Just a Cowboy and His Baby (Spikes & Spurs)

by Carolyn Brown

  The kid bowed up to her. “You wanna bet?”

  “Sure. If we do better than you today then we get to go first again tomorrow morning even though it’s your day. Right, girls?” Deanna said.

  All nine of the remaining girls lined up beside her and nodded.

  “And if we beat you, what do we get?” the kid asked.

  Carly stepped up beside Deanna. “You get to go first for breakfast.”

  “But we already get that.”

  “Okay, then you can come over to our porch and sing with us tonight. But if we win, and we will, buster, then you don’t get to.”

  “Deal!”

  Trace chuckled. “How’d you get them whipped into shape so soon?”

  “I called their bluff.”

  “Breakfast is getting cold and we’re burnin’ daylight, kids,” Lester yelled from the table where the buffet was laid out.

  ***

  The race was on as soon as Trace showed them how to load and stack hay. The boys finished the first pickup load and taunted the girls as they sat on top of it for the ride back to the barn.

  “We’re better than you are. When we get back we’ll show you how it’s done,” the oldest boy yelled.

  The girls huddled up heads down, butts stuck out, and reminded Gemma of a football team. They joined hands, whispered and pointed, and then did a yell that sounded like, “Beat boys.”

  Evidently they’d worked out a system because they had two pickup trucks loaded and ready to go to the barn by the time the boys got back with one truck.

  “You guys cheated. Miz O’Donnell and Mr. Coleman helped you, didn’t they?”

  “No, they did not! We just let y’all get ahead so you’d get all cocky and lazy. And you did. Now we’ll show you how it’s done. We’re going to get our two hundred bales in the barn and have time to sit on the porch and drink sweet tea while y’all are still working,” Jessie said.

  Two more trucks rolled into the field and six girls stayed behind to load while four went with the trucks to unload them. And at the end of the day the girls loaded and stacked two hundred small bales of hay half an hour faster than the boys. The guys grumbled around all during lunch but they’d learned their lesson. When it came time to go to the apple orchard they’d worked out their plan to unite and conquer.

  When Trace rang the cowbell to give them the green light, the smaller boys climbed the ladders like monkeys and tossed apples down to the bigger boys who put them in baskets and then handed them off to Damian and Tyrelle to carry to the flatbed trailers.

  “Guess they learned to stop boasting and get their butts to work,” Trace said when the competition was finished and the boys won by three bushels.

  “Momma says the hardest lesson a kid ever learns is when to shut their mouths and get to work. They did good learning that the first day,” Gemma said.

  The boys won the apple-picking contest and had a whole new swagger to their walk as they followed Trace back to their cabin. At supper they came into the dining tent with their hair combed, their hands washed, and smiles on their faces.

  “We beat you!” Damian told Jessie.

  “That was just plain old apples. We beat you at the hard job. We can haul hay better than you can and that’s supposed to be a boy job. You’re going to have to work hard to overcome that,” Jessie answered.

  “Oh, yeah, well, we just let you win so you wouldn’t cry like little babies,” Marty declared.

  “And we let you win at the apples so you wouldn’t pout around the rest of the week like you did at lunchtime,” Fiona put in her two cents worth.

  “Don’t it just make you itch for a big family?” Gemma whispered to Trace.

  “Oh, yeah! I’d send the boys to military school and the girls off to a convent,” he answered.

  “If y’all can stop bickering long enough to eat, supper is ready.” Lester grinned.

  “Do we get to sing?” Marty asked.

  “Sure you do. It was an even tie today. Girls won in the hay field. Boys won in the orchard, so everyone gets to sing right after supper,” Gemma said. “But the girls get to choose the songs.”

  “Well, shit! I mean sugar.” Damian blushed.

  “You already calling me sweet names.” Jessie giggled.

  “No, I am not. I wouldn’t call you anything sweet as sugar. You are a bitch.” He clamped his hand over his mouth and looked at Trace.

  “That’s two. On three you get to go back to the cabin and think about cleaning up your speech,” Trace said.

  “I am not a bitch, anyway,” Jessie said.

