Wyoming Wildfire (16 page)

“To run him off or keep him from hurting me, but I’d never hang him.”

“That’s because Virginia is a state with laws to protect you. Wyoming is still a territory, and the law most often is in the hands of the cowmen.”

“But you have a sheriff and judges. You can’t convict a man without a jury.”

“They’ve become so identified with the rustlers and their sympathizers it’s impossible to get a conviction, no matter what the evidence.” He could see that Sibyl was becoming upset and abruptly changed the subject. “This is no way for a girl who’s seeing her first roundup to spend her time. Let’s get some dinner and then we’ll see what else we can find to do.”

“Dinner!” she uttered with a start. “I told Ned to give all the food to Sanchez. If he ruins it, after I worked so hard to get it here, I’ll roast him on his own spit.” They arrived at the chuck wagon in the middle of a pitched argument between Ned and the red-faced cook.

“Miss Cameron will have you ground into hog food if you touch that pot,” Ned warned Sanchez as he stood guard over the beef pie Sibyl had spent the better part of a day preparing.

“It ain’t gonna be eaten if I don’t set it out,” shouted Sanchez angrily.

“You’re not getting your hands on it,” asserted Ned. “I never thought I’d be thankful to give up the range, but Miss Cameron’s cooking makes just about anything worthwhile.”

“That’s a sterling tribute,” grinned Burch as Sibyl rescued her pie from the combatants.

“Let me help you,” Sibyl offered, hoping to soothe the ruffled sensibilities of the volatile cook. “I brought a few things to help out so you won’t have to work so hard. I thought you might appreciate a little time off.”

So she has learned a little diplomacy, Burch thought to himself. I wish she could spare a little of it for me instead of abusing me every time she opens her mouth.

Burch could think of so many enjoyable things to do with that entrancing mouth. He felt his blood begin to stir, but it always heated up when he was around Sibyl, so much so it was an agony to spend nights at the ranch knowing she was just down the hall. How could a man get any sleep with a maddeningly beautiful female only a few seconds from his bed? It was better if he slept out with the men. He could ride the several hours back and forth to the ranch and still put in a full day’s work easier than he could after lying awake half the night. It was much less dangerous too; sleepless nights could make you careless.

“When do the men get to eat?”

“Whenever they can,” Burch answered. “They can’t all stop work at the same time, so nobody waits for anybody else. We might as well start.”

“But should you go first?”

“I don’t usually, but I have a guest today and that gives me the right to break tradition.”

“I don’t want to get in the way of your work,” said Sibyl, hoping he wouldn’t abandon her for the entire evening.

“You won’t,” he replied, leaving her unsure as to what he meant.

The men began to show up for dinner, singly or in pairs. Grateful for any change in their diet yet unable to believe that anything so delicious should fall to their lot on the trail, they showered Sibyl with compliments.

“You should come by at least once a week,” said one young boy who, being a member of Lasso’s crew, had dropped by to sample the food of the rival cook.

“You tell anybody else the kind of victuals we got and you’ll be eating nothing but dust,” threatened his friend. “There’s just about enough for us.”

“There’s more in the wagon.”

“He don’t have to know that, ma’am. Then he can’t go spreading it around that we got something better to fill our bellies than son-of-a-bitch stew.” The boy realized too late that the name of the cowboy’s favorite dish was not fit for a lady’s ears and blushed fiery red from the tip of his hair to the bottom of his toes. “I’m sorry, ma’am, it just slipped out.” Sibyl tried to keep a straight face but made the mistake of glancing at Burch. His eyes danced and his whole body shook.

“It’s all right,” she assured him in an unsteady voice. “You can’t change its name just for my ears.” The boy mumbled another apology and quickly rejoined his friend. “You devil, you almost made me laugh in that poor boy’s face,” she said when the boy was out of earshot.

“I couldn’t help it, not when he looked at you like he expected you to cane him.”

