“I can’t find anything to cook,” she informed Mac as soon as she’d met everyone and shooed them all away. “There’s nothing here. No eggs. No bacon—”
“Sure there is,” he said. “Isn’t there?”
“You find it then.”
He found three cans of Spam and a five-pound bag of flour. “Guess I forgot to go to the abarrote like Rita told me to do,” he said sheepishly.
“Yes, and you forgot to go to the grocery store too,” Amelia said sarcastically. “You got me up for this? Will you look at that?” she asked, flinging her arm toward the dark kitchen window. “It’s the middle of the night!”
“Now, Amelia. I know you’ll think of something—”
“Me! I’m thinking of killing you, for one thing. Whose ‘buckaroos’ are these, anyway? I’m not supposed to feed them; you are!”
Mac was backing toward the door. “You just ring the bell out there in the backyard when it’s ready—”
“Mac!”
“You look cute in my pants.”
He disappeared out the door before she could throw anything at him.
Amelia fried all the Spam and made three pans of biscuits—without burning anything, amazingly. Houston McDade was going to drive her crazy! She filled each freshly baked biscuit with a Spam slice and rounded out the meal with coffee and a dozen oranges she cut into quarters. Then she went outside into the still New Mexico darkness to “ring the bell.” She didn’t mind helping out, but a little forewarning and some daylight would have been nice—not to mention a few groceries.
“You did fine, darlin’,” Pop told her as she was nearly trampled in the rush for the food. “I don’t mind telling you I was worried when Mac said he left you in here with nothing but three cans and a bag of raw flour.”
“Get your hat,” Mac told her when everything had been eaten.
“I don’t have a hat,” she made the mistake of answering.
“You do now,” he said, pulling one of his old ones out from under the kitchen table and plopping it on her head. “Let’s go.”
Amelia found herself out in the chilly dawn trying to help Mac find lost cows, hanging on to his waist and trying to stay on Willarďs rump again while they searched every arroyo on the McDade place and he explained the cattle rancher’s dilemma of intensive grazing as opposed to deferred rotation.
“Hey,” he said in the middle of it, “what’s the difference in being seen in my clothes this morning and being seen at the barbecue?”
“Why?” she asked, still feeling surly.
“Because I want to know,” he said, glancing over his shoulder at her.
“The difference is—” she said with a heavy sigh. “I—I don’t know what the difference is.” He glanced back at her again, and she narrowed her eyes. If he wanted logic at this time of morning, he was simply out of luck.
He stared at her, his grin broadening until they both laughed. The sun was coming up, and she felt wonderful suddenly.
“Amelia, Amelia,” he chided her, shaking his head.
Fortunately—she supposed—they found a number of calves and cows, and that led to reinforcements—Pop and the buckaroos—and to some kind of outdoor cow medical clinic where she was promoted to gofer-water bearer while the cowhands concerned themselves with intranasal vaccines for IBR and PI-3—whatever they were—and sulmethazine boluses and blackleg vaccines and vitamins and Lord knows what else. It was hard, dirty work, and by sundown she was exhausted, both from ranch work and from Mac’s assurances that with her borrowed cowboy hat she looked a good deal like a thumbtack.
In the days that followed, Mac left her hardly a minute to herself. She had no time to be homesick, no time to worry about Bobby. She watched calves being branded; she participated—nose covered—while they were being treated for scours. Mac took her to an art gallery in Santa Fe to see one of his mother’s paintings and to Cowboy Heaven for steak and beer. She fought with him about who was going to pay for what, and she crawled under a truck with him because he was tired of holding a flashlight in his teeth while he worked on “Louise’s” innards. She saw truly breathtaking New Mexico sunsets, and she walked with him among the lonely, deserted Indian pueblos, pacing her stride because he was often in pain after hours on a horse. She quickly realized the McCade bathtub with a Jacuzzi was more a palliative for his almost constant pain than a luxury. She spent long afternoons with Mac and Adam, participating wholeheartedly in a game these two McDades devised called Ambushing Sissy. She found herself being constantly wrestled to the ground or tumbled into the rope hammock with the two of them or lifted off her feet as Mac unceremoniously carried her under one arm and Adam under the other. She missed Mac desperately when he hired out to another ranch for a few days to make extra money, and she willingly flew to Albuquerque with him to see Bobby, hardly remembering how afraid she’d been of small planes and knowing that it was the pilot who made the difference.
