On Friday morning the wind kicked up again and the bandanas were jerked up to keep out the dust. Dewar rode to the back of the trail to make sure that Haley had her face covered. Her strange aqua-colored eyes looked huge when that’s all he could see. She rode with one hand and held her old straw hat on with the other.
“Pretty damn good cowgirl, ain’t she?” Coosie yelled from under his bandana.
Dewar nodded and turned around. When he passed Finn he made a motion for him to pull up for a minute.
“Something wrong?” Dewar asked.
Finn pulled his blue bandana down so he could talk. “You serious about that woman?”
“Why are you askin’?”
“Just wonderin’. Seems like in the past couple of days you been ridin’ to the back a little more than usual. I don’t think it’s to steal sweets from the wagon.”
“And if I was?”
“I’d say you was a smart man. She’ll do to ride the river with, man. I didn’t think she was worth a damn when she first joined the drive, but she’s done good, especially for a city girl.”
“What about that old sayin’ about takin’ the girl out of the city but you can’t get the city out of the girl?” Dewar asked.
“Hey, that girl is an exception. You’d do well to ask her out when we get home,” Finn said.
“I already did.”
“Smart move. Let me know how that turns out.” Finn pulled the bandana back up and rode off to bring a straggler back to the herd.
When night came the wind had ceased and they were stopping in a pasture with a working windmill and a big, round galvanized watering tank. The cattle lined up around the tank for their first water of the day. Eeyore waited his turn, checking the trees around them for any varmints that might be eyeballing his herd.
As she brushed Apache’s dapple-gray hair, she unfocused her eyes and pretended that the tank was a hot tub. The grass around it was hard wood and the trees beyond that were a steamy spa where she’d sit a while after an hour-long massage.
Two more nights on the trail and she could have all of it. When she got home, she’d make an appointment for a whole day at the spa complete with a massage, a facial, and mani-pedi. It actually was not an option. It was a pure necessity before she donned her power suit and high heels and walked back into the conference room.
She couldn’t go in there with her hair in braids, no makeup, and freckles shining across her nose.
“Oh, no!” she whispered.
She’d completely forgotten what the sun did to the freckles scattered across her nose when she spent too much time without sunblock. She had a small compact mirror in her purse tucked in the bottom of the saddlebags, but she hadn’t taken it out in days. She wondered just how much damage the wind and sun had done to her face.
One look at her arms told her that she now had a farmer’s tan. Brown below her shirtsleeves and white as the driven snow above them. Would Collette, her masseuse, know how to take care of that issue?
Coosie said that Sunday afternoon the boys were going to hit a bar or two and she could do whatever she wanted. Join them or stay in her room. Then the next day, on Monday, they were sleeping late and doing some sightseeing. On Tuesday morning bright and early the plane would be there to take them home.
Haley was determined that she was not going to the office her first day back in Dallas. Her father could have a fit for all she cared. It was going to take a whole day at the spa to make her presentable. If Carl Levy didn’t like it he could fire her because she was not backing down.
The next morning she awoke earlier than everyone else and picked up her notebook. The end was in sight and the contestants would be both grouchy and giddy. They needed something really big right there on the last two days to draw in the viewers. She tapped the pencil against the paper and tried to think, but nothing materialized. She rubbed her forehead and still nothing.
Then it came to her like a lightning flash. Someone was going to get sick and hold up the process another day. The cook could always pretend some illness that would prevent them from going on. Being so close and then to have to sit still a whole day with nothing to do would drive them all insane. She wrote that down and hoped the whole time that she wasn’t creating an omen and that Coosie would stay well.
Coosie coughed a couple of times and then rolled out of his bed, shook out his boots, and crammed his feet down in them. Haley held her breath until he started whistling. He wasn’t dying with consumption or he didn’t have pneumonia setting in out there thirty miles from a doctor.
“Hey, what’re you doing up so early? Gettin’ anxious about the end?” Coosie asked.
She pulled on her boots and joined him at the back of the chuck wagon where he was busy making biscuits and lining them up in the bottom of the big cast-iron Dutch oven.
“I woke up trying to think of something that would put a twist in the works right at the end of the reality show,” she said. “I decided that the cook was going to pretend an illness so they’d have to sit still right here for an extra day and then you coughed.”
Coosie laughed out loud. “That’s a good one. Or else one of the women could start throwing up. They could think it was food poisoning but it would turn out one of the men got her pregnant.”
Haley opened the spigot on the bottom of the barrel and filled the blue granite coffeepot. “But we couldn’t depend on that happening. It might, but it’s not a for-sure thing. The cook will be a paid employee and not a contestant, so he could feign sickness easily.”
