Cowboy Seeks Bride (22 page)

The donkey heard her voice and kicked at the trailer walls. She went back inside, untied him, and led him outside. He tossed his head a few times and then followed Dewar to the edge of the fence where the cattle were huddled around the old longhorn bull.

“Just tore the tie-downs and flipped back the canvas enough to get some water inside, but it didn’t reach the flour or sugar so we’re fine. We only got the very edge of the storm. Just the wind and rain. If we’d have been in the eye of it, this wagon would have sure enough landed somewhere in Iowa,” Coosie said.

“What are we going to do for supper?” she asked.

Coosie rubbed his bald head. “I’m thinkin’ if that’s a hunter’s cabin, then the propane tank out back might have some fuel in it. We can check and, if it does, we could cook something on the stove in the kitchen. Electricity is turned off. I checked that first thing but the stove might work.”

Sure enough the propane tank was half-full and the stove worked. Coosie was like a little boy with a brand new toy. He made macaroni and cheese from a box, heated up beans from a can, and fried potatoes with smoked sausage and onions in them. He tested the oven and found that it worked too, and put on a big roast for the next day’s dinner and whipped up a lemon poppy seed cake from scratch.

“Five star ain’t got a thing on us.” He set the warm cake and the rest of the supper on the short bar.

“Damn straight!” Haley agreed.

He pointed a long-handled spoon at her. “You are still in trouble.”

“What’d she do?” Sawyer asked.

Coosie drew his eyebrows down at her. “You tell ’em.”

She raised her hand. “My name is Haley Belle McKay Levy. I am disgusting. I steal Oreos and strawberry Boone’s Farm wine and I bring donkeys in the house when it storms, and if he’s scared, he’s coming right back in here tonight, too.”

Buddy frowned. “M-m-my wine.”

She tilted her head up and laid the back of her hand on her forehead in a dramatic gesture. “It’s a disease. I couldn’t help myself. I’d been clean for twenty-three days and ten hours but the Oreos called my name and I took them. Then I found the wine and stole it too. It tasted like shit but I drank it and pretended I was having chocolate-covered strawberries and champagne.”

Sawyer glared at Coosie. “You had cookies in that wagon.”

“And Boone?” Rhett asked.

“Yes, he did. And I found them and now he doesn’t.” She put her wrists together and held them out. “Lock me away. I’m an addict. And beware. If I eat lemon cake, I turn into a slobbering monster.”

Buddy started the laughter and soon even Coosie was chuckling.

Haley bowed deeply and blew them all kisses.

Dewar started a slow clapping and the others followed suit. “Funny, but that damn jackass is not coming back in this house, Haley.”

“That was an amazing performance. Now let’s eat before this food gets cold. It’s not every day you get cake on the trail,” Coosie said.

“Am I forgiven?” Haley asked.

“Hell, no! You still owe me a box of cookies and Buddy a bottle of Boone.”

“And I get your piece of lemon cake,” Finn said.

Haley air slapped at his arm. “This ain’t your fight, boy, but you touch my cake and I’ll show you what a fight is.”

The party mood lasted until she unfurled her bedroll and washed up behind a shut door with four walls around her. Buddy had brought in a small plastic pan of water for her and she was alone. She washed up, stripped down to her underwear, and crawled inside her sleeping bag. And it felt all wrong. The stars were out but the windows were too dirty to see them. The moon looked like a misshapen marshmallow, and the room smelled musty. She missed the clean smell of spring night air and the chirping crickets and frogs.

Stick
with
me
and
I’ll make a redneck out of you.

Dewar’s words echoed in her ears but she didn’t want his words. She wanted his arms around her and his warm breath on her neck. She wanted the stars and moon above her, the noise of cattle, and even Eeyore’s brays. She slipped out of her sleeping bag and opened a window. Eeyore lifted his head and trotted over to it and she swore he whined. She eased out into the living room and had a hand on the door leading outside when Dewar raised up on an elbow.

“It’s not even raining,” he whispered.

She dropped her hand. “He’s lonely and scared and he’s used to keeping watch over me.”

“Leave a window open.”

