Cowboy For Hire (24 page)

“When you’re
through serving, would you come sit by me, Miss Wilkes?” He nodded
at Karen. “You too, Karen. You two have done a lot of work in the
kitchen. You deserve to rest while you eat.”

“thank you. I’m
sure we’d enjoy that.” Amy was charmed.

“Absolutely,”
agreed Karen. “I’m feeling sort of bedraggled.

“You don’t look
bedraggled,” Charlie told her gallantly. “You both look as perky as
ever.”

Amy
thought that was charming, too, even if it was blatant lie. Both
Karen and she were dripping with sweat, undoubtedly redolent of
onions and other vegetable matter, and feeling filthy and
uncomfortable. She’d be mortally glad when the rain stopped and
they could use some of the excess water to bathe with.

The rain
kept up for the rest of the day, forcing the cast and crew to spend
another night in the chow tent. The atmosphere began to take on the
aroma of a cave dwelling—or what Amy expected a cave dwelling might
smell like. It was full of unwashed people and the odors of old
cooking, and it wasn’t pleasant.

The next day,
although the sun came out, the mud was so deep there wasn’t much
hope of getting any filming done. The mud was as thick and sticky
as tar, and it covered the desert for as far as the eye could see.
Amy and Karen opened all the window flaps on the chow tent to allow
the air to come in and blow out the smell of too many people too
long confined in too small a space.

Martin and the
cameramen spent a good deal of time testing the cameras and making
sure the equipment was in working order. Amy and Karen spent that
day, too, in the kitchen, since nothing, not even a mule train,
could traverse the muddy river that used to be the road to
town.

Charlie and
most of the other men spent their time shovelling mud from tents
and trying to clean up the village. Care had to be taken in the
tents, since a rattlesnake had been found curled up in a corner of
one of them. Evidently, as some wag said, even snakes knew enough
to come in out of the rain.

Perhaps
it was the same wit who said, as he looked around the mud-ravaged
village, that the scene was a “royal mess” and suitable for the
star of the picture. Everyone but Horace Huxtable laughed. He only
turned up his nose and went to his tent, which he’d insisted be
cleaned out first, to lie down and rest his royal bones. Amy
thought justice would be served if he encountered a rattlesnake
there, but he didn’t.

She eyed the
pile of potatoes in front of her with some misgiving. “What are we
supposed to do with a hundred pounds of potatoes and nothing
else.”

Karen, her
hands on her hips, looked at the potatoes, too. “I don’t know.
You’re the one who’s supposed to know how to cook.”

“
I do,
but generally one has something to put with potatoes—like meat
stock for soup or something.”

“Oh.”

“
I wonder
if there are any onions left. And maybe some bacon or ham or
something.”

Karen shrugged.
“I’ll help you look.”

Both women
started when a series of popping noises came from outside. They ran
to the front of the chow tent and looked cautiously out. Neither
fancied getting run over by a loose wagon or a rolling log, or
drowned by a mud slide.

“I don’t see
anything,” Amy said after a moment or two.

“Neither do I,”
said Karen.

They stepped
cautiously onto the temporary bridge that was still the only means
of getting from the chow tent to the rest of the encampment, unless
one wanted to wade in mud up to one’s knees. They stood together at
the other end of the bridge, their arms about each other’s waists,
gazing into the tent village.

“The tents look
clean and washed after the storm,” Karen said.

“
They
certainly do. On the outside at least.” They’d spent hours
discussing how horrid it would be to discover one’s home—even
one’[s temporary tent home—filled with mud. Since they hadn’t
ventured further than the chow tent for two days, they didn’t know
if either of their tents had suffered such a dire consequence of
the rainstorm.

Amy spotted
Martin some yards off and waved at him. “Mr. Tafft!” she
called.

Karen
huffed, said, “Honestly, Amy, you’re
so
polite,” and hollered, “Martin!”

Amy clapped her
hands over her ears and laughed. Martin, who’d heard Karen’s cry,
looked over at the two women, waved and began slogging their
way.

“Where do you
suppose he got those hip boots?” Amy asked.

“He probably
brought them along in case there was any fishing to do anywhere. He
likes to fish.”

