Much Ado About Mavericks (30 page)

Teddy tugged on Ben’s sleeve.  “Is it a boy, or a girl?”

“Girl,” Ben said.

“Heifer,” Jake corrected.  She sure as hell didn’t want Teddy to make a fool of himself in front of the other cowhands.

Teddy put his reins in his right hand and held out his left.  “Put her on my pony.  I’m big.  I’ll take good care of her.”

“How about I carry her back to camp?” Ben asked the boy.  “She’s just a baby, but she’s bigger than you are.”  Pleased with the way Ben handled the boy, she kept her silence.

“Yeah, she’s bigger--but I’m older.  And smarter.”  He patted the calf on her head.  “I’m naming her Suzanne.”

“Suzanne?”  Ben chuckled and cast a sidelong glance at the boy.  Jake reckoned he thought naming a calf after his sister might vex her.  “Why Suzanne?”

Shrugging, Teddy said, “Because that’s the only girl’s name I know.  Well, besides Jake.”  He thought a minute and wrinkled his nose.  “Or Henry, and I ain’t
never
naming a baby that.”

“All right, Suzanne it is, then.”  Ben motioned to his right.  “You stay next to me so she can watch you while you’re riding.  That way she’ll learn who you are.”

Jake rode behind them, marveling at how kind Ben could be to the strays.  He wasn’t the faintest bit like the other snobs she knew.  Like Osbourne Callison, Ezra Lawrence’s lawyer, for one.  He had always treated her like horseshit, and acted like she deserved it.  She spat on the ground. 

If she had anything to do with it, that wimpy little bastard could hightail it back to
Nampa
before lining his pockets with Ben’s money.  Truth is, she didn’t think it would come to that--she put her money on Ben.  He was tough, smart, and fair. 

Her mouth went dry just looking at his broad shoulders and muscular thighs.  He’d proven himself strong, and strength counted for everything in this country.  Too bad he’d be in
Boston
within the month.  He’d be a helluva rancher if he put his mind to it.  And a helluva partner, too.  She dismissed the whole idea and rode on.

By the time they got to the
camp
Jake
was plenty tired of eating alkali dirt.  And of listening to that bawling calf.  She knew it was hungry and thirsty.  “Whip, Teddy here’s got himself a stray.  Give him something to feed it.”

Ben handed the heifer down to the old cowhand.  “You can have
it
.”

“It ain’t an
it
, Whip.”  Teddy slid off his pony and scrambled to the calf, hugging her.  “It’s a she, and her name’s Suzanne. She’s
my
stray.”

Whip
chuckled at Teddy, then studied the limp calf.  “She’s hurting.  Come along with me and we’ll see what we can do for her.”

“Looks like we lost our littlest cowhand to doctoring,” Jake said.

Ben jumped off his horse and cursed.  Jake took a look and saw a green streak down one leg. 

“Need to do a little laundry there, cowhand?”  She guffawed as she dismounted and loosened the cinch on Blue.  She grabbed the bay’s reins.  “I’ll take care of your horse.”

“Thanks,” he grumbled.

An hour later, Ben, smelling a helluva lot better and carrying a plate of beans and biscuits, sat on the log beside her.  He rested his elbows on his knees, holding the plate in the middle.

“Tired?” she asked.

He grunted and shoveled a spoonful of beans in his mouth.  Staring at the fire, he chewed for the longest time.  Jake wondered if the calf shit had been one too many humps for the
Boston
lawyer to jump.  She finished her coffee and just sat there, waiting for him to crack.

Finally, he mumbled something.

“Say again?”

He swallowed, then sighed.  “I like it here.”

“Here?”

He nodded and took another bite.  After what seemed the longest time, he gazed at her and grumbled, “I like it here.  The sagebrush, the cows, the kids . . .”  Lowering his gaze until her breasts tingled like when he touched them, he said, “You.”

