“How many men have you cooked for at one time?” Reese challenged. “Not just one meal, but three a day, at three different locations, to which you have to move your kitchen and set up all over again? How many meals have you prepared in pourin’ rain or blowin’ gales when the Man Upstairs would have trouble keepin’ a fire goin’? How many—”
“Mister Catlin, I accepted this job because I’m a widow with a child to raise and because I need the money to hold onto my ranch. Even so, I am beginning to regret my decision.”
“That makes two of us. I’ve been regrettin’ it several minutes now.”
His admission took the life out of her. “I’m not one to stay where I’m unwanted,” she said at length. “As soon as Hank arrives with the remuda, perhaps you would be kind enough to loan me a horse so I can return to town.”
“Town? Town’s half a day’s ride away. I can’t let a lady ride off into the night by her lonesome.”
“Then forget my gender. Consider me an employee, duly terminated. On second thought, I won’t wait for Hank. I’ll take one of the mules.”
“Like hell you will.”
“You have two more in the remuda,” she reminded him. “And I’ll send this one back. Don’t worry, I’m not about to stand between a man and his greed.” She strode angrily toward the mule, calling down the hill, “Jordan. Oh, Jordan. Come runnin’.”
Reese caught up with her. “Me and my greed?”
“Uncle Kipp said you had a burr under your saddle blanket. He didn’t explain what sort of burr.”
“I’ll assure you, ma’am, my reasons for needin’ to get into Wichita ahead of the rush account for a lot more than greed.”
When she reached to untie the ground hitch, he stopped her. His callused palm was rough and warm against her hand, and for an instant, pleasing. How long had it been since a man touched her? More than two years. But that had been Samuel, her loving husband. And this was—
“You can’t ride a dang mule,” Reese was saying, “even though I have a hunch you’re nigh onto bein’ as stubborn as one.”
“Stubborn? Me?” Andie struggled to free the rope, but he wrested it away. His voice was harsh.
“Climb up on the back of that animal, an’ you’ll know stubborn. She’ll kick you clear to kingdom come.”
“Which at the moment is an infinitely more desirable place than here, where I’m unwanted.”
While she was trying to interpret Reese Catlin’s strange expression, Jordan dashed into the clearing. “What’s wrong, Ma?”
Reese gaped at sight of the boy. “What’re you doin’—”
“Howdy, Mister Catlin. Did’ya eat some of Ma’s cake? Ain’t she the best cook ever?”
Reese swung his gaze from Jordan to Andie, then back to Jordan. “Your ma? Why, boy, I oughta have your hide—”
Andie jumped between them. “Keep away from my son, Reese Catlin.” Jordan peeked around her apron.
“Don’t be mad, Mister Catlin. We didn’t go to pull the wool over your eyes.”
“You didn’t, did you? You and ol’ man Kipp set me up real good. You must’ve had a barrel of laughs after I left. Hell, he’s probably still slappin’ his leg and flappin’ his lips. Son of a biscuit eater! I’ve been hoodwinked.”
“So have I!” Chagrin roiling in her stomach, Andie shoved Jordan toward the mule. “Climb up on Bessie Mae, Jordan.”
“That’s not Bessie Mae,” Reese corrected. “It’s Bertha Jane. If you can’t tell your mules apart, how’d you expect to drive ’em?”
“I don’t. Supper’s on the fire, Mister Catlin. Jordan and I will be on our way.”
“On your way? What’ll I do for a cook?”
“That appears to be your problem.”
“You took the job.”
“And you made it clear that I’m undesirable. I don’t hold it against you. You hired me sight unseen. Uncle Kipp and Jordan have some explaining to do, though.”
“What will I do for a cook?” he demanded again.
“Hire another one. With the wages you’re paying, you shouldn’t find it hard to come up with someone.”
Reese removed his Stetson and kicked a clump of new grass with the toe of his boot. She watched his anger wane. “I don’t have time to beat the bushes for a cook, ma’am. Fact is, just anybody won’t do. I have a herd to get to market, and the way I’m fixin’ to work these boys, I’ll need an expert to keep ’em fed and happy.”
“You just fired your expert, Mister Catlin.”
“I did not. You quit.”
“I’m no quitter.”
“No? What else do you call leavin’ a man high and dry? Hell, the biscuits aren’t even baked.”
