The Lover

by Genell Dellin

  “Not the tan,” she muttered to herself. “Surely my other blue shirt isn’t dirty.”

  She found it. It was made of a slightly heavier cloth than the one she had on but if she got too hot, she could change back later. She would change, anyhow, when she came back to the house to help Maynell cook supper for the men.

  Thank goodness, she had washed the dust off her face.

  She unbuckled her belt, started pulling out the tail of her dirty shirt and unbuttoning it. At least the other one fit her—it was a real woman’s blouse and not one of Everett’s old shirts like this one was.

  Once changed, she took her time tucking in the blouse and buckling her belt a notch tighter than before. She did think her waist was getting smaller. Maybe she was losing weight, as Maynell had been saying. She stepped closer to the mirror.

  Only to get the bandana out of the dresser drawer.

  But she did look into the mirror, too. Yes. This shirt was exactly the same blue as her eyes.

  She smoothed back her hair, then took it loose from the scrap of braided ribbon that bound it at the nape of her neck. Funny. She and Eagle Jack wore their hair the very same way but he had his tied with a leather thong.

  His hair was so black it had blue lights in it. It was beautifully thick.

  But she wasn’t interested in his hair or his brown eyes or his handsome profile. She’d better remember her goal.

  She combed out her hair, then gathered it up in one hand and picked up the ribbon with the other. The real boss of this outfit was Susanna Copeland, and the men needed to know it. Neatness would help her establish that.

  Turning away from the mirror, she went back into the main room to get her hat.

  “Well, sakes alive,” Maynell said, from the stove where she was putting the potatoes on to boil, “you’re looking mighty clean and fresh. They’s some vanilla over there in the pie safe, in case you want to dab some on behind your ears.”

  That just flew all over Susanna. “I’m only trying to wear an air of authority,” she said. “The men won’t be getting close enough to smell me, May.”

  “Most of ’em won’t,” Maynell responded, her little eyes twinkling.

  Susanna slapped her hat onto her head and stalked out the door without another word. Maynell loved to get her goat. Well, she wasn’t going to succeed.

  Fred was still ground-tied where she’d left him, and as she gathered the reins and swung up into the saddle, she tried to concentrate on the details of the drive. Tonight and tomorrow wouldn’t be much time to finish stocking the wagon and thinking about what all she’d need, in the way of equipment and staples. She just had to be careful that she left enough for Maynell and Jimbo to survive on.

  At least that was one area where Eagle Jack wouldn’t be meddling—the chuck wagon.

  Jimbo, Eagle Jack, Tucker, and Marvin were sitting their horses, talking, while the other men rode around the herd. They all touched their hat brims when she arrived, and Eagle Jack and Marvin opened the circle to let her in between them.

  “We’re talking about a trail brand, Susanna,” Eagle Jack said. “We need something easy to do with a running iron.”

  “Of course,” she said. “I’m going to use an ’S.’ For Susanna.”

  To her complete shock, Eagle Jack nodded agreeably.

  “That’ll work,” he said.

  She was so taken aback that she stared at him for a minute.

  Wasn’t he going to find some objection, some way to argue with her and undermine her authority?

  Well, whatever he did, this was a battle for the respect of the men. A struggle to decide, before the drive ever started, whether she’d be only the cook or the owner first and the cook second and the way to do that was to prove she wasn’t a greenhorn.

  “The ’S’ is easy and fast,” she said, “only one stroke. And it has no corners to burn too deep.”

  Eagle Jack nodded again. “Good thinking,” he said.

  Yes, he was agreeing with her, but she did consider his tone a bit condescending. And the remark, too, come to think of it.

  “I’ve been ranching on my own ever since my hus—my first husband…died,” she said. “I learned about branding then.”

  “Main thing we couldn’t do was catch ’em,” Jimbo volunteered.

  Susanna turned and stared at him, hoping the look would shut him up.

  But he shook his head ruefully and rambled on.

  “Danged if’n’ we didn’t come right near gittin’ ourselves killed,” he said. “Ain’t no good at brushpoppin’, me and Miz Suzy here.”