“I did, but it’s not the same. He’ll start braying if you don’t let him come inside and then the boys will be mad because he woke them up.”

“You are one exasperating woman,” Dewar said.

She grinned and opened the door. As if he knew he should be quiet, Eeyore made his way from the ground into the trailer and into the bedroom as quiet as a Chihuahua instead of a full-grown donkey. He stood by the window and lowered his head as if telling Haley and Dewar that he’d let them know if anything dangerous threatened one of his cows.

“Damn woman.” Dewar flopped back down.

Haley wiggled down into her bedroll. “Good night, Dewar.”

Purgatory.

Neither heaven nor hell but the limbo of hanging between awaiting the fate of a decision of a higher being as to whether snatched up into everlasting glory or slapped into the flames of hell.

Haley had never believed a place existed like that, not until they were getting very close to the end of the drive. She awoke that morning to the sounds of men’s voices in the living room and kitchen of the trailer house, to cattle milling about outside and a little gray donkey staring right at her.

She could swear that he was crossing his legs. Not one little pile was on the floor, but he looked miserable. She quickly crawled out of bed and he followed her to the door. When she opened it he bailed outside and romped through the wet grass. He was back in his own world, his cows around him, and everything was right with no clouds in the sky.

It was in that moment that she wondered where her world was and the word
purgatory
came to mind. Nothing about her or what she did belonged in Dewar’s world. And yet, she had changed since she left Dallas, and she wasn’t totally sure that she belonged in that world anymore either.

“I’ll be okay when I get back into my normal routine.” She went back to her bedroom, folded the edges of the tarp over her sleeping bag, rolled the whole thing up tight, and expertly tied the knots to secure it. A knock on her doorjamb sounded as foreign as the room looked to her that morning.

“This is your wake-up call, M-m-miz Haley,” Buddy said.

She smiled at him. “I’m awake. Breakfast ready?”

“D-d-dex… I mean Coosie says it will be soon.” He grinned. “D-d-did you sleep okay in your little bedroom?”

“Like a baby,” she lied.

She wasn’t announcing that she’d have rather been outside listening to their snores floating across the campsite on the cool spring night breezes or that she had missed seeing the stars twinkling above her as she fell asleep. She couldn’t even come to grips with the idea, much less put it into words.

They were on the trail again by the time the sun was fully up that morning. The rain had left everything a muddy mess, but it also brought a clean smell to the air. Eeyore had glued himself to her side most of the morning, leaving for only a few minutes at a time to check on the cows.

“Coosie,” she got his attention. “I was wondering why Buddy only stutters on certain words?”

“His grandparents raised him after his momma and daddy died. Near as the therapist can figure that’s the reason,” Coosie said.

“I don’t understand. Does he still see a therapist?”

Coosie shook his head. “That was back in our army days. She thought she could help him but nothing helped. He stutters on
D
,
M
,
V
, and
R
. Daddy. Momma. Vera. Richard.”

“His mother was Vera and his dad Richard?”

“That’s right. I don’t even hear the stutter anymore. And the ladies think it’s cute.”

“What ladies?” she asked.

“Our Saturday night ladies. We usually pick out a bar that’s got some dancing going on for our Saturday nights,” Coosie explained.

“Didn’t either one of you ever want to settle down and raise a family?”

“Oh, we might someday,” Coosie said.

“You got a woman in mind?”

Coosie pointed a finger at her. He tried to look serious but she could see the grin playing at the corners of his mouth. “I ain’t sayin’ I do or I don’t.”

The wind picked up after dinner, whistling across the flat land as if it was romping and playing like a bunch of children on recess. Haley held the reins tightly in one hand and her hat on with the other. Poor little Eeyore’s ears lay flat back against his head making his big, long face look even more ill-proportioned. The cows ducked their heads and followed the longhorn bull, but they bitched at him the whole afternoon.

A forest of wind turbines stood over to the east, lined up one after the other, the enormous blades whipping around generating electricity for dozens of farms. She wished for a turbine in the soul that could generate a good mood or settle the uneasiness about the unrest in her heart, but such things didn’t exist.

