Heart of the West

by Penelope Williamson

  "Whoa, there." He gripped her arms to steady her. She jerked back, nearly sweeping her skirts over the fire. She looked around and was startled to find herself alone with him. Pogey and Nash were saddling fresh mounts, and Gus had walked off downstream to relieve himself.

  "What do you want?" she demanded, ashamed of the quaver she heard in her voice. As long as he was aware of her fear he would prey on it in his attempt to drive her away.

  He rested his unsettling eyes on her face. "The alkali in the dust is already starting to blister your skin. I always carry some sweet oil in my saddlebag. I thought you might want to rub a little on your exposed parts."

  The words "exposed parts" and the smirking way he'd said them made her flush, as he'd meant for them to. But he held a small square brown bottle out to her, seemingly in all earnestness. When she didn't take it, he pulled out the cork with his teeth and poured a dollop of the oil into his palm. She jumped when he took her arm, but she didn't pull away. He rubbed the oil over her hands and as far up her wrists as the tight band of her starched linen cuffs would allow.

  She watched mesmerized as his rough fingers massaged circles on her skin. She didn't like him touching her. She had to clench all her muscles to control the fine quivering going on inside her. But the oil was cool and soothing and smelled faintly of olives.

  His fingers stopped their rubbing. They both looked up at the same time, and their gazes caught and held. "You should put some on your face as well," he said after a moment.

  She breathed, swallowed. "Yes... Yes, thank you." She pulled the bottle from his loose fingers and dropped it into her apron pocket. "I'll do it myself. Later." His sudden kindness disturbed her. She was more used to him treating her with cruelty and crudeness. She turned away from him, willing him to leave, and breathed a sigh of relief when he did.

  When she looked around again she saw that he had joined Gus. Talking together, the brothers drifted past the box elders to a bend in the river where they could see the branding corral and that morning's herd. They stood side by side, elbows bent, hands stuffed into their back pockets.

  It was odd, for she'd always thought Gus was the bigger man, but she noticed now that Rafferty was just as tall. He flexed his elbows, bunching the lean and powerful muscles of his back. His thumbs curled over his pockets, drawing her gaze to the taut curve of his buttocks. He has a magnificent body. The startling thought came to her unbidden, yet once there she couldn't dislodge it, couldn't stop noticing things. The way his canvas britches were worn white between his thighs from straddling a horse. The way the breeze molded his shirtsleeve to the bulge in his arm. The way he stood with his feet set wide, pelvis tipped slightly forward, as if flaunting his masculinity. Things no lady ought ever to notice.

  Hot grease popped in the frypan, jerking her attention away from that man. She forked the bacon onto her empty plate. She knew she ought to take it to Gus—he'd had only beans for dinner. She was a dismal failure as a wife. The sense of freedom she'd felt in defying him had turned to a bitter shame that made her stomach queasy. She would take him the bacon, and she would apologize.

  "I've been thinking we ought to buy us some grade bulls," Gus was saying to his brother as she approached them. "Durhams, maybe, to raise the standard of our herd."

  Rafferty ground his cigarette into the dirt. One corner of his mouth curled into a faint sneer. "What're we gonna use for dollars, brother—cow chips? We got us a heap plenty of them at the moment."

  Clementine watched the hurt come over her husband's face. He turned without a word and walked toward the branding corral, his shoulders slumped.

  "Are you pleased with yourself, Mr. Rafferty?" she said as she came up behind him. When it appeared he would ignore her, she flung the plate of bacon into the dirt and dug her fingers into his arm, pulling him around to face her.

  And slammed into the blazing violence in his eyes.

  She felt it again, that shocking sense of being winded. His shirtsleeve had been folded up to his elbow, and her hand gripped his naked arm. The world seemed to diminish to nothing but the slick, hot feel of his skin.

  She let go of him and wiped her hand on her skirt. "Does it make you feel the big man," she said, "to go trampling on your brother's dreams like a... like a stampeding herd of your stupid cows?"

  "You"—he thumped a stiff finger on her breastbone—"don't know what the hell you're talking about."

