by Thea Devine
Maybe, just maybe they were almost there.
It seemed to her that after a while the air grew cooler, the sun less intense. The relief she felt was tangible.
And supplanted by a new worry: What would Deuce do when he found her? A chill shot through her. Her little escapade might not sit so well with him after all, in spite of her initial feeling she could convince him of her serious intentions.
What if her presence thoroughly disrupted everything and distracted the men, what then? After all, she did not know Deuce's crew the way she had known the few regulars her father would hire on at roundup. And he knew Eakins and the cook would be there to protect her anyway. But Deuce headed a large-scale operation. His
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hands were tough, accustomed to months without a woman, and probably saw every female as fair game. She might have let herself in for something she had no way to control. Oh, Deuce would protect her, she thought, but he couldn't be with her every moment.
And from the conversation she had heard, these men seemed hardly gentlemen; there was a good deal of discussion about spending the fruits of their labors in Bozeman. They seemed very well acquainted with this and that lady of the evening—and in bawdy terms —and whiled away a good portion of the ride comparing notes. Just as easily they might be talking about her, Kalida thought, and she did not hide from herself just how interested she was at his peek into the male mind. She would not want them talking about her in just that same way.
The end conclusion, of course, was there was nothing she could do about it. Her impulsive action had landed her in this rash position, and sooner or later she would have to talk her way out of it with Deuce, and eventually Ardelle too, probably not succeeding with either. In sum, this was probably one of the stupidest things she had ever done, she decided.
The road seemed to level off at this point, and within minutes an animal scent permeated the cool air. Ten minutes later the wagon jolted to a halt, and Deuce was shouting something unintelligible. The answering voice sounded like Eakins. The wagon jerked forward again, slower this time, as if it were moving into a set area. The voices got closer, and Kalida could identify Eakins clearly now. And his words. Numbing words. "Mr. Ryland didn't tell me about no sale. How am I supposed to let you move in and take out this here herd then?"
"On faith," Deuce retorted. "He was supposed to send word."
"Well, he didn't send nothing, not even the pay; so's the
men left. It's just me and the cook now. . . ."
Kalida's heart sank. What on earth was her father up to, to leave Eakins in such straits? And she, who could confirm Deuce's ownership, didn't dare move.
"Well," Deuce said consideringly after a long, heavy silence, "we're going to set up camp here, and one of my men is going to return to Sweetland, and we'll get to the bottom of this."
Nice of you, Kalida thought, clenching her fists. He didn't even defend her father. He sounded rather like it wasn't unexpected. She didn't like that, she didn't like it at all.
All around her she could hear the sounds of the crew settling in. She knew what they would be doing—setting up the rope corral for the horses several hundred yards away from the camp, and each hand herding in his string to bed down for the night.
At this point, too, Old Bruno would have pulled into some kind of protected place, near rocks or trees, set up his stake poles, hung his canvas awning, and started his open fire. The rest of the men would be finishing up with their horses, taking some water, and finding their spot for the night. Already the smell of coffee hung in the air, the first likely food Bruno would have set on the camp fire. Dinner would be simple, since on a short haul like this a side of beef could be managed, wrapped in a tarpaulin to keep it fresh for the day or two the men would be out. A slap or two of that plopped in the Dutch oven with water, potatoes, a lick of dried fruit, and flour for thickening would take no time to boil up and would be served with quick-rising biscuits and the coffee.
Kalida's stomach growled as her brain assimilated the tantalizing smell of the coffee. A lot of noise now surrounded her, a lot of conversation. Eakin's adamant pronouncement that nothing was going to be moved in the morning. Deuce's stark silence. A demand from
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Bruno: "Somebody fill that kettle so I can get the water boiling for cleanup," and the clarion call from Barney: "Unload your gear, men!"
Kalida cringed as lantern light was strung above the wagon bed. The reckoning was at hand. From all around her, hands grabbed for the bedrolls and spare saddle gear. In a moment, her dun-colored skirt was revealed.
