The Lover (12 page)

“I'm in,” Eagle Jack said finally.

“So am I,” Susanna said.

He looked at her, surprised, as if to say he'd already spoken for both of them.

But Tolly took her for her own boss. “That's the both of your crews, then,” he said. He slapped his leg and stood up. “We're in business. We'll all be north of the Brazos and on our way to the Red in two days' time. Very well, then, boys and girls, let's eat our breakfast before we hit the trail, 'cause we never know where we'll be for dinner.”

That made Susanna smile. Not only that Tolly, who was the visitor, was calling everyone to eat, but also because he'd fully accepted her. It would be Tolly bossing the building of the bridge, so she'd get a chance to show Eagle Jack what she could do.

 

Susanna had quit scouting with him and started riding out alone in front of her herd. Eagle Jack kept thinking of the old joke about the snuff
dipping woman in church who, when the preacher began to condemn that habit, called out, “You've done quit preachin' and gone to meddlin', now.”

He had ridden back to talk to Nat and the boys as they drove the Sixes and Sevens herd up behind the Slanted S, and Susanna had just gone right on out of sight without him. Without a word. Come to think of it, she hadn't given him very many words after Tolly left them.

Or while Tolly was there, for that matter. She'd been talking to Tolly, not to him, Eagle Jack.

The one thing certain was that Susanna had quit listening and gone to meddling, now—sitting in on his talk with Tolly and speaking right up like she knew what she was talking about—and it was liable to have dire consequences for her. He couldn't allow it. He absolutely could not. Whether she wanted it to be true or not, he was responsible for her and he had to make the big decisions, like whether to help with the bridge and cross their cattle over it or not.

Thank goodness, they had agreed on what answer to give Tolly, but next time things might not work out so well.

There might not even
be
a next time if she wandered off and got herself killed or kidnapped by some lowlife or else hopelessly lost.

His stomach clutched and he lifted his horse into a slow lope.

He had to go find her, whether or not it made
her even angrier with him.
He
was the one who should be angry with
her,
anyhow—this kind of behavior just to pay him back for not telling her every detail of his business in advance was too petty for him to endure.

He loped up to Nat. “I'm going on to pick a nooning place,” he said.

“Right, boss.” Nat grinned. “Tell that pretty wife of yours I hope she's the one doing the cooking this time.”

Eagle Jack answered with a noncommittal wave of his hand and rode off. That was another thing. If she was going to keep on spreading that story around, she had better start acting like his wife.

By the time he caught up with the wagons an hour later, he had a dozen things ready to say to her, but Susanna wasn't there. Unfortunately, both Cookie and Maynell were.

What had looked, from a distance, like a normal scene of two chuck wagons peacefully setting up in a shady meadow to cook a meal for a couple of outfits was, up close, a battle of wills and a war of words, all guaranteed to leave a bunch of drovers as hungry to ride out as they were the moment they rode in.

Eagle Jack rode into the meadow, crossed behind the wagons, and pulled his horse up in the shade of the low-growing limbs of a big live oak
tree. He got down. He loosened his cinch and dropped his reins for a ground-tie.

He walked toward them.

All that time, neither cook so much as glanced at him. Maynell had a fire going with a coffeepot hanging over it and hot coals in a trench to one side. She appeared to be guarding her handiwork with the spade she'd been using to move the coals.

Cookie stood facing her, legs apart, heels dug in. “That'd be the dumbest waste of wood I ever seen,” Cookie was saying. “I ain't takin' orders from nobody and I ain't buildin' no second fire.”

“Suit yourself,” Maynell said, “but you won't be usin' mine. If you're such a cook, you oughtta know to carry wood on the wagon.”

“I do,” Cookie said, “and we'll use it for supper.” He stared her right in the eye.

She stared back.

“Women should never go up the trail,” he said.

“Men should never be cooks,” she said.

“And meals should never be late,” Eagle Jack said, “or the three of us might have to drive four thousand head of cattle from here to Kansas.”

Finally, they both turned and looked at him.

“I know it's dangerous for me to get in the middle of this,” he said, “but I reckon I can take a chance since there's two cooks on this drive.”

