Lone Star Rancher (16 page)

Everyone has a travel tale…an adventure experienced while on vacation or while on a business trip. Laurie Paige shares with us her travelogue of her trip across Texas.

 

Texas in Eight Days, Twice

When we moved from Satellite Beach, Florida, to Austin, Texas, we took the scenic route by way of Kentucky to attend family reunions. Since my husband, Bob, and I are from the same hometown, our families cooperate so we have one reunion on a Saturday and one on a Sunday. After a fun, but hectic, visit, we head for Texas on a rather erratic trail to take in as much of the state as possible. I have an atlas and a Texas map in hand so we can explore places with interesting/unusual names. This is my favorite method of getting story ideas.

One thing I notice right away is that most of the rivers flow southeast into the Gulf of Mexico.
From sea level at the barrier islands along the eastern coast, the land rises to its highest point at maybe a hundred miles from El Paso. Hmm, there's a Colorado River here as well as in the Far West; it flows through Austin, our destination. Also a Red River. I think every state must have a Red River. The one in Texas is on its northern border and separates the state from Oklahoma. The Red runs into the Mississippi River rather than the gulf.

From the Louisiana-Texas border heading due west to El Paso, Texas is one-third of the distance across the U.S. at this point. It's nearly as “tall” as all the states north of it up to the Canadian border. No wonder our Texan heroes think big!

The humidity along the Gulf coast doesn't faze us. It's the same as Florida. We often have afternoon rains as we wander along the coast from Caddo, a scenic park in the bayou region along the Louisiana border (think
Evangeline
and Spanish moss) to Corpus Christi. We try out all the different seafood dishes we can find: gumbo, blackened seabass, crayfish. I learn file powder is made from dried okra. Yum!

We arrive at Austin, our destination and new home. First of all, I get locked out of my car at the grocery on my way to meet the movers. I call 911, but am informed this is not an emergency. (Ask my cat, who's locked in the car!) However, a policeman arrives and calls a locksmith. In twenty
minutes I'm on my way to the new house. I'm going to name a hero after each of them.

Once settled in, I go exploring. The Pedernales Falls west of town are a long stretch of lovely cascades along the river with rocks scoured smooth by the water. I find a cave carved into the limestone and immediately start thinking of story ideas. The LBJ Ranch is on the Pedernales. Bob and I drive by and continue on to Fredericksburg, settled by German immigrants, where we eat delicious frankfurters with sauerkraut and cheese, one of my hubby's favorite meals.

The surprising thing about the Alamo is that it is in the middle of town in San Antonio, surrounded by traffic and tall buildings. I'm not sure what I expected—a large park around it, or perhaps a fort on a hill that overlooks the town. The bustle and noise are soon forgotten as we explore the mission and the barracks. A sense of history and a connection with the past shape my thoughts and feelings as I realize I'm standing where Davy Crockett and Jim Bowie once stood! Also John Wayne had been there. His picture was on a wall.

A few weeks pass before we are able to range farther afield. On a weekend drive, traveling a county road, we meander deep into the heart of Texas Hill Country. At one point, I realize that other than the road, which started out paved but is now gravel and hardly more than one lane
wide, and a fence on each side, there is no sign of human habitation—no houses, no other cars on the road, no barns, just rolling hills and sagebrush as far as the eye can see. I feel like the loneliest person in the world. The road goes to one barely discernible track, then two ruts. We bravely carry on. Until we come to a cattle guard over a culvert. The road disappears, apparently onto someone's ranch, although there are no signs to indicate this other than a cattle skull nailed to a fence post. We take this as an omen to turn back…and we do, beating a hasty retreat to Austin and home, which takes four hours.

That summer the temperature hits 110 degrees. I sit in the kiddie pool at the park and read most afternoons. Pecan trees are filled with developing nuts. I vow to collect a bunch in October.

This was not to be. The squirrels beat me to the draw. As compensation, we take a week to trek into the Far West. Traveling by scenic Highway 377, we mosey into Del Rio and I wade in the Rio Grande. The Rio Grande! The Real One! The water comes about halfway up to my knees. I study the banks and wonder how deep the river once was before we started irrigation projects. From the other side of the river, three men and two women also wade into the water. We smile and nod as they pass. They soon disappear from sight. My dear heart thinks we should vamoose,
too. Like the Western heroes of movies, we ride into the sunset.