  She slapped his hand aside. "I might squeak when I walk and I might not be worth the slaughtering, but at least I can appreciate the power of a dream. You're his brother and he needs you and what good are you to him?"

  He sucked in a sharp breath and his eyes narrowed. She thought a scoundrel like him could just as easily strike a woman as a man, yet she would not back down.

  "Well, Mr. Rafferty? Of what use are you really to the working of this ranch? You spend most of your days and nights carousing in town, and if you have a moment to spare for Gus it's only to mock him for what he's trying to do for this place..."

  The words dried up in her mouth as he took a step closer. She watched a bead of sweat form below his ear to run down the pulsing vein in his neck and disappear into the open faded blue collar of his shirt. She cinched her mouth tight because it kept wanting to open with her strained breath.

  "Ah, hell and Jesus Christ," he snarled. He spun on his heel and stalked off toward the remuda.

  She wrapped both hands around her neck, the heel of one palm pressing hard at the place where her pulse thundered. Oh, God, what is happening to me?

  It got hotter as the day wore on.

  The sun had never felt so hot back in Boston, Clementine thought. And the dust. It stuck to her sweat-slick face and stung her eyes. It burned her nostrils and settled into her clothes so that she sifted like a sack of flour when she moved.

  It was certainly too hot and dusty to photograph anything, even if she had dared to in the face of Gus's displeasure. From the beginning he'd ordered her to stay away from the roundup. But without any wind to stir her skirts and disturb the cattle, she saw no reason why she couldn't watch the cutting out and branding.

  The dust grew thicker the closer she got to the rope corral. It covered every leaf and blade of grass so that the world had a leached look. A cloud of buffalo gnats suddenly engulfed her, biting at any exposed patch of skin until she wanted to turn and run for the sanctuary of the river. Instead she plowed through the stinging bugs, flapping her hands about her head.

  The grassy, gassy smell of dung would have told her she was getting close even if she hadn't been able to see the milling cattle through the haze of dust. She made her way to a large fire that had several branding irons sticking out of it.

  Gus came up with a cooling iron, frowning when he caught sight of her. "Go on back to camp, Clem. This isn't a sight for a lady's eyes."

  "But I want to stay." I want to understand so that I can share in your dreaming, she wanted to say to him. I am so afraid, yon see, that I will never come to like this hard, cruel, barbarous land. This hard, cruel, barbarous life. But she found it so difficult to speak to him of her thoughts and feelings.

  His face set into familiar stubborn lines, and she thought he was going to order her away. But a cry of "Hot iron!" from Nash distracted him.

  The Mexican boy was dragging a stiff-legged calf across the roundup ground to the branding fire. The calf had a rawhide rope looped around its neck, the other end wrapped around the horn of Palo's saddle. The calf's mother trotted after them, moaning in alarm and shaking her horns.

  The boy's teeth flashed white against the dark skin of his face. "You goin' to fry us up some prairie oysters for supper tonight, Senora McQueen?" he called out to her.

  She waved and smiled back at him, not understanding.

  Palo pulled the protesting calf over to Pogey and Nash, who took handfuls of loose hide, knocked its legs out from under it, and flipped it like a bale of hay onto its side. Palo cast off his rope while Pogey and Nash held the struggling anima
l down. The calf's bawls of panic turned to bellows of pain as Gus slashed its ear with a sharp knife, then sliced pieces off its vitals and threw them into a bloodied zinc bucket. He gripped the branding iron in his gloved hands and pressed it into the calf's red flank. There was a sizzle, a curl of white smoke, the stench of burning hair and flesh. And the calf screamed.

  Clementine whirled, took three stumbling steps, then bent over at the waist and vomited into the dust-coated grass.

  She stayed hunched over as her breath fought its way up into her throat and her heart thundered in her ears. The stink of charred hair clogged her nostrils, and she swallowed hard against a fresh bout of sickness that burned in her throat.

  She heard a creak of saddle leather. Lifting her head, she opened blurry eyes onto a horse's flank, a dusty boot thrust through a stirrup iron, and a hand holding a wooden canteen and a clean blue bandanna.

  She took the offering without a word. She rinsed out her mouth with the tepid water, spitting like a tobacco-chewing mule skinner. She dampened the bandanna and wiped her face clean, and not once did she look at him.

