Forget Me Not (21 page)

T
he fire's snapping warmth began to loosen up J.D.'s stiff joints and the aches of bones that had been broken. Sunset had come and gone, and in the early night campfire flames shot skyward to consume the darkness. Flickering shadows promenaded across faces absorbed in telling stories between puffs of smoke and sips of coffee.

Rio, who'd disappeared once he finished his supper and put his dirty dishes in the wreck pan, returned with J.D.'s saddle and saddlebags slung over his shoulder. He set them in front of J.D., who mulled over what to do about the wrangler's steady flirtations with Josephine.

A glance in her direction, and J.D. saw that she sat on the wagon seat with a lantern at her hip and her nose in a book. Wearing her oversized shirt, the sleeves rolled partway up and the hem billowing into her lap, she didn't look like Rio's type. Her hair drooped at her nape, its twisted confines ruffled. It was no wonder none of the other boys paid her anything more than passing attention or engaged her in conversations that went beyond the polite. Gus Peavy and Rio were the only two hands who had seen her up close in her fancy suit the day she'd arrived at
the ranch. And Gus had a girl he was sweet on in Sienna, so he posed no threat, but Rio was always looking for a good time.

“You planning on doing anything tonight?” J.D. asked over the rim of his cup.

Slouching with his hands in his back pockets, the younger man replied, “I got some hobbles that need stitching.”

“That all?”

Rio's eyes shimmered with unspoken humor in the light, as if he knew what J.D. was getting at. “You need me to do something special?”

“Nope.” J.D. washed down the last of his beans with his coffee, then stood as a way of dismissing the kid. Rio sauntered off to heat water for the dishes, and J.D. cursed himself for not being blunter and coming right out with what was eating at him. But if he did, it might look like he had designs on Josephine himself, and that would be purely false. No sense in giving the boy the wrong idea.

J.D. dumped his dishes in the pan, then went toward the wagon's front. She held the book up close, a strand of hair curling past her cheek. She turned to the sound of his steps, managed to sit straighter than she already was, and slipped the book beneath her behind. “Yes, boss?”

For some reason, the question grated on him, and he had a good mind to tell her not to call him that. But it was his own insistence that had her choosing either boss or J.D. He wished she would use the latter, though even that form of address had its flaws. The foremost being a level of intimacy. It didn't matter that the boys called him that. They were all men. But with the row of buttons on his shirt in a line down the curve of her breasts, Josephine was definitely not one of the boys.

J.D. put his weight on his left hip and took on a stance of casual indifference. “Supper was fine.”

“There were rocks in the beans.”

“Yeah, I found a few.” J.D.'s molar had hit one and thought for sure he'd be requiring a trip to the dentist.

“I thought the little pieces were broken beans.” She tucked the curl behind her ear. “Who would have thought the company wouldn't sort through them?”

“They always slip a few pebbles in to make the sack weigh more. Then I get charged the extra.”

“That's not right.”

“No, but that's the way it is.” Pushing his hands into his pockets, J.D. looked at the sky, then at Josephine, who waited for him to say something. “What are you reading?”

“A book.”

“I figured that. What's it called?”

She shifted, as if he could see what the title was beneath the flare of her hip. “It's just a book. You wouldn't be interested.” She paused, then asked, “Is there something you wanted?”

He wanted to find out what he could about her. Why was it that Josephine Whittaker had come out West all by herself? She'd never offered the information, and he'd never asked. That just wasn't done. A man's business was his own. Just like a woman's should be. Most of the women out here had hard-luck tales. Those told by the ranch widows were looked upon with compassion. A lot of the girls at the saloons recounted colorful stories when they talked about why they'd taken up the life of sin, mostly while crying into their handkerchiefs.

Josephine was no Walkingbars' floozy. Nor was she a woman made for the West. So what was she doing here?

He knew that getting to know her would prove fruitless. She'd be leaving soon, so it was best to keep things indifferent. But he'd have to try hard to keep it that way. “Can you reach in the back for my bedroll?”

