She was just as bad as she was at fifteen, following him around thinking the sun rose and set on his shoulders. She was an adult now, supposedly she knew better, but she was doing exactly the same thing. She ought to feel ashamed of herself, but she didn't. She felt relieved.
"Where's Iris?" Monty demanded even before his horse had come to a stop.
"Over there," Zac said, nodding to where Iris rested next to the fire. "You going back out? You want another horse?"
"Not right now," Monty said, tossing the stirrup over the saddle and beginning to loosen the cinch. "I need to talk to Iris. Is she all right?"
"Why shouldn't she be? Tyler's been grumbling worse than if he burned something, but he's been watching out for her."
"She sleeping?"
"Naw. She perks up every time somebody comes in. See, just like I told you." Zac winked at his brother. "I think she's waiting for you."
"Well you make sure you don't go telling anybody else what you think," Monty said, lifting his saddle from the horse's back. "It's not good for her reputation or your well-being."
"If she was worried about her reputation, she ought to have stayed home," Zac said.
"True," Monty said, "but it's too late for that now." He laid the saddle blanket over the saddle, picked them up, and headed toward the campfire as Zac took an exhausted Nightmare to the corral. Monty dumped his saddle next to Iris.
"You find the herd?" she asked, looking up at him.
"Most of them. Some split off. We'll start looking for them as soon as we get the rest settled."
"Did anybody get hurt?"
"No."
Tyler handed Monty a cup of coffee. He swallowed the scalding liquid.
"I told you he'd head straight for her," Zac whispered to Tyler as he peered at Monty from around the corner of the chuck wagon. "Hen's going to be fit to bite a bear."
"Then you'd better not say anything unless you want him to bite you," Tyler replied.
Zac grinned. "I won't say a word."
"Only way that'll happen is if you're dead by the time he gets back."
"What caused the stampede?" Monty asked. He sat down next to Iris, the hot coffee cup between his hands, and leaned back against his saddle.
"I don't know," Iris answered. "One minute they were all sleeping, and the next they were running straight toward me."
"What were you doing out of your wagon so late? You didn't ask Frank to put you on night duty, did you?"
For once Iris didn't mind Monty criticizing her behavior. If she could have lived this night over again, she would have never left her wagon.
"I couldn't sleep," she said, telling a partial untruth. "Something is going on in my camp, and I wanted to see if I could find out what it was."
"I wonder what she was doing out of bed," Zac whispered. "I'll bet she was trying to sneak over this way to see Monty."
"If you wondered less, you might live longer."
"You should talk to your foremen. That's what you pay him for."
"What if I'm afraid my foreman is involved?" Iris hadn't meant to reveal her suspicions to Monty. She probably wouldn't have if the stampede hadn't scared her so badly, but now that she had told him, she felt a weight lift off her shoulders. She no longer felt alone.
"What do you mean?"
"I'm not sure. Do you remember that man you said was trying to steal those cows you brought back?"
Monty nodded.
"I saw him talking to Bill Lovell back on the ranch several days before we left. When I finally remembered and went to find Frank, he was talking to Lovell. It wasn't like Frank was mad at him. It was almost like they were talking over something important. Then when Frank tried to convince me to rehire that hand you fired--"
"You mean Crowder?"
Iris nodded. "--I was even more unsure."
"Then fire him," Monty said immediately.
"That's just like a man," Iris said, irritably. "You think the answer to everything is a fight or running somebody out of the county. He could very well be innocent. And even if he's not, who am I going to get to do his job?"
"I told you to--"
"If you tell me one more time that I should have stayed home, I'll hit you."
"Well you should."
The night had stretched Iris's resources to the limit. She had no energy left to control her instinctive reaction. She rolled up on her knees and hit Monty in the stomach as hard as she could.
Chapter Nine
"Did you see that?" Zac hissed. "She hit him, and he didn't do a thing. If one of us had done it, he'd be howling mad."
"Don't you know anything about women?" Tyler asked, disgusted.
"More than you think."
"That still wouldn't be much," his brother replied with ruthless honesty.
"You have no feelings, Monty Randolph," Iris said, angrily. "You think all you have to do is hand down your judgment and everything will work out the way you want it to. Well it doesn't. Not by a long shot."
Monty drew back, stunned at Iris's accusation. "I do have feelings. Besides, I risked my neck to rescue you from that stampede."
"You're always risking your neck, and nothing ever happens to it. Everything's gone your way for so long you don't understand anybody else."
Iris ignored Monty's strangled protest.
"It's cruel to tell me to go back to a ranch I don't own any longer and let rustlers steal my cattle until I'm as poor as a Mexican." Iris's hands moved as fast as she talked. "Is that want you want to see, Monty Randolph, me so poor I have to beg?"
"What does she mean about being poor?" Zac asked. "Her pa was as rich as George."
"You keep eavesdropping on people's conversations and you're going to be as dead as that stump."
Monty had never thought such a thing. He couldn't imagine a woman like Iris being reduced to begging, not when half the men in Texas would stumble over themselves to give her just about anything she wanted. Didn't she know what she looked like? Did she have any idea how just being around her affected men?