  Great. Jimbo hadn’t said that many words all strung together since he’d been at Brushy Creek. Now, at this moment, he had to get a flapping jaw and make her look like a tenderfoot when she’d just made a little bit of progress toward being the boss. You’d think Eagle Jack was paying him.

  “Now, Jimbo,” she said. “You have to admit we did catch quite a few,” she said.

  She looked at Marvin and Tucker, mostly Marvin because he’d be on the trail.

  “You’ll find some cattle that are already branded,” she said. “That’ll show you the way I want the brand to look—slanted to the left.”

  The men, including Eagle Jack, were looking at her solemnly. They nodded. Were they humoring her?

  “We’ll get it done,” Eagle Jack said. He lifted his reins as if to turn his horse back toward the herd, then he stopped in midmotion. “Susanna, dear,” he said, giving her that charming grin of his, “you’ll make us some pie for supper, won’t you? I was telling the men that we’ll have pie on the trail.”

  “Yes, ma’am,” Tucker said. “If’n’ I wasn’t so scared of water and crossin’ rivers, I’d sign on right now to go with you all. Won’t be no other camp with pie, ’least not too often.”

  Well. What was it about being around Eagle Jack? Tucker normally didn’t talk any more than Jimbo did, and here he was, making a speech.

  Susanna fought her flaring temper and stared at Eagle Jack.

  “Maynell has already started supper,” she said. “I’ll have to see what she’s got planned.”

  “I’m thinking you’re the boss,” Eagle Jack said. He said it flatly, as if that settled the matter.

  So now if there was no pie for supper, all the men would know it was her fault. She wanted to strangle him for that, not to mention for the fact of the hollow words themselves. He didn’t intend for her to be the boss of anything.

  “And, since we haven’t been married long enough for me to try your pie,” he said clearly, “I’m looking forward to it as much as Tucker is.”

  “So’m I, ma’am,” blurted the apparently shy and reticent Marvin. He blushed at his own boldness and tugged at his hat. “Thank ye very much, ma’am,” he said, even more softly.

  Susanna bit her tongue and grabbed her saddle horn to keep from attacking Eagle Jack, both verbally and physically. She longed to reach out and slap him with the ends of her reins, right across his thigh, that hard thigh bulging with saddle muscles beneath his tight, faded jeans.

  “I have to pack the chuck wagon,” she said. “If we’re leaving day after tomorrow, I need to make sure it has everything.”

  “Right you are,” Eagle Jack agreed, turning his horse to get back to the work. “Build you a fire and cook outside tonight for a dry run. Only way to ever know what all you really need.”

  They started turning their horses to get to the work, but Eagle Jack had a final shot to make.

  “You know, darling,” he said, “we ought to sleep outside tonight. Let’s put up your tent and try it out, too.”

  He spoke just low enough for that to appear to be the private communication it should have been, but loud enough for all three of the men to hear. In fact, the one of Marvin’s friends who was riding past on that side of the herd looked over at them. He had heard, too.

  Susanna had to answer. They were all looking at her from the corners of their eyes. Listening, too.

  “I’ll see what
I can do,” she said in her sweetest voice.

  Then she choked, so she turned her horse and headed for the house. She was going to horsewhip him. She had no choice.

  Maynell helped her set up boards across the two barrels to make a table out in the yard and she helped her carry the supper to it just before sundown, but Maynell was not happy about the extra work. However, the main thing Maynell was not happy about was that Eagle Jack had asked for pie and he wasn’t getting any.

  Susanna set her jaw. “May, I cannot jump every time he says ‘frog,’” she said. “If I did, I couldn’t live with myself.”

  Maynell scowled as only she could do. “You’d best be thinking about living with him. After all, he is your husband.”

  “He is not. You’re losing your mind. Pretending that it’s true doesn’t make it so.”

  “For the next three months he might as well be your husband.”

  “What do you mean by that?” Susanna asked.

  But Maynell wouldn’t say anything more.