  Gemma stepped between them. “You want to be each other’s partner the rest of the night?”

  “No, ma’am,” Jessie said seriously.

  “Huh-uh!” Damian shook his head.

  “Lester has called supper. Let’s get with it. Boys first tonight,” Gemma said.

  “Thank you for coming up with the idea of name tags. I swear it’s the only way I can remember their names,” Trace said.

  “We do that at Bible school at the Ringgold church. It works,” Gemma told him.

  Fiona and Jessie got the job of choosing the songs that evening. They argued. They fussed, but they worked together and twenty voices blended together as they sang the banana song again.

  Trace had followed Gemma’s lead and assigned partners with his guys. Damian griped that his partner, Marty, couldn’t sing and he wanted a new partner, and Marty declared that Damian’s voice was changing and he couldn’t sing either.

  “You sound like your momma callin’ in the hogs,” Marty said.

  “Don’t you be dissin’ my momma, boy. You don’t know nothing about my momma,” Damian told him.

  “Well, then your sister,” Marty said.

  “You are asking for a bruising, boy.”

  “Bring it right on. I’m not a boy, man, and I could beat your skinny”—he paused and looked at Trace—“hind end with one hand tied behind my back and a”—he looked at Trace again—“Big Mac in the other one.”

  “You got the five-foot rule yet?” Gemma asked.

  Trace raised an eyebrow.

  “Jessie, darlin’, come tell Mr. Coleman about the five-foot rule.”

  Jessie raised her voice over the boys and began to explain it. By the time she was finished, all twenty kids were as quiet as if they’d been sitting on the front row in a church during a funeral.

  “You guys hear that?” Trace asked.

  Damian barely nodded.

  “As of right now, it’s in effect for all of you. I’d suggest you learn to get along or it’s going to be a real long week.” He grinned.

  Marty grimaced and kicked at the dirt. “Man, that’s cold.”

  “Yep, it is.”

  Gemma spoke up, “We are making a project in our cabin and tomorrow each one of the girls is to be on the lookout for something small and unique on their trip. You boys might look for something too.”

  “Are we making something?” Marty asked.

  “Of course. Wouldn’t be camp without a project. We will be making a dream catcher, so think of that while you are out tomorrow.” Trace slipped an arm around Gemma and chuckled. “If they find a horse apple, they’ll think they found a fossil.”

  “The trick is to make each one of them think they’ve found a gold nugget no matter what it is,” Gemma said.

  Lester touched her on the shoulder. “This week is all about building confidence and character. You’re already doing a fantastic job.”

  She shrugged. “I’m just using some of the tricks Momma used on us kids. It ain’t nothing special, but thank you,” Gemma said. “Look at them. They’re actually talking to each other and not fighting. Did you tell those boys that we’re having a dance on Thursday night?”

  “God, no!” Trace gasped. “They’d worry themselves to death. Let them get to know the ladies and then they’ll be ready for a dance.”

  At eight o’clock Trace took his tribe home and Gemma took her girls inside where s
he had ten small wooden boxes sitting on a long folding table with chairs lined up around it. Bottles of paint were scattered down the middle of the table along with paintbrushes.

  “What’s that?” April asked.

  “Projects,” Gemma said. Part of the agenda involved an hour of crafts each evening and she’d come up with the idea of making the boxes as their craft project. She’d sent Hill to town that morning with a list of what she needed and he’d brought it back while the kids were in the apple orchard.

  “Don’t look like much to me,” April said.

  “That’s because they aren’t finished. We’ll paint them tonight. Any color you want or any combination of colors,” Gemma said.

  “Who are they for? I’m not making a present for a boy,” Carly declared.

  “You are to do your best artistic work. And while you are on field trips this week, if you find a special rock or leaf or maybe an arrowhead, you could bring it back to go on your project. Make it as if you were going to take it home with you to remember this week,” Gemma answered. “And on Friday morning just before you leave I’ll tell you who it is for.”

  “Mine is going to be yellow,” Katy said. “With a hot pink lid that has swirls of yellow.”

