The Love of a Cowboy

by Anna Jeffrey

  Piggy giggled. “I’ll find somebody else….Maybe you don’t know what you missed with ol’ Mick. Dorinda Parsons says he’s a regular Roto-Rooter.”

  Dahlia felt herself blush, but she couldn’t keep from laughing, too. “Good grief, Piggy, that’s disgusting. I don’t believe she said that.”

  “Would I lie? He’s not a bad guy, you know. I remember how moon-eyed he was over you in high school. He’s still got a crush on you. You think he comes into the Handy Pantry all the time because he’s shopping?”

  “He comes in to buy beer and lots of it. He can forget it. I suspect he carves notches on his bedpost. If there’s anything I don’t need, it’s a cowboy Casanova who’s a drunk to boot…. Besides, I’m not like you. I couldn't handle recreational sex.”

  “Pity. It doesn’t hurt nearly as bad as the other kind.”

  Dahlia gave a humorless huff. “We’re a pair, aren’t we? The princesses of love gone wrong. We should be on a soap opera.”

  Piggy’s mouth twisted into a bitter smile and she shrugged. “You know what I always say about the battle of the sexes. Take no prisoners. Then you don’t have to worry about their feed and care.” She dipped a plastic spoon into the peanut butter and scooped out a spoonful. “Speaking of men, did you get a look at that long, tall sucker who ran you down? The once-over he gave you would fry a burger.”

  Did she get a look at him? Like a brand, the blue fire of his eyes had seared his image on her brain. She still felt the heat. His gaze had done more than peel off her shirt. It had touched her at a level so deep she hadn’t known it was there. An uneasiness still drifted around inside her. Life with Kenneth had left her tough and resistant to men, she had told herself. But then, she hadn’t met one who so unapologetically sized her up, made her feel so, so . . . female. Being that exposed was a new and frightening experience.

  She didn’t dare tell Piggy, or anyone.

  “Don’t forget, Piggy, we didn’t come here to chase men.”

  “Well, no, but that doesn’t mean we can’t if a good one comes along.

  “These is real good tires, Luke. Might outlast your truck.”

  “Think so?” Sipping coffee, Luke leaned on an elbow on a work table and watched Holt Johnson’s teenage employee mount the last of a set of new tires on his aging 4x4. He had known Holt his entire life, had played on the high school basketball team with the Exxon station owner’s youngest brother.

  Holt stuffed a dirty rag into the rear pocket of his blue coveralls. “You seen the new Fords?”

  Luke didn’t want to tempt himself. It would take the sale of forty fat steers to pay for a new rig. He didn’t make a purchase that costly without careful thought. “Nope. Not looking.”

  Holt drew a cup of coffee from a filthy silver urn. “Want a cup?”

  Luke grimaced and told himself that urn had to be cleaner on the inside. “Sure,” he said. But just a short one. I’m in kind of a hurry. Gotta get down to Boise.”

  As if he hadn’t said he was pressed for time, the station owner rambled on about how many miles the last set of tires had lasted on Luke’s battered Ford and jawed about cattle prices which he couldn’t possibly know a damn thing about. In twenty years, he had scarcely left the service station as far as anybody knew.

  Though Luke participated in the conversation, his mind stayed on the woman he had knocked flat earlier in the Forest Service offices. Another newcomer. Outsider. The Forest Service kept bringing them in, as if enough weren’t coming on their own. Like swarms of grasshoppers, migration from South to North had moved across Oregon and Washington for years. City people─retirees, movie stars, Silicon Valley new rich. He had eyed the encroachment from across the state line, thinking, better thee than me, but his security had had a short life. Soon they discovered Montana, then Idaho. Now they came in a stream, as if a gate had been left open. Now he understood the bumper stickers he saw every time he went to Oregon: DON’T CALIFORNICATE OREGON. Somebody oughtta make one for Idaho.

  No doubt the woman was one of them. He wondered if she was the kind who would try to sue him. You never knew these days, especially with folks from California. Filing a lawsuit seemed to be their solution to life’s problems. Last fall, a Los Angeles woman had crashed into a small bunch of Double Deuce cows trailing home on the highway from summer grazing. With no clue what “open range” meant and no interest in learning, she had sued and he’d had to pay a lawyer to defend the ranch. And through it all, no one had given a second thought to the fact that he’d had to put down half a dozen mother cows.