  Susanna rolled her eyes as she rang the dinner triangle. “You don’t get out enough,” she said. “You’ve got to start going into town once in a while.”

  “Hmpf,” said Maynell.

  Susanna shifted the basket of hot bear sign to the other end of the table and gathered the tin cups for the coffee. Sweets were scarce, and the yeasty doughnutlike fried treats called bear sign were scarcer still in the cow camps. The men would appreciate the dessert and Eagle Jack wouldn’t get his way.

  She should never have told May what Eagle Jack said about the two of them sleeping outside tonight in her tent.

  But if she argued with her too much, May would go to her end of the cabin in a huff and quit helping entirely.

  No, she wouldn’t. She wanted to see Eagle Jack up close.

  “Maynell, you need to be helping me think what I can do with him tonight.”

  “Already did,” Maynell said, with a dreamy smile.

  “You know what I mean,” Susanna said sternly.

  “Yes, ma’am, I surely do.”

  Susanna laughed reluctantly. “All right, get your mind on the supper,” she said. “Here they come.”

  Actually, she did feel remarkably light-hearted at the moment, despite May’s grumbling. She had refused to let Eagle Jack dictate to her, yet, by bringing the food outside and serving some kind of dessert, even if it wasn’t pie, she was putting on a show of cooperation with his orders that would satisfy the men of the reality—and happiness—of their marriage. At least, it should.

  Two men stayed with the herd and the rest washed up quickly at the pan she’d set up beneath the big sycamore tree. Studiously, she ignored Eagle Jack and busied herself with the food.

  But, after he’d dried his hands and started walking toward the table, he called to her.

  “What kind of pie do we have, Susanna, dear?”

  She glanced up. “No pie,” she told him. “I’ve been packing the wagon.”

  Marvin and Tucker were right behind him, and at this news, their faces fell.

  “We have bear sign instead,” she said to them.

  Not to Eagle Jack. She wasn’t going to report to him.

  He walked up to the table and picked up a plate from the stack. Maynell dipped him some baked beans.

  “Miss Susanna’s saving the dried fruit for the trail,” she said, smiling up at him as she served his plate. “I tried my best, but I couldn’t talk her out of any of it to make pie.”

  Susanna wanted to shake her.

  “Maynell, this is Eagle Jack Sixkiller,” Susanna said. “Eagle Jack, Maynell Hawkins. Jimbo’s wife.”

  “Maynell,” he said, with a gallant nod to acknowledge the introduction. “I thank you for trying. I’m already learning that sometimes it’s mighty hard to get past Miss Susanna.”

  He gave her a big smile.

  Maynell gave him another dipperful of beans. “Always did like a brown-eyed handsome man,” she said, flirting with him. “’Specially one who’d tell the truth and tell it straight.”

  They laughed together like naughty children.

  “Yes, Eagle Jack told the truth,” Susanna said, forcing a smile past her irritation. “So why don’t y’all quit trying to get past me and do what I say?”

  “No fun in that,” they said, together, and laughed again.

  Susanna sighed. Now they’d be buddies for sure. Thank goodness, Maynell wasn’t going with them up the trail.

  Eagle Jack gave her a great big smile, too, as she served him potato salad and then he served himself some sliced beef and biscuits. “This food looks delicious, Susanna dear,” he said.

  “It is,” she responded. “Maynell and I are both good cooks.”

  “And very sure of yourselves, too,” he said, with a retaliatory gleam in his eye.

  Fine. Let him try to boss her around some more. They might as well get this settled before they hit the trail.

  The men ate quickly and in silence, as was the cowboy custom, then, one by one they finished and threw their plates into Maynell’s big wash-pan.

  “Come get another one of these bear signs,” Susanna called. “I made ’em for y’all to eat.”

  “Thank you, ma’am, for the meal,” each man said, as he came by the table for another one.

  Except for Eagle Jack. “Hope you get your wagon packed,” he said. “Tomorrow’s gonna be a busy day.”