  “Have fun,” Gemma said and sat down at the head of the table to referee in case one of them started slinging paint like they did barbs. Girls! How did her mother ever survive raising two girls? Trace couldn’t be having as much trouble with his boys. It wasn’t possible.

  At the end of an hour the table looked like a tornado hit a Sherwin-Williams paint store, but they were talking and laughing. At nine o’clock Gemma told them to get their brushes washed in the kitchen sink and put the lids on the paint bottles tightly.

  “It can’t be time for bed yet,” Angie argued.

  Gemma pointed at the clock. “We’ve got an hour every night to work on our craft and it really is bedtime. Top bunkers hit the showers first and bottom bunkers help me set up night snacks.”

  At ten thirty when she turned out the lights, Carly was already snoring and Deanna had a pillow crammed over her ears. Gemma slipped out the door to find Trace sitting in a rocking chair on the porch. He patted his leg and she sat down on his lap.

  He cupped her chin and turned her face so he could kiss her lips, sweetly at first then harder and more demanding. “So do you want ten daughters?”

  “Bite your tongue.” She gasped between kisses.

  He nuzzled his face into the soft part of her neck. “You are very good with them.”

  “I’m good with horses. That don’t mean I want ten of them right next to my bedroom,” she told him.

  “Let’s sneak off to the hayloft,” he said.

  “Not on your life, cowboy. Sure as I did, they’d get into an all-out catfight with claws bared and gnashing teeth.”

  “Honeymoon is over then?” he asked.

  She giggled. “Four nights of wild sex does not make a marriage.”

  “How many does it take?”

  “A helluva lot more than four. Now kiss me good night. Six thirty comes early.”

  He bookcased her cheeks with his palms and gave her a kiss that made her wish she’d gone to the hayloft with him and be damned to the possible catfights.

  Chapter 10

  Gemma awoke early the next morning and tiptoed to the kitchen area to make a pot of coffee. While it brewed she studied her sleeping girls one at a time. Carly was tall and lanky for a ten-year-old girl, kind of like a three-month-old colt that was still all gangly legs. She really did snore, but Deanna, bless her heart, had shoved cotton balls in her ears and had turned around in the bunk with her feet toward Carly and her head where her feet should have been. Deanna was one of those blondes with dark brown eyes, heavy lashes that rested like a fan on her cheeks, and high cheekbones. Her face was triangular and her mouth wide.

  Fiona was also a blonde, but where Deanna was a diva, Fiona looked like she could take down an offensive linebacker and enjoy doing it. She was a big girl, not overweight by any means, but taller than the rest of the girls and big-boned.

  Kelsey was the quiet one of the group, but Gemma didn’t think for a minute that the short girl couldn’t hold her own against even Fiona. It was in her eyes. She didn’t have to smart off to anyone and there wouldn’t be a day when Kelsey threatened. She’d just step up to the plate and deliver.

  April, who was partnered with Kelsey, sat back and waited to see what everyone else did before she started. When they were painting boxes she was the last one to pick a color, but she was meticulous in her job. Gemma pegged her for an artist who would enjoy the solitary life if she ever had the opportunity.

  Beth and Chantelle, both brunettes, one from Detroit and one from Omaha, fit right into their partnership. They sat together at mealtime and whispered while they were working on their boxes. Neither of them had as much artistic ability as April, but Gemma would lay dollars to grasshoppers that together they could take on the world.

  Jessie was the mouthy one. Black hair, blue eyes, loud, and brassy. She’d push her way into whatever she wanted. Being partners with Carly would teach them both a lot.

  Angie from New Orleans had a Cajun look about her with her black hair and dark eyes. She and Katy made perfect partners with their love for jazz music and Southern accents.

  The coffee gurgled one last time and Gemma left her sleeping beauties to pour a cup. She carried it outside to the porch and watched the sun rise over the mountains. The crickets and tree frogs sounded the same as they did back home in Ringgold and suddenly a whole new bout of homesickness set in.

  “Dammit!” she swore under her breath. That’s what she got for even thinking about home and family.

  “Dammit, what?” Trace said from the shadows.