They passed through a gate into a freshly plowed field. The wind whipped the black dirt around into tiny dust devils about belly high on Apache. High enough that particles filtered up to her face and nose and she started sneezing.

Coosie flopped a red bandana to the side of the wagon. She wrapped the reins around the saddle horn and quickly reached for it with that hand.

“Put it on like this.” Coosie showed her how to fold it into a triangle and tie it around her head.

She jerked her hat off, shoved it under her knee, and held it there tightly while she followed his instructions using both hands. When she finished, she slapped her hat back on and retrieved the reins.

“Wow! I did it,” she said from under the bandana. “Not that it means anything to most people, but it does to me. I can ride with no hands, keep my hat secure, and tie a bandana around my head. I may be a cowgirl yet.”

***

Dewar sat down on the edge of her bed that night after everyone was asleep. Stars twinkled in the dark sky and the quarter moon dangled among them as if it were a Christmas ornament on a tree.

His forefinger traveled down her arm to her hand. He clasped it loosely in his, the feel of her soft skin against his calluses like silk against burlap. “You looked like Annie Oakley out there today with that bandana on your face. I should’ve told you to tie one around your neck in case of dust storms.”

“I thought they were just to make you cowboys look tough,” she said.

“Well, there is that too. I missed you last night. We were actually closer than we usually are, but—” He paused.

“But there was a wall between us, right?”

“I didn’t like it, Haley.”

She leaned into his shoulder. “Me either.”

He let go of her hand and slung his arm around her, drawing her even closer. She fit well there and things were right inside his heart and soul when there were no walls between them.

“Next week at this time we’ll be back in Texas,” he said.

“The world can sure change in a month, can’t it?”

Dewar squeezed her tighter. He didn’t plan on falling for a Dallas executive, but he had, and in such a short time. However, as he and the rangy longhorn headed up the drive that day he did some calculating. If he’d been dating Haley, going out even twice a week and spending a total of four hours each time on the date, that would be eight hours a week. He’d been with her twenty-four hours a day for twenty-five days. That added up to six hundred hours. Divide that by four to get how many dates it would represent and he came up with one hundred and fifty. Then divide that by two and he would have been seeing her regularly for seventy-five weeks, which was a year and a half.

When a man thought of it in those terms, it wasn’t strange at all that he’d fallen for her. She was smart, determined, and she’d make a fine woman to ride the river with, as Grandpa O’Malley often said about the women his brothers had married.

“What are you thinking about?” Haley asked.

“You.”

“Good answer. Now what were you thinking about me?”

“How far you’ve come since you fell off the horse on that first day,” he said.

“Darlin’, I did not fall off that horse. I would have had to get on him to fall off him and that never happened. I slipped in horse shit and fell before I ever got mounted.”

“Are we arguing?”

“No, but I wish we were.”

“Why?”

She leaned back slightly so she could see his face. “Because the first big fight is going to either make or break us.”

He kissed the tip of her nose. “You really think so?”

She shifted her position so that she was sitting in his lap. “I do. Want to say something really stupid so we can see.”

“Not tonight. I missed holding you and kissing you last night, and besides, I’m a lover, not a fighter,” he said.

“That’s what I’m afraid of. If you fight as passionately as you love, the fights could be hellacious.”

He strung kisses from her neck to her eyelids and back to capture her lips in a kiss that proved that he did indeed know his way around the lover business. When he broke away he whispered, “But just think about how passionate the making up will be after we fight.”

“Whew!” She wiped at her forehead.

“I’d give half my kingdom for an old trailer to appear out of the dirt right now,” he said.

“I’d give half of mine for it to rise up from the earth like a mesquite tree,” she whispered back.

“But here we are camped in the middle of a pasture without even a chigger, weed, or a wildflower,” he said.

“I’ll just keep my thoughts on that hotel room in Dodge City. You reckon the cowboys that ran the cattle up through here got antsy to see things come to an end?”

“I can’t believe you just used the word
reckon
. You’ve been keeping company with Coosie too long. But to answer your questions, I imagine they were very antsy that last week or two. Time was nearing when they’d have a paycheck and they could hit the saloons. Reminds me, we should see the Boot Hill Museum and have a drink at the Long Branch Saloon while we’re in Dodge.”