Amelia was less than thrilled, however, on the Saturday morning Mac asked if she was ready to rodeo. She didn’t answer immediately, and while she accepted the fact that she really loved going places with him, she wasn’t at all sure he wouldn’t have her trying to overturn a cow or something equally Southwestern.
“I… don’t know,” she said finally, while he enjoyed her usual struggle—politeness against the truth.
“You know, Amelia, you’ve got to learn to trust me a little here. It’s just a rodeo.”
“I’d sooner trust a side-winding, flea-manged pole cat,” she answered, truth winning this bout. He grinned and threw his arm around her shoulders, causing that same old addle-headedness she experienced every time he got within two feet of her, regardless of his relentless ability to keep his word and treat her like a fifteen-year-old boy.
“Whatever the hell that means,” he said, laughing down at her, and her knees weakened perceptibly.
Amelia found herself getting ready to rodeo.
“Have you got a dress?” Rita whispered when she came inside to shower the ranch dirt off her and change her clothes.
“Why?” Amelia asked, finding the question odd. She had two, but compañeras never seemed to get to wear dresses.
“Because,” was all Rita would say.
“Rita, what are you up to?”
“Amelia, you’re a pretty woman, and you better be strutting your stuff while you still got it to strut.”
“Yes, but why do I have to strut it today?”
Rita tried to look busy with a dishtowel, then gave it up.
“Because I got to go out there and tell Mac that Marlene called just a minute ago. She’s not letting Adam come this weekend, and she wouldn’t talk to Mac. He’s not going to be happy, Amelia. It won’t hurt you any to sort of… take his mind off his troubles, will it?”
Amelia wore a dress, a cotton gauze madras plaid of jade and pink and purple that hung off her shoulders. She even let Rita give her some plum-colored “earbobs” to go with it, but she wasn’t at all sure she could redirect Mac’s mind. She sighed and put on a pair of backless sandals with high, sculpted wedge heels. When Houston McDade made one his compañera, a compañera was what one stayed. Amelia did a little extra work on her eyes with some burgundy and gray eyeshadow, and Rita approved heartily, spritzing her with a heady cologne when she came out of the bathroom.
“I told him about Adam,” Rita said, “and he’s all out of sorts. You look pretty, so go on out there and see what you can do.”
Amelia went—it was difficult not to with Rita shoving—enjoying Mac’s double-take when he looked up and saw her.
Well, she thought, maybe she did look pretty.
Mac stood frowning, hands on his hips. “Can you drive a truck with a clutch?” he asked.
Then again, she thought wryly, maybe not.
“Yes,” she said, determined not to mind about his indifference. She glanced away, immediately feeling his eyes on her, sliding to her bare shoulders and then to the rise of her breasts under the thin gauze of
her dress. But he was too quick for her to catch him at it.
“Can you drive one backward?” he qualified the question, his eyes riveted on her face. He had put on a blue checked shirt she hadn’t seen before, and a finer than usual cowboy hat with white and brown feathers dangling down the back brim.
“Yes,” she said, looking away again and more than enjoying his covert appraisal. She nearly caught him this time.
“Can you back the truck up to the horse trailer and not run over me?” he asked, his voice sounding a bit strange.
“I can,” she assured him. “But will I, is the question.”
He suddenly laughed. “Amelia, you don’t want to run over me, do you?”
“I have,” she confessed, and he acted stunned, complaining about it all the way to the aged green beauty “Louise.” He also sneaked in another look or two.
“When I say whoa, whoa is what I mean, you got that? And I’ll point which way I want you to go.”
