Scotsman Wore Spurs (7 page)

Seeing Kirby walking toward him, he looked to the trail boss for an explanation. “Is this sort of weather normal?”

Kirby shook his head. “Ain't no such thing as ‘normal' in this part of Texas. Weather can turn real strange out here. I've seen blizzards in May.” Looking at the sky, he shook his head again. “I don't like this. I don't like it one damn bit.” And with that, he walked away, striding across the campsite toward Damien.

Drew gulped down the rest of his food, drank his coffee, rinsed his plate and cup, and left them in the barrel where they were stored. In the few minutes he'd been in camp, the temperature had fallen sharply. He shivered inside his light cotton shirt as he walked to the hoodlum wagon, where he kept his bedroll and extra clothes. He hesitated a moment, then pulled on a wool shirt and his slicker. He might well need it before his watch had finished.

As he started toward the remuda and a fresh horse, Kirby stopped him.

“Be real careful tonight,” the trail boss said. “Cattle are always a little spooked the first few nights, and this sky …” His gaze traveled heavenward again. “There's a storm brewing. A bad one.” Offering Drew a twisted smile, Kirby added, “You might try one of those soothing Scottish melodies.”

Before Drew could reply, Damien interrupted. “Hell, that will spook them straight to Mexico,” he said nastily.

Kirby gave his nephew a long, warning glance, and Damien glared at Drew.

“I wouldn't trust him with those cattle,” Damien said to his uncle.

“I would,” Kirby said quietly. “And you'll take the second shift, Damien, so you'd better get some sleep.”

Drew felt the enmity practically ooze from Damien before the younger man turned and walked over to flop down on his bedroll. Kirby gave him a nod, then headed over to talk to Pepper, and Drew was left to wonder—not for the first time—how seriously he ought to take Damien's blatant anger toward him. Would Kirby's nephew actually do him harm? He didn't know, and that being the case, he reminded himself to watch his own back.

He saddled a fresh horse from the remuda and mounted. As he rode off toward the herd, he caught a glimpse of a small, semibent silhouette—Two-Bits, hunched over an armful of cow chips, heading toward the chuck wagon.

Relieved, Drew smiled. He hadn't even been aware that he was worrying about the lad. Didn't know why he cared enough to worry. Yet he couldn't seem to keep Gabe Lewis out of his thoughts for long, and he found it comforting in a way he didn't begin to understand that the lad was still with the drive.

He didn't understand his concern for Gabe Lewis any better than he understood why he had let himself get involved with Kirby Kingsley. He usually went out of his way
not
to get involved. Yet here he was, dead tired and filthy and longing for a good snifter of brandy, riding off into what promised to be one hell of a bloody storm. And for what purpose? To tend a bunch of cattle.

Stupid beasts, cows. Didn't possess a grain of sense, nor any redeeming qualities he could name. So, why was he killing himself on this damn drive in exchange for fifty of the cursed beasts? One game of chance in town, and he'd have enough money for a clean room, a good meal, and a lusty woman.

Pride, he thought. It had to be. There simply was no other explanation. He'd accepted Kirby's offer out of curiosity and adventure and now was stuck with a decision too readily made. He'd never been a quitter, no matter what else he'd been—or hadn't been.

As he began his first long circle of the sleeping herd, Drew started to sing softly—a Scottish lullaby that one of his nurses had sung to him long, long ago, in another lifetime.

Gabrielle was on her way back to camp with her latest load of cow chips when she saw Drew Cameron ride back toward the herd. She wondered whether he'd heard about her latest debacle. Embarrassment ripped through her as she remembered each humiliating moment.

Stew had been a last-minute replacement for supper tonight. The planned menu had been beans, which she'd put on the fire as soon as they'd stopped at midafternoon, far ahead of the herd. Pepper had been busy making bread and had told her to put beans into a pot with water.

She'd done exactly that, pleased that he had trusted her with that small chore. But then Terry Kingsley had arrived, telling them that the herd was an hour behind, and he'd taken a taste of the beans, immediately spitting them out. The younger Kingsley had sworn first at Pepper, who'd then turned on her.

