The Cowboy Meets His Match

by Meagan Mckinney

  Her situation was precarious. Roman Nose had sidestepped off the narrow trail. A.J. tugged mightily at his bridle, trying to keep the terrified mustang under control on the steep slope.

  However, A.J. also had to contend with his own spooked horse. As Roman Nose regained the trail, A.J.’s horse flew into total panic at the sight of the charging brown bear.

  “Hang on!” he shouted to her as his mustang reared straight up on its hind legs, whickering in fright.

  A.J., still holding Roman Nose’s bridle, was almost pulled off his own horse. Jacquelyn, meantime, scrambled frantically to secure a good hold. But gravity was against her at a bad angle. One foot slipped from the stirrup, and in an instant she fell to the ground.

  “The hell are you doing?” he demanded as if she’d planned the fall just to irk him.

  As Roman Nose escaped down the mountain trail and the agitated bear hurtled even nearer, A.J. gave up trying to gentle his mount. There was no time for it. He leaped to the ground, slapped his horse hard on the rump, then jerked a still-shaken Jacquelyn roughly to her feet.

  “Only for Hazel, you little fool,” he muttered as he worked the lever of the rifle.

  But he didn’t aim for the bear. He fired into the air, the crack of detonation echoing along the slopes with diminishing force.

  The sound didn’t scare the determined bear off. But the creature halted momentarily, startled and unsure. It came up high on its hind legs, sampling the air.

  “Don’t stand there gawking like a ninny,” he chastised his ashen-faced companion. “You skin that one while I chase the others over.”

  Jacquelyn was far too frightened to notice the humorous glint in A.J.’s eyes. “What?” she said uncertainly, her face stupid from fear. “What, skin it?”

  “I’m kidding. Get back down the trail. Get, you damned idiot! It’s a she-bear, thinks we mean to hurt or steal her cubs!”

  He gave Jacquelyn a hard push in the direction the horses had fled. Even as she finally overcame her fear and started down the trail, the bear emitted a deep-chested roar and resumed its charge.

  A.J. was right on her heels as Jacquelyn stumbled down the path. She heard the rifle speak again, but this time the bear seemed unfazed. Jacquelyn could hear it pounding ever closer, making little grunting noises that made her scalp tighten. She could even hear the sound of fabric tearing as the creature swiped at A.J.’s back.

  “My God, A.J.!” she managed between heaving breaths. “Can’t you shoot it?”

  “For what?” he flung back. “Protecting her young? Quit whining and keep going! If we get out of her territory, she’ll stay with her cubs and leave us.”

  Jacquelyn tried very hard not to think what might happen if she fell along the particular stretch they scrambled down. The ridge was steep. She could glance just to her right and below, where sheer cliffs curtain-folded away into steep gorges. Places so deep the sun never even reached the bottom at high noon.

  She heard A.J. stop, though the bear still charged them. Was he finally going to shoot her? Despite not wanting to witness the kill, her fear and curiosity made her look over her shoulder.

  She stopped in her tracks, not believing what she was in fact witnessing.

  A.J.’s rifle lay on the ground beside him. He had stretched his six-foot, two-inch frame out to its full height by rising up on tiptoes. He exaggerated the effect by raising both arms high overhead, his jacket flapping alongside him like giant wings.

  The bear, like Jacquelyn, had no idea at first what to make of this bizarre spectacle. A.J. further astonished both of them by suddenly emitting a deep woof noise that combined a bark with a growl. Not a bad imitation, she realized, of the bear.

  “Bears don’t see so good,” he told her in a low voice. “And I’m downwind, so she can’t smell me. Maybe if she thinks I’m another bear, she’ll respect my territory and leave with her cubs.”

  After a tense ten seconds or so, the bear abruptly turned and dashed back up the trail.

  “Well,” A.J. decided, extracting the bullet from the rifle’s chamber, “we best head back down the mountain and find our horses. Could be a hike, scared as they were. If you could just stay in the damned saddle…”

  “Me? Roman Nose practically did a backward somersault.”