"Well, I'll be good goddamned," a voice said wonder-ingly. "Hey Jake, get over here. Someone tell Deuce."
Jake's stark, frozen face appeared over the side of the wagon, dumbfounded by the sight of her where he was dreaming he might find her. The nature of her, he thought excitedly, that she would come after any men in any way she could. The nerve it took to hide away, to stay hidden all those hours. Not even he had been aware the wagon carried anything but the excess gear and bedrolls. And hadn't he spent the whole trip up thinking about her, wondering when he could and would take his chance with her? It was as if she had read his mind and had pursued him with the express intention of making those dreams real. Yes, she was looking and sounding disgruntled. But she was stiff from all those hours curled up alone and in the dark of the wagon. And the other men were so bedazzled by the sight of a woman that they hardly knew what to think. But then, they didn't know about Kalida, and he did.
He helped lift the remaining rolls of bedding away from her, and Kalida smelled fresh air for the first time in hours.
She shifted her stiff body upright, and then cast a flashing blue look at the crowd of men encircling the wagon. The look in their eyes! As if she were some exotic creature. And Jake, with that lambent light deep in his eyes; it made her correspondingly wary. The only thing to do was brazen it out. She wondered if she had the nerve. The thing to do was assume an indignant expression, and
her eyes darkened as her mood became petulant. "It's about time," she shot out in a voice- to match the mood.
Perfect — and she almost got away with it, except Deuce came marching up the instant the words left her mouth. In the lantern light, he looked bemused, amused, and just a whit annoyed —and all at once.
"Damn, you took your time getting here," she complained to him, forestalling whatever he had been going to say, hoping to deflect the anger she expected him to feel.
"It's for sure you didn't enjoy the scenery," he rejoined calmly, and her bolt blue eyes shot up in surprise. She hadn't expected this dispassionate acceptance of her appearance. She had envisioned rather more dire consequences, and she wondered whether she weren't disappointed.
Then she looked at Jake, his glittery eyes and a crook of his eyebrow saluting her, and the thought — which never should have been given an instant's life—flew from her consciousness. She waited with barely contained equanimity while the men unloaded the wagon and drifted off, their ears still tuned to the conversation they knew must follow.
Deuce watched them all, making sure they were aware of his scowl as his glowering charcoal gaze followed them.
Kalida wriggled, stretching her cramped arms and legs, avoiding that foreboding face.
"So now," he said finally as the last man meandered around the camp fire and took a plate from Bruno in preparation for being served dinner. He turned to her. She made a pretty picture sitting in the wagon bed, all disheveled from being covered for these long hours, looking slightly irritated, her cobalt eyes longingly following the exit of his men to the chuck. She must be hungry, he realized, and dead thirsty. "What are you doing here?" he asked finally. He sure as hell couldn't account for it unless the strength of the feelings he had aroused in her were
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enough to precipitate this rash action.
She turned a snide look on him, almost as though she
could read his thoughts. She was furious that the tone of his voice assumed that anything he had done had compelled her to chase after him. The overweening male nerve of him! "I wanted to help bring down the herd, of course," she snapped at him, flexing her legs experimentally, ignoring the fierce burning flash in his charcoal gaze.
"That's some story, you vixen. And not half the truth."
"The hell with you." She stretched her arms and shifted so her legs were under her and she could lift her body up on her knees. Oh Lord, she hadn't quite expected them to be just that stiff.
"Go on, Kalida. You're tellimg me you're after cows and not . . . something else."
"You put it quite succinctly, but yes. I'm after cows. And maybe something to eat." Definitely something to eat, she thought, and something to drink. She felt like she could swallow a lake.
"Well, my scratching cat, be that all as it may, I'm rather happy you made your way up here. Eakins over there seems to think he owns the herd and not me. So I'd take it kindly if you would convince him otherwise." He almost softened as he perceived her struggling to stand up. "Come, Kalida; I'd forgive a lot for that." He held out his arms.