Josephine made sure the book was facedown, then ducked to go inside the interior of the wagon. He was sorely tempted to take a peek at the cover, but she
came back in a few seconds. Her hair looked worse for the wear, its bun coming completely loose when she hit her head on the fore bow shaping the arc in the canvas. She gave him the rolled-up sougan, then quickly struggled to make some order out of her hair. Unbidden, the image of the long cinnamon-colored curls tumbling down to her hips surfaced in his mind.

Her fingers were nimble as they first unbraided, then rebraided the long coil that had fallen free of its crimped pins. A long glimmer of silver reflected from the dusty wooden floor of the wagon, and J.D. reached for it. He lifted his arm and handed Josephine the pin.

“Thank you,” she said quietly, averting her eyes from his once she had the hairpin in her grasp.

J.D. should have turned away and gone about his business, but he stayed put, mesmerized by her styling her hair. J.D. tucked the sougan beneath his arm and said, “You see the fiddle while you were in there?”

“Yes.”

“Mind getting that, too?”

“No.”

She rammed the last pin home, the final effect decidedly neater but no less wispy than before. In a moment, she came back with the black leather fiddle case and handed it over. “Obliged,” J.D. said, then could think of no other reason to prolong his stay. He took off to set up his bed.

J.D. laid out his blanket, then adjusted his saddle and bags. “Dan and Orley, you boys'll be on bobtail guard, then Gus and Jidge take over at midnight.”

“You boys going to give us some music to sing by?” Dan Hotchkiss asked while refitting his boots back on his feet.

Singing was supposed to soothe cattle; J.D. didn't know for sure why. Unless it was that any sound, be it soft and crooning, could drown out the spooking noises of the night. He'd been on enough bobtail guards to know that if he wasn't singing in a quiet
tone—bad as he was at carrying a tune—any little sound could make them leave the country. Even if that sound was something familiar like a horse shaking itself or the jingle of spurs.

Two men would circle around the cattle, keeping their horses at a walk. If it was a clear night, so quiet you could hear the bedded-down cows breathing, one man would sing a verse of a song, and his partner on the other side of the herd would sing the next verse. If he didn't know the words, he'd make something up. And they'd go through a whole string of songs that way, sometimes until their voices grew hoarse.

J.D. reached over and handed Birdie Tippett the fiddle case and asked him to play. Birdie wasn't as talented as Luis, but in desperation a man overlooked a lot.

Boots sidled his crate closer to the fire where he could warm his feet. “Birdie can't carry a tune in a corked jug,” he commented, crossing his stockinged feet at the ankles and folding his arms across his chest.

“Better than you can,” J.D. remarked while getting out a tin of oil so that he could work it into the leather of his saddle.

Boots snorted, then took out his latest whittling project and began to shave off the rough spots.

Opening the case and lifting out the instrument, Birdie examined the wood grain and the strings. He brought the fiddle to his chin, tested a few notes, then made some adjustments to the strings.

Seth Winters dragged out a mouth organ from his shirt pocket and knocked the tobacco crumbs loose from the holes. Birdie made a big show of limbering up his neck and shoulders by shrugging them a few times and tilting his head. Then he placed the fiddle snugly against his bristled chin.

“ ‘Little Black Bull,' ” Birdie said, and Seth nodded.

The tune was pleasant. Nothing fast and hard to follow. Mostly the same musical verse was repeated
when telling the story about a bull coming down from the mountain, with the refrain of “A long time ago.” J.D. sang the words in his head, an old habit he'd picked up to keep the monotony from closing in on him. He must have sung a thousand songs while doing line work one winter.

While the notes of the fiddle embraced the group by the fire, J.D. oiled his saddle. He periodically glanced in Josephine's direction. She'd put her book away and sat on a blanket, using the rear wagon wheel as a back support. She crossed her legs in front of her, her feet—encased in the old boots—keeping time with the music.

As the two men moved right into another song, he wondered if she missed the highfalutin dances that she'd no doubt gone to. Big to-do ones where she'd most likely worn velvet or silk . . . and perhaps danced with a man named Hugh.

