Hey, Cowgirl, Need a Ride?

by Baxter Black

  F. Rank fell in LUV. Or, at least in FATCHYOOASHUN! It might have been the snowy night, the chalet streetlights, his loneliness, her easy familiarity, the champagne, or . . . her short, streaked-blonde hair that bounced wildly when they did. Or her exquisitely soft skin that slid against him like a baby fur seal, her wide hips, prehensile toes, lusty aroma, femininity, unrestrained enthusiasm, or the startling moon-silver irises that pinned him to the mat the way a predatory wolf transfixes a starving caribou. Being with her was like driving a Maserati for the first time, like seeing Halley’s comet, or discovering that the chocolate really did go all the way to the bottom of the cone in a Drumstick. She’d illustrated a new chapter in F. Rank’s Giant Book of Possibilities. And at the age of thirty-two, his book was already three-quarters full.

  By 3:30 a.m. he was drained. He’d asked her to marry him. She’d declined. He gave her his card. She did not reciprocate.

  He returned to the bar the next night and stayed till closing time. She was his waitress again. He wanted to take her back to his room. Shoot, he wanted to take her home, show her to his folks, start a family, have a scrapbook, throw himself in front of a moving train to convince her of his sincerity. Mostly, he just wanted to touch her one more time.

  She declined. He wheedled and cajoled, he pleaded and cooed. She told him he was nice and that she’d had a good time last night, but she had other plans. He returned to his room with the intention of ending his life but instead watched the late movie on television and fell asleep.

  F. Rank Pantaker, one disappointed Texas transplant, departed Aspen in his private jet the next morning and headed for Las Vegas with an unsatisfied yearning.

  Two weeks later F. Rank received a phone call at his office on the top floor of Pharaoh’s Hotel & Casino in Vegas. It was from Loyal Nutz, his fraternity brother from the University of Texas, who was now the prosecuting attorney in Pitkin County, Colorado. The very same lawyer who had been hosting F. Rank the night he met Teddie Arizona.

  “Remember the woman you met at the bar when you were here last month?” Loyal had asked.

  “You know it, buddy,” said F. Rank. “What I wouldn’t give for another night like that!”

  “She’s in trouble,” explained Loyal. “Seems her roommates are midlevel drug dealers here in the great Aspen underworld. We’ve had them staked out. I don’t know how deeply she’s involved, but I’ve procured a warrant for all three of them living in the house. We’re planning to bust them this weekend.

  “We’ve checked her as best we could. She’s got a fairly decent reputation locally. Well liked, got a good job, but that doesn’t mean she’s innocent. We’ve not actually caught her dealing, but . . . circumstantial evidence, ya know. In the same house, easy access, and we know she smokes pot—”

  “You think she’s dealing?”

  “Like I said, we don’t know if she, herself, is a dealer, but her roommates are. Selling marijuana and cocaine, mostly, some speed— the usual recreational drugs.”

  “Is she an addict?” asked F. Rank, remembering her piercing eyes and snakelike writhing. The memory stirred him deeper down.

  “I doubt it,” answered Loyal. “Good job and all, but drugs are just part of the scene. She’s definitely a party girl and it’s likely she’s getting it from her roomies. But even if she’s not dealing but she knows her roommates are, that could make her an accomplice.”

  “Why are you telling me?” asked F. Rank.

  “Well, if you really liked her as much as you said, and if she were to disappear before the warrant was served . . .” Loyal inserted a pregnant pause. “I suspect, since we have the goods on her roomies, we wouldn’t be obliged to pursue her too far. She’d have to lay low. The warrant would still be good for five years. You could ride in like a white knight and, well, the warrant would give you a little leverage.”

  “How would I—?” began F. Rank.

  “I could fax you a copy of the warrant, brother,” said Loyal, “for old time’s sake.”

  Upon receiving the fax, with her home phone conveniently included, F. Rank had called T.A. immediately and convinced her she was in danger. It took some convincing, since she figured his motives were suspect. She’d always been innately aware of her own seductiveness and its effect on mortal men. She allowed that his concern was flattering, of course. She never took affection for granted. But what he had interpreted as passion on her part that first night was merely a genuine exuberance. She was a natural-born lover.