She could hardly breathe with so much want, but he sounded like a man on his way to the hanging tree.  “Well, hell,” she said, digging the toe of her boot in the dirt. “is that so bad?”

“Yes.”

*   *   *   *   *

Jake stared at the stars and listened to the chorus of snoring.  Everyone in camp slept except her.  Not that she hadn’t tried, but when she closed her eyes, she saw Ben’s handsome face and then imagined running her hands over his broad shoulders and muscular chest.  That man had a body any female would lust after.  Her temperature rose ten degrees just thinking about him.

And when she opened her eyes, she saw the same stars they’d gazed at when he rubbed her back.  And other places.  Then she couldn’t hold still for the want he’d planted in her.

Ben never once said he loved her—at one time he’d said he cared for her and now he said he liked her.  But he’d never said he loved her.  Problem was, she loved him, and had since before the roundup although she tried not to let him know. 

But if he liked
Owyhee
County
enough, if he liked her enough, would he stay?  Surely a man as smart as he was could find a way--unless greed got in the way.  He did say that he’d made a lot of money in
Boston
.  She knew he could never make that kind of money here unless he struck gold--which some of them had.

But not on the Bar EL.  The
Lawrence
ranch was a cattle ranch, no place to be dug up and ruined.  No, Ben would have to give up his fat wallet if he chose to stay.

As the first streaks of dawn pe
e
ked over the mountains in the east, she made up her mind.  By damn, she’d fought for every damned thing she ever got, and she’d fight for Ben.  Play dirty, if needed.

Chapter 15

Frost settled on the land, making the morning eerily bright.  Ben’s blankets crackled when he threw them off of him.  Jake, already up, threw her plate in the wreck pan and saddled her horse.  She never looked at him once.

Pleased that Jake pretended that he hadn’t said what he’d said the previous evening, Ben saddled the paint and readied himself for another day.  Knife day.  God, how he hated castrating.  And he refused to eat
Rocky
Mountain
oysters.

The rest of it he liked—enjoyed even.  Two months ago, he wouldn’t have imagined that a day in the saddle, roping and cajoling cattle, could be so satisfying.

And if anyone had told him that he would fall madly in love with a six-foot, red-headed, bar-brawling cowhand, he’d have laughed out loud.  But he had, and he wasn’t laughing.

He sheathed his knife and mounted the paint, who shied and high-stepped for the required two minutes.  By the time roundup ended, he’d be a pretty damned good horse, Ben figured.  He’d grown attached to the ornery beast—one more reason he
didn’t want to leave.  But he sh
ould.

Jake rode up, reins in her left hand and her right resting on the Colt strapped to her shapely hip.  “You’re riding out today.”

He shrugged, not wanting to look like a shirker, and said, “It’s knife day.”

“Not for you, it ain’t.  Crazy Jim’s castrating today, and Whip’s looking after the strays and the heifer.  You’re coming with me.”

“Where?”

“I gotta check out some new grazing land for next season.”

He would have bet his
Boston
house, his horse, and three fingers of his right hand that she already knew every single square inch of this country.  “All right.”

He dismounted and fetched a canteen and some biscuits.  The paint didn’t think highly of the canteen rubbing on his side, and snorted and stomped until Ben unhooked it from the pommel. 

“Give it here,” Jake said.  “Ain’t no use pissing off a greenbroke horse.”

He mounted, went through the high-stepping ritual again, and then they left.  They rode north, fairly hard, for an hour.  Jake hadn’t said much.  Hell, she hadn’t uttered a word, but she seemed determined to get wherever they were going in record time.  At least the paint had settled down.

Ben had no idea why he was so drawn to this woman who had her own ideas about life.  She was the only lady foreman in
Idaho
Territory
and the best at what she did.  Even though life seemed harder for her than most women, she never complained and showed genuine pleasure in the cattle, the horses, and the land.

“Jake, how did a beautiful woman end up as the foreman on the Bar EL?”

