Cowboy Seeks Bride (8 page)

“I’ll look forward to it,” Dewar answered.

“Just how far does your reputation as a ladies’ man go?” Haley asked.

“We are only about forty miles from Ringgold,” he said.

“Who is your bull-ridin’, prize-winnin’ woman?” she asked.

“Jealous? And we hardly know each other,” he teased.

She glared at him. “No, I’m not jealous. I just wasn’t prepared for the way the women act when they see cowboys. I’ll have to put that in my notes. The contestants will love it, and if there’s already a little love interest between a couple, then jealousy can be played up when they parade through Comanche.”

Dewar threw a hand over his heart. “I’m hurt. I thought that kiss meant you were madly in love with me.”

“I kissed a jackass once on the ear. It didn’t mean I was madly in love with him.”

“Four-legged or two-legged?”

“Four, but I have kissed two-legged ones as well. Neither one gave me the instant desire to look at wedding dresses and white cakes.”

“You are a tough cookie, Haley.”

“Yes, I am, Dewar, darlin’!” She drug out the last word until it became
darrr-lynnn,
like the hussy on the side of the road had done. “Now who was she?”

“That, Miz McKay, is not a damn bit of your business. Who she is or what she is to me has no bearing on your reality show. We’re going to open that gate up there and run the cattle back close to the original trail before we turn north. Get them off this main road and away from traffic. You can stay with me or fall back. As Rhett said in the movie, ‘Frankly, my dear, I don’t give a damn.’”

She stayed behind the chuck wagon the rest of the day. To know that line meant that Dewar had watched
Gone
with
the
Wind
and that made him a romantic. Rugged good looks and a soft romantic core? It’s a wonder all the women in Texas weren’t laying bets about who’d drag him to bed and hopefully down the aisle. That shrill cowgirl on the side of the road might have even put up the most money.

When they stopped that night in a cottonwood grove, her rear end had stopped aching and gone into the absolutely numb stage. She slid off Apache, loosened the bedroll, and carried it over toward the place where she and Dewar had already thrown down his gear. Coosie was setting up his irons to cook supper. Buddy hustled firewood. Cattle were lining up at Claridy Creek to get a drink.

She rolled out her bedroll on the ground under a big tree and walked down to the edge of the creek, stuck her hand in it, and groaned. It was clear water, tumbling over a rocky bottom and would have made a lovely place to take another bath. But it felt as if it was coming straight off an ice-capped mountain in Wyoming.

“Probably spring fed,” Dewar said at her elbow. “You brave enough to take a bath in that?”

“Not me. I had one last night that’ll have to do until we get to something warmer. I can use the dishrag to wipe the remaining chocolate from my shirt.”

“Then if you’ll stay at the camp, me and the boys will get washed up,” Dewar said.

Her eyes snapped open so wide that she could almost hear the pop. “You are kiddin’ me.”

“No, ma’am, I am not! You might offer to stir the stew for Coosie so he can get a bath, too. It’s been a long day. I reckon one of our longest since we managed eighteen miles and put on a parade to boot.”

Haley nodded and went back to the camp. Any man brave enough to shuck his clothes at the first of April and take a bath in ice water was a tougher cookie than she ever thought about being.

She was dreaming of Dewar wrapping his arms around her and drawing her close to his chest as they slept. His warm breath caressed her ear and the heat it generated felt like warm butter in sharp contrast to the chill of a spring morning. She didn’t want to open her eyes and leave the dream behind, so she reached up and her fingertips grazed his face, feeling the bristly growth of a day’s beard.

That wasn’t a figment of a dream. It was damn sure real! She popped her eyes wide open and crimson filled her cheeks. His face was so close to hers that she could count his eyelashes one by one.

“Don’t move a muscle. It’s curled up behind you,” he whispered softly.

“What?” She stiffened.

He eased an arm over her curled up body, sending tingles down her spine as his hand brushed against places he’d set on fire in her dreams.

“A huge rattlesnake. I didn’t want to shoot it and scare you. I want you to lie very still and not move. Whatever you do, don’t roll over. And don’t say anything else. You might wake him up.”

Every nerve in her body itched. Her muscles tensed so tight that they throbbed. She was afraid to blink and her eyes hurt with want for moisture. If he was teasing, he was a dead man. If he wasn’t, he might be anyway.

He eased a pistol up over her, covered her ear with his hand, and pulled the trigger.

Her scream would have curdled fresh milk and it brought every other cowboy to a sitting position so fast they looked like a blur. She threw both hands over her ears, shut her eyes, and tried to rip her way out of a zipped sleeping bag.