  The black-haired woman didn’t look to be hurt, but he had offered to take her to a doctor all the same. He guessed that was all he could do. Issue closed.

  But it wasn’t closed, not in a distant part of his mind. Her being an outsider or filing a lawsuit wasn’t what nagged him. What kept coming back was the memory of round breasts, nipples peaked and unusually dark behind a lacy bra under that wet T-shirt. He did love the sight of a shapely female form strategically covered by skimpy lace. An edgy feeling crept through him. The crotch of his jeans grew tighter.

  Christ, he had gone without too long. Otherwise, his cock wouldn’t be twitching in his britches in the Exxon station’s garage over some woman he’d seen for no more than a minute. Being aroused by women he didn’t know was a luxury he could neither afford nor allow. He had learned the hard way the pitfalls of giving in without thought to his more primitive urges. A painful, expensive lesson that had gone on for years and hadn’t ended yet.

  “Looks like you’re all fixed up. Too bad about the Circle K, eh, Luke?”

  “Hunh?...Oh, yeah. Dang sure was.” Luke set his mug on the work table as the rack holding his truck lowered.

  Holt scrubbed a forearm across his brow, leaving a black, streak. “What if the buyer does like they did over in Montana?”

  “How’s that?”

  “A fella in here the other day told me some stock broker from back East bought a ranch over there. Brought in a bunch of sick buffalo. Spread a disease all over the place.”

  Tales of that nature had floated around the Northwest ranching community for several years. Sometimes the curse was TB, sometimes it was brucellosis or one of a dozen other plagues that chilled a rancher’s blood. As the owner of a substantial herd of carefully bred and nurtured beef cattle, Luke never stopped studying or vaccinating─or following up rumors of a new outbreak. “That’s just a story, Holt, but with these dudes and flatlanders coming in here, it could happen.”

  Holt ordered the teenager to back the Ford out of the shop and led Luke inside to the cash register. “I heard it was a computer nerd from Seattle that bought ol’ Tuffy out. They say the guy’s never seen a cow up close.”

  “Yep, that’s what they say.” Luke answered absently while writing a check, his thoughts still dominated by the black-haired woman. She was foreign looking. A hybrid mix of some kind, but he couldn’t put his finger on it. Oriental? Too tall. Indian or Mexican maybe. Her light-colored eyes were deceiving, green being a recessive gene. Well, whatever her breeding, she couldn’t be bringing anything worthwhile to Idaho.

  “Why didn’t you buy it, Luke?”

  “Lord, Holt, I’ve already got more to do than I can say grace over. Not that I wouldn’t have been interested, but it happened so fast, I didn’t know about it ’til it was over. Guess Tuffy was more desperate to sell than I thought.”

  The red-faced station owner shook his head wearily and tucked the Double Deuce check into a greasy cash drawer. “’Preciate your business, buddy. Things is changing, ain’t they? Not like they was when we was in school. I ain’t so sure I like all these new folks.”

  Luke looked into Holt Johnson’s face and saw the fear common in the eyes of many of the old-timers around the county. He suspected it showed in his own eyes if anybody looked close.

  “We can’t kill ’em, Holt, much as we might like to. Guess a man’s got to learn to roll with it, else get mowed down.”

  Leaving
the service station, Luke turned south toward Boise and a two o’clock meeting. The sale of Tuffy Keeler’s ranch pressed on him heavily. Like the Double Deuce, the Circle K had been a family operation for at least a hundred years. Good friends, good neighbors, the Keelers. What did a computer nerd need with a cattle ranch?

  He had intended to look into buying the place when the neighbor told him Tuffy had decided to sell out, though it would have meant a staggering debt. But with a cold, wet February and March, calving had been harder than usual. Unlike a lot of ranches the size of the Double Deuce, he didn’t hire much outside help. He relied on family and himself. Thus, he hadn’t had much free time. What little he’d had and most of his mental energy had been used up the last few months with trips to Portland, taking his seven-year-old son to a specialist and arguing with his ex-wife.

