Cowboy Seeks Bride (21 page)

“Something to wash them down?” Dewar held up a bottle of Boone’s Farm strawberry wine.

“And wine, too. What was he saving that for? The last night we’re on the trip?”

Dewar looked at it carefully. “We’re having it with our chocolate cookies right now.”

They snuck back to the river and sat down in the same spot. He opened the bottle of wine, took a swig, and frowned. “That tastes like shit! Give me a cookie to get the taste out of my mouth.”

She exchanged the bottle for a cookie, ate a bite of the chocolate, and then sipped the wine. “Not too bad, but it’s not as good as the real thing.”

“And that is?”

“Chocolate-covered strawberries and champagne,” she answered.

“Honey, you been on the trail too long. That is as close to strawberries and champagne as a quickie is to two-hour sex in a round bed with satin sheets.” He grinned.

“Oh, and how do you know that?”

“Let’s just say I wasn’t a virgin when I met you, either. And when one of our horses wins the big prizes there’s always chocolate strawberries and champagne right along with caviar, if you’ve a mind to eat that shit. Tastes like you ought to use it for bait to me.”

She giggled. “Momma says it’s my Cajun blood surfacing. I hate caviar and I’m not too fond of sushi, but I never thought of it as bait.”

“Stick with me, darlin’, and I’ll make a redneck out of you yet.”

“Is that an invitation?” She handed the wine back to him.

“Yes, ma’am, it sure is.”

After more than three weeks on the trail, everyone had settled into their riding positions just like the sleeping arrangements. Dewar rode point alone unless they were going through a town and then he insisted that Haley ride with him. Buddy and Sawyer herded cattle on one side. Finn and Rhett took care of the other side. Coosie brought up the rear with the chuck wagon, and Haley and Eeyore usually rode behind the wagon or beside it if she was talking to Coosie.

“Are you tired of this constant moving?” she asked Eeyore.

The donkey’s ears perked up at the sound of her voice.

“Won’t you be glad to get back to Dewar’s ranch and have a pasture to romp around in all day?”

“Donkey won’t talk to you,” Coosie called back. “Come on up here and ride beside me.”

She clicked her tongue and guided Apache to the side of the wagon. “Will you tell me a story?”

“Not this morning.”

“But I’m bored. It’s not even midmorning and did you ever see that movie
Groundhog
Day
?”

“Oh, yeah! Same thing happened every day for months because he couldn’t get his head on straight. Is that what you feel like this is, Haley?” Coosie asked.

She nodded. “Some days the land is flat. Sometimes it is up and down, but it’s all the same. Look at the back end of cows, talk a little to Eeyore, and hope you’ll talk to me.”

“It’ll make you appreciate your rut when you get back to it.” Coosie smiled.

“They’ve moved Dodge City. We should have been there days ago. I could have driven from Ringgold to there in less than a day.”

“That’s in a car. This is on horseback and we’re making good time even with the rain. Speaking of which, it’s going to rain tonight, darlin’.”

“No! How do you know?”

“My leg hurts. Arthritis is the best weatherman in the whole world.”

She moaned. “I don’t like sleeping in the rain.”

“Well, if we’re lucky, there’ll be a barn up ahead. If not, then I don’t reckon the powers of the universe give a damn whether we like it or not.”

“I’d sleep standing up in a broom closet if it was dry,” she said.

“Be careful. You might have to do just that with that donkey of yours in there with you. And I’m not talking to you today. You don’t deserve conversation.”

Her big eyes widened even further. “What did I do?”

“You got into my cookies and my wine last night. I figure they moved Dodge City one mile further west for every cookie you ate and it’s going to rain to punish you for drinking my wine.”

She gulped. “I was hungry.”

“There was peanut butter and a whole loaf of bread. And you ate a real good supper, so what made you hungry?”

She could feel his eyes boring into her face. She tugged her hat down. She had a stone face when it came to poker, but her grandmother said she could tell when she was lying by looking into her eyes. No way could she tell him that sex had given her a ravenous appetite.

“Poker. I’m always hungry after I win a big pot at poker and we didn’t have a snack before we went to bed,” she lied.

“Hummph,” Coosie grunted.

“And besides, that wine tastes like shit so it shouldn’t rain to punish me for drinking it. There should be a five-star hotel waiting up ahead for us to stay in to pay me back for doing you a favor and drinking that crap.”

Coosie grunted again. “Me and Buddy like strawberry Boone. We was saving that bottle for the last night to celebrate two old men keeping up with the young bucks.”

“Old, my ass, and I’m not talking about Eeyore. You’re not a day over forty,” she said, glad to take the conversation away from the reason she was so hungry.

“Darlin’, me and Buddy will both be forty-eight if we live to see the fall. We was born six weeks apart. Me the first of October and him the middle of November.”