“Be still and let me help you,” Dewar yelled.

His mouth moved, so he was talking, but all she heard was the roar in her ears. She looked away from him and there it was, still coiled up but without a head, as big as King Kong and wicked as Lucifer. She shivered so hard that she feared her toenails had fallen off inside the sleeping bag.

Chilly wind circled her when Dewar finally got it unzipped to let her out. She wiggled free of the entanglement and danced around, swiping at her arms and neck worse than when the spider crawled inside her lacy underwear. Snakes! Spiders! She was throwing in the towel and going home to Dallas as soon as she found a pay phone. She didn’t care if her father fired her ass. She’d stand on the street corner with a soup can and beg for nickels before she ever got one mile away from civilization again.

Coyotes and bobcats at a distance were one thing. A snake slithering into bed with her was a whole different ball game. Yes, sir, she was going back to Dallas as soon as she could find a phone. And she would never again go anywhere that did not have hot and cold running water, toilets, and hair spray.

Coosie picked the snake up by the tail. It was as long as he was tall, even without a head, and its body was as big as his arm.

“Supper!” He grinned like he was right proud of the dead critter.

“You are shittin’ me,” she yelled.

The guys all laughed and she glared at them. There was not one thing funny about a damn snake snuggling up next to her or the roar in her ears. They could have the next one for a bed partner. She wasn’t sticking around to see if there was anything worse than rattlesnakes and panty spiders.

From the way they used their hands to talk, she guessed the breakfast conversation centered around who’d seen the biggest, baddest snake in the world. Sawyer made a hacking motion like he’d killed his trophy crawling varmint with a shovel or a hoe. Finn must’ve gotten his with a knife, and Coosie used his thumb and forefinger to show them how he’d shot one. To Haley’s way of thinking, there wasn’t a wrong way to kill a snake, so they were all heroes.

The roar in her ears continued while they saddled up and got under way after breakfast, but by midmorning it had toned down. She and Apache brought up the rear of the whole herd, each minute lasting a whole hour.

Boredom was what would send the contestants packing. Not snakes or bugs. It would be the pure boredom of day after day looking at a cow’s ass while their own rear ends turned into one big callus.

Dinner was held on the banks of Stage Stand Creek and consisted of cold biscuits stuffed with sausage and pepper jack cheese. She was glad that she could finally hear enough to listen to the stories the guys told about rattlesnake hunts down around Ringgold. She couldn’t believe any fool would actually go out and hunt those things. And Coosie must have been serious about eating the thing because Buddy asked him if he was going to use cayenne pepper in the cornmeal when he fried it.

She’d said that she’d eat anything and there wasn’t a doubt in her mind that they’d hold her to her word. But rattlesnake? Maybe they were teasing. She could hope so. Beans again or even peanut butter sandwiches sounded like gourmet food compared to snake. She wouldn’t even make her contestants eat snake.

Dinner was over too quickly. She’d make a note later to let the contestants draw out the dinner hour occasionally. That’s what she desperately wanted to do that day. Anything beat getting back on the horse and riding another five or six hours.

She’d barely settled back into the saddle when Apache’s muscles tensed and his front feet were suddenly fighting the air. She slid backwards, the saddle catching her before she scooted right off his backside and onto the ground. She glanced down to see where she was about to fall and a snake slithered by like it had all day to crawl away into the brush. With a force that jarred her teeth, Apache’s front feet came down, hitting the snake right behind its head.

And then the horse snorted and took off in a dead gallop. It was all she could do to hang on until he reached the edge of the creek and stopped so fast that she had to hug him like a brother or she would have shot right out over his head into the cold water.

One minute she was moving forward. The next she was jerked back. And then strong arms reached up and hauled her off the horse. Dewar set her firmly on the ground and held her close to his chest. She was amazed that his heart was speeding every bit as fast as hers. She looked up into his worried eyes, but before she could even thank him, cowboys came running through the trees. Buddy was stuttering and stammering and the rest of them weren’t doing much better.

“You okay, M-m-miz Haley?” Buddy spit out.

She nodded.

Coosie patted her on the shoulder. “You done good, girl. Any other fool would have fallen off that horse right on the snake. Now we got enough meat for a real meal tonight. I’ll skin this one and then we’ll get back on the trail.”

“I’m fine,” she said.

“You ready to make that phone call? I think Dewar’s phone has a little bit of power left,” Rhett asked.

She shook her head and said, “Hell, no!”

