Cowboy For Hire

by Duncan, Alice

  Cowboy for Hire

  Book #1 in the “Dream Maker” series

  Alice Duncan

  Cowboy for Hire

  Copyright © 2010 by Alice Duncan

  All rights reserved.

  Copyright © 2001 by Alice Duncan

  All rights reserved.

  Published 2001 by Kensington Corp.

  A Zebra “Ballads” Books

  Smashwords Edition November 29, 2010

  Visit aliceduncan.net

  Smashwords Edition, License Notes

  This ebook is licensed for your personal enjoyment only. This ebook may not be re-sold or given away to other people. If you would like to share this book with another person, please purchase an additional copy for each person you share it with. If you’re reading this book and did not purchase it, or it was not purchased for your use only, then you should return to Smashwords.com and purchase your own copy. Thank you for respecting the hard work of this author.

  One

  Pasadena, California

  May, 1905

  Sunbeams filtered through the slatted ceiling of the Orange Rest Health Spa’s elegant pavilion, casting a brilliant patchwork pattern of light and shadow on the white wicker tables and the people seated at them. The San Gabriel Mountains loomed in the near distance, looking remarkably green and friendly for a mountain range. The heavenly scent of orange blossoms and honeysuckle mingled with the robust aroma of roses to create an almost mystical atmosphere when combined with the variegated light and the overall beauty of the pavilion and its surroundings.

  Amy Wilkes thought that if she were dealing with anyone other than the obnoxious human crocodile snarling at her from his white wicker chair, her spirits would be as bright and cheery as the sun itself. She wasn’t, and they weren’t. Horace Huxtable was the most recalcitrant, worst mannered, least respectful bully of a patient ever to sully the portals of her uncle Frank’s health spa. What’s more, he was a drunkard and a lecherous old goat. And he was rich. Rich, rich, rich. It wasn’t fair, and Amy detested him.

  “Mr. Huxtable,” she said in her sternest tone, despising the task and wishing she could use less refined methods to make him behave—hammering him on the head with a blunt instrument, for instance—“you must drink your orange juice.”

  “Oh, must I?”

  Amy imagined he’d practiced his sneer in front of a mirror in order to polish it to such a high gloss. “Yes.”

  “The stuff is vile.” His sneer transformed into a glower and he reminded her of a sulky child. “Damned if I will.”

  She glowered right back. “My uncle prefers that his guests refrain from the use of profanity on his premises, Mr. Huxtable.”

  “I don’t give a crap what your uncle prefers, you damned little prude.”

  With her lips pressed together in a tight line, Amy frowned down at the man who was here at her uncle’s health spa in Pasadena in order to dry himself out. He was here of his own volition. No one could force a person to take the cure.

  Personally, Amy wished Huxtable would just go away and drown himself in a butt of malmsey—whatever that was—like that fellow in Richard III. He wasn’t cooperating in his health regimen to the least degree, and Amy had thought from the moment he staggered through the front door that he was both horrid and egotistical.

  Motion picture actors, she thought grimly, ought to be locked away so they can’t contaminate the rest of us. They were a new breed, motion picture actors, but Amy had already encountered enough of the species to have formed a strong opinion about them.

  “Orange juice is the elixir of life, Mr. Huxtable,” she said primly, reciting a line from her uncle’s colorful brochure.

  “Elixir of life, my ass,” rumbled the well-known actor in his deep and melodious voice which ought, in a just world, to have belonged to some fellow who deserved it.

  Again, Amy recoiled from his language. “Well, really!”

  He chuckled. “Now, now, girlie. You’re too innocent for this world, do you know that?”

  “I know no such thing, Mr. Huxtable. I do, however, know that you’re paying a good bit of money to stay here and restore yourself to some kind of health.”

  “who the hell are you, anyhow? Mary Baker Eddy?”

  Amy drew in a deep breath, recalling the copy of Science and Health residing upstairs in her bedroom. Her aunt, an ardent disciple of Mrs. Baker Eddy, had given it to her, and Amy always felt guilty for not reading it more often. Today, however, she wished she’d brought it here with her. She’d thump Mr. Huxtable over his hard head with it. That might do him some good. It would make her feel better, at any rate. “It would do you no harm to read her book, sir.”

