a far cry from anything I thought I’d ever, ever do. But my editor pays my salary, and he is adamant.”
“Oh, Alex, why?”
“Back East people are mad for stories about the wild, untamed West.”
“I feel responsible for you,” her aunt said. “And a cattle drive is dangerous.”
“I don’t have a choice, Aunt.”
Alice snorted. “Of course you have a choice. Just tell your editor no.”
“I can’t. If I refuse, he’ll fire me, and I’ve worked too hard to risk losing my job. Eight long, grinding years I’ve spent working my way up from the proofreading desk to being a top reporter. I’m the only woman on the entire staff, and I won’t give it up. I can’t.”
Alex bit her lip and smoothed a crease in the top sheet over and over. Why, why did her job depend on the harebrained idea of a newspaper editor who’d never traveled west of his favorite restaurant?
Alice sighed. “Your mother would never allow this.”
Alex flung back the sheet and sat up. “Aunt Alice, my mother is dead.”
“Yes,” Alice said quietly. “I know. And you’re just like her. Bright. Beautiful. And...” her voice tightened “...bullheaded.”
Alex slid her arms about her aunt’s rigid form. “Mama always said you were the bullheaded one.”
“Don’t change the subject,” Alice snapped.
“Aunt Alice, you can’t stop me. You can’t keep me from holding on to my career as a newspaper reporter.”
“Oh, I know, honey. I just wish you’d—”
“Settle down and get married,” Alex finished. “That’s what Mama always wanted, too. But I’m twenty-six. On the shelf.”
Alice shook her head and blew out a sigh. “You will be careful, won’t you? At least try to?”
“Of course I will. Uncle Charlie says Zach Strickland’s the best trail boss in three states. I’ll be in good hands.”
Her aunt let out a long sigh and said nothing.
* * *
Zach stuffed his thumbs in his front pockets and watched Miss Newspaper Reporter trip down the porch steps ready to go cattle driving. She looked so bright and shiny it made his head hurt. And, Lord love little chickens, what her butt did to a pair of jeans was indecent.
“Good morning!” she sang.
“Mornin’,” he growled. “Got a lot of miles to cover today. Sure hope you can ride.”
“Why, certainly I can ride.” She rested her hands on her shiny new belt buckle.
“Yeah? Where’ve you ridden?”
“In the city park,” she said, her voice frosty. “On the bridle path.”
Zach resisted a snort, looked her up and down and unhooked his thumbs. “Those your ridin’ boots?”
She glanced down at the stylish, neatly laced leather boots. “Yes. What’s wrong with them? I bought them in Chicago and—”
“They won’t work.”
She propped her hands on her hips and peered more closely at her feet. “Well, if it’s not too much trouble, Mister Knows Everything, would you mind telling me what’s wrong with them?”
He spit off to one side. “You won’t last half an hour in those fancy city leathers. Brand new and probably too tight. Go ask Alice for a pair of her old riding boots.”
For a moment, Miss Newspaper Reporter looked like she was going to argue, but he stared her down. Finally, she pivoted, stomped back up the porch steps and slammed through the front door.
Hell’s bells, she was a greenhorn. A ladyfied greenhorn, and one with a mouth on her. Charlie had just used up his last favor.
When Miss Fancy-Pants reappeared, she wore a pair of Alice’s well-worn riding boots and a sour look. Zach expelled a long breath and tipped his head toward the corral.
“Saddle up.”
“Oh, yes, sir, Mister Trail Boss.”
His jaw tightened. Gonna be a damn long day.
* * *
Alex snapped open her leather-bound notebook and jotted half a line before the chuck wagon rolled into position at the head of the muddle of cows and horses and riders. Her horse jolted forward. She stuffed her pencil in her shirt pocket and grabbed the reins, but the horse danced a few paces to the left before it settled down. She’d never before ridden anything but old, gentle, city-trained mares, and this horse was neither old nor gentle. Or a mare, she’d been told. In fact, she’d never been this close to a horse that had been...well, gelded.
At least forty horses milled around in a whinnying clump, and she counted seven, no, eight scruffy-looking cowboys, not including the horse wrangler and His Highness the Trail Boss.
And hundreds and hundreds of cows. Steers, Uncle Charlie said. Surely they couldn’t all be steers, because some of them had calves tagging along behind.
She flexed her toes in Aunt Alice’s boots. Her aunt had said they were well broken in, but they still felt awfully tight. She was glad she was riding and not walking the four hundred miles that stretched ahead of her.
The chuck wagon, a bulky-looking top-heavy box on wheels, rattled and clanked its way on ahead of the roiling mass of animals and men on horseback. She watched Roberto, the driver, stash his whip under the bench, put two fingers to his lips and give a sharp whistle. Right away she decided she liked the white-haired old man. The wagon lumbered off down the trail, drawn by two horses.
Bellowing cattle, yipping men on horseback and the thunder of horses’ hooves added to the hubbub. It was deafening. She clapped both hands over her ears and lost control of her mount. A rider swung in close, grabbed her reins and settled the horse. Juan, Roberto’s soft-spoken nephew. He laid the leather straps in her gloved hand, touched his hat brim and reined his horse away.
Dust rose in thick clouds. She had just kneed her horse off to one side when Juan dropped back and shouted something. She couldn’t hear over the noise, so she tried to read his lips. “Señorita.” He mouthed something else, but she had no idea what it was.
She shook her head. He pointed at the bandanna covering his mouth and nose. Oh! Of course. But she didn’t have a bandanna. Oh, well. She smiled at Juan, lifted her chin, and spurred her mount forward.
She was on her way!
It was all fascinating. So this was how people in places like Philadelphia and New York got their meat, a thousand bawling cows lumbering after one old seasoned bull called a “bell steer” because of the clanging bell hung around its neck. They would all end in some rough, dirty railroad town in Nevada with the Indian-sounding name of Winnemucca, where