“What's the matter now?” Pepper asked sharply, and when Terry held up his tooth for the cook's inspection, Pepper let out a single explicit oath.

Gabrielle still hadn't been quite sure what she'd done wrong. Pepper had told her to put five pounds of beans in a pot and she'd followed his instructions precisely.

But Pepper had fixed her with his blue pale eyes. “Sonofabitch,” he said. “What did I do so bad in my life that a vengeful god saddled me with you?”

Gabrielle had stared at him, uncomprehendingly.

“Any fool could see gravel was mixed with the beans,” he said. “Anyone with a lick of sense.”

She still must have looked puzzled because the cook went into another spasm of creative oaths, then explained disgustedly. “Sellers mix gravel in with beans to add to their weight. You always have to sort it.”

“I didn't know,” she said.

“Any jackass knows that,” Pepper muttered balefully. “I ain't gonna let you anywhere near this wagon again.”

Gabrielle had wanted to sink into the ground. Nothing she did was right. Nothing. She'd tried to swallow, but a huge lump of embarrassment had clogged her throat. She
had
seen some grit toward the bottom, but hadn't seen any in the scoopfuls she'd measured. Minutes later, she'd been banished back to collecting cow chips. At least she was out of sight of Pepper, and hopefully out of mind. She winced as she remembered the outraged barrage of insults.

At least this hadn't been quite as bad as the coffee calamity. Having lived with her parents in rooming houses and hotels, she had never made coffee in her life. So when Pepper had told her to make it “strong enough to float a horseshoe,” she had taken him seriously. After searching the compartments and finding coffee beans, she'd hesitantly asked him how much to use. After he'd hollered for a while about how any simpleton knew how to make coffee, his growled instructions had been to “take a pound of coffee, wet it good with water, boil it over a fire for thirty minutes, pitch in a horseshoe and if it sinks, put in more coffee.”

It hadn't sounded right to her, but she was hesitant to ask any more questions. They always drew spiked contempt and exasperation. He obviously thought
anyone
should know how to make coffee. So she'd followed the directions—except for putting in the horseshoe—and she still didn't consider it her fault that nobody had told her that she had to grind the coffee beans.

Unfortunately, Kingsley had been the first person to pour himself a cup of the stuff she'd made. He'd taken a sip without looking at it. The reaction was immediate. He spat it out instantly, and his face had gone beet red. She'd been extremely thankful that the words he'd muttered under his breath were incomprehensible.

Pepper's comments, however, had been very plain. Gabrielle had heard inventive swearing in the theater, but everything she'd ever heard paled in the face of the old cook's creative use of the language. And his comments over the coffee were nothing compared to the pinnacle he'd reached when he discovered she'd thrown out his sourdough starter. It had looked—and smelled—like something spoiled to her. How was she supposed to know what it was?

For the following three nights she had been exiled from the chuck wagon, and only today had she been given another chance.

So much for second—and third—chances. She'd lost them. And she only wished she could figure out why she even cared. She wasn't here to learn how to cook or make anyone like her. She was here to find some kind of justice.

She bit her lip, torn between amusement at the beleaguered Pepper and chagrin at her own incompetence and the likely result. If only there had been a cookbook. Or if Pepper had explained something. But neither had happened, and she'd placed far too much faith in her own reasoning ability. Cooking, apparently, was not one of her God-given talents.

She sat down on a dead log, and she couldn't help herself. She started laughing. That coffee
had
been rather strange, and the look on Pepper's face when he'd discovered his treasured starter missing would forever be in her memory. Pure disbelief. Absolute horror. If she hadn't wanted to stay so badly, to complete her mission one way or another, she would have smiled then and there.

The reminder of her goal sobered her. Nothing had changed her conviction that Kingsley had hired a gun to kill her father. And she was still suspicious that Drew Cameron might be that hired gun. But she wasn't sure, and she hadn't figured out how to confirm her suspicion.

