
like that.”

“Pasadena’s not
bad,” Amy ventured, sounding sort of tentative about it. “It’s
small and pleasant.”

“Oh, yes,”
agreed Karen. “Pasadena is lovely. It’s nothing like some of those
horrible cities back East where everything’s dirty and
crowded.”

“I’m not much
of a one for crowds,” Charlie admitted.

“I suppose
you’re accustomed to the wide-open spaces,” Amy said. Again,
Charlie thought he detected a hint of wistfulness in her voice.

“I suppose so,”
he said. “Arizona Territory’s not like this, though. Where I’m
from, it’s beautiful.”

“I’d like to
see it someday,” Amy said upon a sigh.

“Really?”

She looked at
him as if his question surprised her. “Why, of course I would. I’d
love to travel.”

“Hmmm.”

“Um, do
ostriches get bothered by thunderstorms?”

Charlie huffed.
He wished she hadn’t brought up those fool ostriches. “I suppose
they do. I don’t reckon very many animals much like thunder and
lightning.”

“Hmmm.”

“But, you know,
it’s my brother who’s got the ostrich ranch.” He elected not to
mention the poker game in which Sam had won the ranch, sensing Amy
Wilkes wouldn’t approve of gambling. “The family has a cattle ranch
near Sedona. That was where I’ve spent most of my life.”

“Oh?”

Was it his
imagination, or did she perk up at that? He couldn’t really blame
her for not cottoning to the thought of ostriches.

“Sure. My
granddaddy moved to the territory after the war, and my daddy took
over the ranch after that. It’s been in the family for a long
time.”

“My
goodness.”

“It’s a
prosperous place,” Charlie added, feeling a little defiant. He
really didn’t like Amy thinking of him as an itinerant
ostrich-rancher.