She looked out from under the brim of the hat. “I’ll buy you another bottle of that swill soon as we get to Dodge if you’ll call off the rain.”

He threw back his head and laughed. “Can’t do it. It’s already scheduled according to my leg, but you can buy me a bottle anyway.”

“Now will you talk to me?”

“Nope. My cookies are gone. I’m not in the mood for stories. And there’s no place to buy more so you’re shit out of luck.”

“You are mean,” she said.

“You are the one who ate the cookies.”

***

By nightfall she’d decided that hell was seeing southern Kansas from the back of a horse with no one but a gray donkey to talk to. She missed her cell phone and talking to her mother and friends. She even missed bantering with Joel, and that was really, really saying a lot. She missed looking at him across the boardroom table and arguing with him about everything from which show they’d run at what time to who would star in the show.

She and Dewar hadn’t had a rousing good argument. Yet they circled each other like wary dogs at the beginning, but since the first kiss, they’d been so busy trying to figure a way to be alone that they hadn’t had time for a fight. Would they weather it or would it be the undoing of them?

Lightning split the sky in the southwest and she counted, starting with one-Mississippi until she heard the faint clap of thunder. Ten minutes and it would be on top of them. Damn! She wished she would have never touched those cookies or that wine. They weren’t even that damn good.

“Y’all see that old trailer ov-v-ver there?” Buddy pointed.

“Looks like it’d have rats in it.” Haley shuddered.

“It’s d-d-dry inside. I checked it out,” Buddy said. “I’m takin’ my bed in there. Y’all can get blown away if you want.”

Coosie winked at Haley. “There’s your five-star hotel.”

“Looks to me like an old rusted-out trailer someone left behind,” Sawyer said.

“Looks like a dry place to sleep to me.” Finn followed Coosie and Buddy.

Lightning zigzagged through the air and she counted. Eight more minutes.

Eeyore brayed and hugged the back side of the chuck wagon. She hurried to his side, scratched his ears, and assured him that it wouldn’t hurt him. She looked across the distance at the trailer.

“Don’t even think about it,” Dewar said.

“He’s scared.”

“Probably always will be and he’ll always hunt up a barn or a wagon to hide behind, but there’s no way Coosie will let you take him in the trailer.”

“Just until the storm passes?”

Dewar shook his head.

“You are the trail boss. Make him let me take Eeyore inside until the storm passes. I’ll be mad for days if anything happens to my donkey, and I mean it.”

Dewar shook his head more emphatically. “And I’m saying no. He’s a donkey.”

She tilted her chin up at him defiantly. “Then I’ll stay out here with him.”

The next clap of thunder came three minutes after the lightning and Eeyore brayed again.

“You are picking a fight. Why?” Dewar asked.

“I am not! I just don’t want to leave him out here alone when he’s scared.”

“I’m not taking him in the house when it storms. You’ll be in Dallas and probably won’t even think about him when it thunders. So why are you fighting with me?”

“To see if we can stand it,” she said honestly.

“Well, pick another subject on a day when there’s not a damn tornado on the way.” He pointed to a wall cloud coming at them.

“A tornado looks like a funnel,” she said.

“That’s one kind but that one is worse. Grab your bedroll and saddle and run. We’ve got about two minutes,” he yelled.

The stillness was so eerie that she ran toward the place where she’d tossed her bed and saddle, snatched both up, and was on the first step of the trailer when she heard the distant sound of a train.

“It’s coming!” Dewar said right behind her.

“That is a train,” she hollered above the din.

The door opened and Buddy pulled her inside, held it open for Dewar, and then slammed it shut. “It won’t be v-v-very stable, but it’ll beat stayin’ outside.”

Eeyore set up a pitiful braying right outside the door. The noise that went along with it said that he was beating at the metal with his front hooves.

“God almighty, Dewar, he’s scared out of his mind. Either you open that door and let him in or I’m going outside,” Haley declared.

“Let the damn animal in. I swear to God he’s making more noise than the tornado,” Coosie said.

She slung the door open just as a clap of thunder rattled not only the trailer but her very bones. Eeyore sprang straight up and into the trailer, shaking himself like a dog, sprays of water sending cowboys diving behind folding chairs trying to get away from it.

The wind whipped the door shut with a loud bang and she turned around to see them all wiping at their faces and slapping their hats against their thighs.

“See what you did,” Dewar said. “Now we all smell like wet jackass!”

“You might as well smell like one. You’ve been acting like one. He’s scared. Poor baby.” She grabbed him by the wet ears and hugged him.

He shivered again, threw back his head, and brayed at the ceiling.

“What do you intend to do with him now?” Dewar asked.

