LITMIR.BIZ

       Chapter Five

      After Curly’s interview, Zach sent him off to night-herd with José, listened to his wrangler’s report about the remuda and grudgingly admitted that Miss Alexandra Murray—Dusty—had more sand than he’d thought. Today she’d ridden a full twelve hours across miles of sunbaked sagebrush and bunch grass without once complaining, or crying, or doing any of a dozen other things most women would under the circumstances. And she could still sit up and talk past suppertime.

      Not only that, he’d learned more about Curly tonight than he’d gleaned in the seven years he’d known the man. Dusty had a way of asking questions that sort of drew forth information. And secrets. He’d never known before that Curly had once had a wife. Or that his newborn son had died at birth, along with the baby’s mother.

      But he knew one thing for certain—he’d never let Dusty within twenty yards of himself with her pencil and that notepad in her hand. The woman was downright dangerous. He had secrets, too, things he’d never told a living soul.

      He heard Roberto’s wheezy breathing from under the chuck wagon. Between his cook’s snoring and the scrape of crickets, the night seemed to close in around him in an unsettling net. Something was bothering him, but he couldn’t figure out what it was. Curly’s dead wife? Juan’s polite but pointed remark about the river they’d have to ford soon? Swollen, the kid said. “And the current muy swift, Señor Boss.”

      Or was it the way his new hand, Cassidy, kept staring at Dusty and edging closer and closer to her while she sat talking with Curly?

      Last night she’d rolled out her pallet as close to the chuck wagon and Roberto as she could get without scaring the cook out of a night’s sleep. Zach noted that tonight she’d done the same thing.

      Cassidy always seemed to be there beside her around the campfire. Not good. And when Dusty climbed into her bedroll, there was Cassidy, throwing his blankets down right next to her.

      Zach moved quietly to where she lay, her dark head poking out from her top blanket. Cassidy was sound asleep. Zach laid one hand on her shoulder.

      “I’m not asleep,” she murmured.

      “Get up and come with me,” he said. She slipped out of her bedroll, and he rolled the blankets up under his arm and tipped his head toward the opposite side of the fire pit. She nodded, picked up her boots and quietly followed him.

      He positioned her bedroll parallel to the dying coals and motioned for her to crawl in. Then he rolled out his own pallet next to hers. Now no one could reach her without first stepping over him or wading through hot coals.

      “Understand?” he whispered.

      “Yes. That man, Cassidy, makes me uneasy.”

      “Yeah. Me, too.” He laid his revolver under the saddle he used for a pillow, positioned his hat over his face and closed his eyes.

      “Thank you, Zach,” she murmured.

      “Yeah,” he said.

      “And I’m still here,” she breathed. “You owe me a silver dollar.”

      “Yeah,” he said again. He hated to admit it, but he was halfway glad. Dusty was fun to watch.

      He tried like the devil to go to sleep, and he would have succeeded if it hadn’t been for the quiet breathing of the woman beside him. He was so aware of her his toes itched.

      He damn well didn’t want to be aware of her. He didn’t want to notice her or find himself watching her or listening for her voice. A female could be a dangerous thing. And a female on a cattle drive, a female he couldn’t help admiring, made him sweat bullets.

      * * *

      The next morning, an incident occurred that brought him up short. It wasn’t what happened, exactly; it was his puzzling anger about it. He never lost his temper. He’d learned long before he came out West, before he’d learned to ride or shoot a rifle or sweet-talk a girl, how to stuff down rage. So his reaction surprised him.

      At first light he saw Cassidy snatch up Dusty’s white camisole where it hung drying on the chuck wagon towel rack and caper around camp, twirling the garment over his head. It made Zach see red.

      He grabbed the lacy thing out of Cassidy’s hand and laid him flat with one punch. Then he stuffed the garment inside his vest and stalked out of camp to cool off down at the creek bank. When he returned, the men were sitting around the fire, sleepily shoveling down bacon and biscuits, and he sent Cassidy out to relieve one of the night-herders.

      Dusty sat between Juan and Curly, calmly sipping a mug of coffee. Zach couldn’t stop staring at her chest. Without her camisole, he knew her bare nipples were pressing against that thin blue shirt, and it was doing funny things to his insides. His outsides, too.

      He slipped the bit of cotton and lace out of his vest and without a word knelt beside her, pressed it into her hand and folded her fingers over it. She gave a little squeak, and he bit back a chuckle.

      She leaped up, marched over to the horse Cherry had brought up for her today and pulled herself up into the saddle. Lordy, he’d have to work hard to keep his eyes off that all-too-female body of hers this morning.

      It wasn’t easy.

      Sometime around noon they entered a stretch of red-brown rocks interspersed with clumps of tall mustard, blazing bright yellow in the hot sun. Pretty stuff in the wild. In the summertime, Consuelo used armloads of it to make a kind of spicy-hot spread for venison or baked ham. He watched Dusty slow her mount to admire a patch of the weed. Probably gonna draw a picture of it in her notebook.

      She looked up and bit her lip. “How will I ever learn everything there is to know about a cattle drive?” she asked.

      “Everything? You don’t need to know ‘everything,’ Dusty. You just need to know enough to stay alive.”

      “But my newspaper...the readers are simply fascinated by the West. How will I ever report enough to keep them entertained?”

      Entertained! Hell’s bells, this drive means life or death for me, and all she wants to do is entertain?

      “Well, I’ll tell ya.” He sent her a look from under the brim of his hat. “Do what Charlie told me when I first came to work for him.”

      “And what would that be?”

      “Keep your eyes and ears open, and your mouth shut.”

      She gave him a sharp look, her lupine-colored eyes widening.

      “Got it?” he snapped.

      “Yes, sir, I have most certainly ‘got it.’ In order to keep my readers riveted to their morning newspapers, I thank the Lord I can scribble my notebook full of interesting facts while joggling along on the back of a horse. Nothing will escape me.” Her voice was so frosty it made him wince. “I do keep my eyes and ears open,” she continued. “And that includes noticing your...your insufferable rudeness. You will not hear another question out of me.”

      He laughed out loud. “I’ll believe

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