“If I beat anybody, it would be you,” she said as severely as she could. Just then Jesse came hurrying up, wearing a broad grin of welcome, and dissipated the intimacy of the moment.

“I heard you had come to see a roundup. I’d be happy to show you about.”

“You must have forgotten you have to supervise the holding herds tomorrow” Burch said. For a moment Sibyl thought she saw a flash of some intense emotion flare in Jesse’s eyes, but it was so brief she dismissed it as imaginary.

“Then I’ll be here to welcome you back when you come in ready to drop in your tracks.”

“I don’t tire that easily,” Sibyl told him, nettled. “I’ll undertake to stay in the saddle as long as anyone.” The two men eyed each other with keen glances, but neither spoke.

“We’ll see about that tomorrow” Burch said as he got to his feet and helped Sibyl up. “Right now I have to find a place for your wagon and get you situated for the night. We can’t have you bedding down in the middle of camp. The men wouldn’t get a wink of sleep.”

Ned wondered whether it was the men or himself Burch was thinking about, but of course he was careful not to wonder that out loud.

After all the food had been transferred to the chuck wagon, Ned drove the wagon a little distance to a small dip that was protected by some sagebrush on one side and a creek on the other. “We can take a little walk while Ned gets your wagon set up,” Burch said, picking up a blanket and throwing it over his shoulder. They walked the short distance to the creek in silence.

“We should have brought the horses,” Sibyl remarked, but her words were barely out of her mouth before Burch swept her up and waded into the stream.

“It’s not deep,” he pointed out unnecessarily. Sibyl’s heart pounded at the emotional intensity of his words. The strength of his arms and the nearness of his body were affecting her senses in a most alarming way. Her arms were around his neck, but she felt as though they encircled the hot turbulence of a tornado. By the time he reached the other side of the narrow stream, she was so shaken she was unsteady on her legs.

“I must have turned my heel on a pebble,” she said as she reached out to him, seeking support.

“Be careful, there’s no doctor for miles.” Even the comparative safety of the camp seemed so very far away.

“Where are you taking me?” she asked uneasily.

“Just to a rise through those cottonwoods. When the moon is full you can see the entire plain from there.”

Before them spread the panorama of the open plains, thousands of cattle settled down for the night as far as the eye could see. Here and there campfires pierced the twilight but made no impression on the vast darkness that enveloped them. The voices of cowboys riding the herds and singing their bleak songs in rough voices floated to them in a mixture of entangled melodies. A distant howl caused her to turn questioning eyes to him.

“Just a wolf,” Burch said, untroubled. “It’s probably following an antelope herd.” She walked a little closer to him. The silence was vast and menacing, but she knew the huge man walking next to her was just as dangerous. She had never felt quite so alone before and it frightened her. Sibyl felt herself slipping steadily under the spell of his physical presence. Even the smell of sweat that clung to him and the dust that covered his shirt and hat didn’t bother her. At least he didn’t wear jangling spurs or walk bowlegged.

“It’s not often that a man gets to take a girl to watch the sky at night.” Burch was speaking almost to himself. “It kinda’ makes you look at things different.”

“How’s that?” she managed to ask without her voice quavering.

“I can’t say for sure. I never gave it any thought before. Sky is sky and I’ve spent more nights in the open than in a proper bed, but when a man has some female to watch out for, it’s not the same.” Sibyl’s heart was pounding so loudly she could hardly hear his words.

“Are you trying to tell me that you’re in love with your cows?” she said, striving to conceal her emotional pandemonium. Burch tossed the blanket on a large rock that lay between the roots of the cottonwood trees and took her by the shoulders.

“I’m trying to tell you that you’re the most beautiful girl in the world, and I’ve been dreaming of holding you in my arms ever since that first ride.”

“You don’t talk like it most of the time,” she said, fiddling with the buttons on his flannel shirt. “I sometimes think you don’t like me at all.”

“I like you more than a sensible man lets himself like anything. I may get angry with you, but I never stay mad. One look at that pouting mouth and all my anger melts.”