  “Yeah, so what? Don’t matter if he chins the moon. It’s your job to hang on. Damn near got both of us killed. And now we’ll waste good time flushing out our horses. This means we set out even earlier in the morning.”

  “Earlier?” she exclaimed. “If we’d left any earlier this morning, it would’ve been yesterday.”

  He just held up a hand, tired of it. By now he was striding quickly down the trail, Jacquelyn practically trotting to keep up with his long legs. She kept looking behind them to make sure the bear wasn’t just tricking them. Blood still pounded in her temples from the shock of their near miss.

  “I was sure you’d shoot it,” she told him. “I mean her—the bear.”

  He replied without looking at her. “Obviously you would’ve. S’matter, you trigger-happy?”

  “I admit I would have tried to shoot it,” she confessed. “But only because I was so scared. Still, I’m sure I would’ve missed and just really made her angry.”

  “Then you’re double useless up here,” he said with scathing bluntness. “Too eager to kill, yet inadequate to the task.”

  “‘Eager!”’ she bristled. “Now I’m a killer on your sayso? You manage to turn everything into an insult or a crime, don’t you?”

  Instantly she regretted her remark. Not what she had said, but her little-girl-hurting tone. It made her angry at herself to show him she needed his approval.

  “You want affection,” he growled at her, “get a dog. Hazel didn’t ask me to build up your self-esteem, just run you ragged in the mountains.”

  “Well, you’re doing a pretty damned good job of that!” she flung at him.

  Her comment made him grin. He finally looked at her. “Step it out, Peeping Jack. We’re burning daylight.”

  By the time they finally caught up with their horses, they had descended well down into the tree-covered slopes again.

  “No point riding on now,” A.J. grumbled as he gauged the amount of light left in the sky. “We’ve lost all our wood, anyway, and I’ll need to gather more. We’ll camp right here.”

  “What’ll we do for water?” she asked as she studied the little pine copse where they’d found the horses grazing.

  “We’re okay for tonight. Tomorrow we’ll just watch where the closest birds go at dawn. They always drink at daybreak.”

  He left to forage for firewood while she tended to the horses. The huge adrenaline high of the bear incident was now followed by a zooming crash of her emotions. Her despair had returned with a vengeance.

  Hazel was right, she decided. The trip was a benchmark event in her young life. It was throwing into stark relief the harsh fact that she was alone, cut off, walled off.

  Suddenly her throat closed so tight it hurt. Hot tears welled up from her eyes. Afraid A.J. would return and catch her, she sought out a lonely spot behind a tangled deadfall far away from camp. And there she dug up the grave of her hopes and buried them all anew.

  “Was hoping the bear got you,” the cowboy greeted her when she returned to camp. His tone was gruffly cordial.

  “Sorry to disappoint you,” she volleyed back. “Maybe you’ll get rid of me on Devil’s Slope.”

  He laughed.

  Trouble’s coming, she warned herself as she looked at him. She was becoming fragile; he was becoming friendly. I’ll pay, she thought blackly as she sat in front of the fire to warm herself.

  Night settled down on the mountains like a dark blanket. The campfire was going strong.

  “What’s that…interesting smell?” she finally asked.

  He pointed to a skinned rabbit roasting on a greenwood spit over the fire. “Caught it with a snare,” he informed her. “That’s how Jake took care of his supper m
ore than once up here. Didn’t have to shoot his gun and announce his position.”

  “I’m sure it’s tasty. But I think I’ll settle for a granola bar and an apple,” she demured.

  He stared at her. All he said was, “Leaves more for me.”

  She was able to set up her pup tent like an old pro by now. When she finished, she noticed that he was gingerly removing his flannel shirt. She spotted blood spatters on the back of it, and a little prickle of alarm went through her.

  “You’re hurt,” she said, crossing to the spot where he straddled a log beside the fire.

  “Ahh, it’s small potatoes,” he assured her. “Mama bear swiped me once up on the slope, but it wasn’t deep.”

  “You let that bear get so close?”

  “Let? She didn’t exactly require my permission.”

  She moved around behind him. Several long scratches covered the hard ridge of muscle across his upper back.