Big Bend National Park goes on my list of favorite places to “get away from it all.” We camp in its quiet canyons among limestone cliffs and cedar trees. A nosy coyote sneaks into our camping site and sniffs around. He doesn't notice me sitting on a nearby boulder, hardly daring to breathe as I observe him. After five minutes, not finding anything of interest, he looks directly at me, then trots off with his tail set in a distinctly disdainful attitude.

The land west of the Pecos River is the southern end of the Rocky Mountains. The elevation rises from 1500 feet at the Rio Grande Valley to the highest point of Texas, Guadalupe Peak in Culberson County. Yep, definitely what I would call rugged country. We travel along Highway 90, then I-10 to El Paso. I watch for scenes of ranching life and roundups.

El Paso! City of song and legend! Shootouts and badlands! Cowboys! At last!

Oh, they're filming a movie. There are semitrailers and cables all over the place. We join a crowd of sightseers, but no one knows what film or actors are involved. I ask a camera crewman and he tells me it's a TV commercial for laundry detergent. Huh, moms already know everything about stains and spots. I check out the
town, the river and some mines in the wilds of the desert, or plains, as they call them.

Going north we are awed by the soft hues of the Llano Estacado, or Staked Plains, all subtle yellows and reds, their layers exposed by erosion. The plains rise to more than 4000 feet and are level, except where cut by deep arroyos, dry now, but dangerous in a sudden storm, as we are warned by the owner of a grocery/gas station sitting like a lone sentinel at a crossroads. The land reminds me of Australia's outback—very few trees and a sparse growth of coarse grasses, unless irrigated. Again we hit a stretch where we see no other signs of life, unless you count the dead armadillo beside the road. Rain is also sparse, less than ten inches per year. Unused to the low humidity, we get minor nosebleeds; we keep water and iced tea in hand constantly.

We pass through Lubbock with its oil wells and Amarillo with its cattle yards. We had to hold our breaths a couple of times when the wind was in our direction as we passed the feed lots filled with a mixture of cattle, but otherwise found it all fascinating. One thing we found everywhere we went—jalapeños: on pizzas, in corn bread, cooked in chili and brown beans and soup. After a week, I can eat them without weeping.

We follow the Brazos to Waco, visiting a prairie-dog town on the way, then pick up I-35 and are soon in Austin and home.

HOME ON THE RANGE

by
Elizabeth Bevarly

(Part 2 of a 3–part serial)

CHAPTER 4

M
egan instinctively lurched forward at the sound of gunfire…then realized belatedly that the only place to land was against Nash Ridley's broad chest. Worse—oh, all right, maybe better—the moment she made contact, he instinctively wrapped his sturdy arms around her.

Strangely, though, when he did that, all the fear she'd felt dissolved completely. Because she was too busy noticing instead the firm, masculine flesh beneath her fingertips, and the warm breath stirring the hair at her temples and the sudden pounding of her heart.

She glanced up to find Nash gazing down at her, and he looked as surprised as she felt. Though whether that was because of the sudden gunshot or, like Megan, the sudden zinging of the strings of his heart, she couldn't have said. She only knew that the way he was looking at her and the way she was feeling about him changed a lot in that instant.

Then, at the far fringes of her mind, she heard the
sound of laughter, and it dawned on her that maybe what she had heard hadn't been a gunshot at all. Or that there was a reason for it that everyone else understood but she and Nash had missed. Or maybe everyone was laughing at her and Nash, and the cowardly way she'd reacted to what must have been a harmless sound.

Looking up, she saw everyone looking at another ranch hand who was holding a dead rabbit, his rifle propped proudly against his shoulder.

“Got yer dinner for ya, Clyde!” the man called out as everyone's laughter doubled. “I'll see if I can't find a couple more for Steven and Miles, too!”