  “Pshaw.” Huxtable waved that way. “My ass.”

  “It seems to me you should be trying to profit from this experience, not fight every attempt to help you recover.”

  “Recover, my ass.”

  Feeling saving, Amy said through gritted teeth, “I see you have a limited vocabulary.”

  He laughed.

  “Anyhow, what about the money? Don’t you care about wasting your money?”

  If Amy had enough money to spend a month at her uncle’s fancy health spa, she’d consider herself rich beyond avarice. It was her goal never to be insecure again in her lifetime, and she furiously resented people who wasted what she’d give her eyeteeth to possess. She wouldn’t drink away a fortune. She, unlike Horace Huxtable, was a reasonable and sensible human being.

  He waved that one away, too. “I’m not paying. The Peerless Studio is.”

  “Then you ought to be cooperative. In fact, you ought to be grateful. I’m sure they won’t appreciate you wasting this opportunity and squandering their money.”

  “Balderdash. They need me.”

  Amy wrinkled her nose and refrained from making the statement she believed his words deserved.

  Huxtable, caught up in his own thoughts and indifferent to anyone else’s opinions, said, “If this bilgewater is so wonderful, I’ll let you drink it, my adorable Miss Wilkes.”

  Amy gave up. She knew she shouldn’t. Part of her job here was to see that the patients—she’d begun to think of them as inmates, actually—ate properly and drank their daily quota of orange juice. Most of them were suffering from the same excesses as was Huxtable—too much food and drink. That, to Amy’s mind, was grossly unfair, considering how many people in the world went to bed hungry every day and had perishingly little with which to sustain themselves. Children died every day from starvation—Amy herself might have starved to death if her wonderful aunt and uncle hadn’t rescued her—and Amy conceived of wastefulness as a crime.

  But were her uncle’s patients grateful? Did they cooperate in their own recovery and redemption? Did they take full advantage of this beautiful health spa? Did they eat their oatmeal and drink their orange juice with the appreciation it deserved? Did they study the health magazines Uncle Frank distributed in an effort to help them regain their well-being?

  No. Most of them were defiant and uncooperative at least some of the time. Mr. Horace Huxtable, noted theatrical actor and lately to be seen on celluloid in nickelodeons across the country, seemed to go out of his way to be impossible.

  She lifted her chin. “I shall leave you here, then, to contemplate the nature of your health. And I should advise you to begin looking kindly upon orange juice, Mr. Huxtable. If what I read in the newspapers is true, the whole nation will be liquor-free soon.” Although she knew she shouldn’t—after all, according to her uncle, the customer was always right no matter how wrong he was—she smirked.

  “God, what a thought!” Huxtable gave a visible shudder.

  “I think it’s a perfectly splendid one.” She whirled to go and almost bumped into a tall, sl
ender, brown-haired man modishly dressed in a light-colored summer motoring suit, with a driving scarf wound around his neck, and carrying a pair of motoring goggles. Amy chalked him up for another movie fellow, disliked him for it, nodded curtly, and marched off to deal with Mrs. Fellows, who might be fat, silly and self-indulgent, but wasn’t nearly as cantankerous as Horace Huxtable.

  Martin Tafft, the fashionably dressed gentleman, whipped off his soft cap and said, “I’m very sorry, ma’am,” to her stiff back, but she didn’t turn around or acknowledge his apology. He sighed, deducing at once that Huxtable had said or done something to scandalize her. How typical of the overbearing brute. Nevertheless, Martin had a job to do, so he got at it.

  “Huxtable,” he said with a friendly smile. “You’re looking well today.”

  He looked like a dipsomaniacal wastrel, actually, but Martin couldn’t bring himself to say so aloud since Huxtable could cost the Peerless Motion Picture Studio a lot of money if he didn’t dry out soon. Huxtable was only forty-two years old, for heaven’s sake, and he had within his vanity-stuffed body a wealth of talent. It was a shame, both for Huxtable himself and for Peerless, the studio for which Martin labored, that he seemed determined to drink himself into an early grave.