“Worked for it.”  She shrugged her collar higher onto her neck to ward off the cold breeze.  “And don’t call me a beautiful woman.  Your sister is pretty.  Your
Boston
girlfriend is beautiful—at least when she ain’t wearing whore’s clothes.  I’m just a cowhand.”

“You’re not
just
anything.  Still, I want to know how you came to earn your living as a cowhand.  Were you born around here?”

“Don’t rightly know where I was born.  Probably
Texas
somewhere.”

“Where did you grow up, then?”

“On the cattle trails.  My pa rode the Goodnight Trail and all the rest them, too, and I went everywhere he went.”

“Good Lord, he took a little girl on the cattle trail?”

“Since I was two or so.  Yep.”  Jake took a drink of water from her canteen.  “And don’t say nothing bad about my pa.  He did the best he could and he taught me how to be a damned good cowhand up until the train ran over him in
Salt Lake City
.”

“Where was your mother?”

“She up and died.  He was heartbroke about it—never did get over it.  I just hope they’re together in the Big Cattle Trail in the sky.”

“Most men would’ve sent their baby daughter to live with relatives.”

“Most men would’ve, but he didn’t.  I don’t know if there are any because he never did say and I never asked.  No reason to.  I belonged on the trail with him.”

“And then?”

“A steer broke from the pack as we were waiting for the train, and the cowpony did his job—only the steer went right on the tracks and the train killed all three of them.”  She snapped her fingers. “Just like that.”

“And that was in
Salt
Lake
.  So how’d you get to Henderson Flats?”

“Some of the men had hired on with the Bar EL, so I decided to go with them.  Once we got there, Mr. Lawrence wanted to boot my ass out, but I showed him I could do a man’s work, so he agreed I could stay.”

“And now you’re foreman.”

“Yep.”

The wind kicked up, blowing down the back of his neck.  Reining his horse to a stop, he pulled the collar of his coat up and scrunched his neck in it.

“Damned cold out here,” Jake said as she loosed her hair from the single long braid and tucked it in her collar.  “I know a place where we can get out of the wind.”

He was so cold, all he could do was nod.

“Firewood there, too.  Fifteen minutes away.”

“Sounds good,” he gritted out.  “Let’s go.”

They rode a while, then descended a hill to the valley.  “It’s over there,” Jake said, pointing.  “Follow me.”

He didn’t know what the hell else he’d do.  He’d been following her the whole damned day, with nothing but a frozen nose and ass to show for it.  Studying the direction she pointed, he sure didn’t see anything that looked like shelter. 

She led him into a canyon—a beautiful little canyon with green shrubs lining a babbling creek.  They rode in deeper, and Ben could hear the sound of rushing water upstream—much louder than the bubbling stream beside him.

“This here’s
Jump
Creek
Canyon
.”  She smiled as she dismounted.  “Nice place, ain’t it?”

The steep, jagged rock walls of the canyon protected a beautiful waterfall, a pond, and a pristine creek bed.  The shrubbery was still green, even this late in the season, and the temperature was a good fifteen degrees warmer.  “A beautiful place,” he agreed as he dismounted.

Jake had loosened the cinch on her horse and ground-tied him.  Ben didn’t trust the paint to stick around, so led him to the stream and watered him, then hobbled him before he removed the saddle.  He left the blanket on, since the horse was hot and the day was cold.

“I’ll start a fire,” Jake said as she gathered a bunch of sticks.  “You bring the grub.”

She led him along a rocky path upstream.  The splashing sound of water grew louder with each step.  Finally, they came upon a pretty little waterfall.  “There ain’t much water this time of year—sometimes none, but it’s right pretty.”

He had to agree.

“C’mon.”  She leapt across more rocks to a clearing on one side to a well-used fire pit dug in the sand and lined with rocks.  “Indians used to live here.  The Paiute.”

*   *   *   *   *