Cowboy For Hire

by Duncan, Alice

“It sounds a whole lot more comfortable than being rained on while you’re driving a herd of cattle to market,” he said, uncoiling the rope as he walked across the chow tent floor. Amy followed with the chair. “And trying to keep the critters from getting spooked by the thunder is no fun, either.”

  “I suppose not.” Amy looked thoughtful, and Charlie got the impression she didn’t mean it, that she believed she’d enjoy the excitement of driving cattle through a storm. She set the chair down on the other side of the tent. Charlie climbed on it and tied the rope to a tent pole on that side. Karen, with her arms full of blankets, stood next to Amy. She handed Charlie a blanket, which he arranged over the rope, securing it with a clothespin Amy handed him.

  He went on, testing Amy and her interest in things outside her frame of reference. Maybe she honestly wouldn’t mind life on a cattle ranch. “Sometimes you’ll see lightning do weird things. It’ll flash on the cattle horns and roll from steer to steer. It’ll look like blue balls of electricity running through the herd.”

  “My goodness!” Amy’s eyes were as round as robins’ eggs. She’d taken up the bucket full of clothespins, and she handed another one to Charlie.

  “Really?” Karen was interested, too. Somehow, Charlie didn’t care.

  “Yup.” He shoved a clothespin onto the blanket to hold it in place, and took another one from Amy’s delicate fingers. He peered at those fingers hard, wondering if they were capable of doing the kind of work a ranch wife had to do.

  “Doesn’t the lightning kill the cows?” Amy asked, handing him yet another clothespin.

  “Sometimes.” He jabbed that clothespin at the end of the blanket and reached for another blanket from Karen, which he swung over the rope. Their goal was to create separate sleeping quarters for the men and the women. Inelegant, perhaps, but more proper than having all of them sleep together. “But not that blue-ball lightning. It’s the bolts of lightning hitting an animal that will kill it. The ball lightning only plays with their horns. I saw it happen with a herd of longhorns once. It was something to see, you bet.”

  Amy and Karen looked at each other while Charlie clipped another couple of clothespins onto the latest blanket. Karen said, “Do you suppose he’s teasing us, Amy?”

  “I’m not sure.”

  “I’m not!” Charlie cried, stung. “Honest Injun, it happens all the time. Well,” he amended, honesty having overcome him, “not all the time. But it happens. You can ask anybody.”

  “I supposed we could ask anybody,” said Amy with a grin. “But I doubt that would help any, since nobody from around here would know what we’re talking about.”

  Both girls laughed. Charlie joined them, but he didn’t mean it. He didn’t like having his word doubted.

  “I’d love to see that blue-ball lightning,” Amy murmured.

  Charlie eyed her. “Maybe you will someday.” She gazed at him, his eyes stuck in place staring into hers, and Karen had to clear her throat twice to unlock the spell. Amy jerked and looked into her clothespin bucket. Charlie cleared his throat and turned away to secure another blanket.

  They finished hanging the blanket curtain shortly before the cooking crew hollered out that chow was ready to be dished up. The seating arrangements were casual and crowded, but since Amy and Karen didn’t seem inclined to leave him, Charlie didn’t mind that. In fact, he offered to fetch both young ladies their soup and sandwiches, an offer the declined.

  “You couldn’t hold three bowls of soup and however many sandwiches you aim to eat tonight, Charlie Fox, much less a couple for us, too.”

  The look Amy gave him—coquettish and full of humor—nearly felled Charlie. He didn’t argue, because he wasn’t sure what would come out of his mouth if he let it operate while his brain was in such a muddle. He feared he’d say something really idiotic, like “Please marry me.” Considering silence prudent, he laughed and let the two ladies precede him in the chow line.

  They found a bench not too far from a warm stove where there was room for the three of them, and sat together there. Charlie hadn’t realized quite how hungry he was, and all but inhaled his soup and sandwiches. Both Karen and Amy offered him half of theirs, which he took with many thanks. “I’m used to eating a lot,” he said simply.

  “I imagine so,” said Amy. “You must work very hard at ranching.”