“I don’t pout,” she demurred.

“You do too. Your soft red lips push forward in the most entrancing way” he said, letting his fingers trace the lips he spoke of so lovingly, “and I just want to kiss them to take away all the hurt.”

“You never do,” she murmured breathlessly.

“Do you want me to?”

“Not if you don’t want to,” she said, refusing to commit herself and all the while tilting her head back until her lips were close to his. He obliged by kissing her, gently at first, then with garnering ecstacy.

“Oh God!” he moaned, folding her tightly into his arms. “I’ve ached with the thought of you day in and day out. I even spend my nights out here because I can’t trust myself in the same house with you.”

“I didn’t know,” she said stupidly. “I thought you preferred it.”

He kissed her again to erase any doubt. They sank down on the blanket, their arms around each other. The pervading sense of peace that lay over all the creatures below filled Sibyl with the most wonderful sense of well-being she had ever experienced. It was as though she had come home and her spirit was at rest. She involuntarily tightened her grip on Burch and he caught her in a crushing embrace.

“I like being here. I can’t understand why, but I feel like I belong.”

“It’s because you were never meant to be caught in the web of staid Virginia society. You’re just as wild as those cattle down there, and your spirit needs just as much space as they do.” His body was next to hers and the heat from the contact made it hard for her to think about peace, spirits, or anything else. The only thing that seemed capable of penetrating the garnering haze was the commanding force compelling her to draw toward the man next to her. He was like a tremendous magnet, polarizing every atom of her being until every bit of her was concentrated upon him.

His hands no longer held hers but were traveling hungrily over her body, first down her side and then along her leg, hurriedly exploring and setting her skin on fire. She started to protest, to draw away, but she couldn’t move or utter the objection that habit formed in her brain. His lips locked with hers and his ravaging tongue invaded her mouth. Everything was moving so fast, so quickly beyond anything she had been prepared to face, that she felt helplessly carried along by a raging, uncontrollable torrent. The feel of his leg moving between hers immobilized her. His hand, a bold and insistent hand, found one breast and began to knead it into a firming peak of mounting desire. She felt a new wave of heat spread through her belly and downward between her thighs, it was even more enslaving than the first and just as hopeless to resist. Unconsciously giving in to the waves of pleasure that grew stronger and stronger, she sank on the blanket and pulled Burch down with her. Burch took this as an open invitation, and his knee between her legs grew bolder and the hand began to unbutton her shirt. But this was going too fast for Sibyl.

“No,” she said, trying to hold his hand in hers, to slow the advance of that powerful knee. But he was too strong for her; so were the demands of her own body.

“I want you,” he groaned. Or was it her own voice she heard? She wasn’t sure, but his hand was inside her shirt and making free with one throbbing breast.

“God, how I want you,” he groaned again, and dipped his head to touch his lips to her rosy nipple.

She tried to resist, at least she thought she did, hoping to be saved from the one thing she wanted most, but the enervating heat coursing through her had changed into a desire that matched his and she was losing control of herself. Burch was beyond the power of words. His aching need blotted out everything but its own overwhelming hunger.

“Mr. Randall! Miss Cameron!” Ned’s voice came from somewhere not far below them. Sibyl grew rigid with fear. They had been so overcome by their desire that they had not heard Ned cross the stream and start to climb toward the rise. He would be upon them in a few minutes. Sibyl panicked.

“Stop! It’s Ned. He’ll be here in a minute.” Fear cleared her head and stiffened her ability to resist the inviting heat that still thundered through her veins. She pushed Burch away with all her might, but he wouldn’t stop until she bit the lips trying to possess her mouth.

“What the hell! …” he muttered, ruthlessly snatched from the tantalizing arms of his enveloping passion.

“It’s Ned, he’s looking for us.”

“Damn Ned,” he said, reaching to bring her down beside him once more, but she scrambled to her feet and quickly buttoned her blouse.