“You’ve hurt his feelings,” she said. “You should apologize.”

Sawyer roared with laughter. “Apologize to a jackass? You’ve got to be kidding.”

Eeyore took a couple of steps away from Haley, backed up, and sat on Dewar’s lap and then looked at Haley with a hangdog look.

“He’s forgiving you.” Haley smiled.

Dewar pushed at him with both hands and Eeyore let out a bray that rattled the walls even worse than the wind and rain. He got to his feet, farted loud and long right in Dewar’s face, and trotted over to Sawyer.

Finn, Sawyer, and Rhett all covered their noses and backed into the kitchen with Coosie and Buddy. Dewar waved one hand around and held his nose with the thumb and forefinger on the other hand. “Damn, Haley, put him outside.”

“I will not. That’s what you get for being mean to him.”

Eeyore lumbered into the kitchen, head butted Sawyer, and stomped on Finn’s feet at the same time. Finn fell to the floor right beside Buddy, holding the toes of his boot and cussin’ a blue streak. “Damn donkey does not belong in a house and he sure don’t belong in a little bitty trailer. He’s got his tail up and he’s going to…”

“He just did,” Finn said. “And it don’t smell too good. Haley, it’s your jackass. You clean it up!”

“I will!” She grabbed a broom that had seen better days.

“Just be thankful he’s not big as an elephant,” Rhett said.

Eeyore turned around and licked Rhett’s face from chin to forehead with one big slurping motion. Rhett used both hands to try to get the slobbers from his face while Buddy guffawed behind him.

Eeyore’s rear end started to wiggle like a calf playing in the pasture and Rhett took off for the room at the end of the hall with Sawyer and Finn right behind him. Buddy threw both hands over his face, but Eeyore wasn’t thinking about licking. He wanted to play now that he was safe and warm.

Buddy hopped up on the bar and rolled into a ball. “Get this d-d-damned jackass away from me, Haley, or I’m going to shoot him and D-d-d-dex… I mean Coosie can cook him tomorrow.”

Haley took care of the mess on the floor, tied the bag shut, and fought with the door to get it open just enough to shove the bag outside. She melted into a chair beside Dewar and wondered if there would be a single cow left when the wind stopped blowing. Eeyore dropped his head in a pout and stomped back into the living room area. He laid his head on her lap and looked up at her with big pitiful brown eyes.

“See, he is sorry. He was scared.” She stroked his still-wet fur.

“Put him in the bedroom,” Coosie said.

The tone in Coosie’s voice said that if she didn’t, he’d kick poor old Eeyore out into the storm and her right behind him, so she led him into the room right off the living area, took a rope from around her saddle horn, and tied him to the closet door handle. “You stay right here, sweet boy. That old, mean storm will pass soon.”

When she backed out of the bedroom, Dewar was still fanning the smell away from his nose and Coosie had his hands on his hips.

“What?” she asked.

“He’s not eating with us,” Dewar said.

She cut her eyes around at him but didn’t answer. A short bar separated the living room from the kitchen to the left, a doorway into the bedroom where Eeyore let out another pitiful bray was to the right, with a hallway leading to another bedroom past the kitchen. Furniture was scarce, limited to a few plastic lawn chairs, a couple of metal folding chairs, and an old chrome table with a yellow top in the kitchen area.

“Looks like a huntin’ cabin to m-m-me,” Buddy said.

Wind and rain pounded the outside of the metal building with enough force that it should have tilted over, but it stood its ground. Haley sat down on the floor in the doorway into the bedroom and put her hands over her ears. “If Eeyore wasn’t in here with his weight, it would blow us away.”

“Think it’ll take us all the way to Oz?” Dewar asked.

She looked up and nodded.

One second it sounded as if a freight train was coming right through the middle of the trailer, the next the eerie quietness returned and sun rays filtered through the dirty windows to dance on the linoleum floor.

“Everyone okay?” Coosie asked from his refuge behind the bar in the kitchen.

“I’m alive,” Dewar said.

“We’re fine back here,” Sawyer hollered from the other end of the trailer where he, Finn, and Rhett had taken off to when Eeyore lifted his tail.

“They m-m-must have anchored this thing into concrete. I was sure we really were going to blow away,” Buddy said.

Dewar crossed the living room in a couple of long strides and opened the door. “I’ll check the cattle.”

Coosie joined him. “I’ve got to see about my wagon.”

Haley jumped to her feet and headed out right behind them.

“Where are you going? Your donkey is in the house,” Dewar said.

“And that’s where he’s going to stay. I’ll muck out the room tomorrow morning. He’s afraid of storms and I can see black clouds down to the southwest even yet.” She pointed.

“And what if a coyote or a mountain lion comes huntin’ a cow for supper?” Coosie asked.