Carolyn Brown - [Spikes & Spurs 07]

by Cowboy Seeks Bride

  Hell’s bells, the running of the bulls didn’t have a thing on a stampede in southern Oklahoma. A lady was cornered between a rack of jeans and the door into a store by a big heifer that still had horns. The woman was shooing at the cow with her handbag. The cow tossed her head back and bawled, then stomped through a round rack of blue jeans and one of bras. She went tearing down the street with a hot pink bra strap stuck firmly on one twitching ear.

  Women were screaming like wounded coyotes and fighting so hard to get their kids to safety inside stores that they were stampeding worse than the cattle. Haley saw the whole thing in a blur of flashes as Apache ran full out ahead of the whole herd. Lord, what a show it would make, but nothing could ever be staged to look like the real thing.

  The red tablecloth flipped up over Haley’s eyes about the time that the stampede reached the edge of town, so she couldn’t see what was going on when Apache came to a long greasy stop. She tumbled out over his head to land right in the middle of a table full of cupcakes. The table collapsed and cupcakes went sailing through the air like miniature Frisbees. As luck would have it, she landed smack in the middle of dozens of chocolate cupcakes and the red tablecloth floated right down on top of her. She fought her way out, slinging chocolate every which way. Once she was free, she found Apache nibbling away at the cupcakes, with chocolate icing in his teeth.

  Haley licked chocolate icing from her fingers, remounted, and gave thanks that she’d landed in that rather than shit—for a change. She slapped Apache on the rear end and they raced on ahead, this time behind the herd instead of in front of it. The cowboys were all still working their asses off trying to turn the bull and cows around. If they could get the first ones turned and head back toward the rest, the oncoming cows would slow down and they’d stall out the stampede.

  Dust boiled up all around her, but she and Apache kept to the side as the cattle finally came to a stop half a mile out of town in the middle of a corn patch. A withered-up little old man with a shotgun trained on Dewar’s chest stopped cowboys, cows, bulls, and even Apache quicker than six cowboys on horses had been able to do.

  “You the revenuers?” he asked.

  He had wispy gray hair that the wind blew every which way. His overalls were unbuttoned on the sides, and from Haley’s vantage point, it was evident that those and a pair of scuffed-up cowboy boots were the only things the man wore.

  “No, sir. We just drove this bunch of cows through Main Street and we had a stampede.”

  “Smart-ass kid threw a rock and hit my horse and the little shit caused the whole thing,” Haley said.

  The shotgun lowered and the old man grinned. “I keep tellin’ Mama that folks don’t raise their kids right no more. I swear to God that I’d kick that kid from here to next week if I caught him. Damn kids ain’t got a lick of sense. It all comes from all them damn things that they keep plugged in their ears. God only knows what the hell they’re listenin’ to…”

  A voice from the house shut him up. “Clovis, shut up your bitchin’. I got two big pans of corn bread cooked up and my bathtub is full of moonshine. If that damn sheriff comes out here, and you know he will to see if any of them crazy fools got hurt in town, he’s going to put us both in prison. So bring them people in here and I’ll give them a chunk of fresh corn bread and a jar of shine to take with them.”

  “I made that to sell, not give away,” Clovis yelled back at the little house with peeling paint.

  “You’d try to sell a coffin to a dead man. It won’t be worth a damn if we’re in prison and can’t spend the money. Get them people on here to help me get it in jars. Miz Gertrude just called and said the sheriff is on the way. He was down near Terral, so he’ll be a little bit makin’ his way up here.”

  Coosie drove the wagon up into the yard, heard the last of the conversation, and said, “Y’all dismount, tie your horses to the wagon, and get on in there.”

  “Well, hell!” Clovis dug a cell phone out of his pocket and listened for a minute, jammed it back in the bib pocket, and yelled, “Momma, grab a jar of that shine and hide it in with your under-britches. Lawman is comin’ from the north to help put things to rights. He ain’t but five miles up the road. Pull the plug on the tub.”

  The gun went back up. “I oughta make y’all pay for that shine.”

  “We didn’t cause it. That red-haired kid did,” Haley said.

  The gun lowered again. “Red-haired? ’Bout ten years old?” He squinted against the sun and pulled his brows down over his deep-set eyes.

  She nodded.