  By the time she finally finished the work and started to get ready for bed, Susanna didn’t even care what he’d meant by that. This had been a day to end all days.

  And the last thing she would even consider doing now was set up her tent and sleep on the ground out there in the dust.

  She pulled the brush through her hair one last time. Then she laid it on the dresser and smiled at her reflection.

  Eagle Jack would learn that if he persisted in giving her orders in front of the men, he would be the one who ended up embarrassed. He had better not be giving her orders at all.

  Except maybe in times of danger on the trail.

  Those images floated through her mind again, cattle skulls and dry marches, outlaw rustlers and swift rivers like Tucker feared. Then she’d be glad to let Eagle Jack take control.

  She wasn’t afraid, not really, but she shivered a little. The spring night was turning chilly.

  There might even be times when it was cold on the trail, even though it would be full summer before they got out of Texas. There might be hailstorms, too, and with them the temperature could drop thirty degrees or more in only minutes.

  She’d packed a slicker and Everett’s old jean jacket jumper, but not her one wool shawl. She got up, went to the armoire in the corner, and began to look through its meager contents.

  What she ought to take along in case it hailed was one of the board shelves. A hailstorm had come up when her neighbor Walt Terry’s men were up by the Red River with not one scrap of shelter for miles. Finally they had held their saddles over their heads—it was the only protection they could find.

  She stood still for a minute and tried to imagine how that would be. It would need to be a very fast-moving hailstorm if she were in that situation because, strong as she was, a saddle would get very heavy in a very big hurry. Maybe they would be lucky and not be in a hailstorm.

  Or any other kind of storm. Everybody said lightning storms could make cattle and cowboys both go crazy and it was a fact that they often caused a stampede.

  Her stomach tightened and she closed her eyes, but against the black of her eyelids she saw the cattle running beneath a wild, dark sky full of white flashing lightning. She could just hear their hooves pounding, loud as the thunder.

  Living out under the sky for months at a time was going to be a risky thing. Besides the weather, there could be rustlers and toll-taking farmers and other herds trying to get the same grass. Besides deep rivers to cross, there could be wild animals and prairie fires.

  She opened her eyes, straightened her shoulders, and stiffened her s
pine. What she had to do was quit worrying and start gathering her strength because she was surely going to need it.

  “Reckon you can find me an extra blanket or some kind of soogan in there?”

  Eagle Jack’s low voice.

  “Dear Lord,” she cried, whirling to face him, “you nearly scared me to death! What are you doing in here?”

  He was near enough to touch and she hadn’t heard the sound of his steps. He filled her bedroom. His shoulders were broader than she’d even realized and his head nearly brushed the ceiling.

  But it was he who made her private space his, with his pulsing, unbounded, impetuous energy. And his boldness.

  And his own wonderful smell, mixed with those of horse and leather and dust and sweat.

  “I’m in my nightgown,” she said, clasping her hands across her breasts.

  “Yes, you are,” he said. “And even more beautiful with your hair all long and loose.”

  But it wasn’t only her hair that he was looking at. His gleaming dark eyes moved over her, head to toe.

  She couldn’t stop looking at him, either. The lamplight limned his face and threw it into high relief as it hit his high cheekbones and the haughty line of his nose.

  A brown-eyed, handsome man.

  And well he knew it.

  “Eagle Jack,” she said, as she forced her breathing to slow, “what are you doing in here?”

  He grinned. He looked tired, he really did, but he grinned with a mischief that nearly made her grin back.

  She couldn’t. What if he, like Maynell, had decided he “might as well” be her husband for the next three months?

  “Hunting a bedroll,” he drawled, then cast a lazy glance at the bed, already turned down for the night. “Mine got stolen.”

  Then that speculative glance of his came back to her and took her breath.

  It was just because no one had ever looked at her like that, never in her whole life. As if she were the most desirable woman in the entire world.

  Finally, she said, “Well, you don’t have to sound so pitiful.” She squared her shoulders and got hold of herself. “And you didn’t have to invade my room,” she added, a sharp tone in her voice.