Drew (The Cowboys) (2 page)

“Thanks,” he said. “That is mighty sporting of you.”

“You go first,” she said. “I’ve already established my credentials.”

He smiled. She’d scored a hit that time. It was up to him to prove he wasn’t all talk and no substance.

He turned back to the audience. “Do you think I can hit the pigeons?”

The men answered with shouts of encouragement. It annoyed her that he was trying to turn the spectators against her.

“What happens if I make every shot?” he asked.

“I’ll make every shot, too.”

His eyebrows lifted ever so slightly. “You don’t think mere’s a chance you’ll miss?”

“If I do, I’ll be out of a job by tomorrow.” Earl, a small man with feminine good looks, didn’t care about his performers, only the number of tickets they could sell.

“Maybe I shouldn’t shoot after all,” he said to the audience. “I wouldn’t want to cause the little lady to lose her job.”

Now he really was being insulting, implying the gentlemanly thing to do was to back down so she wouldn’t lose her job.

“You can’t back out now,” Drew said. “You’ve got everybody’s attention. They’ll think you’re a fake.”

She didn’t like cocky men, but this man gave the impression of being able to do just about anything he wanted. Drew was certain he wouldn’t have come down out of the stands without knowing he had a good chance of beating her.

“I’m no fake,” he said.

“Now’s your chance to prove it.” She gestured to the spectators. “Everybody’s waiting.”

The man lifted the rifle to his shoulder, checked its weight, its balance, the sight line. “In case you’re curious, my name is Cole Benton.”

“I wasn’t curious,” she replied.

“I’m a Tennessean by birth, a Texan by adoption, and a cowboy by preference,” he announced to the audience, who laughed and applauded. They were enjoying his show.

“I’m sure Texas considers itself fortunate.”

“If it doesn’t now, it soon will. Pull!”

A clay pigeon flew out of the machine. Cole hit it.

When the crowd broke into noisy applause, Cole turned and executed an exaggerated bow. Then he turned to Drew as though he hadn’t done anything unusual. “Your turn.”

Drew pulled her rifle to her shoulder and gave the signal. One clay pigeon was propelled into the air and immediately shattered.

“There’s obviously nothing wrong with that rifle,” Cole said.

“Did you think there was?”

“Not all shows are completely honest.”

“Don’t you mean you didn’t think it was possible for a woman to outshoot a man unless she cheated?”

“All things are possible,” he said. He turned to the audience and asked, “What should we do next?”

Several people called for them to shoot two pigeons.

They did. There were no misses

Cole turned to the audience again, but they were already chanting:
“Three pigeons! Three pigeons!”

“It looks like we’ve got our orders,” he said to Drew.

The results were the same.

“The machine doesn’t hold more than three pigeons,” Drew said.

“What do you suggest we do next?” Cole asked.

The audience sat in silent, rapt attention. By now Drew knew she was up against a superb shot. She didn’t know if she could beat him. If she went down in defeat… well, she’d figure out what to do when it happened. Until then, she was the best shot in Texas, and she meant to prove it.

“Face away from the target,” Drew said. “Shout pull, turn, and fire at the clay pigeon.”

“That doesn’t sound very easy,” Cole said.

“It’s not. Let me show you how it’s done.”

She turned her back. “Pull!” As she called out the command, she turned and fired at the pigeon. It shattered. Polite applause from the women.

“Good,” Cole murmured. “Very good.”

“You sound surprised.”

“No, but it’s still very good.”

He took his position with his back to the machine, shouted the command, turned and fired.

He hit the target. The men and boys erupted with shouts and the noise of stamping feet. He had succeeded in dividing the crowd. That made Drew angry. This was her audience, yet half of them were rooting for Cole. It just went to show a woman couldn’t depend on men when the chips were down.

“Two pigeons this time,” Drew said. She was tired of this game. It was time to finish up and let the next event begin. Besides, this man irritated her.

She turned her back, called out the command, spun around, and hit both targets.

Cole tried it, missed one pigeon. The men in the audience fell silent.

“Let’s try it again,” Drew said. Again she hit both targets. The women responded by jumping up in their seats, shouting and cheering.

Again Cole missed one.

He turned to her, and with exaggerated gestures, bowed and kissed her hand. “To the winner!” he called loudly to the audience.

The women in the audience loved Drew’s winning as well as Cole’s courtly behavior in defeat. They applauded loudly. Even the children voiced their approval.

The men remained quiet.

The band started to play in the background, and Earl began the buildup for the trick riding. Drew turned to leave the ring. Cole Benton walked beside her.

“Shouldn’t you go back to your seat?” Drew asked.

“Why?”

“Your family—friends, a young lady, I don’t know!—somebody must be waiting for you.”

“I don’t have any family, and I didn’t bring a young lady.”

“Everybody has a family.”

“I came alone.”

Drew didn’t like the tickle of excitement that stirred in some dark recess of her mind. Or the one that danced along her nerve endings. She wasn’t about to put up with any of this nonsense. She’d stamp it out before anything got started. Cole Benton might be a fine figure of a man, but she wasn’t interested in men, fine-figured or not. She had enough men in her family.

“You’ll lose your seat,” she warned him. “The trick riders are very popular.”

“I’m sure they’re no more popular than you.”

“They’re followed by an Indian battle. People fight over seats for that.”

“They’ll soon be fighting over seats to see you.”

She stopped and turned without warning. “Why are you following me?”

“I want to talk to your boss.”

“Why?”

“I’ve got a proposition to make.”

“Well, he’s over there,” she said, pointing to Earl. “Now go away. I want to watch the trick riding.”

“Why?”