How she affected him. Hell, he couldn't remember the last time his pants fit right, and if he didn't learn to keep his mind on something other than Iris he was going to lose his own herd.
Today marked a change in their relationship.
Until now he had kept on trying to think of her as the young girl with a crush on him. Tonight's ride had changed all that. Iris was a beautiful, mature, vibrantly alive woman from whom distance seemed impossible. Maybe it was the feel of her body in his lap, leaning against him, rubbing against him intimately, holding him in a tight embrace. He would never be able to think of her as a little girl again. He regretted that in a way. As a girl she had an innocent, endearing charm he hated to lose. Liking her had been comfortable. No complications, no commitment.
But it was impossible to completely regret the change. This woman had nothing to do with the girl of four summers ago. And neither did his feelings. Her effect on him wasn't convenient -- women never were. They always picked the worst time to do anything -- but it was exciting. She might irritate him, she might trouble him, but she wouldn't bore him.
"You'll never have to go begging," Monty said, finding his tongue. "You can marry just about any man you want."
"That's just the kind of thing a man like you would say," Iris shot back, her eyes bright, her red hair bouncing as she spoke. "You think all you have to do to take care of a woman is marry her off. Find her a husband and she can't possibly wave a care in the world."
"I didn't mean--"
"Well I'm not property, and I have feelings." Iris pounded her chest with her fist. "Far more feelings than you'll ever have. I'll get married because my husband adores me, not because he's rich."
"He'll adore you all right. One look and every man adores you."
"I mean me, the real me."
"That's what I said," Monty said, uncomprehending. "He'll take one look at you and won't be able to deny you anything."
"You're just like all men,
" Iris said. "All you see is what you see."
Monty was fast losing the thread of this conversation, but he struggled on. "Men are funny like that. Even the most sensible man, one who can fight and ride with the best, who doesn't mind the cold and the wet, going hungry or being a little uncomfortable. Get him hitched up with a woman and all of a sudden he can't be more than thirty minutes away without having to be reminded what she looks like. Soon after that he gets to liking a bed and regular meals, baths and clean clothes. Next thing you know he's completely ruined."
"How about you?" Iris asked. "Would you adore some female like that?"
"Hell, no!" Monty replied, appalled at the very idea. "George doesn't even do that, and he's so nutty on Rose he sometimes doesn't even know there's anybody else around."
"A man who really adored his wife would give her anything she wanted."
"Not unless he's crazy. Have you already forgotten how Helena ruined your pa? That woman seemed to spend just to show she could do it. Wasn't a bit of sense in half of what she did."
"And how do you know that?"
"Because Rose said so," Monty replied as though that were enough to clinch any argument.
"If Monty keeps talking like that, she's going to take a gun to him," Tyler said. "The damned fool can't seem to understand a female unless it's a cow."
Zac crowed. "Now you're eavesdropping."
Iris felt like hitting him again, only harder. He had no business criticizing her mother, even if what he said was true. It didn't make it any better to realize that everybody from Austin to San Antonio probably thought the same. It might have been easier to endure if she weren't now suffering from the result of her mother's extravagance and her father's inability to refuse her anything she wished.
"A man who truly adored me wouldn't criticize my family," Iris said.
"He might not say it to your face," Monty said, "but he'd know it just the same. Besides, it never does to hide something like that. It only gets worse for covering it up."
He always had an answer, usually one she didn't like.
Monty stood up. "It's about time I was getting you back to your camp. I want a word with that foreman of yours."
"No." Iris scrambled to her feet.
"There's no time like now. I want him to know I'm onto his game before we start separating the herds. I already had some doubts of my own."
"I don't care about your doubts," Iris said as she rubbed a sore muscle that threatened to cramp. "You can't tell him, then turn around and leave me with him."
Iris could tell he didn't like what she said, but it made him thoughtful. "If he's guilty, we don't know who might be working with him, or when they might try again. We need to wait, to watch the whole crew before we do anything."
"What do you mean we? I--"
"We could keep the herds together," she suggested, before Monty could say anything. "Then you could be responsible for everybody. That way you would have an excuse to watch everything he did, to study the men and find out who you could trust."
"Lord Almighty," Zac hissed. "Wait until Hen hears about this."
"Why don't you rush off and tell him," Tyler suggested. "No point in keeping the good news to yourself."
"I ain't no fool," Zac said. "There ain't no horse fast enough to outrun a bullet."
Iris could see Monty hated the idea and was only waiting for her to be silent before he refused. She rushed ahead. "It'll take days to separate them. And you told me you had to keep to a schedule. Why not wait until you have to wait anyway to cross a river? By then you ought to know what to do."
"You're crazy," Monty said, when he could get a word in edgewise. "Nobody in his right mind would try to drive a herd that big. We have more than six thousand cows together."
Iris knew the time had come to be honest with him, and herself. She had tried flirting, she had tried subterfuge, and she had tried bluffing. None of it worked. Now it was time for a little straight talk. It was all she had left.