“That sounds simple enough,” Amelia said, “even for me.” She lifted one shoulder a bit, and the dress dropped lower on that side. This time he didn’t seem to care if she caught him looking. She walked on by him—strutting her stuff, as it were—getting into the truck and backing it up, following his instructions so expertly that the trailer was hitched in a matter of minutes.
Mac was clearly impressed. “I’ll be damned,” he said under his breath.
“What was that?” she asked, eyebrows raised.
Mac frowned. “You can back a truck, Amelia, you know that?” he said as if accepting that fact was coming unusually hard.
“I told you I could,” she said, forcing herself not to beam and toe the ground under his incredulous praise. She kept looking at him, trying to keep her control by once again doing an inventory of her most favorite thing in the world these days, Houston McDade. It was just that he was so appealing, she told herself one more time—physically appealing. His personality was something else again. Her eyes kept traveling over him, to his strong shoulders, to his scratched and battered hands. She let her eyes drift to his trim waist. He was wearing an unusual belt buckle today, she noted, large and silver, with a lot of engraving and some lettering about a… National… Rodeo…
“Amelia, what are you doing?” Mac asked, breaking into her concentration. Her eyes flew to his face in alarm.
“Nothing,” she said, mortally afraid of what he thought she was doing. “Nothing,” she said again, giving a shrug that dropped the shoulders of her plaid dress a little more. She frowned because he was beginning to grin.
“Well, don’t do it where I can see you,” he advised her, the grin widening.
“I wasn’t doing anything!” she said indignantly.
He only smiled.
“I wasn’t!” she said, making matters worse. “I was only reading.”
“Whatever you say,” he said agreeably, and she blushed furiously. She couldn’t have pleased him more.
“Will you look at that? Amelia’s blushing!”
“I am not!”
He was laughing now, and he caught her around the neck, pulling her against him. “Oh, yeah,” he remembered. “That’s right. You were reading.”
“I was!” she insisted, finally hiding her face in his shirt while he laughed. Compañeras, she thought. Remember that.
“Well, darlin’ Amelia,” he teased her, “you had better watch where you read.”
“Yes, I will,” she promised, disengaging herself from his hugging. “You’ve embarrassed me half to death,” she complained, smoothing back her now mussed hair.
“I embarrassed you? You ought to try being read sometime, Ms. Taylor. Pop!” he suddenly yelled to his father. “Come here and let me tell you what Amelia’s been doing.”
“Don’t you dare!” Amelia cried.
“I was just going to tell him how good you can back up a truck,” Mac said innocently.
“Mac, if you tell Pop—”
“Tell me what?” Pop said as he walked up, looking from one of them to the other, the sun in his eyes.
“How many cowboys have nearly killed me backing this truck up to Willard’s trailer,” Mac explained, his devilish grin firmly in place.
“Any idiot can back a truck right and left and then stop,” Amelia said testily, tired of his amazement.
“Yeah, but you stop before you hit something. That’s nice, Amelia. Really nice.”
“Thank you,” she said sarcastically.
“You’re welcome,” he answered, his sarcasm equal to hers.
“You know,” Pop said, “I can tell you two are into it about something again, but damned if I can tell what it is.”
“She won’t behave,” Mac explained helpfully.
“I beg your pardon,” Amelia said defensively.
“See?” Mac said, and Pop grinned. Amelia waited by the truck while the McDade men went to get their horses.
“You ain’t going to start nothing with Marlene,” Pop was saying as they came back.
“Daddy, what do you think I’m going to do?” Mac said. “I’ve never hit a woman in my life.” He maneuvered Willard into the trailer and then reached for the bridle on the other brown and white horse. “And if I was going to, I’d start with that one”—he made a gesture in Amelia’s direction with his free hand. “All she does is pick on me.”
“Yeah, but we’re glad she’s staying with us,” Pop said, giving her a wink.
Oh, fine, Amelia thought. She could barely hold her own with Mac’s teasing; she’d never handle both of them.
“Well, she’s staying if I don’t keep making her mad,” Mac said, finishing loading the horses. “I swear, Daddy, I try as hard as I can to say something that will make her come and crawl into my lap, and all I do is make her mad.” He gave a forlorn sigh.