  But when F. Rank began detailing the tricky situation about to engulf her, she took him seriously. She hadn’t thought about where Jeroba and Joanne, her roommates, procured the drugs that always seemed to be readily available. She herself didn’t do drugs daily. But usually once a week she found herself smoking grass at someone’s house, at a party, or in the kitchen having the occasional late-night hit with Jeroba and Joanne. She also drank liquor moderately, but she had stayed away from the stronger drugs. However, it wasn’t impossible that her roomies were dealing, she admitted to herself. T.A. worked the late shift and they only crossed paths at home in the early afternoon. They led separate lives.

  When F. Rank spelled out the particulars and told her he had a copy of the warrant for her arrest on suspicion of selling an illegal substance, it scared her.

  “But I’ve never sold drugs,” T.A. told him. “And how did you get a copy of the warrant in the first place? Who told you?”

  “I’ve got friends in high places,” he explained.

  “And you’re warning me,” she said. “Why?”

  “Because,” he told her, “I want to marry you.”

  T.A. met F. Rank the next morning at the Aspen airport. They sat at a small table for two near the window in the airport coffee shop. He slid the fax across the table toward her. She scanned it quickly and asked, “What do you want out of this?”

  “I told you. I want to marry you,” he stated matter-of-factly.

  She didn’t say, “I’d rather go to jail, go down with the Titanic, move to Wendover, or have my fingernails pulled out one at a time,” because that wasn’t true. But she had no intention of marrying this man that she knew only in the biblical sense.

  T.A. contemplated her chances of going to court and winning. There would be no one to testify that she had ever sold them drugs. Surely Jeroba and Joanne could defend her innocence. But would they? She decided to test out F. Rank’s hand, “Frank—”

  “F. Rank,” he corrected.

  “F. Rank, I appreciate what you’re doing here. Warnin’ me and all. But that’s not reason enough for me to contemplate marriage. I hardly know you. You hardly know me. I might be better off just going to the police and—”

  He interrupted, “They’ve had your house staked out for quite a while, as I understand. They’ve been building a case, and the arrest warrant and charges of selling narcotics aren’t something they’d just do without cause.”

  “But I told you!” she protested. “I don’t sell drugs! I don’t really know if they do. We just live together.”

  “Well,” said F. Rank, “something makes them think you’re in on it.”

  “Who told you all this?” she asked, irritated. “Maybe someone’s trying to set me up. I don’t know why anyone would, but—”

  “I can’t tell you who gave me the information, I promised I wouldn’t. But he thought I might be able to help you.”

  “This all sounds fishy to me,” she said.

  “Okay. Listen, I’ll make you a deal.”

  “What do you mean, a deal?” she said curtly. “So if I don’t marry you, you turn me in or something?”

  “No, no!” F. Rank said, genuinely hurt. “Only a choice. You can make the choice. If you pick Door Number One, I get back on my plane and leave. Never see you again, or worry whether you’re doing time in the women’s prison, or waiting tables till you’re fifty years old.

  “You go to work tonight. Plan a normal weekend. Take a chance that what I’m telling you is wro
ng. But if I’m right and you wind up in the hoosegow, it’ll be too late for me to help. Or, if you do believe me, you could just leave town, change your identity, and spend the next five years running from the law.

  “Or,” he said, with a grandiose sweep of the arm, “Door Number Two. You go home, right now, pack your bags, and get on the plane with me. You call any of your friends here next week or read the newspapers, or whatever it takes, and discover if your roommates are really and truly drug dealers and are in custody.”

  “What if I turned myself in?”

  “Before you’re arrested?”

  “Yeah,” she said.

  “Do you want to spend the next year or two in the pokey, or on bail? Do you have a good lawyer, or will you be using the public defender? Do you want to spend the next two years being a suspect, or at least a material witness? Where you gonna live?

  “And what if the prosecution thinks you’re guilty, which they do, by the way”—F. Rank lied just a little, but he was making his point—“and they make a good circumstantial case and you’re convicted?”