Where had those words come from? She wasn’t that brave, that mean, or that crazy. She wanted to go home to air-conditioning, exterminators, and a real bed with no varmints.

Dewar took his phone from his pocket and handed it to her with a wide grin and a twinkle in his sexy eyes. She flipped it open to see one bar left. She flipped it shut and handed it back to him, crawled up on Apache’s back, and rode him up over the embankment and back to the campsite where Coosie was busy skinning the second snake of the day.

Her granny Mahalia Jones always said that bad things came in threes. Well, she’d faced all three of hers in less than a week, so the rest of the journey should be smooth sailing. One mean old spider and two damned miserable rattlesnakes. Thank goodness she’d squashed the spider with her boot or Coosie would be rolling it in cornmeal and frying it for supper too.

She shuddered at that idea!

In no time he’d cut the snake into edible pieces and tucked them away inside the chuck wagon. Then they were right back on the boring trail. She wanted to get Coosie to talking about something… anything… to make the day go faster, but the only thing on her mind was having to eat that snake.

By evening she had convinced herself that she could eat it. If she could eat nutria down in Louisiana, then she could eat snake. She’d pretend like it was fried fish or chicken and eat one tiny little piece. Buddy helped her unsaddle Apache and she gave the big gray horse the usual thorough brushing before she turned him loose to graze on the spring grass.

She watched him romp around in the pasture like a young colt, thankful to be free of rider and saddle. She could understand his feelings. She’d be glad to be free of horse and saddle and get back to her life, hectic as it was. Apache rolled over a couple of times in the knee-high green grass and then stood up and started eating.

Haley’s stomach growled and she laid a hand on her midriff.

“Guess we are both hungry. I’ll trade with you. I’ll eat your grass if you’ll eat my piece of snake,” she muttered.

Someone touched her on the shoulder and after a day of thinking about spiders and snakes, the adrenaline rushed through her body so fast that she doubled up both fists, spun around, and was instantly ready to do war.

“Hey, I didn’t mean to startle you. I just wanted you to know I was here. I rolled out your bedroll for you,” Dewar said.

“Sorry, but after today everything is scary,” she said.

“I expect it is, but wait until you taste the supper. Hush puppies, baked beans, and fried rattlesnake. It don’t get any better than that.” Dewar grinned.

“Rib eyes, baked potato, and fresh green salad,” she said.

“I didn’t think you’d be brave enough to try fried snake,” he taunted.

“Oh, you didn’t, did you? Well, you better guard your plate with both hands, mister, because I’m hungry.” She wished for the second time that day that she could reach up into the evening breeze, snatch the words before they hit his ears, and cram them back in her mouth.

The first bite almost gagged her, but once she got past the idea of what she was eating, she had to admit it was delicious. Like mild-flavored fish with a nice spicy cornmeal coating that was very crispy. It was much better than the calamari that Joel ordered when he took her out to his favorite restaurant for dinner. And it was one hell of a lot better than that sushi stuff that Joel thought was the best shit since ice cream on a stick.

“Haley provided supper tonight. What are you fellers going to do to beat this kind of meal?” Coosie asked.

“I shot that snake,” Dewar argued.

“But you couldn’t have shot it if it hadn’t been on her bedroll, so it was her snake,” Coosie said.

“Squirrel tomorrow night,” Finn said.

“Young enough to fry? Won’t have time to boil one tender for dumplings if it’s an old one,” Coosie told him.

“Young enough to fry and maybe two or three old ones to boil after supper for dumplings for the next day,” Finn said.

Coosie pointed at him. “I’ll hold you to it.”

Dark clouds covered the moon and the stars that night soon after supper, bringing on nightfall a full hour earlier than usual. Coosie was the first one to turn in, followed by Buddy and then Finn. Sawyer yawned a few times and then he and Rhett were snoring.

Dewar had thrown out his bedroll closer to Haley’s than the previous nights and after they were tucked in he whispered, “You goin’ to be okay?”

“I’m fine,” she said. In reality she kept hearing slithering noises and her eyes darted from one side of the tarp to the other constantly, but she would rather fight another spider attack as admit it to him.

“I can sit watch four hours so you can sleep,” Dewar said.

“I said I’m fine!”

“Okay, then. You ready for squirrel tomorrow night?”

“Of course I am. This idea of wild game will make my show even better than the one about grappling catfish out of the Red River. The contestants’ faces will be priceless when they see wild game on the supper table. What makes you think Finn will get enough for supper anyway?”

Dewar laughed softly. “He was a sniper in the army.”