“I’m sure you or one of your dough-brained drovers can figure out how to set Dutch ovens in the fire.”
“That’s not the point.” Reese focused on his hat brim, which he twisted in his hands. “I might not like it, ma’am, but you’re all I’ve got. I’ve tasted your cookin’. If everything you make is as good as those lemon pies Kipp sells, you’ll do a better job fattenin’ up my cowboys than I will fattenin’ the steers.”
Andie’s heart turned over. A lock of brown hair had fallen over his forehead. She resisted the motherly urge to smooth it back. He might be a respected cattleman and a master trail boss, but at the moment Reese Catlin looked more like an overgrown kid. A kid who had been called to task and had the good sense to know when he was whipped.
“Try her pound cake, Mister Catlin,” Jordan urged. “It’s yummier’n that ol’ lemon pie.”
“Jordan,” Andie warned.
“Don’t go, Ma. Mister Catlin needs us.”
Before her Reese continued to twist his Stetson. “That’s a fact, ma’am.” When he looked up again, the expression in his brown eyes gave her insides a good hard twist.
“What about the men? You said they would stampede.”
“With the aroma comin’ from those Dutch ovens, I figure your supper’ll convince ’em otherwise.” He grinned. “And if it doesn’t, ma’am, you and I’ll find some way to let ’em know who’s boss. We run the show around here.”
“I know the rules, Mister Catlin. You run the cowboys and cattle; I run the wagon and camp.” Uncle Kipp had tutored her in the sharp division of power around a cattle camp, and something warned her that now was the time to stake her ground. “If I stay, I will expect you to do your job and leave mine to me.”
Supper was a disaster. Well, all except the food, Reese acknowledged. By the time the boys headed into camp for the evening meal, he still hadn’t recovered from learning that Andy Dushane, a renowned trail cook according to ol’ man Kipp, was in fact Andie Dushane, a more comely than average widow with curly black hair and eyes the color of the prairie in springtime. The fact that she was an excellent cook, no doubt the expert she claimed, wasn’t likely to hold water with the boys.
Reese introduced them one by one, and to a man of them, the cowboys’ eyes bugged out, before they turned to him, expecting to hear that their legs were being pulled or their lassos yanked. Every man jack of them let him know by one silent gesture or another that they hadn’t signed on to any petticoat operation.
All except Reese’s best point man, Tom Lovejoy, who wasn’t known as Lover because he was fond of his mama. Which added to Reese’s growing list of reasons to send Andie and her fibbin’ son back to town at first light.
But if he did that, what would he do for a cook? He hadn’t been exaggerating—hell, he wasn’t sure the point could be exaggerated—when he told her he intended to work these cowboys so hard only the best of cooks could keep them on the job.
To give her credit, Andie played her role to a T, like she’d been schooled at it, which, no doubt, she had, by that connivin’ ol’ man Kipp. First, she called the men to supper with vigor.
“Come an’ get it, less’n you want me to throw it in the possum an’ head the lot o’ you out for Wichita with empty bellies!”
The men lined up, all right,
even though they balked like a dozen ol’ muley cows. But little Miz Dushane didn’t blink an eye—or let up issuing orders.
“Wash in the basin, then toss it under the wagon.”
“We gener’ly don’t toss out water after only one use, ma’am.” Grumpy, first in line, was also first to challenge the cook, a dangerous thing under normal circumstances, which these definitely were not. Andie smiled when she replied.
“Generally doesn’t count, Grumpy. Toss out the water.”
With all the commotion about her being a woman, Reese hadn’t figured she’d remember more’n one or two names from his introductions, but dang if she didn’t fool him again. She recalled every one and put the right faces with ’em, too.
“Clean water and a clean towel.” She added to her list of rules with the regularity of a Texas dust storm, handing each cowboy, as she spoke, a fresh flour sack towel. “Community towels breed germs. I’ll doctor your ailments, but I don’t intend to cultivate them.”
The men fired skeptical glances at Reese, but he nodded in agreement with the cook. What else could he do? If he ended up having to keep her, he couldn’t undermine her authority the first night out. Besides, if she wanted to spend her time washing, that was her business, long as she didn’t use up all the water with her Miz Clean Crusade. He’d talk to her about that—if he ended up having to keep her.
