Miss Murray On The Cattle Trail

“Tomorrow you’re going back to the Rocking K,” he announced. “I’ll send Curly with you, and he can catch up with us before we hit the river. Right now, though, supper’s on, and you don’t want to miss Roberto’s beans and tortillas.”

“No,” she said.

His dark eyebrows went up. “No, what?”

“I’m not going back.” She tried to shove away from the tree trunk, but her legs still felt like jelly.

He propped his hands on his hips. “In case you forgot, Miss Murray, I’m the trail boss on this drive. You do what I say.”

“No,” she repeated. “I don’t work for you, Mister Trail Boss. I work for the Chicago Times. And that’s who I take orders from.”

“Nope, don’t work that way, Dusty. On the trail you take orders from me.”

She raised her chin. “When we’re ‘on the trail,’ I will take orders from you, but that does not include sending me back to the ranch. That is tantamount to firing me, and as I said, I don’t work for you.”

He stared at her for a long moment with those unnerving gray-green eyes. “I don’t fancy nursemaiding you, whining and stumbling over your boots, for the next four hundred miles. Cattle driving is a tough business. You’re gonna get river mud up your nose and grasshoppers in your hair. By tomorrow night, you’ll have spent another ten or twelve hours in the saddle and we’ll just see what tune you’re playin’ then.”

“Are you a betting man, Mr. Strickland?” She put as much frost in her voice as she could manage. “I will wager you one silver dollar I will be playing my own tune. And that means I will be riding on to Winnemucca with the rest of you.”

Zach rolled his eyes. “I never bet with a fool, Dusty, but in your case I’m makin’ an exception.”

He walked her back to camp and sat her down at the campfire. Roberto brought her a tin plate and a fork and settled it on her lap, then balanced a mug of coffee on a flat rock beside her. “There ees whiskey, señorita,” he whispered. “You wish?”

“No, thank you, Roberto. I do not drink spirits.”

“Long night tonight,” he murmured. “Long day mañana.”

She shook her head. “I will manage.” Somehow.

Zach looked up. “Roberto, after supper, give her some of that liniment you squirrel away.”

“Si. Good idea.”

“Hey, Miss Murray?” Jase called from across the smoldering fire pit. “You gonna write about us?” Jase was the one with the unruly blond hair. She wondered if he got grasshoppers in it.

“Why, yes, I am.”

“Whoo-eee,” he exulted. “You hear that, boys? We’re gonna be in the newspaper. We’re gonna be famous!”

Curly sat bolt upright. “Yeah? How famous?”

Alex studied the rapt faces around the fire. “Well...” She paused for dramatic effect and sneaked a look at Zach Strickland’s unreadable countenance. “More than twenty thousand people read the Chicago Times every day.”

“No funnin’?” Curly asked.

“No funning,” Alex assured him. “And I will want to interview each one of you for my articles.”

She could scarcely hear herself think over the cheers. Yes, she would most certainly write about them. And she’d also write about the body-breaking punishment of a trail drive. That is, she would if she could get her tortured body over to the chuck wagon to retrieve her notebook and pencil.

She groaned and stared at the plate of cold beans in her lap. She would last until she rode down the streets of Winnemucca with all those cows or she would die trying.

* * *

Zach kicked a hot coal back into the fire pit and surveyed the camp. Roberto had long since splashed water on the canvas-wrapped carcass of the calf he’d slaughtered and hung on a hook in the chuck wagon, washed up the supper plates and crawled under the wagon to sleep. All but two of the cowhands had rolled out their bedrolls. Curly and Cassidy, the new man, were night-herding, riding around and around the steers bedded down in the meadow, moving in opposite directions and singing songs to keep them calm. The kind of songs a mother would sing.

He’d always liked night-herding. It gave him a chance to talk to Dancer, reflect on the day’s events and plan for tomorrow’s, at least as much as anyone driving a thousand head of prime beef could plan. Usually, whatever could go wrong, did.