  “You’re right, they’re not deep,” she agreed, her tone relieved. “But they really should be disinfected.”

  A.J., looking a little sheepish, held up a brown plastic bottle. “I know Jake didn’t have hydrogen peroxide. He used carbolic acid, which hurt like hellfire and stank like hair burning.”

  “Let me help you. You can’t reach them.”

  She took the bottle from him and returned to her tent to get a little first-aid kit she had brought along.

  “You better lie down,” she suggested when she returned, “or it’ll all just run off too quick.”

  He unrolled his sleeping bag and stretched out on his stomach. She took over the log he deserted. She soaked a cotton ball in peroxide and sponged his back with it. In the coppery firelight, the lines and ridges of his muscles seemed sculpted. She had a hard time concentrating on her ministrations when she remembered how his backside looked without the jeans.

  She taped gauze over the scratches, so his shirt wouldn’t irritate them. While she was applying the last strip of adhesive tape, a light rain began slapping down. She started hurrying up.

  “Don’t bother rushing, won’t be enough to get us wet,” he assured her in a sleepy, relaxed voice. “Just enough to settle the dust.”

  “I take it this isn’t that bad weather you’ve mentioned?”

  “Not hardly.” But he said no more on that subject.

  “Summer rain back in Georgia,” she observed, “always sounds softer and prettier because of the leaves. Same here.”

  Hardly feeling a drop, thanks to overhead boughs, she sat in silence for a few minutes, listening to the whispering patter. As he had predicted, it was over quickly. Afterward, the quiet was so complete she could hear the trees drip.

  She had finished her task. There was no excuse to stay around. But then she had an idea.

  “You know what?” she told him. “I just realized. Here I am, traveling in the mountains with one of Montana’s favorite celebrities. And I haven’t even got you on tape yet. Okay if I interview you for a bit?”

  “I guess, but none of them boxers-or-briefs questions, okay?”

  “Your secret is safe with me. Although no doubt plenty of women already know that answer.”

  “God bless ’em all in several languages,” he added piously as she went to get her pocket recorder. By the time she returned, he was sitting up again, buttoning on a clean shirt against the night’s gathering chill.

  “So tell me, as a lifelong resident of Mystery Valley—has it changed that much during your lifetime?”

  “Too much. Though it’s still the finest valley in Montana. When I was a kid, Mystery had only one hotel, and that one the size of a packing crate. Now look. Got us a Ramada Inn, a Hampton House, even a Motel 6 out on Crawford Road. Might be a KOA campground coming, too.”

  Not to mention an upscale tourist suburb in the pipeline, Jacquelyn thought. She felt a lance of guilt as she recalled her father’s plans for “site development” in Mystery Valley and elsewhere.

  Eager to change the subject, she asked, “Why’d your people come out West originally? To farm or raise cattle?”

  “Neither one, actually. See, my great-granddaddy Horace Clayburn had to flee out West from the law in Missouri.”

  “What’d he do?”

  “Among other charges they made public, he stole a steamboat.”

  She studied his hard impassive face. Bright firelight reflected rubies in his eyes. But she detected none of the usual irony in his strong, expressive lips.

  “Really?” she said, impressed and fascinated. “He actually took a steamboat?”

  He nodded. “His only mistake was going back for the river. They hanged him.”

  Suddenly feeling foolish in a good-natured way, she shared a rare moment of laughter with him as he reeled her in. She thumbed off the recorder.

  “Since you got all that on tape,” he added, “I’ll expect to see it in print. That’s a clan joke among us Clayburns.”

  “You’re not my editor, but don’t worry. I’ll use it. Classic example of a greenhorn—me—falling for a Western tall tale.”

  They both fell silent, listening to the peaceful sounds of night settling in. Pine pitch sizzled in the hot fire; wind whispered in the treetops; now and then one of the horses snuffled.

  She looked at him at the precise moment he looked at her. Their eyes met, held, and suddenly the moment was oddly intimate.

  Her throat was dry. She swallowed.

  “This trip is getting interesting, isn’t it?” he said.