Grumbling and wary, each man picked up his eatin’ irons and tin plate and headed for the fire where Night Hawk was first to lift the lid off a Dutch oven. Before he could spoon out food, however, Andie stopped him.
“Mister Catlin, would you oblige us with grace before these hungry drovers dish up the vittles?”
The ground rocked under Reese’s feet at that, but the stampede he felt had nothing to do with four-legged critters. From the hush that followed her request, he figured every man jack of the boys was thinkin’ the same thing. It was lookin’ more an’ more like the decision of whether to keep the cook might not rest entirely on his shoulders. She had stepped on three rattlesnakes already. Before he could come up with something appropriate in the way of grace, she stepped on another.
“Remove your hats, please—while we speak to the Lord, and while you eat.”
Every dust-stung cowboy eye in camp swiveled to Reese’s. He saw in an instant that their indulgence was wearin’ thin. Campfire etiquette did not require a man to remove his hat. Never had, never would. Hell, his neighbor might step on it or spill gravy on it. But the camp was the cook’s domain. By unwritten law, Cookie made the rules, and every cowboy was obliged to follow ’em, even the trail boss.
Reese removed his hat and the boys begrudgingly did likewise. “For this food we’re about to receive, may we have grateful hearts. Amen.” Silently he added his own prayer for a cook. A male cook of undetermined competence. Real quick, Lord.
The food quieted ’em down. Even Reese. By the time he served himself and sat cross-legged on the ground, tin plate balanced cowboy-style on his calves, silence pervaded the camp. Glancing around, he found each man’s eyes trained on his own plate. No one spoke. No one rose for coffee. Every drover was pacified by succulent roast beef and garlic-flavored potatoes. Reese’s ire began to abate. He couldn’t fire her till after breakfast, anyhow. Henry Morgan was the first to speak.
“What’d you do to these taters, ma’am?” Henry questioned of a sudden. Known as Professor for the books he packed in his saddlebags, Henry was one of the two seasoned point men Reese felt fortunate to have hired. “I’ll be a monkey’s uncle, if my ol’ grandmammy didn’t cook ’em the same way back in Mississip.”
“Thank you, Professor.” Andie spoke lightly, with a trace of humility in her voice that Reese instantly admired. “It’s an old family recipe from Virginia. If we get our herd in ahead of the competition, I’ll be delighted to share it with you.”
Our herd? Reese cast a wary glance around the seated cowboys to see how they took that. Most of them were so busy cleaning their plates, they hadn’t heard. Or, they chose not to react—for the moment, he cautioned himself.
More praise was quick in coming when Andie passed the biscuits. The kid followed his ma carryin’ a tub of butter. Real butter. On a trail drive they settled for sorghum with a little bacon grease stirred in. Hellfire! Had she spent all his money on tender meat and cow’s butter?
The wagon had appeared well-stocked. But was it? Did she know how far it was from one supply station to the next? Did she know how to stretch groceries to fit the distance? Did she know anything except how to cook?
And how to set a man’s world to spinnin’?
With her dark hair pinned up, he hadn’t missed the delicate line of her nape, nor for that matter, the graceful way she gestured with slender fingers. It took a man’s full attention to keep from imagining those fingers runnin’ across his chest at night, or his own, snakin’ up the soft skin on her neck.
Uncomfortably, Reese realized he wasn’t the only man among them to have noticed Andie’s attributes, even though most of said attributes were hidden beneath billowing apron and swaying skirts. He watched Tom Lovejoy watch her pass the biscuits.
Reese didn’t mind that Lover charmed the ladies at every stop from South Texas to Kansas, as long as he did his job. Possessed of boyish good looks and what Reese had heard one girl refer to as eyes that looked like bluebonnets sparklin’ with dew, Tom Lovejoy was the best point man in the business. And two good points were essential to the success of this drive. Like Andie said, Reese had hired the best, experts in their fields to a man of them:
Lover and Professor at point; four swing riders—Pop and Monte to the north, and Woody and Dink on the south; bringing up the rear, the three Tahlman brothers—Gimpy, Grumpy, and Goosey—rode drag. These were men who knew how to trail twenty-five hundred cattle ten miles a day, while the herd thought it was out for a morning stroll. With these men, his cattle should gain weight, and, by turn, his pocketbook. Every trail boss to follow would envy him.