“Because the two men doing the riding are my brothers.”

Cole turned to the ring, a look of surprise spreading over his face. The questions would come next. It annoyed her to have to reveal anything to a stranger about her personal life, but there was no other way to explain how her brothers could be a half-breed Indian and a Negro.

“We’re all adopted,” she said.

“You must have an interesting family.”

“I do, but if you’re going to speak with the boss, you’d better do it now.”

She didn’t care if he spoke to Earl Odum or not. She just wanted him to leave her alone. And give her a chance to get rid of this annoying feeling that she might like to get to know something about him. He was an arrogant nuisance. She didn’t need to know any more.

She turned away, directing her attention to the ring as Cole walked off toward Earl. The audience always started out a little cool. It made her angry that people weren’t just as ready to applaud an Indian or a Negro as a white man. Zeke and Hawk were wonderful showmen, though, and by the time they were done, the spectators would be on their feet cheering. For Drew, that was vindication enough.

“That was a good performance. You ought to do it every night.”

Drew turned at the sound of old Myrtle Rankin’s voice. She was in charge of the costumes for the show. Her husband helped take care of the animals.

“I couldn’t if I wanted to, which I don’t,” Drew answered. “I don’t even know the man.”

“He’s nice-looking,” Myrtle said.

Drew made a face. “You think every man under forty is nice-looking. I sometimes think your only requirement is that they be breathing.”

Myrtle chuckled. Her laugh sounded rich and fruity, and came from deep within her large body. She looked like someone’s kindly aunt or grandmother. It was hard to believe she’d once been part of a trapeze act.

“When you get to my age, you can’t afford to be so choosy,” she said. She looked back over her shoulder at Cole. “But this one
is
good-looking.”

Drew turned to look at Cole, now in deep conversation with the boss. “I guess you could say he’s not too bad,” she admitted. She tried to ignore the tickle which now skittered down her spine. It was probably irritation. It would disappear as soon as Cole Benton went away.

“I have several very handsome brothers,” Drew said. “I’m not impressed by Mr. Cole Benton.”

Twenty-two-year-old Matt was extremely handsome, but nineteen-year-old Will turned heads wherever he went. Then there were Chet and Luke. They had left the ranch, but she could still see their handsome faces, remember their sensuality. She wasn’t affected by it herself, but she understood how other women could be devastated.

“I thought you said you didn’t know him,” Myrtle said.

“I don’t, but he told me his name during the shooting, like I was going to want to know it afterwards. The man has a greatly exaggerated opinion of himself.”

“Looks to me like he’s got good reason.”

“Myrtle, will you stop drooling? He might be good-looking, even handsome, but he’s conceited. I wouldn’t be surprised to find he was trying to talk Earl into giving him a job.”

“Well, you have to admit he made the shooting competition more interesting. Usually there’s nobody who can come close to you. I still think it would be better if you missed once in a while.”

Drew took great pride in her accuracy. Even though she hadn’t missed a shot in the nearly two years she’d been with the show, she continued to practice daily, to develop new tricks and perfect them.

“I’m not going to miss shots just to make some man feel better,” she said.

“I wasn’t talking about the men,” Myrtle said. “I meant the show. It would be more interesting if there was a chance someone could beat you.”

“They pay to see me hit the targets,” Drew said. “Not miss.”

“I know,” Myrtle said with a shrug. “It’s a dilemma.”

“What is?”

“How to be perfect and yet seem human.”

Drew laughed and pointed to Hawk, who was doing one of his most popular tricks, leaning from the saddle at a full gallop to pick up three handkerchiefs dropped in a row. “If Hawk weren’t perfect, he’d kill himself.”

“That’s why he seems human,” Myrtle said. “If he or Zeke does something wrong, they fall, break an arm or a leg, get trampled on by the horse. If you miss a target, nothing happens.”

“You never mentioned this before.”

“I guess I never understood what I felt was missing until tonight. The two of you generated a kind of excitement I haven’t seen before. The audience felt it, too.”

Drew had felt it as well, but she refused to attribute it to anything more than Cole’s unexpectedly thrusting himself into the ring and proving himself a very capable shot. Okay, maybe a little had been due to his looks. If he hadn’t been so conceited and sure of himself, she wouldn’t have had so much trouble admitting she found him attractive.

Drew had been criticized before for not generating enough excitement. The boss wanted to make her more of an attraction. He said she was too mechanical, too lacking in emotional excitement. He wanted her to wear frilly dresses, put bows in her hair, skip about, do acrobatics, even wear a blond wig. Once she’d overheard two women in the Indian massacre say they didn’t know why the boss kept such a dull act as a headliner.

“How can I make my act more exciting?” Drew had never asked this question before, not even of Zeke or Hawk. She didn’t think she was dull, but she didn’t try to fool herself into thinking her act was as thrilling as the real crowd pleasers, the battles between the Indians and the settlers, and the Indians and the army. The audience loved to watch the bloodthirsty fights, with people seeming to die right before their eyes. The women and children screamed at the sound of gunshots when actors fell from their saddles, appearing to be dying from some horrible wound. Everybody shouted encouragement to the settlers or the Army. Nobody rooted for the Indians.

“You could smile more when you go into the ring,” Myrtle said. “Audiences like a pretty girl.”

“I’m not pretty,” Drew said. “I see proof of that every time I look in my mirror.” Something she did as seldom as possible.

“Even if you weren’t pretty, which you are,” Myrtle insisted, “people like watching a woman. You ought to skip into the ring, smiling and waving at the audience.”

Drew felt her stomach turn over. “I don’t
skip
anywhere. I’d quit first.”