  She gave him back his canteen, still without looking at him. Another calf bellowed, and a fresh stink of burning hair and hide wafted to her on the hot air. She squeezed her eyes shut. "Oh, please tell me... does it hurt them unbearably?" she said, the words grating raw in her throat.

  "What do you think? If you can't take it, Boston, go home."

  "I am home," she said. But she lied, and he knew it.

  She heard a step behind her and Gus's voice came to her, taut with anger again. "When're you going to start doing what you're told, girl? You see what I meant about this not being a fit sight for a lady? Get on back to camp now."

  "No. I'm staying." She lifted her head. The brim of Rafferty's dusty black Stetson shaded most of his face; she couldn't see his eyes. "I'm staying," she said again. To him.

  He touched two fingers to his hat almost as if he were saluting her. He laid his reins against his horse's neck, then pulled its head back around. He stared down at her in silence a moment. "It don't hurt them unbearably," he finally said. "The branding. It only sears off the hair and a bit of hide." He squeezed with his knees, and the horse spun around in a cloud of dust and trotted back to the corral.

  Clementine stayed, though she couldn't bear to watch Gus at the branding, for it must surely hurt the calves some, she thought; otherwise they wouldn't scream. She fastened her gaze onto Palo and the biscuit-colored hound, Atta Boy. Though almost blind, the dog wended his way through the milling cattle, unerringly picking out a calf with no brand on its flank and herding it toward the boy's swinging rope. She kept catching whirls of movement out the comer of her eye, but she held herself stiff, for she would not look at that man, she would not, would not look at him.

  She looked at him.

  Long brown fingers building a loop of rawhide, drawing soft floating circles in the air. Lean muscles bunching, flexing, flowing as his arm whipped across the circles he had drawn. And the lasso sailing, sailing, hanging poised in the air, and then by some miracle sliding beneath the belly of a running calf to snag its hind legs. Hands flashing, dallying the free end of the reata around the saddle horn. Thighs tautening as he braced his weight hard into the stirrups against the plunge of the cow pony driving its feet into the dirt. Rawhide singing taut as the calf hit the end of the rope and flopped to the ground, side up and ready for branding.

  She thought she knew how his naked body would be beneath his clothing, how it would feel beneath her hands. The thought, so sinful, stole her breath. Yet she could not stop it, could not stop herself from staring at him.

  He turned his head and caught her watching. Their eyes met and held. A rush of blood thrummed through her body. Her skin grew warm, felt raw; her clothes suddenly prickled as if they were made of thistles. His eyes still on her, he swung his arm, and the lasso clutched at air. The calf tossed its head and let out a low bawl, dancing free.

  "Hot damn, did ya see that?" Pogey exclaimed. "The boy wasted a loop. First time I ever seen him waste a loop."

  "They're bulls."

  The breath left Clementine's chest in a sharp gust. "What?"

  Zach Rafferty stood before the water butt, a full dipper in his hand, poised to drink. She was three feet away, her hands braced behind her on the mess wagon cook's table. Gus had rigged a canvas fly over the rear of the wagon. It shaded her from the sun, but it also trapped the heat, allowing steam to build up as in a simmering kettle. Sweat crawled over her body. She could smell herself. And she could smell him: leather and horse and male sweat.

  "Bulls," he said again. "What you genteel ladies refer to as gentlemen cows..." He paused to drink. Water spilled out of the corners of his mouth and ran down his neck. She watched the corded muscles of his throat work as he swallowed, then flushed when he lowered the dipper and caught her looking.

  He wiped the wetness off his lips with the back of his hand. "I figure if you're gonna photograph 'em, you ought to know what's bull and what's not. Your cows are more specifically your females, which means they got teats, but none of what you genteel types refer to as the male breeding organ. Now your steers, they're males, so they do sure enough got organs. But they've been castrated, which means they had their breeding potential cut short when... Am I rilin' you, Boston? Your cheeks sure are gettin' red."

  Her cheeks burned hotter than a branding iron, but she answered his taunting gaze with a level look. "You might well be able to make me blush, sir. But it will take more than your foul tongue to chase me away from here."