Amelia stood looking from one McDade to the other. She didn’t know how to handle this southwestern whatever it was. And Adam was going to be just like them.
“Well, come on,” Mac said, holding open the truck door.
“Fat chance,” Amelia told him, and he came and took her by the arm, giving his father a see-what-did-I-tell-you look in passing while Pop smiled tolerantly. Mac all but put her bodily into “Louise,” and he kept staring at her on the way to the rodeo.
“You look nice,” he said eventually.
“Thank you,” she answered.
“Smell nice too,” he added, his eyes trying to probe hers.
“Thank you,” she said again, avoiding his steady gaze by looking into the side mirror. She could see Pop and Rita following in another, less nostalgic truck.
“Aren’t you going to tell me I look nice?”
Amelia frowned at him. What was all this anyway? He was supposed to be upset about Adam. “You look nice,” she responded, realizing that he was upset. He was doing what Rita hoped: He was trying to take his mind off his troubles.
“Yeah, I do, don’t I?” he agreed, giving her a detailed account of why he was wearing the particular blue checked cowboy shirt he had on. “My lucky shirt,” he said. “And my lucky belt buckle.”
“I am not interested in your belt buckle,” she said coolly, making the mistake of glancing at him. He was grinning from ear to ear, and she whacked him on the arm in annoyance, feeling her face go hot again.
“Tell me something, Amelia,” he said when they’d ridden a few more miles. “Did you get mad at Daniel all the time the way you get mad at me?”
“I never got mad at Daniel,” she said more truthfully than not. Daniel had always made such a point of being reasonable—even in his elaborate explanation of Kerry. Reason superseded anger, and Amelia suddenly understood that in living with Daniel, she had forfeited any healthy venting of her emotions.
“Why didn’t you get mad at him?”
“Because he didn’t annoy the living daylights out of me the way you do!” Amelia said in exasperation. She wanted Mac to forget his troubles, but honestly! The man never recognized a topic as being none of his b
usiness.
“You mean he didn’t pick on you?”
“No, he did not.”
“Hmmm,” Mac said thoughtfully. “Must be something wrong with him.”
The site of this “ranch rodeo,” or whatever it was called, was not what Amelia expected. She had imagined a grandstand, a big arena, and a high wooden fence, but this one seemed to be little more than a depression in the ground. She did see a bleacher and a shed and some metal chutes, but no real places to sit. The spectators were improvising their own seating on the grassy knoll that surrounded the depression in the ground, and they were busily dragging out folding aluminum lawn chairs or blankets or a board and four bricks. It occurred to Amelia that there was nothing between her and the wild bulls and horses she was supposed to see but a wire fence that reminded her of a higher version of Tennessee hog fencing. She had no time to worry about it though, because Mac came for her as soon as he and Pop had unloaded the horses, taking her along with him to pay his entry fees.
“So how do you like it so far?” he asked, ignoring a group of young girls who called to him from the bleacher.
“Fans of yours?” Amelia asked.
“Willard’s,” Mac explained, trying not to smile.
“Oh,” Amelia answered, thinking that he’d told her the truth when he said he didn’t have to hang around where he wasn’t wanted. And women continued to engage him in waves and conversations that ranged from invitations to a barbecue to “Long time no see, big boy.”
Mac moved purposefully on to the outdoor table where he was going to pay his money, and that area was surrounded by his rodeo peers, who received Amelia with what she could only describe as respectful lust. Rodeos were clearly a place that fostered male camaraderie, she decided—something on the order of the settings in Ernest Hemingway’s novels and the entire continent of Australia. And Houston McDade seemed to garner the same respect here as he did everywhere else. He was constantly hailed for consultations on riding a certain bull or bronc.
“It’s not enough just to stay on an animal,” Mac explained to her in the middle of one of these sessions. “It’s the luck of the draw too. If you don’t draw a horse or a bull that really puts on a show bucking, you can’t win, see?”
Such Rough Splendor Page 12