It was also time she accepted the fact that Monty wasn't one of the besotted men who adored her so much they would do anything she wanted. He was clearly attracted to her, but she had the feeling physical beauty was a disposable item for him. He liked it, he appreciated it, he could even fall prey to its lure now and then, but in the end he would set it aside for something else.
Only Iris didn't know what that something else would be. She wondered if Monty did.
"Don't say no just yet," she pleaded. She reached out and put a hand on his arm so he wouldn't walk away. "I can't do this by myself. I thought I could, but I can't. I need your help."
Monty was looking at her like she had grown a second head. He was already looking after twenty-five hundred cows. It shouldn't be that hard to take care of thirty-seven hundred more.
Monty removed her hand from his arm. His glance was hard and questioning. "I don't have enough men to manage both herds, and there's nowhere I can get more, at least not experienced trail hands. And that doesn't even touch on finding food and water for such a huge herd."
"I already have a crew."
"I can't watch your cows and Frank, too."
"Frank won't dare try anything with you looking over his shoulder."
She would have thrown herself at Monty's feet if that would have worked, but there was a different formula for this man. Right then she swore to find the key. He ought to be brought down a peg. It would make him more human. He would never find a wife if he treated every woman like a dim-witted cowhand and kept throwing up the perfect Rose as an example. Everyone knew Rose was a paragon. Even Helena had been made to feel the sting of unfavorable comparison.
"It won't be for long," she pleaded. "I wouldn't ask that of you. I know you've got to get your herd to Wyoming without losing a single cow or George will have your head."
Iris hadn't meant to anger Monty. She was merely repeating what she had heard. His eyes grew hard and his eyebrows drew together. His mouth tightened until a muscle in his temple started to twitch.
"This is the family's herd," he said, his temper barely under control, "but I'm ramrodding this drive, and I'm going to be foreman of the ranch. I don't need George's say-so for anything I do."
"I didn't mean to hurt your feeling," Iris said, unsure what she had said to make him so angry. "I just thought that since George runs the ranch--"
"I run the ranch," Monty exploded. "George has some say about it, all of us do, but I run it."
"Doesn't look like she knows any more about men than Monty does about females," Zac observed. "She just made him madder than a nest of hornets."
"I don't know what they teach you at that school George is sending you to, but I sure hope he can get his money back."
As Iris deliberated her next move, one of Monty's hands rode up. "The herd hit a mesquite thicket about a mile from here. They're scattered all to hell," he said.
"Damnation!" Monty cursed. "It'll take us days to find them all. We'd better get at it before the herd cutters and rustlers do. Come along," Monty said to Iris. "One of the first lessons any rancher needs to learn is how to find their cows."
Iris nodded her agreement, but secretly she couldn't regret the stampede or the mesquite thicket. They had been able to do what she couldn't. A leveling thought, but victory at any hand was better than no victory at all.
But she meant to learn more about Monty. She couldn't depend upon stampedes and mesquite to keep him at her side.
"Instead of dancing about waiting for trouble, you'd better fork out some broncos," Tyler said as Monty and Iris disappeared over a ridge. "I see two hands coming."
"I see them, too, and one of them is Hen."
"Thank goodness he didn't get here five minutes sooner."
* * * * *
"You might as well set fire to the rest of it," Monty said.
Iris stared at her travel wagon. It had been turned over into the campfire during the stampede. The canvas cover had burned completely. Two of the ribs had almost burned through, and
part of the panel on one side was badly charred. Most of her clothes and her bed were ruined, but the furniture could be saved.
Her eyes flew to the panel that contained the secret compartment. There was no damage to that part of the wagon.
"It's got to be fixed," Iris said.
"What for? You should never have brought such a big, clumsy thing in the first place."
"I've got to have some place to sleep and keep my things."
"Sleep on the ground and keep your things in your saddlebags."
"Not my dresses,"
"It doesn't look like you have any dresses left," Monty said, holding up a piece of scorched and torn material. "Leastways not anything you'd want to wear."
"You don't sound the least bit sympathetic."
"You shouldn't have brought all that stuff."
"I know. I should have stayed home and waited for poverty to overtake me," she said sarcastically.
"You should have met your herd in Wyoming," Monty said, sounding a little less dictatorial than usual. "Nothing wrong with having dresses in Cheyenne or Laramie."
"I'm surprised you don't expect me to wear buckskins."
"I don't think it would be a good idea for you to go around in pants. Fern used to do it, and it caused no end of trouble. Madison won't let her wear them anywhere but the ranch."
"I wouldn't be caught dead in pants," Iris said, shocked at the idea.
"Good thing. Bound to cause somebody to get shot."
"Whatever for?"
Monty looked at her like she had suddenly lost any sense she ever possessed. "Wyoming and Colorado are full of miners. They're nothing like cowboys. Don't have any manners at all. They're bound to make some insulting remark, and I'd have to kill one or two of them to keep the rest in line."
Iris started at him, her mouth open. "You'd do that for me?"
"I wouldn't have any choice. What kind of man would I be if I went around letting miners insult a woman under my protection."
"I'm not under your protection."
"Yes, you are."
While Monty subjected the wagon to a closer inspection, Iris attempted to digest his remarks.
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