  "The day is young, and I can get fouler."

  "I don't doubt that you can, for you do have a bit of a talent for it. A talent you are understandably proud of, since you have so few and they are all so small."

  He snorted a laugh as he scooped another dipperful of water out of the butt. He pointed the dipper's handle at her chest. "You know, for all your highfalutin, la-di-da ways, you got a tongue on you that could rip the hide off a buffalo. Bet Gus didn't know that about you before he married you, huh? He never has liked uppity women."

  She would not discuss Gus with him; she would ignore him. She wanted him to leave her alone. She wanted him to get on his horse and ride off the Rocking R spread and out of the RainDance country and keep on riding until he was back in the hell that had spawned him.

  She reached beneath the chuck box and picked up a burlap sack of potatoes. As she set the sack on the cook's table, she heard a shrill buzzing and she tensed, for she hated bugs and it seemed that out west they were everywhere. Gnats, flies, and fleas plagued her constantly. And those hideous black beetles that fell out of the sod roof at night and into her face and hair... She shuddered at the thought even as the insect whirred again. A katydid must have hopped into the wagon; the grass was full of them.

  She scraped a knife around the scrawny, gnarly potato, watching the brown skin curl free, yet aware still of that man. Sliding quick furtive glances at him.

  He had taken off his hat and emptied the dipper over his head. The ends of his hair hung over his collar, dripping water. His shirt, already drenched with sweat, clung to his back. She lowered her gaze to the gun he wore. Blue-black and deadly-looking, it rested in an open leather holster that was looped over a thick cartridge-studded belt and tied to his thigh with a thong. It looked too heavy for his lean hips. Yet he wore it easily, as much a part of him as his hat and boots. Gus had told her that cowboys, when they bothered to carry a gun, wore it on a belt cinched up around the waist. Only lawmen and scoundrels who fancied themselves gunslingers wore them hip-low and tied down at the thigh. She had no doubt which category Zach Rafferty fell into. Why, she wouldn't put it past him to have ridden with the James gang, robbing trains and stagecoaches and gunning down innocent bank tellers in the street—

  His gaze whipped around suddenly, clashing with hers, and she jumped.

  A tortoiseshell comb slipped out of the coiled bun at her neck, bouncing off her bodice into the
dusty folds of her skirt. A hank of hair fell over her shoulder, strands of it sticking to her damp cheek. Her hands full of potato, she turned her head, trying to brush the hair off with her arm.

  Suddenly he was standing before her, slipping his hands around her neck. She shuddered violently. "Hold still," he said. "I'm not gonna scalp you."

  He tugged loose the thick knot of her hair. More combs and pins fell onto the cook table with soft clicks. Every muscle and nerve in her body hummed taut. Her stomach clenched so tightly she felt dizzy. Revulsion, she thought. Her mind might have formed a prurient fascination with this man, but at least her body had the sense to remain revolted by his touch.

  He tore a fringe off his chaps and used it to tie her hair back out of her face. She imagined his hands handling her hair the way they had the rope. Expert hands, graceful. Almost gentle.

  "This isn't proper," she said, the words strained by the tightness in her throat. Oh, no, it wasn't proper. Allowing him to touch her, even in innocence. Because he... because she...

  He stepped back and took a good gander at her, head to toe, the hardness of his eyes and mouth flattening all expression. She felt indecent now standing before him with her hair hanging free and loose down her back, merely tied back with a piece of leather. But then, the man made her feel hot and disheveled even when every pin was in place.

  She tore her gaze away from his and jerked around to face the cook's table. The half-peeled potato in her hand was turning brown in the heat. Bright drops of blood lay scattered like ripped rose petals on the scarred wood. The knife handle was sticky with blood. It bewildered her for a moment until she felt a throbbing pain in the heel of her hand. At some time she must have cut herself.

  She heard the scuffle of his boots as he left, and she pushed out a pent-up breath that lifted her breasts. Throughout the afternoon the men were always riding back to the camp to pick up a fresh horse and cool off at the water butt. But she knew he'd come here for another reason entirely. To torment her.