  “Yes,” Karen put in. “I guess it’s a harder life than we who live in the city have. Well, unless you’re one of those poor unfortunate people crowded together in a New York slum or something.”

  “My goodness, yes!” Amy exclaimed. “Why, I’ve read articles describing the terrible conditions some of those poor immigrant families endure. It’s awful.”

  “Sure is,” Charlie agreed after he’d swallowed. He know that Amy didn’t approve of people talking with their mouths full. Which was only good manners, as his mother had tried to teach him and his brothers for years. This was the first time Charlie’d ever had reason to be thankful that his mother was a strict woman who didn’t let her sons get away with stuff. “I don’t think I’d like to live in a big city like that.”

  “Pasadena’s not bad,” Amy ventured, sounding sort of tentative about it. “It’s small and pleasant.”

  “Oh, yes,” agreed Karen. “Pasadena is lovely. It’s nothing like some of those horrible cities back East where everything’s dirty and crowded.”

  “I’m not much of a one for crowds,” Charlie admitted.

  “I suppose you’re accustomed to the wide-open spaces,” Amy said. Again, Charlie thought he detected a hint of wistfulness in her voice.

  “I suppose so,” he said. “Arizona Territory’s not like this, though. Where I’m from, it’s beautiful.”

  “I’d like to see it someday,” Amy said upon a sigh.

  “Really?”

  She looked at him as if his question surprised her. “Why, of course I would. I’d love to travel.”

  “Hmmm.”

  “Um, do ostriches get bothered by thunderstorms?”

  Charlie huffed. He wished she hadn’t brought up those fool ostriches. “I suppose they do. I don’t reckon very many animals much like thunder and lightning.”

  “Hmmm.”

  “But, you know, it’s my brother who’s got the ostrich ranch.” He elected not to mention the poker game in which Sam had won the ranch, sensing Amy Wilkes wouldn’t approve of gambling. “The family has a cattle ranch near Sedona. That was where I’ve spent most of my life.”

  “Oh?”

  Was it his imagination, or did she perk up at that? He couldn’t really blame her for not cottoning to the thought of ostriches.

  “Sure. My granddaddy moved to the territory after the war, and my daddy took over the ranch after that. It’s been in the family for a long time.”

  “My goodness.”

  “It’s a prosperous place,” Charlie added, feeling a little defiant. He really didn’t like Amy thinking of him as an itinerant ostrich-rancher.

  “I didn’t realize.”

  “Didn’t think so.”

  They talked—whispering mostly—far into the night. Karen drifted off after an hour or so, and they kept talking. Long after everyone else had settled down to sleep, Charlie and Amy talked while rain pounded down, sliding off the canvas siding of the chow tent and splashing into the lake growing outside.

  Charlie told Amy all sorts of stories about life on the ranch. He was happy to note that she not only seemed interested, but he thought he detected some longing, too,, perhaps for a life that had a little more to it than drinking orange juice. His impression that she wasn’t such an outrageous candidate for territorial living as he’d first supposed grew as the night progressed.

  He knew better than to set his heart on anything, but he was encouraged, and he didn’t mind admitting it. To himself.

  Eleven

  The rain continued all night and into the following morning, making the atmosphere outdoors cool and muggy and indoors steamy. For the first time in her life, Am
y smelled the aroma of many bodies huddled together. She didn’t like it. Charlie’s wide-open spaces began to sound more appealing as the rain continued.

  The desert was covered in water, reminding Amy of a weird, flat ocean with prickly plant tops sticking out of it. Rain splashed in sheets and then in sprinkles and then in sheets again. The thunder subsided during the day, but the sky was as gray as her aunt Julia’s hair. There wasn’t a jot of blue or a flash of sunlight anywhere. When she let her imagination motor ahead on its own, it seemed to Amy as if the whole world had turned sullen and dangerous.

  She didn’t get her letter to Vernon written the night of the flood. Nor did she have a chance to write it the following day, most of which was spent by the cast and crew of One and Only in digging trenches around the chow tent and trying to repair leaks. The chow tent eventually ended up the only domicile in the temporary Peerless lot that remained relatively undamaged and free from water.

  “Heave!” Charlie yelled at Martin and Horace Huxtable, who were struggling with a flat board that looked like a door to Amy, although she wouldn’t have sworn to it.