  She jumped and spilled coffee all over her nightshirt. “You scared the shit out of me. Now I’ve got coffee stains all down my front.”

  “Take it off,” he teased.

  “I don’t think so, cowboy,” she said.

  “I have a name. Why don’t you use it?” he asked tersely.

  Until that moment Gemma hadn’t realized that most of the time she called him cowboy. In the same moment she realized why she did, but there was no way she was telling him.

  “Who pissed in your coffee this morning?” she snapped.

  He ignored her question. “As long as you call me cowboy and not Trace, I’m just competition and a romp in the sheets. I’m not a real person who might get in the way of your glory win in Vegas, right?”

  She didn’t answer and he pushed on.

  “So I’m your one-man groupie for the tour? Is that what I am, Miz O’Donnell? Do you always pick out one lucky cowboy to be your plaything for the circuit?”

  She stood up slowly. “If that’s what you think then you haven’t learned much about me at all.”

  He held up both palms. “Hey, I’m just asking. You can agree or deny, but be honest and call it what it is.”

  She bowed up to him, her nose so close to his that she could see the pupils in his eyes and they were downright angry.

  “Don’t you dare put me in a corner and expect me not to fight my way out. I don’t have to explain jack shit to you. But I will tell you one thing, and that is you will not get in my way when it comes to winning.”

  “Anyone tell you that you are cute when you are mad?”

  “Flattery means less than shit to me right now, and don’t you dare laugh at me. I’m mad and I may not be over it for days. You just made some pretty mean accusations there… cowboy.”

  The beginnings of the smile faded. “The truth hurts, don’t it? See you at breakfast.” He took two steps back and the shadow of the cabin swallowed him up as he disappeared around the corner.

  Her girls grumbled when they rolled out of their bunks, but when it was time to go to the dining cabin they were wide-eyed and ready for the day.

  “We’ll be picking green beans this morning and right after that we’re taking a sack lunch
on a long hike up toward those mountains in the distance, so you might want to braid your hair or put it in a ponytail,” she said.

  It wasn’t easy keeping her voice calm when she wanted to yell and kick something, but she managed with lots of effort.

  Deanna picked up Carly’s brush and began to work the tangles from her long, red, kinky curly hair.

  “Ouch. You pull on purpose. You are worse than my granny,” Carly said.

  “Well, sit still and stop trying to squeeze your neck down into your backbone,” Deanna said.

  “Enough bickering this morning.” Gemma took the brush from her hands and deftly braided Carly’s hair while the rest of the girls looked on.

  “Who are you mad at?” Deanna asked.

  “None of you,” Gemma answered.

  “That cowboy, Mr. Coleman, been mean to you?” Angie asked.

  “No, he hasn’t. We just had a little disagreement this morning.”

  “He throw his coffee on you?” Jessie asked.

  “No, I spilled my coffee,” Gemma explained.

  “I’ll put a Cajun curse on him if he’s not nice to you,” Angie said.

  “It’s just fine. Really. Now let’s go to breakfast and then go show the boys we can work a garden better than they can,” Gemma said.

  The minute she walked into the dining room she spotted Trace talking to Hill, who was on cooking duty that day. He said something to Hill who turned around and waved and motioned toward the buffet.

  “Breakfast is ready. Help yourselves. Don’t be shy. I’ll be flipping pancakes in the kitchen as long as you kids want to eat them. Remember you are gathering your supper right after you get done with breakfast. I checked the vegetable garden this morning and there’s more than green beans, so your counselors will divide you up into partners. One will pick ripe tomatoes. One will pick cucumbers, but only those that are at least six inches long. Others will pick the green beans, and then there is squash and okra.”

  “And we get to eat all that for supper?” Carly asked.

  “Along with fried chicken and hot biscuits,” Hill said.

  “We have to kill the chicken and pick the feathers too?” Damian asked.

  “No, we wouldn’t expect you boys do that,” Jessie yelled across the rectangular dining cabin. “We did it last night before we went to bed so you wouldn’t get all sick and upchuck at the sight of blood.”