  The new doc in Portland had recommended his son be put into a school, an idea that had gone down like sour milk. To make matters worse, his ex-wife wanted their two daughters to spend the summer with her in Boise, which was bound to add up to trouble with a capital T.

  He shifted in his seat, combating the discomfort brought on by thinking about the woman at the Forest Service, puzzled by the charge of lust she had set off in him. He hadn’t seen his lady lawyer friend in weeks. That had to be his problem. While he was in Boise today, maybe he would have time to pay her a visit.

  In the idleness of the three-hour drive, he pictured Belinda Hughes. Tall and thin, long yellow hair pinned up in a roll on the back of her head, she looked cool and untouchable in a mannish suit. But stripped bare, hair loose and draped over her shoulders, she was hot as a wood stove in January and more than a little kinky.

  The conflicting images excited him. He enjoyed bringing the deputy attorney general down off her pedestal. He could call her today and she would “clear her calendar” and meet him at her house in the foothills outside Boise. He liked that. It was more convenient than making dates and maneuvering to keep them.

  Belinda took him into her bed for nothing more than fun and blistering sex; he went for the same two reasons. Neither of them had ever been disappointed. They refrained from boring each other with sentimental platitudes, phony expressions of affection or personal problems. If they discussed anything at all, it was politics. She droned on about women’s lib, double standards and equality of the sexes. Sometimes he listened, other times he tuned her out. He didn’t like her much and didn’t tell her he did. They weren’t even friends in the way he defined friendship. None of that was important. He was glad she didn’t let emotions get in the way of what satisfied them both. Their two-year-old affair was a perfect arrangement for a divorced, confirmed bachelor.

  Despite Belinda’s political views on the exploitation of women, she wasn’t above using feminine favors to advance her career, so he knew others preceded and followed him when it suited her agenda. He didn’t care and it felt good not to.

  Deceit and hypocrisy. Typical of his experience with women. He had fought it for the nearly nine years he had been married to Janet. He saw it in the women closest to him─his mother and how she had taken decision-making at the ranch from his dad; and his two sisters, the way they manipulated their husbands into living somewhere the men didn’t want to live, doing jobs neither of them liked or knew how to do.

  Steeped in negative thoughts about the opposite sex, he decided not to call Belinda Hughes after all, for their affair did have a flaw. As physically satisfying as he found sport with her to be, invariably, he left her bed feeling like a key without a lock, the part of him above the waist longing for something more.

  He usually tossed off the emotion as a temporary weakness and pushed it out of his mind until he needed her again. He was in no mood for that empty feeling today. In two hours he would face a counselor about his son’s future, a hard enough truth. He didn’t need to be reminded that thoughtless sex and human weakness were responsible for the little guy coming into the world with a damaged brain.

  Chapter 3

  “Should we?”

  “Supper club? Piggy, that’s a redneck bar if I ever saw one.”

  Dahlia stood beside Piggy in front of Carlton’s Lounge & Supper Club, each hanging onto two plastic grocery sacks bulked with necessities. They had just left Fielder’s Grocery where they had wiped out most of Dahlia’s cash and all of Piggy’s fifty dollar bill.

  Dark had descended. Except for foot traffic in and out of the town’s two bars, the main street was deserted. From a high, narrow window beside Carlton’s front door, inviting golden light spilled out onto the sidewalk. As revelers came and went, loud country music blurted through the doorway.

  “The perfect place to find Jerry,” Piggy said.

  “I wonder if the food’s fit to eat.”

  “It’s too cold to go back to that house.”

  “Only one drink, Piggy. I don’t want to make a night of it. If we’re going to stay in that quaint little cottage, we have to do something about the furnace. And we have to find your cousin. We can’t just hang out and shiver.”

  Piggy shrugged. “Whatever.”

  They stowed their groceries in the Blazer and headed for the supper club. As they opened the door, a blast from the jukebox hit them full force and Dahlia jumped.

  They stood for a moment just inside, letting their eyes adjust to the gloom. And what they saw was like stepping back in time, all the way back to the nineteenth century.

