shot to her feet. “Cherry, please gather your sticks. I will return in one hour.”
She walked downstream, away from the camp, looking for a sandy beach and a pool suitable for bathing. Zach walked five paces behind her, whistling through his teeth. Suddenly she stopped short. There it was, the perfect spot, a deep pool screened by willow trees.
“Here,” she announced. His whistling ceased, and she waited until he caught up with her.
“Right.” He tipped his head toward the copse of trees. “I’ll be over there.”
“Standing guard,” she reminded him.
“Yeah.” He strode off and disappeared. “Your hour starts now,” he called from somewhere behind the greenery.
Quickly she stripped off her shirt, boots and jeans, listening for telltale signs that he was creeping up to spy on her. He wouldn’t do that, would he? Well, he might, she acknowledged. On second thought, no, he wouldn’t. Zach Strickland was the most maddening man she’d ever come across, but something told her he was a man of his word.
She stripped off her camisole and underdrawers. Then she took three quick steps across the sandy creek bank and dived headfirst into the most blissful, cool bath she could imagine.
She swam and splashed, unwound her braid and washed the grit out of her hair, then floated on her back and gazed up at the purpling sky overhead. Dusk was beautiful out here, soft with tones of lavender and violet, and the air so sweet it was like wine.
“You’ve got ten minutes,” came Zach’s voice from somewhere.
She paddled to shore, dragged herself up on the narrow beach and stood shivering while a million crickets yammered at her. Drat! She had no way to get dry except to just stand still and let the water evaporate.
“Four minutes,” he called.
Double drat. Not enough time to air-dry. She grabbed her camisole to use as a towel. But when she’d blotted up all the water, the garment was too sodden to wear, so she wadded it up, stuffed it in the back pocket of her jeans and pulled on her drawers, followed by her shirt and trousers. Her wet hair dripped all over her shirt, but it couldn’t be helped. At least it was clean.
She heard Zach stalking toward her through the brush. “Time’s up. You ready?”
Well, no, she wasn’t, but at least she’d washed off the trail dust. “Look,” she teased when he appeared. She flipped her wet hair at him. “No grasshoppers!”
Unexpectedly he laughed out loud.
“Tomorrow night when I bathe—”
“Hold on a minute,” he interrupted her. “The hands don’t take a bath every night, and neither will you.”
“But we’ll all smell...well, funny after riding in the sun all day, won’t we?”
“Yeah. Get used to it. We don’t take baths unless there’s a river or a stream handy, and that isn’t too often. We sleep in our duds, too.”
“Oh.” That was another snippet of information she could put in her newspaper column, but it wouldn’t help her sense of smell for the next few weeks.
“So,” he continued, “when you’re close to anybody on a trail drive, just don’t breathe too deep. Or maybe hold your nose.”
“Oh,” she said again.
Back in camp the men sat around the fire, eyeing the fistful of twigs Cherry held in one roughened hand.
“All set, miss?” the graying wrangler inquired. The man was bent from years on the trail, she guessed, but there was something about him she liked. For one thing, he moved so gracefully and deliberately it was like watching a man do a slow sort of dance. And for another, he was the only one of the men who didn’t watch everything she did.
“All set,” she answered. “You may proceed with the drawing.”
The cowhands hunched forward, and one by one each of them drew a stick from Cherry’s gnarled fingers. Zach stood on the other side of the campfire, watching.
“Aw, my stick’s longer’n a steer’s horn,” Skip grumbled.
“Mine, too,” José said.
Some of the men held their sticks close to their chest. Others, disappointed, snapped theirs in two and tossed the pieces into the flames. At last a chortle rose from Curly, who leaped up and capered around the fire. “It’s me! I got the short stick! She’s gonna interview me first.”
“And we’re all gonna listen,” Cassidy drawled. “Ain’t we, boys?”
“This is okay with you, señorita?” José inquired politely.
“More important,” came Zach’s commanding voice, “is it okay with Curly? He might not want you hearin’ all his secrets.”
Jase snorted. “Heck, boss, twenty thousand people back East are gonna read all about ’m. After that, Curly won’t have any secrets!”
Curly settled his work-hardened frame next to Alex and sent her a shy smile. “Guess I’m ready, Miss Murray. Fire away.”
Quietly, Roberto set a brimming mug of coffee at her elbow. She took a sip, fished her notebook and pencil out of her shirt pocket and began.
“Your name is Curly, is that right?”
“Yeah. My real name’s Garner, miss. Thaddeus Garner.”
“Then why are you called Curly? I notice your hair is straight as a licorice whip.” The men guffawed.
“Dunno, ma’am. I’ve always been Curly, ever since I kin remember.”
“Very well, Curly. Now, tell me all about yourself, where you were born, where you grew up, how you came to be on this cattle drive.”
“Well, lessee, now. I was born in Broken Finger, Idaho. That is, I think I was. My momma could never remember. Some days she said it was Mule Heaven and other days she said it was Broken Finger. Pa died before I could ask him.”
“And did you grow up in Broken Finger? Or Mule Heaven?”
“Guess so, miss. Leastways Ma never moved whilst I was growin’ up. Went to school for a while, but I never seemed to learn much.”
Jase snorted. “Didn’t learn nuthin’, ya mean.”
“Didn’t learn anything,” Skip corrected with a grin.
“You neither, huh?” Jase shot back.
Alex tapped her pencil against the notepad. “Gentlemen, please. Let Curly finish his story.”
Curly talked and talked while Alex jotted down pages of notes. The man talked for so long that the other hands began to drift off and retrieve their bedrolls from the chuck wagon, lay them out around the fire and nod off to sleep. And still Curly talked.