“Who’s sick?” Dewar asked.
Sawyer sat straight up and rubbed his eyes. “Someone is sick? Well, shit! And right here at the end. We going to be able to go on?”
“No one is sick. We were talking about the reality show and the last few days of it,” Haley said.
“Well, thank God. I’m ready to go home to my girlfriend. I swear, I’ll never leave her for thirty whole days again. Hell, I might not even leave her for a couple of hours on Saturday night to go into town to a honky-tonk for a beer with the guys,” Sawyer said.
A stabbing pain hit Haley in the heart. She’d have to leave Dewar. Maybe not for thirty days but for at least a week. Probably two weeks before she could get away to see him again.
***
Saturday afternoon they crossed the Arkansas River. It hardly seemed like a river at all since it was nothing more than a dry riverbed. The chuck wagon had forded rivers, creeks, and gullies since the day they left Ringgold without a problem, but that day the wheels buried in the sand and no amount of horsepower could budge them.
Coosie wiped sweat from his bald head with his bandana and glared at Haley. “You wanted a problem to hold your show up a day. Looks like you got it. I might have expected you to make us a day late.”
Coosie motioned for Buddy. “Come help me unload the wagon. If it’s lighter maybe they can get it across and then we’ll reload it.”
“Haley, you take Buddy’s place with the cattle then. And you two can catch up with us when you’re back on firm ground,” Dewar told Buddy and Coosie.
She rode on ahead to Buddy’s normal place alongside the cattle and in a few minutes Sawyer was right beside her. “Hey, are you serious about my cousin?”
She shrugged.
“I talked to him about you.”
She raised both eyebrows.
“I like you, Haley. I really do, but you’re not for him. He’s not poor by any means but you can’t make a silk purse out of a sow’s ear, you know.”
“I would think how I feel about Dewar is my business. And I’ll have you know I’m not a sow’s ear,” she said tersely.
“I’m not talkin’ about you, darlin’. I’m talking about Dewar. He’s a cowboy. You are a city girl. You can’t mix halos and horns.”
“And which am I? Horns or halos?”
“Okay, then you can’t mix spikes and spurs.”
“Oh? I betcha I could get a pair of spurs on my spike heels. We have a date planned. You want to make it a double date with your girlfriend? She could wear that black lacy thing you were talking about,” Haley said.
Damn, she wished he would have never brought that blasted cup of coffee to her bedroll. They didn’t get all concerned about the day he’d held her hand on the walk to the church as they did about that cup of coffee. What made it such a serious gesture?
She kept turning in the saddle and looking back, hoping to catch sight of Buddy and Coosie. As cranky as Coosie was, she liked riding with him better than Sawyer. But the sun kept getting lower and lower and still the wagon didn’t show.
Dear
Lord, what if I jinxed it when I thought about the cook getting sick? What if he broke an arm or worse, a leg, trying to get that wagon out of the sand? Buddy could never pick him up, as big as he is. What if Buddy fell and hit his head while trying to get Coosie into the wagon? One of us should have stayed with them just to be a lookout. They aren’t young anymore. With that much work, they could even have a heart attack and be lyin’ back there dead.
Finally, when Dewar had called it a day and stopped beside a farm pond, she heard Coosie cussing not far behind them and shouted, “They did it! They got the wagon out of the sand.”
Eeyore brayed and rushed to her side. She scratched his ears and told him that she was fine. “I was just worried about the wagon. Give me time to get Apache brushed and out to eat his supper and then I’ll brush your coat.”
“That jackass knows which side his bread is buttered on.” Finn chuckled.
“What’s that mean?”
“None of us would brush him or make him into a pet the way you have. I bet you want Dewar to take him in the house when it snows this winter.”
“He
will
have a stall in the barn, right, Dewar?”
“Quit worrying about Eeyore and get the fire going for supper.” Coosie hopped down from the buckboard. “Me and Buddy worked up an appetite back there.”
Finn and Sawyer gathered sticks and Rhett started removing the harnesses from the horses and brushing them down. In no time there was a pot of stew bubbling over the fire and a pan of corn bread cooking above that.
“This will be our last supper on the trail. I’ll cook up extra for breakfast and we’ll have leftovers from that for dinner tomorrow,” Coosie said as he prepared supper.
“Wow!” Dewar exclaimed.
Buddy nodded. “We’ve almost m-m-made it.”
Dewar looked at Haley. “So you think you can put a reality show together with what we’ve done?”
“Oh, yeah!” she said.
He looked across the campsite at his cousins. “Are you boys ready to go back to Texas?”