“Is that a threat to fire one of us?” Maynell said.

“Take it any way you want to,” Eagle Jack said.

Maynell and Cookie exchanged a glance.

“Well, fire away,” Maynell said, “but I can tell you right now neither one of us is leavin'.” She looked at Cookie for confirmation.

“Damn straight we're not,” he said. “This outfit'd starve to death down to the last man if I rode away from here.”

Maynell nodded at Eagle Jack triumphantly, then she realized exactly what Cookie had said. She rounded on him, hands on her hips. “If you rode away from here? That sounds like an insult to me, old man.”

He repeated Eagle Jack's words. “Take it any way you want to.”

“Then I'll take it as a dare,” she said, and hit her spade against the leg of the cook rack for a ringing note of emphasis. “Put your best foot in the soup, Mr. Cookie, and we'll see whose fire them boys comes back to for second helpings.”

That was all it took. Cookie started building his fire, Maynell started a skillet heating on hers.

Eagle Jack set his jaw. He'd thought he brought this whole situation under control when he'd had his brilliant idea to assign all the sweets to Maynell. Now they'd be cooking more than could be eaten at one meal and the men hated leftovers with a passion.

But he certainly didn't want to get crossways of them again—either or both of them.

Damn it all!
Where
was Susanna? If she was going to insist on coming along on this drive, and then insist on trying to be the one to take her own herd across the Brazos and do the scouting all by herself, why didn't she take care of the cooks?

If she wouldn't
be
one, she could at least keep them straightened out.

“Why don't y'all pick one thing a day?” he said, trying for an offhand tone. “It could be a contest of coffees one day and sourdoughs the next.”

“And stew the next and steak the next,” Maynell said.

“And fluff-duff the next,” Cookie said, in a tone that brooked no disagreement. “I ain't lettin' you be the only one makin' sweet stuff.”

“Fine,” Maynell said, “but it still won't do you no good. You're jist scared they'll all vote fer my food if I'm the one givin' 'em sweets, but they will anyhow.”

Eagle Jack's headache was trying to come back. It seemed that his peacemaking idea hadn't been such a good one, after all. Listening to these taunts and threats every day might be a whole lot worse than eating leftovers.

“They'll vote with their feet and their empty plates,” Cookie said. “We'll see whose wagon has a path beat to it in a hurry.”

Eagle Jack turned toward his horse. He had to get out of there. “Have y'all seen Susanna?” he said.

“She'll be back in a minute,” Maynell said. “She's gone up the river a little ways to see if it's out of its banks up there.”

“I'll go meet her.”

He walked faster, eager to get to his mount. Anything to have a little peace and quiet and figure out what to say to Susanna to keep her around the camp. One more skirmish like this and he'd have to knock Cookie and Maynell's hard heads together and then he'd have no cook at all.

The horse he was riding was the youngest one in his mount and, ground-tied or not, the gelding was moving around, edging out into the sunlight from the shade of the tree, throwing its head around and acting as if it wanted to run. Eagle Jack broke into a trot, trying to keep it slow and easy so as not to encourage the horse to bolt.

That was all he needed on top of everything else today—to have his horse run off and leave him afoot and that be the subject of all the hoo-rahing and laughter for the next couple of days. Or until something funnier happened, which could be a while longer than that.

He slowed back into a walk as he got closer and began saying, “Whoa, now, bay horse, whoa now.”

The bay pricked its ears and looked upstream. It nickered.

A horse nickered back and Eagle Jack turned to
see that it was Fred, with Susanna in the saddle, coming toward them at a nice long trot.

He lifted his hand, thinking it was best to be as friendly as possible if he was going to have any hope of talking her into better behavior. She returned the greeting and he went back to trying to catch his horse, who was truly dancing now.

It would be even worse for him to run off with Susanna watching.

“Now, now,” he muttered, “come on, now.”

Finally he had the reins in his hand and he stepped around to put his foot in the stirrup. As his seat hit the saddle, he turned his mount to go meet Susanna, who was coming on much faster now.

As soon as he saw her, he froze.