“Fish? Are
there fish around here?” Amy surveyed the desert. At the moment,
she supposed that any number of fish might find places to swim out
here, but before the deluge, it had seemed dry as a bone.

Karen
laughed. “I understand there’s a lake not too far off. I expect he
was hoping he’d have a chance to get over there.”

“Oh, I never
would have suspected such a thing.”

“No, it doesn’t
look very much like there’d be lakes tucked away anywhere around
here, does it?”

Martin was
close enough now that he could make himself heard without shouting.
“I’ve got some good news for you, ladies.”

Offhand, Amy
could think of several things that might constitute good news, the
primary one of which would be word from the outside world. She felt
cut off and isolated, and she didn’t like it. Suddenly she wondered
if ranch life would engender such a feeling of isolation and
loneliness, and she frowned, not liking the train of that
particular thought.

“did Mr.
Huxtable drown?” Karen asked innocently.

Amy, startled
by her friend’s verbal jab, laughed aloud and slapped a hand over
her mouth.

Martin didn’t
look particularly amused. “No, he did not, Karen Crenshaw, you
terrible woman you.”

“I’m so ashamed
of myself,” said Karen in a voice that held not a trace of
penitence.

“What was the
good news?” Amy asked. She, unlike Karen, did feel somewhat abashed
about laughing at so unkind a joke.

“Charlie’s been
hunting, and he’s got some meat for a meal.”

The women
looked at each other, then at Martin. Amy said uncertainly, “He’s
been hunting?”

“Yes indeed.
He’s a real outdoorsman, he is. A little flooding doesn’t slow him
down any.” Martin rubbed his hands together as if he couldn’t wait
to eat whatever it was Charlie had been hunting.

Amy wasn’t so
sure. She’d never had anything to do with wild game, since she
lived in the city of Pasadena where people ate things like chickens
and cows and pigs and so forth. If he brought her a dead deer, she
feared she might even be sick. And how in the world was a body
supposed to get at the meat of such a large dead beast?

She
wasn’t equipped to skin a deer. Or a bear. Good heavens, what if it
was a bear? Or—heaven forbid—a rattlesnake. Amy had read novels in
which cowboys had cooked and eaten rattlesnakes. The notion made
her feel queasy, even if the books did equate the taste of snake
meat with that of chicken. Amy figured that if the good Lord had
wanted people to eat rattlesnakes, he’d have made them into
chickens in the first place.

Karen,
with her usual bluntness, said, “What’s he been hunting? If he’s
got a great big dead animal slung over his horse,
I’m
not cooking it.”

God bless Karen Crenshaw
, Amy thought to herself. How nice it must be to feel free
to ask any old thing of anyone, no matter how unrefined the
question might seem.

Martin laughed.
“Ha! I can see the headlines now: ‘Motion picture actor saves cast
and crew from starvation on the desert of Southern California by
shooting a herd of antelopes.’”

Karen
laughed. Amy didn’t think it was very funny, but she smiled. The
notion of having to shoot one of those pretty little creatures
she’d seen pictured in
The National Geographic
for meat didn’t appeal to her. There was a lot to
be said for civilization.

“No, I don’t
think he’s shot anything awfully big. I think he managed to bag a
couple of rabbits. Do you ladies think you can cook up a rabbit
stew if you tried real hard.”

The light
dawned in Amy’s brain. “Oh. Those noises were from Mr. Fox shooting
rabbits?”

“They were. I
think he bagged three of them.”

“
Um, what
kinds of rabbits, do you know?” Amy didn’t know much about the
wonders of the camping life, but she clearly recalled her uncle
laughing about how he and Amy’s father had tried to eat a
jackrabbit they’d shot once. It had not been a successful
venture.

“What kind?”
Martin looked at her blankly, and Amy realized that he was as much
a child of civilization as she.

I understand
cottontails are good for eating, but jackrabbits aren’t,” she
explained.

“Oh.”

“Really? I
didn’t know that.” Karen beamed at her, as if Amy had demonstrated
some kind of esoteric frontier knowledge that had impressed her
greatly.

Another child
of the city, Amy realized at once. Perhaps she wasn’t such an odd
duck after all. The thought gave her an odd feeling of kinship with
Karen and Martin that she hadn’t had before. She murmured, “I’m
sure Mr. Fox already knows that.”

