Miss Murray On The Cattle Trail. Lynna Banning

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СКАЧАТЬ Pretty stuff in the wild. In the summertime, Consuelo used armloads of it to make a kind of spicy-hot spread for venison or baked ham. He watched Dusty slow her mount to admire a patch of the weed. Probably gonna draw a picture of it in her notebook.

      She looked up and bit her lip. “How will I ever learn everything there is to know about a cattle drive?” she asked.

      “Everything? You don’t need to know ‘everything,’ Dusty. You just need to know enough to stay alive.”

      “But my newspaper...the readers are simply fascinated by the West. How will I ever report enough to keep them entertained?”

      Entertained! Hell’s bells, this drive means life or death for me, and all she wants to do is entertain?

      “Well, I’ll tell ya.” He sent her a look from under the brim of his hat. “Do what Charlie told me when I first came to work for him.”

      “And what would that be?”

      “Keep your eyes and ears open, and your mouth shut.”

      She gave him a sharp look, her lupine-colored eyes widening.

      “Got it?” he snapped.

      “Yes, sir, I have most certainly ‘got it.’ In order to keep my readers riveted to their morning newspapers, I thank the Lord I can scribble my notebook full of interesting facts while joggling along on the back of a horse. Nothing will escape me.” Her voice was so frosty it made him wince. “I do keep my eyes and ears open,” she continued. “And that includes noticing your...your insufferable rudeness. You will not hear another question out of me.”

      He laughed out loud. “I’ll believe that when steers can fly.”

      She sent him a smoldering look and gigged her mount away from him.

      Sure hope you remember the “mouth shut” part, Dusty.

      He reined away, but her horse started acting funny, and that caught his attention. She urged it closer to the rocks and all at once the animal shied and danced sideways. What the—Then the sorrel arched its back and bucked her out of the saddle.

      She landed flat on her back. By the time he reached her, the horse had skittered off a ways, and out of the corner of his eye he saw what had startled it. Rattlesnake.

      Dusty laid without moving. Zach pulled out his gun, shot the snake, then dropped out of the saddle and raced over to her. Her eyes were open, but she wasn’t breathing. Had the wind knocked out of her, he guessed. When he knelt beside her, she grabbed for his arm. Her face was white as flour and she was struggling to draw in a breath.

      “You’re okay,” he barked. “You’re winded. Just lie easy.”

      She tried to sit up, then sucked in a huge breath and started to cough, gasping for breath at the same time. “C-can’t breathe!” she choked out.

      Zach rocked back on his heels. “Not surprising since you got thrown. Your horse shied at a rattler.”

      Her eyes widened. “A s-snake?”

      “Yeah. Horses are afraid of snakes.”

      “P-people, t-too,” she said. “Oh, my s-stars, a snake!” She shuddered visibly.

      Now that she was breathing better, he found himself mad as hell. “Dusty, there’s a whole lotta things out here that’ll spook a pilgrim like you. It’s time you turned tail and—”

      She jerked upright and jabbed her forefinger into his chest. “Pilgrim! I am not a ‘pilgrim’ by any stretch of your minuscule imagination, Mr. Strickland.”

      Hell, she sure had plenty of breath now. He caught her chest-poking hand and held it out to one side. “Damn right you’re a pilgrim. You’re a real beginner out here in the West. Oughtta know better than to ride close to the rocks on sunny days. And that’s another reason why—”

      “I am most certainly not going back!” she hissed. “I can learn about snakes and rocks and...and other things. I intend to complete this cattle drive, and my newspaper assignment, so you can just stop yammering and let me get on with it!”

      He stared at her.

      She jerked her hand out of his grasp. “Did you hear me?”

      “I heard you, all right. You’re more stubborn than a whole passel of mules, Dusty, but I’m the trail boss of this outfit, and I say you’re just too much damn trouble out here. I say you’re going back to the Rocking K.”

      Before she could speak, Juan cantered up on his bay. “Is problema?”

      “No!” Dusty yelled up at him.

      “I’ll say,” Zach contradicted. “Horse threw her.”

      “It wasn’t my fault,” she protested. “It...it was the snake!”

      “Si,” Juan acknowledged with a sidelong glance at Zach. “The snake. And the horse, he did not like, so...” He made an eloquent somersaulting motion with his hand.

      “Exactly,” Dusty said. She got to her feet, dusted off her jeans and advanced on her horse. Juan walked his mount forward, leaned over to grab the reins and laid them in her hand.

      With a nod of thanks, she stuffed her boot into the stirrup and clawed her way up into the saddle. Then she tossed her head, stuck her nose in the air and kicked the horse into a gallop.

      Juan and Zach looked at each other. “Mucho woman,” the young man breathed.

      Zach shook his head. “Mucho trouble, you mean.”

      “Si, maybe so. But ees ver’ pretty trouble, no? Like I say, Señor Boss, mucho woman.” Chuckling, he kicked his gelding and rode off.

      Zach stomped over to remount, but instead stood looking after Dusty. Mucho problem. Very mucho.

      * * *

      Long days followed long days, one after the other, with nothing happening except endless hot, boring hours plodding after a herd of noisy cows, and listening to the thunder of hooves and the yipping of cowhands trying to keep them moving forward. Sometimes she wondered what the cowhands thought about during the interminable hours on horseback with nobody to talk to and nothing to do but chase after wandering animals.

      They all smelled sweaty at the end of a day on the trail. When they could, the men bathed in creeks and rivers, and on Sundays, if Zach held the drive over for a day, they’d grab a cake of yellow lye soap and wash out their filthy garments. Like everyone else, she had only one pair of jeans plus an extra shirt and another pair of drawers, so every day she prayed for a camp beside a creek.

      Did people in Chicago or Philadelphia or New York have any inkling what whole days lived like this were really like? She knew her readers would want to “see” what happened on a cattle drive, so part of the hours she spent on horseback she planned how she would write about it.

      I’ll start out by describing the meadows full of red and yellow wildflowers that get trampled by thousands of animal hooves, and how the sky looks in the morning when the sun comes up, all pinky-orange, СКАЧАТЬ