Texas Fever
Page 17
He turned to the fire. After a moment, Chuck left him there and moved across the grassy space to the buggy under the trees. Seeing him come, Jean Kincaid stepped down to meet him on the ground, but for some reason neither of them spoke a conventional greeting when he reached her. This morning, he saw, she was wearing a white shirtwaist and a blue wool skirt. Her hair was uncovered. Here in the shade, it seemed to shine with a soft light of its own. He was startled to realize that she was beautiful. It seemed odd that he hadn’t noticed it before.
There was a little pause. He cleared his throat, and asked, “Would you care for a cup of coffee?”
She shook her head. “Are those the wild Texas cattle I’ve been hearing about? They look quite dangerous.” He said, “Well, I wouldn’t venture among them on foot, ma’am.” Looking at her, he was suddenly very thankful that he was not fleeing through Indian Territory with a stolen herd of cattle and a price on his head, or even just standing there with Will Reese’s blood on his hands—whatever she might think of Reese now, she’d been going to marry him once. If he’d been killed, she’d always have remembered who killed him. Chuck said abruptly, “Your dad’s been kind enough to offer to help me buy back my herd. After I’ve sold it, I’ll have to come back this way to repay—”
He found himself flushing. The words weren’t coming right; and after all, he’d only known her a couple of days. Some people might even question whether he had the right to speak.
She was smiling. “Have to, Mr. McAuliffe?” she murmured. “Why, if it’s inconvenient, I’m sure you could arrange to send Dad his money.”
He looked at her for a moment. She was teasing him, and he wasn’t in a mood to be teased. “I could,” he said shortly. “What I’m trying to find out from you, ma’am, is whether or not it will be worth my while to come back. If not, I reckon we’ll take the straight trail home from this Abilene place, so we’ll know it for future drives.” He thought she’d get mad, being spoken to so bluntly; instead, she shook her head abruptly and said, very quietly, “I’m sorry. I didn’t mean to . . . I would like for you to come back. I’ll be waiting.”
He looked at her for a moment longer, memorizing the way she looked for the miles ahead. He would have liked to kiss her, and perhaps she was expecting it, but it wouldn’t have seemed quite right yet. There was still a matter to be settled between him and his conscience; there were things that had happened that had to be studied out before he could live with them comfortably. He lifted his hat, and turned quickly and walked to his horse, and swung into the saddle.
“Joe!” he shouted. “Joe Paris! We’re back in the cattle business. Do you know a town called Abilene?”
Across the meadow, Joe called back, “Abilene? Where’s that?”
“We’ll find out when we get there,” Chuck called. He rose in the stirrups and waved his arm. “Start ’em moving west, I’ll be along as soon as I’ve signed some papers for the sheriff here.”
He heard the cook, behind him, grumbling and fuming about folks who expected a man to break camp without warning. Before him, the herd was starting into motion, the lead steers finding their accustomed places at the point, the pioneers of a movement that within ten years would stock a continent with Texas beef. But the longhorned animals didn’t know they were pioneers, and neither did Chuck McAuliffe. He only knew that he had a girl waiting, and that, in this summer of 1867, he was taking a herd of cattle to a place called Abilene that he’d never heard of until five minutes ago. And if they didn’t want his cattle there, he’d take them somewhere else. . . . But history says they did.
ABOUT THE AUTHOR
Donald Hamilton, author of the bestselling Matt Helm series turns to the West he knows and loves in this exciting novel. The author of The Ambushers, The Betrayers, Murderers Row and a long list of other action-packed thrillers proves he is equally skillful in evoking the sights and sounds of the nineteenth-century West and the men and women whose dramatic adventures made that time and place one of the most colorful in our History.