  The two men heaved, Huxtable without even whining or complaining about having to do some real work for once in his life. He was apparently as worried about the picture lot and the completion of One and Only as anyone else on the set. The reason they were heaving unattached doors was to create a bridge across the trench, and thereby connect the chow tent to the rest of the world. At present, the chow tent bore a slight resemblance to a very small, very unstable medieval castle with a moat around it.

  The wooden door—or whatever it was—was slapped into place, sending up a spray of mud that coated Huxtable and Martin. Martin leaped back and laughed. Huxtable leaped back and swore.

  Amy shook her head, thinking the two reactions could have been predicted by anyone with an ounce of understanding in his soul. If she were writing a script of this episode, she’d write it just this way, with Charlie leading the pack. The dialogue would have to be cleaned up a little, since Huxtable’s penchant for cursing was both shocking and revolting. Amy was certain the picture-watching public would never countenance such vile language.

  She sighed as she stirred the soup. She volunteered to work in the kitchen since the kitchen crew had been unable, presumably, to traverse the flooded roads from El Monte after they’d gone home the night before. Whatever their reasons, they hadn’t appeared this morning. Most of the resident male crew members had been recruited to work in pursuits more muscular than cooking. Therefore, Amy and Karen were pulling kitchen duty, while other female crew members had been set to mending things that needed it, tent flaps and so forth.

  At the moment, Amy and Karen were engaged in fixing lunch. Breakfast had consisted of biscuits and coffee. Since everyone in the crew understood, by this time, how much Amy knew about coffee, she’d made the biscuits. Charlie had told her that he and his brothers generally ate biscuits and coffee for breakfast on the trail.

  The trail. Amy stirred dreamily, remembering his comment and thinking about life on a ranch and how peaceful it probably was. Most of the time.

  Perhaps it was even too peaceful sometimes. Amy always tried to pepper her dreams with doses of reality in order to keep her feet on solid ground. She had to admit, however, that the ranching life sounded lovely. A little boredom never hurt anyone, and it beat the tar out of the kinds of excitement she’d lived through in her earlier days.

  “What are they doing out there?” Karen wiped hair from her sweaty forehead and resumed beating the cornmeal mixture she’d been assigned to put together.

  Her attention recaptured and plunked down slap in the middle of the waterlogged Peerless Studio set, Amy said, “I think they’re trying to secure the rest of the tents so the water won’t get inside and ruin everybody’s clothing and so forth. They went around earlier today and made sure everyone’s luggage was placed on top of the beds.” She tasted the soup, decided it needed more oomph, and tossed in another cut-up onion and some salt and pepper. She liked well-seasoned food.

  “How are they doing that? Securing the tents, I mean.”

  Amy shook her head. “I’m not sure. I think it involves folding up the edges of the canvas so that water can’t leak in through the seams.” She thought about it and shrugged. “I have no idea, really.”

  “I imagine we’ll find out eventually. If we live through this rain. It reminds e of Noah and the flood.”

  “It does indeed.” Amy squinted at the roof of the tent, wondering if it would hold. The chow tent was the largest and most elaborate of the tents, and had cross-beams supporting it. Cross-beams wouldn’t be of much help if the canvas decided to collapse around them.

  But as her aunt told her with regularity, it was no use borrowing trouble. “The good Lord knows what he’s doing, Amy. He doesn’t need you to guide His hand,” Aunt Julia would say when Amy got to fretting and fuming.

  Amy knew her aunt spoke the truth. Amy’s life, which in late years had been remarkably free from insecurity and doubt, had not always been thus, and she still worried. When she was a little girl, insecurity was all she’d known. Worry, when it was so deeply entrenched in a person’s heart, was a hard habit to break.

  At least the cameras were safe for the time being. They still resided in the wagon, and had been tucked all around with oilskin and canvas coverings. Martin had been going outside every time he thought about them—which seemed to Amy every fifteen seconds or thereabouts—to check on them.

  Amy found it amusing, in a cynical sort of way, that Martin, who was really a very nice man, should be much more worried about the cameras than about the cast and crew. Of course, cameras, as martin had told her with some show of irritation when she’d voiced her observations, couldn’t swim.