Megan felt a momentary rush of relief, but when she realized she was still in Nash Ridley's arms—and that neither of them was doing anything to change that—she tensed again. But it wasn't the kind of tension that came with anxiety and fear. It was the kind that came with anticipation and excitement…and not a little pleasure.

“Looks like rabbit's on the menu for dinner at the big house tonight.”

Nash murmured the observation in a very quiet voice very close to Megan's ear, and she felt an involuntary shudder wind through her body. She told herself it was due to the sight of the dead animal dangling from the cowboy's hand. But she knew that wasn't it.

There was a ripple of pleasure mixed with it, and that could only be because of Nash's nearness, and
the gentle way he was touching her. His fingers raked lightly over her bare arms, as if he were trying to soothe her fears. But there was too much intimacy in the touch for it to be simply reassuring. And there was something else, too, something she'd probably be better off not thinking about. Because she was only going to be in Red Rock for a week, and Nash was ten years younger than she, and they had nothing in common, and it felt much too good, having this stranger so close.

“Not for me,” she said. And for a minute, she couldn't remember what she was talking about, what it was that wasn't for her. Besides Nash Ridley, she meant. Then she remembered the cowboy holding the dead rabbit, and she shivered again. She looked back at Nash, whose warm fingers still stroked up and down her bare arms, and who she couldn't quite bring herself to tell “Stop that.” Instead, she told him, “I don't want to eat anything I've personally seen murdered. You can have my share.”

He shook his head. “No thanks,” he said. “I'm a vegetarian.”

Megan would have been less surprised if he'd told her he was wearing women's underwear. “Are you serious?” she said before she could stop herself.

He smiled curiously. “What? You never heard of a vegetarian cowboy?”

“Well, no,” she said. “I thought red meat was a staple for you guys. I mean there are all those wide-
open range, sweeping Aaron Copeland score, manly man commercials for beef.”

He lifted a shoulder and let it drop. And continued to brush his fingers along her very sensitive flesh. “That's just a stereotype perpetuated by shortsighted advertising executives who can't come up with an original idea.”

Megan felt herself coloring at that, but had no idea what to say.

“What?” he asked, his smile growing broader. “You never heard of someone whose job is to convince people to give up their hard-earned dollars in exchange for some idealized state of mind that only exists on a television screen or the pages of a glossy magazine?”

Megan made herself smile back at him, but knew it was sheepishly. “Um, yeah,” she said. “Me.”

Nash's smile fell. “What?”

“What you just described is what I do for a living,” she told him, realizing the comment held more than a grain of truth. The campaigns she created for LA Mode were pretty much designed to do exactly what he said—make people buy into an image that she and her colleagues fabricated. “I'm the creative director of an advertising company in Los Angeles.”

This time Nash was the one whose face colored. “Oh.”

Somehow, though, Megan couldn't find it in herself to get angry. He was essentially right, after all. And neither his tone of voice nor he himself had been
condemning or accusatory when he offered his assessment of her profession. He'd simply been voicing an observation he'd made.

And between that and the vegetarian thing, she realized he was in no way the stereotypical cowboy that she'd decided he must be—the stereotypical cowboy she might very well have used in a campaign.

How very interesting.

She also realized that the two of them were still standing with their arms around each other—mostly because she heard Miles call out with a laugh, “Knock off the kissy face, you two, and get to work!” She made herself drop her hands back to her sides and take a few steps in retreat.

Immediately, she felt uncomfortable, a reaction she told herself was crazy. She barely knew this guy. She should have been uncomfortable standing so close to him while his warm fingers drifted over her bare skin. But that hadn't been the case at all.

“We better saddle up,” Nash said, “and get a move on. Everyone else is on their way.”

“Saddle up?” Megan said, confused. “I thought we'd be driving.”

Nash looked past her and shook his head. “All the trucks are either gone or have people in them. You and I are going to be on horse patrol.”

Horse patrol? Megan repeated to herself. Why would Steven put her on a horse? He knew she didn't like to ride. He knew that when they were kids, she'd done just about anything to avoid riding. But there
was a good reason for that, Megan knew, even if she'd never told any of her cousins about it.

Megan was terrified of horses. Terrified.
Terr. I. Fied.
And now Nash Ridley was going to make her climb on top of one.