Reese had thought of everything. At least, he tried. He hired two skilled young drovers for the lowliest job, horse wrangler: Night Hawk for night duty and Hank Sawyer for day shift; the wrangler off-duty would help Cookie set up and break camp. With them to do most of the dirty work, Cookie could concentrate on preparing meals. And last, but most important of all to the success of a drive, Reese had hired an expert camp cook: the man who baked those damned lemon pies at Kipp’s.
One by one the men scraped their dishes and tossed them in the wrecking pan beneath the lid, then returned to sit around the fire. As planned, Hank helped Andie wash the dishes. Not as planned, Reese thought. Some man she turned out to be.
When the dishes were dried and stored in cubbyholes, Andie enlisted Hank and that kid of hers to help turn the wagon tongue toward the North Star, a necessary duty of the cook, for it provided the trail boss with the next day’s heading, come daylight; afterward, she placed a lighted lantern on the tongue to guide the guards back to camp in the black of night. Hell, she knew all the right answers. Made all the right moves.
Before retiring to her tepee, she called to the men in general, “’Night, everyone. Eat all those cakes. I don’t want a crumb left in the morning. They’ll draw ants.”
Left to sit around the fire with his men, Reese watched her go, but his thoughts were far from the harness he mended. When she lit a lantern inside the tepee, his imagination began to play havoc with his brain, so he turned his attention to the campsite. To a man of them, his cowhands were busy eating the best dang sour cream pound cake a man could ever ask for, prepared by a cook that would be the envy of every trail boss in Texas, if she weren’t—
Again Grumpy was first to complain. “Dangit, boss, a woman’s about as welcome on a cattle drive as a skunk at a church social.”
“I’d say she smells a mite sweeter,” Tom Lovejoy observed. “And she looks…hmmm, makes a man wonder what’s underneath that canvas apron…don’t it, son!”
Reese shook his head in agony. Goosey
tuned up his fiddle.
“She’ll sure as shootin’ cramp our style,” Monte allowed.
“Ain’t that true?” Dink added. “I’ve been savin’ up tales all winter. I won’t be able to tell a one of ’em with a lady in camp.”
“You oughta learn cleaner tales,” Weasel, called Pop, contended.
“Says you, Pop. You fixin’ to clean up your language?”
“What’s wrong with my goddam language?”
Reese joined the cowboys’ whoops, if a bit feebly.
“Your language’d light a fire of wet cowchips,” Woody allowed.
“Hell, Pop, you’re the only man I know’s been run outta Rosie’s Pleasure Palace for unfit language. How you figure on keepin’ your mouth clean around a real lady for two months?”
“Or any of us. Hellfire, boss. ’Fore we reach Wichita we’ll be explodin’ like a pot of boilin’ Pecos strawberries.”
Rising to his feet, Reese took the poker and banked coals around the pot of fresh coffee Andie had put on for the night guard. “Which one of you’s offerin’ to trade in his cow pony for the chuck wagon and mules?”
The grumblers fell silent.
“I take responsibility for her bein’ a woman,” he told them. “I shouldn’t have hired a cook sight unseen. So, I’ll let you fellers have your say, an’ when we take a vote, I’ll abide by your wishes. But let me say somethin’ first. You know how important this drive is to me. Hell, I was born and raised on that Matthews spread. It’s like home, even if my pa was only the foreman. I’d give my eyeteeth to own that ranch, and now that he’s decided to sell, Mister Matthews has given me first chance to buy it. If I don’t come up with the money by midsummer, he’s puttin’ it on the market an’ takin’ the highest offer.” Reese scanned the men.
“So I took a gamble,” he continued, “on you boys. Each of you is the best there is, and I’m payin’ double wages. Oh, you’ll earn ’em, no doubt about it. I intend to work you into a lather an’ send you out again ’fore you’ve dried off good. Workin’ that hard, I figured you’d need the best grub this side of your mama’s kitchen table. So, we have a decision to make tonight. Way I see it, there’re two choices. We keep Miz Dushane. You had a taste of her cookin’, should be enough to judge her by. Or we send her back to town in the morning and handle the cookin’ chores ourselves.”
A Wish to Build a Dream On Page 2