  Horace Huxtable had finally been coerced into helping Charlie and Martin build the bridge over the moat, but he’d had to be bribed with the promise of liquor after the storm was over. Amy deplored such tactics but had to admit they’d worked on Horace.

  “I hope I won’t be around when they give him his reward,” she huffed, changing hands because her right arm was beginning to ache from stirring.

  Karen sniffed. “I expect they’ll take him to a roadhouse to tank up.”

  The way she’d expressed it tickled Amy, and she giggled. “I hope he drowns on the way.”

  “I fear there’s little chance of that happy prospect coming to pass.” Karen’s cornbread mixture was ready to dump into two large greased tins which were awaiting their turn at usefulness. “Would you mind holding these things down while I pour?”

  “Don’t mind at all.” Amy removed the huge wooden spoon from the soup pot, tasted the soup again, decided the onion, salt and pepper had helped a good deal, and laid the spoon aside. “It’s a miracle there was enough wood to fire up the stove this morning. I’d expected it all to be soaked through.”

  “I guess they have a lot of wood put aside for just such emergencies. The people who run picture studios don’t like to take many chances.” Karen shook out her arms and prepared to lift the huge bowl of batter.

  “You mean they anticipated a flood?” In an effort to help her friend, Amy shoved one of the tins closer to the bowl.

  “I don’t know if they anticipated this, exactly, but picture making can be a rough sort of business when you leave town for the country. I’m sure Peerless has run into troubles of a similar nature before this.”

  “I suppose they must have. Making a picture is quite an undertaking.”

  Karen didn’t speak while she concentrated on pouring out her batter, giving Amy time to think about leaving town for the country. Arizona Territory, for instance.

  Charlie had told her all about his ranching operation. It had sounded like some kind of remote and gorgeous heaven to Amy. She chided herself for being foolish. She knew good and well that it was dangerous to leap into things without checking them out first. For heaven’s sake, leaping before they looked was what had sickened and eventual
ly killed her father and mother.

  She didn’t want to think about her parents, since doing so always made her sad. Instead, she thought about Vernon Catesby. She needed to write a response to his letter. It wasn’t kind of her to be spending all of her thoughts on Charlie Fox, whom she really didn’t know very well.

  Vernon was a known and therefore a comfortable commodity in her life. It was true that he had no tales to relate about blue lightning balls passing back and forth on cattle horns, and he had no experience with wildfires or flash floods, both of which phenomena Charlie had explained to her last night, but Vernon was stable. Stability was good. Stability was a most desirable quality in a man.

  Stability might be sort of boring, but Amy would much rather be bored than scared and in danger. She’d been both of those things, and she didn’t intend to be again if she could help it.

  On the other hand, the Fox family’s ranch had been a thriving concern, according to Charlie—whom she had no reason to doubt—for nearly fifty years. That was a long time. It sounded almost frightfully stable.

  The ranching life also appealed to Amy for other reasons. She adored her aunt and uncle, but she wasn’t keen on pampering the whims of self-indulgent inmates of the Orange Rest Health Spa, like Horace Huxtable, for the rest of her life. Although she knew she’d do that in a minute rather than suffer the disquietude of insecurity.

  But having her own home and family on a thriving ranch in the Arizona Territory or in California—especially in California, actually, where there were lots of them already—sounded nice to her. She knew her aspirations seemed dull and uninspired to many young women her age, but they were hers, and she cherished them. A home of her own. A loving husband. Lots of children. Wide-open spaces and fresh country air. Maybe an orange grove, if the ranch was in California. Why, it all sounded like some idyllic Eden to her.

  “Ooof!” Karen plopped the heavy mixing bowl on the counter, again brushed hair from her forehead, and eyed the other greased tin with a frown.

  Amy quickly opened the oven door, picked up the batter-filled tin, and thrust it into the oven. The stove was a modern one, thank goodness, and boasted a regulated heating element. Modern conveniences. The world was making great strides in appliances. Amy expected a well-to-do ranching family would have such a stove. Maybe. If the wife of the rancher was lucky.