“Hey there!”
another voice called to them, and Amy’s heart warmed instantly.
Charlie Fox. She’d never forget that lovely deep drawl.

The trio
turned, and Amy saw Charlie walking toward them, having very little
trouble in the mid—and he had on no hip boots, but only his usual,
everyday cowboy boots. She admired his athletic grace.

Bother. She’d
forgotten to write to Vernon again. Tonight, she promised herself,
she’d see to it.

In the
meantime, she enjoyed the sight of Charlie Fox walking to the chow
tent. He was quite a manly sort of fellow, Charlie was. Not soft
and pallid and city-like, like Vernon, but rugged. Tanned.
Westernish. She sighed before she could stop herself.

Karen peered at
her slantwise for a second, and Amy felt her cheeks warm.
Fortunately, Martin was waving at Charlie and missed the
exchange.

“What have you
brought to our cooks here, Charlie” he called, sounding happy. Amy
thought it was nice that the motion picture fellow had such a
friendly personality.

”Three nice
plump rabbits,” Charlie sang out. He sounded cheerful, too.

Amy appreciated
people with bright, sunny natures. Her own nature tended to be
gloomy when she didn’t watch it. She knew her aunt and uncle used
to worry about her a good deal, and for good reason. When they’d
taken her in, Amy had been a pathetic specimen. Not any longer.
These days, she was quite satisfied and secure.

She
had
to write to
Vernon. It wasn’t fair of her to ignore his letter as she’d been
doing. Not, of course, that she hadn’t had cause to fail to write
him. After all, floods didn’t happen every day of one’s life. She
wondered if Vernon would worry when she wrote about the flood, and
realized she hoped he would.

Vernon
was a very nice gentleman, and he was enormously proper and
refined, but Amy wouldn’t have minded if he were a teensy bit more
demonstrative of his devotion to her. If he were, say, to pine to
be with her, she wouldn’t mind A woman liked to know she was
cherished. At least, she thought,
she
wouldn’t mind being cherished.

Charlie strode
up to them and held out his rabbits. Amy took a step back and
wrinkled her nose before she could stop herself. He said, “I
skinned ‘me for you. Didn’t think you ladies would like to have to
skin rabbits.”

“God, no!”
Karen said. She sounded as if she were appalled by the sight of the
naked, helpless-looking rabbit corpses.

Amy was
glad. She was also glad she hadn’t gasped or said anything to
suggest that she didn’t appreciate Charlie’s thoughtfulness. She
really did appreciate it.
She
wouldn’t want to skin a sweet little bunny
rabbit.

“They’re
cottontails,” Charlie went on blithely, “so they’ll be tasty.”

Poor
little things. Amy took herself to task for worrying about rabbits
when a whole crew of people needed to be fed. That’s what rabbits
were for—eating. She said, “Thank you,” and hoped she sounded as
merry as he.

“Yes. And
thanks very much for skinning them. I’d have been sick all over the
chow tent if I’d had to do that,” Karen said in her downright
fashion. Amy grimaced, and wished she hadn’t been quite so
downright in this instance.

Charlie
laughed. “I saved you that, anyway. Want me to cut ‘em up for you,
too? You can make a good stew with these babies.”

“
Oh,
would you?” Feeling reprieve in the air—and from a man who had
become her very favourite cowboy in the whole wide world—Amy beamed
at him.

He swallowed,
as if her beam were more than he could take with equanimity. “Sure.
Got any potatoes and onions?”

“We’ve got lots
of potatoes.” Amy turned and led the way into the tent. She was
feeling sort of light-headed all of a sudden, and feared it had
something to do with the look Charlie Fox had just given her.

“You start
peeling the potatoes,” Karen said. “I’ll look for onions.”

“See if there
are any carrots and celery and stuff like that, too,” Charlie
called after her.

“Will do.”

Charlie
and Amy smiled at each other, Amy a little uncomfortably. She found
Charlie
so
attractive
and appealing. She didn’t want to show him exactly how appealing,
because she sensed that that would be not merely disloyal to
Vernon, but unwise, fantasies about being a ranch wife
notwithstanding. “Well, ah, I suppose I’d better get started on
these potatoes.”