She saw so little of the Scotsman. And when she did see him, he confused her so badly she couldn't think. When he was around the campsite, he watched her constantly, watched her with those intense, piercing golden eyes. And when he wasn't watching her, he was doing or saying something
kind
—at least on the surface his words and deeds appeared kind—which only made her more confused.

She didn't want Drew Cameron's kindness. She didn't want to talk to him, didn't want to like him. And she most definitely did not want to feel the butterflies that fluttered inside her every time she looked at him. She didn't understand how she could feel any pleasant sensation over a man she believed might be a murderer—
her father's
murderer.

In fact, she decided, it was her suspicions about the Scotsman that were keeping her from acting on the overwhelming impulse she felt every time she saw Kirby Kingsley—that and the fact she was never alone with Kingsley. She wanted to use the pistol she kept in the saddlebags, force him to tell the truth, even … kill him if necessary. It wasn't rational, that impulse. In some dark corner of her mind, she knew that. But when she saw Kingsley, or thought about him, all rational thought fled. Rage and grief overpowered all else. She wanted to hurt him, to do damage to him as he had done to her and those she loved.

It didn't matter what happened next. She couldn't think past that moment. In slightly more rational moments, she knew that if she shot Kingsley, the likely outcome would be that she, too, would die. But at the moment, she simply didn't care. She had no one. Nothing. Except … if she were killed, she would miss her chance at finding the man who'd actually pulled the trigger.

So, no, she couldn't confront Kingsley. Not yet. And so she was biding her time. Every morning, she woke up with the sensation that she was living under a cloud as big and dark and all-encompassing as those filling the sky above her at that moment. And every night, she fell onto her bedroll vowing that tomorrow … tomorrow would be the day. She would get the answers she needed about Drew Cameron, then seek the justice her soul craved so badly. And in between morning and night, all she could think about was how hot and tired she was, and about her father being dead, about being alone in the world. So alone. So apart from everything and everyone around her.

Enough wool-gathering, she scolded herself. She was competent enough to fetch cow chips and wood, and that might be the only thing that saved her job.

As she finished her search for cow chips, she noticed that the wind had picked up since she'd left camp. It felt good, and she even risked opening her coat and unbuttoning the top few buttons of her shirt to let it cool her overheated skin. She'd been hot and miserable all day under the layers of clothes. How she would make it through weeks, maybe even months, in all these clothes, she didn't know.

By the time she started back to camp, it was nearly dark. As she passed between the herd and the wagon, she slowed, then stopped, at the sound of a man's voice. It was a voice she instantly recognized, and he was singing. She didn't know the song but it was soft and low. A lullaby. She couldn't identify the song, but she was instantly enchanted, both by the melody and the rich, smooth tenor that was singing it. She listened, storing the melody in her mind, until gradually he moved away and she couldn't hear him anymore.

In the silence, she was left feeling more confused than ever. The cursed man had done it to her again. His smile, his kind words. His voice, singing a lullaby. Nothing about him fit the image of an assassin. Yet nothing about him seemed to fit the image of a cowhand either. A part of her—the part of her that was grief-stricken and enraged at an unjust world—wanted to believe the worst of him, wanted to find ulterior motives in everything he did. Wanted to hate him.

But another part of her whispered that he couldn't possibly be a murderer. That he was as lonely and apart from the rest of the world as she was. As lonely as his voice had sounded, singing his beautiful lullaby to a herd of cattle.

Suddenly, as she stood in the dark in the middle of that vast, wide-open plain, all of her own feelings of loneliness, of being isolated from the rest of the world, intensified. Damn Drew Cameron. Damn his smile, and his lullaby. Damn everything about him that made her feel things she didn't want to feel.

Angry at herself, feeling like a fool, Gabrielle buttoned her shirt and coat and started back for the chuck wagon. As she walked, though, she became aware that the sky had lost its last trace of light, and the cool air that had been pleasant only minutes before had turned cold. It bit through her layers of clothing. An instant later, thunder rumbled in the distance.

She quickened her steps and, as she approached camp, she saw cowboys leave the cooking fire and head for their horses. Thunder meant nervous cattle. She'd learned that much.