Sawyer raised his hand. “I am ready for a hotel room to scrub the grime off me first.”
“Trip has been very good for me. I’m glad I came along for the ride and I think I’ve faced off my demons. I’m ready to go home,” Finn said.
“I’m tired of this and I’m ready for a job that lets me sleep in a bed at night and take a shower. I’m even ready to dance with a pretty girl. How about you, Buddy?” Rhett asked.
“Ah, me and old D-d-dex… I mean Coosie could do this forever if it was just chasin’ cows and cookin’ supper. But if we couldn’t go d-d-dancin’ on Saturday nights, then we’d just as soon be back at the D-d-double D-d-deuce.”
“You got that right. I wouldn’t mind this kind of livin’ if we could stop at a motel, clean up, and go have a beer and a two-step with the ladies every so often,” Coosie said.
“What about you, Dewar? You tired of the trail?” Finn asked.
“I think I am. Now let’s roll out our bedrolls one more time. Tomorrow we’ll send them all home with the horses.”
Haley busied herself getting her bed arranged, keeping her head turned away from the cowboys so they couldn’t see the tears streaming down her face.
Haley fidgeted in her saddle. She’d proven, by damn, that she wasn’t all fluff, high heels, and hair spray. She could go out into the field and do the job. The last ten minutes of the journey took them toward an enormous feedlot already brimming with cattle. Several semis were parked in front of the small office building, but two took her eye immediately. One was bright red with Double Deuce painted on the side and the other was shiny black with the O’Donnell Horses logo printed on the side.
Those would be the trucks there to take the horses and Eeyore back to Ringgold. She swallowed an enormous lump in her throat and leaned forward to kiss Apache between the ears.
“You’ve been a good horse. I’ll miss you,” she whispered.
Eeyore trotted along beside her and looked up at the sound of her voice.
She wiped the tears on the sleeve of the denim jacket Liz had loaned her. “You’ll be happy on the ranch. I promise I’ll come and see you when I can.”
The first day she’d thought it was all a big April Fools’ joke. Now with good-byes at hand, she wished it had been.
When she and Coosie reached the parking lot, the cattle were already in three big pens. Liz, Raylen, Tyson, and Lucy sat on the porch of the office in rocking chairs. Lucy left the porch and threw her arms around Coosie first and then Buddy.
Haley expected someone ten feet tall and bulletproof, but Lucy was a short, pregnant brunette. Haley didn’t see anything outstanding about her until she dismounted and saw her crystal clear blue eyes. They sparkled like the ocean water on the Hawaii shoreline and absolutely looked like they could see under Haley’s hat and right into the depths of her soul.
“I’m Lucy and I missed Buddy and Dexter something awful.” She extended her hand. “I didn’t even get to talk to them on the phone. That’s just not right.”
Haley shook her hand and then saw another person coming toward her.
“I’m Tyson. Lucy is my wife and she keeps us all in line at the Double Deuce.”
Tyson was almost as big as Coosie. He had close-cropped red hair and the freckled complexion that went with it. His shoulders were square to match his face, and his arms looked like he was a professional wrestler.
“Lucy should not be riding in that truck,” Coosie grumbled.
“That’s what I said but you know how it is.” Tyson grinned.
Lucy popped her hands on her hips. “It’s six weeks until the baby gets here. I could ride that horse if I wanted to.”
Haley liked Lucy immediately. The woman had enough spunk that she could have probably ridden a horse for thirty days even if she was pregnant.
“You tell him. He never listens to me. And he made us call him Coosie the whole trip and, if we didn’t, he said when the trip was done, we had to give him a dollar for every time we made a mistake,” Haley said.
“Well, you are Dexter to me and always will be.” She looked over at Haley. “You’ve got to be a strong woman to have survived a month with this crew. Come visit me. I’d love to hear the stories.”
“Thank you!” Haley stuck her tongue out at Coosie.
“That piece of meanness comes on the Double Deuce, I’ll hide,” Coosie teased.
“You can run, but I can run faster,” Haley said.
Dewar rode up from the pens and dismounted. “We did it! We made it on schedule and in spite of a stampede, the cattle weighed in really good.”
Raylen gave him one of those man hugs that said he’d missed his brother. “Momma is of the same opinion as Lucy. You aren’t going to be able to go very far for a long time and you’ll have to be home by suppertime.”
“No problem there,” Dewar said.
“Well, unsaddle them and we’ll load ’em up. We drove up yesterday and had a little sightseeing today. Now we’ve got to get these trucks headed toward home if we’re going to get these horses in their stalls by midnight,” Raylen said.