  “I feel like shit,” Huxtable answered back, lifting his glass of orange juice. “Do you see this?”

  “Yes.”

  “It’s repellent stuff. Whoever invented the orange ought to be shot.”

  “I think God has that distinction,” murmured Martin. “I doubt if a shot would do any good.”

  “A shot would do me good,” the actor growled.

  “Nonsense. Booze will be the death of you.” Martin breathed deeply and sat when Huxtable waved him at a chair, looking around with interest. “It sure smells good around here. Orange blossoms, I presume. This place is very pretty.”

  “Hunh.”

  So much for beating around the bush. Martin got down to brass tacks. “I came to tell you the latest developments with One and Only.”

  At last Huxtable seemed to be interested. His bloodshot eyes focused on Martin. “Have you found a proper cowboy?”

  “Yes. Or, rather, yup.” Martin smiled. Huxtable didn’t. Martin sighed again. “He’s a young, gingery fellow named Charles Fox, and he’s been working on a ranch in Arizona.” Martin decided not to make any mention of what kind of ranch it was, feeling certain that Huxtable would sneer.

  “Ah.” Huxtable squinted narrowly. “A handsome lad, is he?”

  This was tricky, mainly because Charlie Fox was very handsome. He sure took the shine out of Huxtable in his current condition. But the celluloid could hide many flaws, and so could theatrical makeup, and Huxtable was already a well-beloved character—thank God his many fans didn’t know him personally—so Martin didn’t anticipate any chance of Charlie making a better impression on the public than the leading man in the movie. “He’s fairly good-looking,” he said noncommittally.

  Huxtable huffed with irritation. “God, I hate this stuff.” He lifted his orange juice glass again and drained it. Then he gave an eloquent shudder and burped. “What they need to do is mix some gin in it. Make it palatable.”

  Martin, who had been dealing with actors for several years, was not daunted by Huxtable’s boorish manners. He plowed on. “We still need to find you a leading lady—”

  Huxtable held up a hand. “Done.”

  His mouth already open to continue the leading lady line, Martin used his breath to say, “I beg your pardon?”

  “I’ve done that part of your job for you, Martin old boy. I’m sure you noticed that pretty little filly you just bumped into?”

  “We didn’t actually touch,” mumbled Martin.

  “Pity, that, but you’ll try harder next time, I’m sure.” He gave Martin a lascivious wink, from which Martin did all he could not to shrink. “I want her to star with me.”

  Martin stared at Huxtable for a moment, then turned in his chair to see if he could catch sight of the young woman with whom he’d narrowly avoided contact. She was at present standing beside an elderly woman at a table on the other side of the room, smiling attractively. She was a striking girl, probably around eighteen or nineteen, with thick, reddish-brown hair piled on top of her head, and very nice eyes. Martin couldn’t see their color from where he sat, but it didn’t matter what color anything was since, on celluloid, it all came out black-and-white. Her lashes were thick, too, and wouldn’t require much makeup.

  She had a superb figure and looked dignified in her narrow black skirt and prim white shirtwaist with a high collar encircled by a tidy black bow tie. She actually fit the description of the leady lady in One and Only admirably. Still, Martin had grave doubts about asking her to act in a movie with Horace Huxtable, who would probably eat her alive and spit out the pieces.

  “Her?” he asked dubiously.

  “Her.” Huxtable ran his fingers across his natty mustache. “I want her.”

  Martin didn’t like that sound of this. “Has she any experience?”

  “Not the kind you mean. Probably not the kind I mean, either.” His chuckle rumbled out, an oily blot on the soft, sweet-smelling Pasadena air.

  Deciding a firm hand was needed her, Martin said, “Now see here, Huxtable. You can’t go about the country deflowering virgins. We have a picture to shot, and Mr. Lovejoy is planning on making it the biggest and best one yet. Four reels, for heaven’s sake. This picture will make Peerless Studio a name to be reckoned with in the industry. It’s an expensive project, and we need a cast of professionals to act in it. I can’t hire just anybody.”