She slapped them away. "To get your hands on the herd?" she asked sweetly, pretending to misunderstand. Her shaky limbs just would not permit her to climb over the back of the wagon the same way she had climbed in.
"To save a few days and a lot of aggravation, cat. Come on, I'll carry you if it's necessary."
"Just lift me down; I'll manage the rest." She would have to; just being that close to him was wreaking havoc with her senses. She had the strange sensation, as his
strong arms lifted her down and held her too tightly, too long, that the herd didn't matter. And her father didn't matter.
All to the good, she thought ruefully as her feet touched the ground; if she had been Deuce, she might have gone after her careless, feckless father with a gun. But he was not to know that. She leaned against him heavily. "My legs are stiff," she explained tightly.
"Of course," he agreed reasonably.
"If only you had provided'proper accommodations for a stowaway," she went on musingly as she limped with his help to the camp fire.
"Perhaps," he said in an undertone as he sat her down by the fire, "the sleeping arrangements will be more to your liking."
"None of your arrangements have been to my liking," she snapped, out of patience with her recalcitrant body and angry with herself altogether for even attempting this reckless escapade and for confronting his all-fired masculine conviction. He would have it all his way, no matter what her motivations really were, and the fact that she had gone haring off without thinking of such mundane things as food or sleeping arrangements, in his eyes, only lent credence to his theory. So all her protestations must seem coy and just a little too arch in their denial.
Nevertheless, his humor improved over the roasted meat and gravy, and he was most solicitous to her, providing her with water and coffee almost the minute after she sat down. And all the while his coal-dark eyes burned with a different message —and it was one she could not refute.
"Of course you're sleeping with me! Where the hell else did you think you were going to sleep? With Jake?" Kalida flounced away from him. Dinner had restored
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the warmth to her body, and she was now fully ambulatory, enough at least to get away from him when she needed to.
He stalked after her, reaching for her arm and wrenching her around to face him. "Are you crazy, Kalida? You really think you're going to take a blanket and settle down under the trees and expect nothing is going to happen to you?"
"It never has," she said shortly, wresting her arm out of his grasp.
"When you were a young 'un, maybe," Deuce growled, yanking her back to face him. "You aren't hardly a youngster anymore, Kalida, and every last man of them can imagine what is under that dusty skirt and what they would do with it, since they all haven't had a woman since they can't remember when. Tell me how you're going to fight that kind of single-mindedness."
"I shouldn't have to," she interpolated.
"Uh huh, and you shouldn't be the only woman around to tempt them," he finished, "let alone me. But I promise you, Kalida-cat"—his grip loosened, almost like a punctuation to his words —"I won't touch you."
She drew in her breath at his words. Good. Perfect. He would keep his end of the bargain. She had corroborated his right to the cattle with the poor perplexed Eakins, and now he was going to take care of her. He was going to sleep with her and not lay a hand on her. And when she considered how ardently she tried to prevent him from coming here, she felt a huge wave of disappointment. Why was he so angry? Why was she?
"That will be just fine," she agreed, finishing the last dregs of her coffee. Already, the camp fire area was empty of the men. Bruno and Barney were doing the cleanup, dumping the dishes in the large kettle that had been heated to boiling earlier. Breakfast call would be at four-thirty, with the expectation that the herd would trail
in the Morgan field by ten o'clock at the latest, allowing for an hour or two for them to corral the strays.
Kalida handed Bruno her cup and plate. His reaction to her sudden appearance had been simple, and perhaps the most honest. "You hadn't ought to have done this, Miss Kalida; this ain't no place for a lady."
And she said, "I'm no lady, Bruno; I'm a cowgirl, and I wanted to help."
Bruno shook his head. "You ain't gonna do much of that, Miss Kalida; Mr. Deuce wouldn't let you."
"Mr. Deuce has no say about 'letting' me," Kalida retorted huffily and was instantly sorry that she had vented her anger on him.