“You’ll be takin’ that sorry-lookin’ little jackass home too,” Dewar said.
“You’ve got to be kidding me.” Raylen snorted when he laughed.
“Nope. It belongs to Haley. Stupid thing survived lightning and he’s her pet, only the fancy apartment she lives in seems to have a thing about four-legged jackasses. They let two-legged ones walk through the doors any old time. Just because Eeyore doesn’t own a three-piece suit or Italian loafers he can’t go inside,” Dewar said.
Haley poked him on the arm. “You better take good care of him or he’ll tattle.”
“I don’t doubt it for a minute,” Dewar said.
Liz looped one arm through Haley’s and the other through Lucy’s. “Come on, ladies. We only have a few minutes to visit while they load up.”
Haley removed her hat and jean jacket and handed them to Liz before she sat down in a rocking chair. “Thank you for letting me borrow them. I had no idea that day what I was getting into.”
“Your suit and shoes are at my house. I’ll put them in the backseat of your car tomorrow,” Liz said. “There’s something different about you, Haley. What happened out there on the drive?”
Lucy sat down in a rocking chair and whispered, “Did something happen out there between you and Dewar?”
“We don’t mean to be rude. It’s just that both of us noticed the way his eyes were on you when he rode up,” Liz said.
“I don’t know. We have a date sometime in the future. He’s taking me to the Chicken Fried.”
“It’s Dewar.” Lucy sighed.
“Dewar wouldn’t be taking you to our local restaurant for the whole area to see you with him if he didn’t really, really like you,” Lucy explained.
“Then it’s a big thing?” Haley asked.
“Yes, it is. Put on your best cowboy boots,” Liz said seriously.
Haley straightened a leg and looked at the only pair of boots she owned. They’d walked through mud, cow shit, and rivers for a whole month.
“This is it,” she said.
Liz laughed. “I know exactly where you are coming from, honey. I was in your boots a couple of years ago.”
Dewar let out a whoop that caused Haley’s head to jerk around so fast that it made her dizzy.
Liz smiled. “Raylen just told him that we’re expecting a baby in December. If you listen just a minute you’ll hear another one. Yep, there it is.”
“What’s the second one?” Haley asked.
“Their sister, Colleen, is also going to have a baby,” Lucy said. “The O’Donnells love kids. The more the better.”
“Plus yours,” Haley said.
“They’re claiming him. In Kentucky we call it shirttail kin. Looks like the menfolks got the wagon in the trailer. And Tyson is motioning to me. Our gossip session is done.”
“Have fun these next two days and we’ll set up a girls’ night to have a long visit. Does Dewar have your phone number?” Liz asked.
“He will before we part company,” Haley said.
“Good. Oh, and go see the Boot Hill Museum. It’s pretty neat.”
“And get your pictures made at that old-time photography place,” Lucy threw over her shoulder.
Just that quick it was over.
Cattle in the pens. Eeyore in the truck headed for the O’Donnell ranch. The chuck wagon and two horses in the Double Deuce truck. It reminded Haley of Christmas morning when she was a little girl. She’d looked forward to the day for a whole month, shook the presents, sat for hours watching the twinkling lights, agonized over what kind of cookies to make for Santa, and then in less than an hour it was over.
She stood there bewildered and confused. Would her contestants feel like that when their horses were loaded up and taken away?
“Oh, shit!” she mumbled.
“What?” Coosie asked.
“My things from the saddlebags,” she said.
“Are in grocery bags in the trunk of that black car over there.” Dewar pointed.
One small black Chevrolet and two large white mini-vans were parked on the other side of the office porch.
“We got the white minivan since there are three of us, and besides, we called it first,” Finn said. “And we let Coosie and Buddy have the other van since Coosie would have to eat his knees if he got into that little bitty car.”
She looked at Dewar.
He shrugged. “We got the short straw. Raylen delivered our money for the month. So here they are, folks.” He passed out envelopes filled with twenty-dollar bills to each of the cowboys and had two left when he was done. “One for you and one for me. Where do you want to go first?”
Haley was stunned. “I get paid too?”
“You worked. You get paid.”
She took the envelope with H. B. McKay written on the outside.
“I want to go shopping,” she said.
Finn grinned so big that his eyes disappeared. “Well, that settles it. She’s riding with you, Dewar.”
“Y’all ain’t going to buy new duds?” Dewar asked.
“Nope. I intend to do laundry at the hotel, take a bath, and put on my clean clothes and then go out on the town,” Finn said.
“You can bet your sweet little ass I’m not shopping. Me and Buddy is going to get some good old hamburgers and take them to our room and watch television all night,” Coosie said. “Lord, I missed
Law
and
Order
.”