He started to think about who she would have danced with, if she'd had a favorite partner . . . why she wasn't married at her age. He guessed her to be halfway into her twenties. He was getting close to thirty, and he felt he had a good reason why he hadn't tied the knot. But for a woman, especially a woman from the type of society his mother was from, not being married by her late age was cause to be labeled an old maid.

Birdie and Seth had played more than a dozen songs when Birdie took a break to straighten the kink from his neck. Seth wiped his mouth with the back of his hand.

Gus made a comment about Luis listening in from up above.

Print added, “Luis was a good friend.”

Somebody ventured, “It don't matter where a man goes after he passes on. If he was a friend, you'll know him when you meet up again.”

Then Boots put his plug nickel in, the knife in his
knobby fingers going as still as the piece of wood in the other. “I'd know an old cowboy in hell with his hide burnt off.”

His observation was one of the few things J.D. was in agreement with Boots about. He went so far as to voice his accord. “I bet I'll meet up with a few who've crossed my path.”

Boots raised his eyes to stare at J.D. over the fire's flames, but he offered no sarcastic undertones—which took J.D. greatly by surprise.

“I imagine you and I will be there together,” Boots remarked, moving the tip of his knife into the wood once more. “Eugenia will see to it I won't get anywhere near her. Just as well. I don't like harp music.” Then, to Birdie, he called, “Aren't y'all going to play anymore?”

“I ran out of songs. Don't know anymore.”

“Good gawd, what kind of fiddle player are you?”

“A bad one,” Birdie replied in all honesty.

“Don't any of you other numbskulls know how to play that thing?” Boots threw out to the boys.

J.D. noted they all had sorry shakes of their heads . . . all but Josephine, who suddenly looked at her hands. He suspected she was withholding something.

“Miss Whittaker, do you know how to play a fiddle?” J.D. asked.

She lifted her gaze to his. “I was given tutelage on the violin.”

“Same thing as a fiddle if I'm remembering my music studies correctly,” J.D. said offhandedly.

Boots grumbled beneath his breath, “Eugenia would be glad to know all the money I paid that book scholar, Archer, was good for something.”

“Give us a song, Miss Josephine,” Rio urged, pitching his smoke butt into the fire and sitting straighter. “I'd surely like to hear anything you could offer us. I'm sure it'll be as sweet as an angel's song.”

J.D.'s
mouth fell into a thin line. He was curious himself about Josephine's playing abilities, but he wouldn't go so far as to state she could play like an angel. If her violin playing was anything like her cooking, even Toby would run for cover with his paws up over his ears.

“Go ahead, Miss Josephine,” Birdie added. “I'm played out. It would sure be a treat to listen to somebody else.”

Josephine was anything but modest about the talents she possessed, which J.D. couldn't exactly name at the moment. In fact, she was appearing downright shy when she rose to her feet to take the instrument from Birdie.

She apologized before she even strummed a note. “I'm not very good. I can't read music. I play by ear.”

“How can y'all play with your ear?” Boots inquired.

“That's a figure of speech,” she replied. “I can't read sheet music, or, rather, I can, it's just that all those notes . . . well, I got them all mixed up. So instead of reading the pieces, I memorized them inside my head after my tutor played them.”

She gently examined the fiddle, her slender fingers gliding over its dull and beat-up surface. Bringing the instrument to the point of her chin, she tentatively ran the bow across the strings. She made numerous adjustments, so many that finally Boots complained.

“Are y'all going to play it or what?”

“I'm tuning it. I'm not sure, but I think I have them the way they should be.” She worried her lower lip. “It's been a long time . . .”

J.D. put aside what he was doing so he could better concentrate on what she would play. Like the rest of them, he was interested to hear what she had to offer. She wouldn't know “Bury Me Not on the Prairie.”

Taking a deep breath, and remaining standing, Josephine positioned the fiddle, then closed her eyes. J.D. kept his gaze on her. She seemed so set on what she was doing. So in tune to the instrument alone.

Then she began to play, and J.D. was just as awestruck as the rest of them.

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