She was almost to him and she held a gun in her hand. Somewhere, way back in the recesses of his mind, he recognized it as the old hogleg she'd been wearing when he'd seen her that morning. It was leveled, pointing straight at him.

Before he could even take a breath, she fired.

S
omething slapped him in the face right after the old gun roared. There wasn't the hot sting of a bullet, though. A musty odor and a cold roughness tickled the one thin edge of his mind that was still working—a snake fell across the withers of his horse.

The bay broke apart in a heartbeat. It got its head down and bowed its back faster than Eagle Jack could blink. Then it was all high jumps and hard licks and the world going up and down into the sky.

Eagle Jack's instincts took over—at least
this
was an understandable, familiar thing that was happening. For one long minute he rode the horse. He stayed in the saddle and in both stirrups just long enough to think that when the bay got tired, Eagle Jack would still be on top.

But the snake stayed with them and the bay began to sunfish so desperately to be rid of it that it turned sideways and nearly upside down in the air and Eagle Jack lost his center of gravity. He hit the ground as hard as he ever had, landed on his bottom with a force that jarred his teeth and made him bite his tongue and that knocked the last scrap of breath out of his body. The snake fell, too, not far away, and the bay lit out across the prairie, headed straight for the herd with the force of a strong, straight-line wind.

The boys had better be paying attention, or else they might be fighting a stampede there in a minute.

That was his last sensible thought for what felt like a long, long time. He collapsed full length onto his back, his head hit a lump of dirt with enough force to addle him—if he wasn't, already—and all he could do was try to draw breath.

Futilely,
helplessly
, try to draw breath.

After what seemed an age with no air, faces appeared above him: Susanna. And Cookie and Maynell.

Eagle Jack stared up at them with eyes he couldn't close and saw Nat, Rod, and Marvin appear, too. Above Cookie and Maynell. At Susanna's height.

Those four were mounted. They ought to be riding the other direction, trying to stop the bay
before it bucked its way into the herd and scattered it all over Texas. He tried to open his mouth to say so, but he couldn't even do that.

His mind began to work again, though.

A shot fired meant a call for help or a predator near the camp or lethal trouble in their midst or even a man already dead. More men would be there in a minute—if they weren't trying to keep the cattle from heading back toward the Rio Grande—and here he'd be, laid out in the dust like a greenhorn by a horse scared by a snake that he didn't even see.

The boys would hoo-rah him about this one for days to come.

Before he could get enough air back into his lungs to move a hand or sit up, much less give an order of any kind, the whole bunch was talking about him as if he were dead, or something.

“I take it that he ain't shot or he couldn't have rode that horse that long.”

Dimly, Eagle Jack realized that was Nat's voice.

“You mean for thirty some-odd seconds?” Cookie said, with a chuckle. “He sure didn't stick with him for a whole minute, I know that.”

“
Of course
he ain't shot,” Maynell said. “Susanna ain't gonna shoot our brown-eyed handsome man.”

“I reckon I've got brown eyes, too,” Nat said, always having to draw a woman's attention to himself, the whiny baby.

“But I reckon nobody's callin' you handsome,” Rod said. “So watch out, Nat, you're liable to get shot.”

Eagle Jack would've said something similar himself if he could've talked.

And it was good that Maynell acted like she didn't even hear Nat and so did Susanna. Maynell was bending over, poking around on Eagle Jack's person, searching him over for damage. He wished Susanna would.

No, he didn't. She'd made him look like a tenderfoot fool.

Then Cookie made it all even worse. “That snake must've scared Eagle Jack as much as it did the bay,” he said. “I never seen that boy buck off quite so soon.”

If only he could talk. He'd tell that mouthy old cusie he'd stayed on the bay for a whole lot longer than a minute.

“What snake? What happened?” Marvin said.

“That there cottonmouth was on a limb right at Eagle Jack's head,” Cookie said. “Miss Susanna shot it, it fell across the pommel of the saddle and that was all she wrote for the bay horse. Eagle Jack only rode 'im the first couple of jumps.”