“Looks like you are with me. I suppose the trail boss should suffer through shopping and let the rest of the crew have a good time,” Dewar said forlornly.
“Well, that’s so nice of you,” she smarted off.
“See, I told you. She’s got a temper to go with that red hair,” Sawyer said.
Haley held out her hand. “I believe one hundred dollars of what is in that envelope belongs to me.”
He opened it up and counted out five twenty-dollar bills, put them in her hand, and said, “Don’t spend it all in one place, darlin’.”
“It’d buy a nice second tat,” Rhett said.
She pointed at him. “Go get a haircut and hush!”
“We’ll meet at the airport at twelve thirty, day after tomorrow,” Dewar said.
Coosie and Buddy’s van pulled out onto the road heading into town with the other cowboys right behind them. Dewar opened the passenger door to the small car for Haley and waited until she was settled before he closed it. He whistled on the way around the back end of the vehicle. He’d wondered how in the great green earth he and Haley would ever get to ride in the same vehicle and spend the next couple of days together without a problem, but she’d fixed it all by saying that she wanted to go shopping.
“So where to, m’lady?” Dewar asked.
She raised one shoulder. “I have no idea. Never been here before. I need a shop that sells underwear and clothes. Doesn’t have to be fancy.”
He backed the car around and pulled out onto the highway. “I haven’t been here in a couple of years. We come up to the rodeo sometimes. I do remember a Walmart because we went there to buy food.”
“That will do fine,” Haley said.
“You’ll wear Walmart clothes?” He gasped.
“I’d wear Goodwill right now.”
“Okay, then Walmart it is. I think we turn on Fourteenth Street if I remember right. The hotels are all on Wyatt Earp Boulevard and Fourteenth comes right off that.”
“There is Fourteenth,” she said excitedly and flinched when a truck passed them.
“Trucks go faster than horses, darlin’.” Dewar chuckled.
“Who would have thought it would be difficult to adjust back into the world?” she said.
“It spooked me too,” he admitted.
“I see the sign. Wow! I’m getting excited about a Walmart. I think you’ve made me into a redneck, Dewar.”
“Only for a little while. When we get back to Texas, you’ll be the high-maintenance businesswoman you were when you joined up with this renegade band of cowboys.”
He parked the car and she was out of it before he could open the door for her. She grabbed his hand and practically pulled him inside the store and shivered when the cold air rushed out.
“I’d forgotten about air-conditioning. It wasn’t a dream. It really does exist,” she said.
“Yes, ma’am. Now where to first?”
“Underwear. Mine is threadbare and then a couple of outfits to get me home. And a pair of sandals, some fingernail polish, and hair spray and good soap.”
He pulled out a shopping cart. “Guess we’re going to need this. We might even need to call Coosie to come tote your things to the hotel in the van.”
She grabbed the front of the cart and pulled him toward the clothing section. “Why did he get the van anyway?”
“Raylen said that there were only three cars left at the small rental company and he took them all. He’d hoped to get club cab pickup trucks for us, but he had to settle with what they had. The company did agree to come out to the airport and get them on Tuesday so we don’t have to take them back and get taxis.”
She tossed three pairs of lacy bikini underpants in the cart and followed those with two new bras and then pulled the cart in the direction of a rack of sundresses. She chose a white one with pink polka dots and a mint green one and headed for the shoe aisle. If anyone had told her six months before that she’d wear a pair of shoes from Walmart, she’d have ordered up a CAT scan for them.
She picked up a pair of pink sandals and a white pair and put them into the cart. “Now to the place where they sell sweet-smelling soap, bubble bath, and shampoo.”
“I need some Stetson and a new razor. I reckon those will be in the same place,” Dewar said.
She stopped and looked up at him. “I’m sorry. Did you want to buy new clothes?”
“I’m going to do what the boys are doing. Find the laundry room at the hotel and do some washing. I could probably use new socks. Mine all have holes in them.”
She steered him toward the menswear. “Tube socks for boots?”
He nodded and she tossed in a bag with six pairs.
“Underwear?”
“Commando.”
She shivered.
“Cold?” he asked.
“No, commando. That was not a weather shiver but an anticipation one.”
He grinned. “It’s going to be an interesting two days.”
She stopped at the cosmetics section and threw in everything she thought she might need. While she did that, he picked up a bottle of Stetson, shaving cream, and a new razor.
“Now food,” she said.
“We’re eating in tonight?” he asked.
“Let’s order pizza tonight in the room. And I need a nightshirt or…” She wiggled her eyebrows.
“Black and lacy like Sawyer said?” Dewar asked.