  “But,” she said, “even if I went with you, there’d still be a warrant out for my arrest.”

  “That’s true,” he agreed. “But as long as you’re with me, I guarantee that it will not be followed up on.”

  “How can that be! You can’t do that, have that power over my life!” she protested.

  “All I can tell you is, I can,” he said, flat out.

  The air hummed between them. Finally T.A. spoke. “It makes me sound like a slave.”

  “It’s not that way at all,” he explained, with sincerity in his voice. “You see, I do think—I know—that I love you already, but . . . it would also help solve a practical problem for me. I have . . . my family is . . . I’ve been told by my parents that I won’t come into my position in the company, my proper inheritance, if you will, until I’m married, responsible, you know.

  “Personally I blame it on my brother,” grumped F. Rank. “He’s older, stodgy, went to Harvard—big deal! He told them I’m immature! Not ready to be a manager, or whatever. Says I play the field, not stable, so they’ve still got me on this financial leash, if you know what I mean. So, I figger gettting married will show I’m ready.

  “Listen.” He leaned toward her. “I know this is sudden, maybe a little overwhelming for a small-town . . . I mean, a girl like . . . well, look, I do find you enormously attractive and, believe it or not, I think I really do love you, and that you could easily learn to love me—for the time being, it would work if you would just marry me . . . for the public perception.”

  “You mean,” she said, “just be your wife so you can fool your parents?”

  “Exactly,” he said.

  “What kind of people are they that you would do that to them?”

  “They’re good people,” he answered almost indignantly. “They’re just like me.”

  She let that personality self-profile sink in.

  “But it wouldn’t be so bad,” he continued. “You’d move to Las Vegas, live in a penthouse on top of Pharaoh’s Casino. You’d have money, room service, go to all the good shows, I’d take care of you. I’d be a good husband.”

  T.A. looked out the window at the Lear jet with PHARAOH’S HOTEL & CASINO painted professionally on the rudder. What did she have here in Aspen, anyway? Suppose she beat the drug rap. With no college degree or special skills, all she had in front of her was a lifetime of minimum-wage paychecks and a dwindling number of good parties as the wrinkles of time took their toll. Would she still be working for tips in ten years if she stayed?

  Then the most revealing of questions slid into the back of her mind. The one she’d been avoiding since her mother died: Who’d care what she did?

  The answer was what she’d expected. To put it painfully, there was no one she had to call.

  The business side of her brain began to calculate. T.A. looked back into F. Rank’s eyes and gave him a good hard look. A mail-order bride’s dream, she thought. Maybe that’s what I’ve become.

  “F. Rank,” she began, “I would consider this if it were a business proposition, pardon the pun.”

  “What do you mean?” he asked suspiciously.

  “I could consider marrying you for, say, two years. With a contract, in writing, five thousand dollars a month, my own bank account, flying lessons, and . . . a horse.

  “Here’s the deal: I pretend to be your wife. No one but you and I know that we aren’t legally married. We just say we are. At the end of two years, we go through a fake but civilized divorce, for the sake of your folks. You pay me a bonus of . . . twenty-five thousand. I go my way, you go yours.”

  F. Rank hadn’t expected this would be so easy—and so humiliating. He’d pictured himself as a white knight saving the damsel in distress. Maybe even love at first sight on her part, too. Alas, he was too smitten, too shameless to bargain. Maybe, he thought, as they grew to know each other, she’d fall in love with him, too, and they could be married officially. Of course, he brightened, that’s how this would play out. In the meantime . . .

  “And you’d play the part of my wife”—he paused, looking at her from the corner of his eye—“in all respects?”

  She caught his drift. Then she nodded slowly and said, “In all respects.”

  Six weeks later, after a fourteen-day trip to Europe and the Mideast, they returned a “married” couple. The new Pantakers were feted by his parents at a large barbecue in their twenty-five-thousand-square-foot backyard in south Texas. Mrs. Pantaker, the mom, was disappointed that Sonny didn’t let her throw a big wedding, but Mrs. Pantaker, the faux bride, was so charming that he was forgiven. F. Rank got a promotion, T.A. almost felt loved, Mom cried, and Dad was relieved. The newlyweds rode the company jet to Las Vegas to set up housekeeping at Pharaoh’s, where they were supposed to live happily ever after.