He didn't have to keep saying that. Eagle Jack wanted to tell Cookie to shut up more than he'd wanted anything in a long, long time.

Nat, Marvin, and Rod chuckled at the vision he'd created.

“Always heard ‘if it was a snake it woulda bit you,'” Nat said. “Sounds like the boss woulda been snake bit if you hadn't've been quick and accurate, Mrs. Sixkiller.”

“Thank you,” Susanna said.

Hmpf. Prissy as an old maid schoolteacher. She oughtta know it wasn't a woman's place to be running around camp shooting at everything that moved.

The least she could do would be to show a little concern and get down from that horse and see about him. After all, she could've killed him.

“He's just got the wind knocked out of him,” Maynell pronounced, as she finished looking him over and lifted his head off the ground.

She crooked his neck so much it would've cut off his air, even if his lungs had been working.

How come nothing was like it was in the story-books? How come some bad guy hadn't shot at him and Susanna wasn't down here beside him on her knees, softly soothing his brow?

She owed him that. After all, she'd bought him a world of aggravation with the men.

He tried again to move his lips, but he couldn't speak.

“Good thing that horse is a pioneer bucker,” Cookie said, frowning down at him. “If he hadn't a-kept on lookin' for new ground, he mighta bashed your head in on that very tree limb the snake fell off of.”

At least somebody was talking
to
him, now, instead of about him. They must be expecting him to live.

“Good thing your head is hard as a gourd, boss, is what I'm thinkin',” Nat said.

A whole new heat suffused Eagle Jack's limbs. Those two wouldn't stop teasing him about this until the Judgment Day. Drat Susanna, anyhow.

He thought about all the possibilities of jokes they could make about him, since he was powerless at that moment to try to stave them off.

Eagle Jack Sixkiller himself, sitting under a tree limb with a snake on it—a big snake—and he hadn't known it was there any more than a greenhorn would've. A woman had saved him from it.

And then he'd let a broke horse throw him, like he was the biggest tenderfoot in Texas.

Now he was lying prone in the dust, helpless as a kitten.

Who
wouldn't
hoo-rah him?

All he could do was glare at Susanna. If she'd minded her own business, as she'd been trying so hard to do this morning by going off and leaving him, none of this would ever have happened. He'd have ridden out from under the tree, no worse off from never knowing that the snake was there.

Every bit of this fiasco was all her fault. And, dear God in heaven, shooting at him with that relic of a gun! It was a miracle that it could be
sighted in enough to hit the broad side of a barn. She could just as easily have sent a bullet through his head.

“Damn it…Susanna,” he said, with the first ragged breath he was able to take, “why couldn't you…have just hollered a warning at me?”

“I didn't have time to holler,” she said, with a complete lack of concern that he could have been mortally wounded and no apparent joy whatsoever that he had recovered enough to speak at last. “He was starting to come off that limb, unwinding there beside your head.”

Nat chuckled. “You're lucky you married, boss,” he said. “You need somebody to take care of you, it's plain to see.”

She didn't have to
say
right out, plain and simple, that the snake was hanging down practically in front of his face. She was, without a doubt, the most aggravating woman alive.

“Yeah. What's the matter with you, anyhow?” Cookie asked, lighting into him with a frown on his face that would scare a bear. “Instead of cussin' at her, you oughtta be
thankin'
your wife for savin' your worthless hide.”

Damn it. Here was entertainment for the outfit for miles to come.

Eagle Jack gritted his teeth. He'd bitten his tongue when he landed and that made him even madder. Every bit of this misery was totally unnecessary.

“Oh, darling,” Susanna said, sweet as sugar, “I just couldn't let anything happen to you. I was so scared that snake would bite you right on your handsome nose.”

Great.
Now
she chose to play up the pretend marriage. Well, two could play at that game.

“Thank you, sweetheart,” he said, with his sore tongue from behind his clenched teeth. “You saved my life.”

He gave her a heavy-lidded look.

“I can't wait to show you my appreciation.”

Her cheeks pinkened, which gratified him. And nobody else said anything, which was even better.

Cowboys weren't accustomed to any such innuendo in the company of a lady, married or not. But it didn't faze Maynell.