  Feeling insecure somehow, she stood up, brushing bits of bark from her jeans. “I guess my interview has gone as far as it can go,” she announced with forced lightness.

  He smiled a little. “Pretty near,” he agreed, watching her.

  “Well…good night.” She headed to her tent.

  “Jacquelyn.”

  She drew up, surprised. It was the first time she could recall his using her first name.

  Slowly she turned around to look at him. In the burnished firelight, his rugged, handsome features seemed to capture the essential ideal of “the Western man.”

  “Yes?” she inquired carefully, fearful about what he might say next, do next.

  “We’ll be starting early in the morning. Got to make up lost time,” he announced, looking away to the fire.

  She stared at him for a long moment, sure he’d been about to say something else. But then, like taunting the grizzly, she decided retreat was the most prudent action.

  Without comment she crawled into her cold tent and zipped up her sleeping bag. She tried most of the night to get some sleep but sleep evaded her as her thoughts returned again and again to the naked cowboy in the spring, the sound of her name upon his lips and what it all might mean.

  Eleven

  She’s man wary, A.J. told himself as he watched Jacquelyn duck into her tent. Just like those mustangs were when I first penned them.

  Something had happened to her back East. Hazel didn’t mention any details, nor did he care to know any. But the old girl did hint that Jacquelyn Rousseaux had recently experienced a “romantic misfortune.”

  Too bad for her, A.J. thought with a flare-up of resentment. Did she think she was so special bees wouldn’t sting her? What, love was supposed to go easy on her because she was Big Daddy’s rich little belle?

  He stirred himself to life, rising to throw a few more good-size limbs onto the crackling fire. Mindful their bear friend might yet pass this way, he wanted plenty of flames through the night.

  When he sat back down, his thoughts once more trailed to the woman in the tent. He would bet she’d figured he would be the proverbial putty in her female hands—just some red-neck hick from the backwater. Well, it served her right how hard he’d been on her. She had to learn that A. J. Clayburn didn’t lick salt from any woman’s hand.

  Then again, an inner voice niggled at him, maybe Hazel’s instincts were sound. The girl was holding up better than he’d ever thought she could. He reluctantly had to admit it. She did have
a lot of pluck to go along with those good looks and that shapely body. Sure, she screwed up plenty. Sure she was green. But she was smart, and she never made the same mistake twice. That was more than he could say for a few of the men on his payroll.

  With the fire well stoked, he crossed the camp clearing to check on the horses. At the first sound of his movement, her muffled voice called out fearfully, “Who’s that?”

  “Just us angry bears. Go to sleep.”

  “What’s wrong? Did you hear something?”

  He grinned, shaking his head in the dark. “No need to get spooked. I’m just checking on the horses.”

  With a fast zwip sound, she opened the fly of her tent and stepped outside to watch him with wary suspicion. He was only a shadowy outline at the very edge of the firelight.

  “The horses are fine,” she assured him, her voice defensive.

  “You been taking good care of them,” he acknowledged. “I’m not faulting you. Even Roman Nose’s saddle gall is better.”

  His grin widened as he recalled a scene from earlier, before dark set in. He had seen her using her fingernail file to painstakingly probe out a stone too small for the hoof pick. If the thing had lodged in the animal’s hoof and been neglected, it could cause a crack to work its way up the coronet and eventually lame the horse. She did have some sound horsemanship behind her.

  “I’m just gonna fill their nose bags again,” he explained. “We’ll be leaving earlier and moving faster than usual to make up lost time. Plus we’ll have Devil’s Slope to cross. It’s rough on riders, but it’s double rough on the horses.”

  “Yes,” she said, her voice distrustful. “You’ve already reminded me a dozen times about Devil’s Slope. And I have to tell you that I read Jake’s diary entry about it. He referred to it as only ‘an annoyance.’ Maybe he didn’t scare as easily as you do?”

  “An annoyance,” he repeated. “And when Jake caught a Confederate bullet in his left lung at Gettysburg, that was a ‘flesh wound.’ You ain’t Jake McCallum.”

  She flounced back into her tent without comment and again sealed herself off from him—a favorite pastime of hers, he thought.