But Bruno hardly noticed. "You'll see, Miss Kalida. He wields a strong hand, Mr. Deuce."
Arid don't I know it, Kalida thought ruefully as she followed Deuce's long, strong figure into the twilight shadows of the surrounding rocks, holding a small lantern high so that he could pick his way through the rocks and find a suitable area to spread out the bedroll. Finally he nodded, and she set the light down on a flat rock nearby and watched him dismantle his bedding.
With the expertise born of years on the range, he deftly unrolled and laid out the first layer—a tarpaulin, on which he spread a quilt and over that a thin blanket. He had another quilt ready to lay over Kalida, and he stood patiently holding it while she resisted kneeling down on the bedding.
"Kalida." His tone of voice told her he would pick her up and haul her down like the most rambunctious calf if she did not get down on the blanket that minute. And that she understood. She got on her knees, settling herself in the approximate place he indicated with an insolent reluctance that made him snap the second quilt down on her curvaceous body with conspicuous impatience.
He kicked aside his meager bag of possessions that had
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been rolled up with the bedding, snuffed out the light, and slipped down next to her. Meticulously, he leaned forward and pulled up the lower half of the tarp, which brought the quilts up over them snugly and still left the upper portion of the oblong of the tarp to cover them should it rain.
"Settle in, Kalida," he advised, wriggling down into the quilts, "it's going to be a long night."
She lay down resignedly and turned her back to him. It had been a damned long day, she thought. She wasn't up to anything much else but combatting her sensual awareness of Deuce lying next to her. That would use up anyone's strength. She took a long, deep breath. "I am going to work you know," she said challengingly into the dark.
"You've done your work for today," he responded in that flat, hateful voice that made her want to smack him.
It was obviously no use talking to him; he would think what he wanted to anyway. And she would not admit anything except her original intention. So she refused to be goaded by his statement. She lay tense and overwrought beside him, warmed by the heat pulsating from him, chilled by the thought of the situation she had put herself in.
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bsp; She had no business coming on roundup. Her father had sold the herd; it was Deuce's business now, plain and simple. The impulse that had driven her spontaneous behavior seemed rash and ill thought out —the actions of a child. And she was sure that Deucewould not scruple to let her know it in no uncertain terms. When he was ready to. Damn, he held all the cards; it was galling to think he could—and would—call her bluff at any time.
Around them, the night had a life of its own, compounded by the whirr of the insects, the whickering of the horses, the subdued movements of Bruno as he finished cleaning up the chuck area. Beyond them, the first shift
of the night guard was patrolling the herd, their low crooning mingling with the intermittent bawl of the cattle as they settled them in for the night. Above them, the rustle of leaves from the trees overhanging their bed made a counterpoint to the tense silence between them.
After a long, long time, she had to shift her cramping body and was dismayed when her buttocks jammed into his rock hard thfghs. His arm immediately surrounded her waist, pulling her even tighter, against him. She felt him behind her, lifting himself slightly onto his elbow, and then the breath of his voice in her ear. "Kalida."
"No," she whispered fiercely, her hands pulling at his arms.
"Contrary cat," he mocked, his voice still light, low, hardly discernible. She heard it so clearly. "Kalida, stop your nonsense now and turn to me."
"I won't." That was as resolute as she could make it as she felt his lips against her jawbone and his tongue tracing the line of it.
"Surely you will," he contradicted softly. "I'm desperate for the taste of you. Kalida ..."
"Stop it," she groaned, turning her head and'burying it against the blanket beneath her.
"Kalida . . ." He moved his hand to tangle in her night-black hair and tugged it sharply. Her head lifted and he grasped her chin, twisting it over her shoulder to meet his avid mouth. His tongue covered her mouth voraciously and delved between her lips hungrily. His hand moved slowly down her shoulder, sweeping to the curve of her breast to cup its fullness and touch the budding nipple. Her body reacted instantly with a resistant wriggle.