“Fine, you do that,” Maynell said, supporting his shoulder as he tried to sit up, as if he were a helpless baby, “but you're not able for any such shenanigans right now, mister.” She looked at Nat and Rod. “Boys, he's weak as a cat. Let's get him into the shade over there by my wagon. We've got to eat dinner now.”

As if he were holding up the whole drive just for the amusement of lying on the ground. His anger blossomed.

“No. Y'all had better be riding out to the herd,” he said, forcing more air into his body so he could try to take control again, “last time I saw my horse he was headed that way.”

“That young boy, Johnny, with your beef herd turned him,” Rod said. “Got to him soon enough he didn't spook the cattle.”

“Yeah,” Cookie said. “That's another thing to be glad about, Eagle Jack. Your horse coulda caused a stampede, you know.”

Without a doubt, when the strength came back into his arms and legs, he'd strangle Cookie into silence. He'd stuff a bandana into his mouth and tie it so tight behind his head his eyes would squeeze shut. He'd make him wish he'd never learned to talk at all.

Then Susanna smiled at him and he forgot about Cookie. She had a beautiful smile when she chose to use it—maybe it was because she had such a beautiful mouth.

But then, when she spoke, she had to go and ruin it.

“We may be driven to shoot the brown-eyed handsome men in this outfit or run them off,” Susanna said, looking straight into his eyes and grinning, “but we're not letting the snakes bite them. No, sirree.”

So she was going to join the others in rawhiding him. Little vixen. He didn't
care
if she rode away all by herself straight into trouble.

But first he was going to teach her a lesson.

“Honey, I need you to hold my head,” he said. “Maybe instead of riding scout this afternoon, you oughtta make me a bed in the wagon.”

She gave him a long, straight look. “Of course, darling. Let's just get you into the shade for right now.” He pulled away from Maynell. “I don't need to be carried,” he said. “Bring me my horse…”

The world started spinning.

“You're in no shape to ride,” Maynell said, her tone suddenly sharp.

“Yes, I am.”

She tried to guide him back down. “You ain't even ready to sit up. Lay back down.”

He resisted the pressure of her hand. “Somebody get my horse…”

Everything faded before his eyes. The sun went down and the world went black and, in front of all of them, he fainted like a tender girl. Flat out onto the hard, ungiving ground.

 

When Eagle Jack came to, he was alone in the back of the jolting, swaying wagon with the bedrolls shifting under him. There was a cloth on his forehead that had dried and stuck there in the heat, but no soft hand stroking his skin.

He thought of the poultice Susanna had tried to apply at her house that first night, but there was no tell-tale medicinal smell of antiphlogistine. There were smells of dust and cattle and leather and sweat, but no faint scent of flowers, either.

No fragrance of Susanna.

A sharp disappointment stabbed him. A feeling of hurt, really. Didn't she care what was wrong with him? What if he'd been hurt inside and become sicker and sicker while unconscious?

He sat up, ripped the cloth off his head and threw it out the back of the wagon. The sun was halfway down the sky. He'd been out for two or three hours.

This also meant that his little plan to get back at Susanna, his
wife
, hadn't worked.

“Hey, hey, easy there, mules!”

Maynell's voice. Maynell was driving the
bed
wagon?

He turned and saw, through the front opening, that it was, indeed, Maynell on the driver's seat. Susanna was riding up to meet the wagon as it slowed.

He'd make her think twice about scouting alone. He wasn't going to let her out of his sight.

Eagle Jack started scrambling toward them, over the bedrolls and other claptrap of the bed wagon.

“I need a horse,” he said, the instant he emerged from under the canvas top. “Where's the remuda?”

Startled, Maynell glared at him. “Lay back down,” she said. “I didn't risk letting Cookie's helper drive my chuck wagon just so's I could watch you ride a horse.”

He glared back at her and turned to Susanna. She had turned her mount and was riding alongside.

“Where's my horse?” he said.

She grinned in the most maddening way. “Surely you don't want the
same
horse,” she said. “Remember you couldn't stay in the saddle the last time you tried to ride him.”