  “You hired that cowboy.”

  “That’s different. The public is clamoring for cowboy pictures and more cowboy pictures, and all the studios are using real cowboys nowadays. They add authenticity, and the movie-going public love it.”

  “Pshaw. Let me have that tidy bundle, and I’ll give you all the authenticity you want.”

  The next time his studio head, Phineas Lovejoy, wanted to hire Horace Huxtable to act in a moving picture, Martin was going to object with all the energy in his body. He didn’t care to have pimp added to his already overfull list of responsibilities at the studio.”

  “What about Ginny Mae Williams?”

  Huxtable made a rude noise which Martin correctly interpreted as an objection.

  “Mabel Gresham?” Another noise, ruder this time.

  “Wilma Patecky?”

  “Good God, man! What do you think I am?”

  A sot, a reprobate, and a debauched cad, thought Martin instantly. He said, “You’re a fine actor, Huxtable, and one with a loyal following.” Otherwise, Peerless wouldn’t have anything to do with him.

  “You’re damned right I am. I have instincts.” He pounded his fist on the table. “And I know a good screen presence when I see one. I want her.”

  “Very well.” Martin resigned himself to tackle an unpleasant task. “I’ll speak to her.”

  “You’ll do more than speak to her. You’ll hire her.”

  Irritated, Martin said, “I’ll do my best.”

  “You’ll succeed,” Huxtable said complacently. “What girl wouldn’t leap at the chance to act in a motion picture with Horace Huxtable?”

  Any girl who possesses half a brain. Martin said, “Right, I’ll talk to her now.” He got up to leave, but thought it wouldn’t hurt to give Huxtable a gentle warning. Actors and their exalted emotions and lofty opinions of themselves were a pain in the neck, but as Phineas had pointed out to Martin more than once, one had to pamper the blockheads. However, a hint wouldn’t hurt.

  He looked down at the Peerless star, who was preening himself. “Remember, Huxtable, the studio is paying for your stay here because we want you sober for the shooting. If you don’t do your best in this picture, which will be the biggest, most expensive one made to date by any studio in the entire world, the chances are good that your reputation as a reliable actor will be ruined beyond recovery. You’ve had plenty
of chances, and won’t be given another.”

  Huxtable drew himself up as if Martin’s words had mortally offended him. “Don’t you talk to me like that, you impudent pup!”

  Martin’s temper snapped. “It’s about time somebody did, because it’s the truth. You aren’t going to be able to live on your looks much longer. You’re not only getting older, but you’re ruining yourself with your drinking. If you must know the truth, you’re beginning to look mighty liverish. Keep drinking orange juice, old man. It might just save your career.”

  Since he’d been associated with theatrics long enough to recognize a good exit line when he said one, Martin turned on his heels and walked toward the girl, leaving Huxtable in his chair, sputtering angrily.

  * * *

  If Amy Wilkes possessed a single defining personality trait, it was sensibleness. She’d learned long ago that the only way to get on in life was to make sensible plans and stick to them no matter what obstacles people threw in her way.

  At the tender age of seven, she’d lost her parents, a tragedy that had precipitated her descent into such a cauldron of grief, terror, and pain that she’d never forgotten it. She aimed never to experience such a catastrophe again and had made it a guiding principle never to allow insecurity so much as a toehold in her life.

  Her gratitude toward her uncle Frank and aunt Julia was boundless. They’d taken her in when they’d learned of the dire straits into which she’d fallen, and loved her as if she’d been their own child.

  For years now, Amy had been working for her aunt and uncle, starting during her summer vacations from school. Now she worked for them year-round. She enjoyed the work, although she didn’t anticipate being employed at the Orange Rest Health Spa forever. She was only twenty years old, but already she’d experienced happiness and sadness, security and insecurity, and had been forced to put aside a child’s rose-colored glasses and view the world as it was.