  A baroque antique bar with a black-veined mirror ran the length of one side of the corridor-like room. Tall stools lined up along the front of it. All were occupied by cowboys and suspendered stout men Dahlia thought might be loggers. Most of them looked as if they had rolled in the mud outside. Wearing clean jeans, a sweater and Nikes, Dahlia felt over-dressed.

  A TV sat on top of an avocado-green refrigerator in the far corner behind the bar. Baseball players darted and leapt across the screen in silence, the broadcaster’s voice no match for the jukebox. A dozen pairs of eyes turned toward them. In the middle of pouring whiskey, the bartender, the lone heavy-set female wearing a flower in her short curly hair, flicked a glance their way. Dahlia made a silent groan. As much as she hungered for a real meal, she wished she had balked at the choice of places to have it.

  A layer of cigarette smoke floated above them. Evidently, the smokeless environment movement had yet to arrive at Carlton’s. Even stronger than the smoke, the tang of masculine sweat pervaded the air.

  Though the bar stools were filled, the tables were empty. Piggy took the lead and they threaded their way to one shoved against a paneled wall opposite the bar. The two-foot Formica square sat spotlighted beneath a Coors sign hanging on wall above it.

  “We might as well be on stage,” Dahlia grumbled. “All we need is a drum roll.”

  As they sat down, the men whistled and hooted.

  “There ya go,” Piggy said. “Close enough.”

  A monumental urge to bolt darted through Dahlia. She leaned forward and yelled to be heard over Garth Brooks. “This is worse than a redneck bar. Let’s leave.”

  “Wait a minute. The testosterone’s knee-deep in here. This could get interesting.”

  Dahlia was too hungry to be intrigued by wading in male hormones. Through an amber-lit doorway at the rear of the room, she could see a few customers dining at tables covered with red and white checked cloths. The aroma of searing meat wafted past, mingling with the barroom’s earthy smells. An acute pang clutched her stomach.

  The bartender—now Dahlia could see she was the size of a tank—brought a plastic bowl of unshelled peanuts. “Whatcha drinkin’, Ladies?”

  “Margarita,” Piggy said.

  Dahlia ordered white wine and dug into the peanuts.

  Soon, two more drinks appeared, sent by one of the men at the bar. The bartender pointed him out. He gave them a toothy grin and tipped a greasy gimme cap.A short while later, several margaritas and glasses of white wine were lined up in front of them, all bought by different bar patrons and Pi
ggy was doing her best to keep up with them. Dahlia concluded the men weren’t being so friendly, sending them free drinks. She and Piggy were being slugged with alcohol and her fun-loving pal didn’t care. She asked for a Coke, shelled peanuts at a fast pace and watched with trepidation as Piggy downed another margarita. Two had evaporated before Dahlia persuaded her to transfer into the restaurant to eat.

  They had just been handed menus when a tall silhouette with a cowboy hat appeared in the doorway. Dahlia’s stomach thumped. Her every female instinct went on alert. She didn’t want to look at him, but if doing it should strike her blind, she couldn’t keep from staring at the cowboy who had mowed her down in the Forest Service office.

  The restaurant’s young hostess met him with a molar-showing smile. He draped an arm around her shoulder, removed his hat and held it to his midriff by the crown. His head bent and he nodded as the hostess whispered to him. He chuckled wickedly. His girlfriend, Dahlia thought, and felt a letdown.

  Anyone born and raised in West Texas recognized Wranglers as the uniform of cowboys, but at the time of her fall, Dahlia hadn’t noticed how well his fit him. Faded and soft, they molded around muscled thighs, cupped the subtle masculine bulge below his belt buckle.

  The hostess rose on tiptoes and whispered to him, then giggled, bumped his long thigh with her hip and led him toward a table in the far corner. To Dahlia’s bewilderment, she resented the hostess.

  As his boot heels thudded across the wood floor, Piggy’s gaze followed him, too.

  “You look like an owl,” Dahlia whispered. “Will you stop?”

  Piggy leaned on one elbow studying him, tapping her bottom lip with her forefinger. “I’m picturing him naked, stretched out on a king size bed in a Marriott somewhere. Black satin sheets. Champagne. I bet he looks like…who was that statue we saw that summer in Rome? The naked one with—”