In spite of all the problems, Zach liked this life. When he’d come West as a boy, right away he’d liked the freewheeling, easy existence of a cowboy, and later, when he’d risen to be Charlie Kingman’s top hand, he liked the admiration working for the Rocking K brought him. He liked being in charge, doing his job and doing it well. I’m responsible only to myself, my cattle and my ranch hands.

A successful drive brought him the gratitude and respect of people he cared about, Charlie and Alice Kingman. And this drive would bring him something else, something he’d dreamed about ever since he was a scrawny kid with no home; it would bring him enough money to buy a spread of his own and start his own ranch.

He sucked in a lungful of sagebrush-scented air and surveyed the camp. Dusty sat as close to the chuck wagon as she could get without nuzzling right up to Roberto. He guessed Dusty didn’t trust his cowhands. Zach did, though. Had to, on a long drive like this.

After supper he’d watched her limp off behind the chuck wagon with the bottle of Roberto’s liniment clutched in her hand. When she returned, her gait had evened out some and she was walking easier, at least easier enough to let her climb back on her horse tomorrow. He knew she’d be sleeping in wet jeans; by morning they’d still be pretty clammy. That ought to hurry things up a bit for her deciding she ought to hightail it back to the Rocking K.

He’d sure hate to take that silver dollar off her, but he guessed that by tomorrow she’d yell uncle and turn back, and then he’d be a buck richer.

* * *

Alex huddled by the campfire, sipping from a mug of coffee Roberto kept refilling from the blackened metal coffeepot and staring into the flames. What have I gotten myself into? She could never, never admit it to Mister Know-It-All Strickland, but she was starting to feel just the tiniest bit uneasy. The night was so dark out here in the middle of nowhere.

All around the fire pit were sprawled-out cowboys shrouded in their blankets—a lump here, and one over there, and there. They lay without moving, probably too tired to even twitch.

The trail boss was tramping around out there in the dark somewhere, and while she could hear him, she couldn’t see anything beyond the circle of dying firelight where she sat.

She pulled out her notebook and began writing.

First she described the camp and the dwindling campfire, the dark shapes of the sleeping cowhands, even how the camp smelled after their supper of tortillas and beans. But she did not write about how frightened she felt at the huge expanse of black, black sky overhead. Or the stinging mosquitos. Or her aching muscles.

Finally she admitted she was exhausted and she needed to sleep. She tiptoed to the chuck wagon, scrabbled around in the back and pulled out her roll of blankets. Just one other unclaimed bedroll remained. Roberto had long since crawled under the wagon to sleep, so this one had to belong to Zach Strickland.

She stood uncertainly near the remains of the campfire, wondering where to spread out her blankets. It would be most improper to curl up next to one of the cowhands, even one who was sound asleep, but out beyond the haphazard sprinkling of bedrolls it was pitch black. Wild animals could be lurking out there. Wolves, even.

Or... She caught her breath. Even wild Indians.

She crept forward to an unoccupied space and spread out her blue wool blanket. The other, a forest green one Aunt Alice said wouldn’t show the dirt, she wrapped around her body. Then she lay down on the hard ground and pulled the edges of the blue blanket over herself.

She couldn’t close her eyes for a long time, and when she did they popped open at the slightest sound. Never in her life had she realized nighttime could be so noisy!

She listened to the faint hoofbeats of the horses ridden by the two night-herders Mr. Strickland had assigned. One of them was singing something; she couldn’t identify the song, but it was soothing. Which was no doubt what that herd of cows out there somewhere was feeling. She, however, was feeling anything but soothed.

Something made a whoohing sound off in the dark. An owl. She hoped. Indians made wolf calls, didn’t they? Not owl calls. At least that’s what she’d read once in a dime novel she’d found in Uncle Charlie’s bookcase.

Something rustled out beyond the fire pit. Oh, mercy! What was that? A... What did they call them? A mountain lion? She tugged her blankets more securely around her.

Suddenly she became aware of another sound, a crunching noise. She lay still, listening. Footsteps, that was it! They came closer, and then she was startled by a low voice at her back.

“Dusty?”