  T.A. had certainly lived up to her part of the bargain, in all respects, he admitted. But he eventually came to realize that she wasn’t in love with him, in spite of their close quarters and intimacy. Their arrangement had lost some of its luster, but she was definitely great to have around. After almost two years, she was still a spectacular courtesan, though he never had the feeling that her whole heart was in it. Therefore, he felt he was in the right to have an occasional assignation on the side. He was discreet, well, fairly discreet, in order to maintain the public perception of a happy marriage. He expected to be made a full partner in Pantaker Oil & Cattle this Christmas. T.A.’s contract would expire in March.

  He and T.A. had engaged in a little tiff in the days before he left for Houston. She’d become aware of his attentions to other women. It was just taking her a while to get used to his screwing around. Particularly with the spectacularly trashy massage therapist who had an office in the mall underneath the hotel. She hadn’t actually caught him in flagrante with Allura Valura, the alleged therapist, but Allura wasn’t very subtle and word had leaked out. Plus T.A. had smelled her on him.

  She’d broached the subject indirectly, setting a trap as neatly as a tunnel spider spins her web. Just a hint, and F. Rank dove for it like a mall shopper torpedoing an empty parking space. He acted indignant and accused her of “acting like a wife.” There ensued a couple days of stiffly formal communications and cessation of marital activities.

  Now, some may think that T.A. might have been pleased or relieved that F. Rank was leaving her alone occasionally. Think of it as, “Take the day off, I’ll drive the neighbor’s wife to work today.” But people are funny critters.

  Even forced relationships can create a mutual dependence and, therefore, a possessiveness that reveals itself in the green cloak of jealousy, e.g., kidnappers and their victims, drill sergeants and draftees, vegetarians and steamed broccoli, not to mention bull ridersand bulls, dogs and pickups, or words and poets.

  T.A. and F. Rank had grown to know each other beyond just the physical intimacy. He had actually fallen in love with her, but even that was
not enough to overcome his own selfishness.

  She, on the other hand, did not dislike him or even resent him in spite of her status as a kept woman. From being together constantly they had each become aware of the other’s wants and needs, good points and shortcomings. And yes, she did enjoy his company sometimes.So his infidelity, straying from the intent of the agreement, so to speak, hurt her pride and she was salty enough to show it. He could have waited another four months.

  She’d stopped short of accusing him and he’d stopped short of confessing, but his indiscretion was as obvious as a dead mule in a car trunk. She didn’t berate him, but asked if she could take a couple days off and spend some time alone. He’d given her permission but made it clear that he expected her to fullfill her contract. He was even so crass as to mention the arrest warrant. She’d blushed. It had turned him on.

  But now she hadn’t come back. T.A.’s disappearance right now was a little worrying. F. Rank didn’t want to rock the boat, he had other irons in the fire, as well. He watched Valter exit and called out, “Oh, and Pike, call Allura up here. All this thinkin’ is giving me a headache.”

  “Right, boss.”

  8

  DECEMBER 1: LICK AND AL CHECK COWS

  By Monday at the camp, the weather had cleared. Lick and the old man rode hard all morning. They found the cows three miles down-river from Slippery Canyon brushed up in another little canyon that drained into the river. The cowboys hobbled their horses in a sheltered niche and ate their peanut-butter-sandwich lunch.

  “So, whattya think, Al? ’Bout T.A., I mean.”

  “Not my type. Looks like the kind that counts her money and yers!”

  “No, I mean her bein’ so secretive, not wantin’ to notify anybody about the wreck. What if somebody finds the plane?”

  “Oh, they’ll find it all right,” said the old man. “There’s plenty of traffic on the river in the summer. By then we’ll be moved up to Yankee Bill Summit or over to Gold Creek and the little lady will be long gone.”