She cupped his face in her hands. “Darlin’, I would rather spend every minute with you in bed. I can have a drink at any number of bars in Dallas.”

Dewar hugged her tightly. “If we don’t get some sleep, we won’t have the energy for that kind of romp. So good night, Haley! See you in the morning.”

***

The next day was Thursday and if all went as well as it had been going, they’d bring the cattle into Dodge City on Sunday afternoon. Dewar awoke that morning, stretched, and looked over at Haley, who was already sitting up, watching Coosie and Buddy put breakfast together.

The constant wind blew the aroma of bacon and coffee right to him and his stomach growled so loudly that Haley turned to look his way.

“Hungry,” he said.

“Sounds like it.”

He pushed back the sleeping bag that he’d used as a cover rather than crawling inside and zipping it, put on his boots, and poured two cups of coffee. He carried one back to Haley and sat down on the edge of her bed.

“Whoa! What’s going on here?” Sawyer asked. “Man takes coffee to a woman before she ever gets out of bed means something, don’t it?”

“Means that he’s a nice man,” Haley said.

Finn looked over at Sawyer. “What’s the matter? You missin’ your woman this morning?”

Sawyer’s nods were emphatic. “You are damn right, I’m missing her. She’s probably shopping for just the right lacy underwear for when I get home. I bet it’s black and…”

“Shut up!” Rhett said.

Sawyer laughed loudly. “Why? You wishin’ you had a girlfriend thinking about nothing but you when you get home?”

“How do you know she’s not thinking about anything else? Maybe she’s thinking about her job or her friends,” Haley said.

Sawyer shook his head. “I’m an O’Donnell. When we fall in love with a woman, they never think about anything else.”

“That don’t hold water, Sawyer. You weren’t thinking about her when you joined this trail drive. You were thinking about being out here for days on end playing cowboy. You were all excited about riding a horse for a whole month and eating campfire food at night. So don’t give me that load of bullshit about never thinking about anything else,” Haley said.

He narrowed his eyes at her. “I said our women don’t think of anything else, not that we don’t.”

“That’s not fair then. If she’s that besotted with you, then you should have stayed home with her and kept her happy,” Haley argued.

“You should have been a lawyer,” Coosie said. “Now you kids stop your bitchin’ and fightin’ and come eat breakfast. We’re headin’ out in half an hour and there’s no snacking. Dinner ain’t until noon.”

All morning Dewar wondered if Haley thought about him as much as he did her during the day when he rode point and she brought up the rear. Did she ever imagine him riding naked? He imagined such things all the time.

He looked over at the longhorn who was eyeing him suspiciously. “Don’t look at me like that. You’ve got a bunch of cows following you. Don’t tell me you never think about them.”

The longhorn shook his big horns and trotted on up ahead.

“Just what I thought. Male is male, no matter what the species,” Dewar said.

Sawyer rode up beside him. “Who are you talkin’ to?”

“Myself. And that means we need to get this ride done and go home. When a fellow starts expecting a damn longhorn to answer him, it’s time to go home,” Dewar said.

“You got a thing for Haley?”

“What makes you ask that?”

“You took her coffee this morning.”

“Last week I handed Buddy a cup of coffee. You didn’t ask me if I had a thing for him,” Dewar said.

“You going to answer me?” Sawyer asked.

“Don’t know yet. We’ve got a date when we get back to Texas. We’ll see how that goes before I make any rash statements.”

“It won’t work,” Sawyer said.

Dewar looked over at him.

“You can take the girl out of the city, but you can’t take the city out of the girl. Kiss her good-bye at the end and cut your losses, cousin. She’s pretty but she’d wither up and grow bitter on a ranch.”

“Thanks for the advice,” Dewar said.

“Get yourself a country girl like I got waitin’ on me. Grew up on the ranch next door and we been datin’ for two years. She’s a keeper.”

“Congratulations.”

“Just sayin’, man. Just sayin’.” Sawyer turned his palomino horse around and headed back to his post.

“You think he’s full of shit?” Dewar asked his horse.

Stallone raised his head and snorted.

“I thought so.” Dewar laughed.