  “Yep, that’d be the preacher’s kid. Mean little shit. Well then, I’ll just tell the police and they can go fuss at the preacher for raisin’ up a kid like that. I bet they can take up an extra offerin’ this Sunday down at the church to pay for the damage done in the town and for my shine that’s goin’ down the drain.”

  “You ought to fix up an underground cistern in the backyard and let it drain into it if you nearly get caught again,” Haley said.

  “Smart girl. Mama, bring on out that corn bread. Police car is pullin’ into the drive right now,” Clovis yelled.

  A rotund woman opened the door and handed Coosie a paper sack, already showing grease marks where she’d slid a whole pan of corn bread into it.

  “Thank you, ma’am,” Coosie said.

  “They’re calmed down enough to move them on out of here now,” Clovis said. “And y’all ought to thank that little lady for your hides tonight. She’s the smartest one in the whole bunch of y’all. Movin’ cows through town. What the hell was you thinkin’?”

  Haley breathed a sigh of relief when they headed back to the west and out into the open ground. The bull had shook free of the black lace teddy, but he still trotted along with his straw hat impaled in a jaunty slant on one horn. The flannel nightgowns on the two cows had flown off into the ditch, but the old horned heifer still sported her pink bra proudly. Haley swiped a finger across a chunk of chocolate on her shirt and licked it from her finger.

  She turned to say something to Dewar and a woman in a little red pickup truck pulled up beside Dewar’s horse.

  “Hey, Dewar, darlin’, you ready for a party?”

  Didn’t the broad know that they’d just survived a stampede and a double-barreled shotgun? She should be whispering, not yelling. Damned idiot! If those cows stampeded again, Haley hoped that they ran right over her big hair and flattened those enormous boobs.

  Dewar grinned and waved at her. “Not today. Got cattle to herd.”

  Leave it to a man to eat up all that attention.

  Apache snorted and Haley wished she had the energy to do the same.

  “Come on, now! Betcha I can stay on that bull at the club down at the Resistol Rodeo longer than you can. Winner gets the prize. I’ll be callin’ you when you get home,” the woman hollered.

  “I’ll look forward to it,” Dewar answered.

  “Just how far does your reputation as a ladies’ man go?” Haley asked.

  “We are only about forty miles from Ringgold,” he said.

  “Who is your bull-ridin’, prize-winnin’ woman?” she asked.

  “Jealous? And we hardly know each other,” he teased.

  She glared at him. “No, I’m not jealous. I just wasn’t prepared for the way the women act when they see cowboys. I’ll have to put that in my notes. The contestants will love it, and if there’s already a little love interest between a couple, then jealousy can be played up when they parade through Comanche.”

  Dewar threw a hand over his heart. “I’m hurt. I thought that kiss meant you were madly in love with me.”

  “I kissed a jackass once on the ear. It didn’t mean I was madly in love with him.”

  “Four-legged or two-legged?”

  “Four, but I have kissed two-legged ones as well. Neither one gave me the instant desire to look at wedding dresses and white cakes.”

  “You are a tough cookie, Haley.”

  “Yes, I am, Dewar, darlin’!” Sh
e drug out the last word until it became darrr-lynnn, like the hussy on the side of the road had done. “Now who was she?”

  “That, Miz McKay, is not a damn bit of your business. Who she is or what she is to me has no bearing on your reality show. We’re going to open that gate up there and run the cattle back close to the original trail before we turn north. Get them off this main road and away from traffic. You can stay with me or fall back. As Rhett said in the movie, ‘Frankly, my dear, I don’t give a damn.’”

  She stayed behind the chuck wagon the rest of the day. To know that line meant that Dewar had watched Gone with the Wind and that made him a romantic. Rugged good looks and a soft romantic core? It’s a wonder all the women in Texas weren’t laying bets about who’d drag him to bed and hopefully down the aisle. That shrill cowgirl on the side of the road might have even put up the most money.

  When they stopped that night in a cottonwood grove, her rear end had stopped aching and gone into the absolutely numb stage. She slid off Apache, loosened the bedroll, and carried it over toward the place where she and Dewar had already thrown down his gear. Coosie was setting up his irons to cook supper. Buddy hustled firewood. Cattle were lining up at Claridy Creek to get a drink.

  She rolled out her bedroll on the ground under a big tree and walked down to the edge of the creek, stuck her hand in it, and groaned. It was clear water, tumbling over a rocky bottom and would have made a lovely place to take another bath. But it felt as if it was coming straight off an ice-capped mountain in Wyoming.

  “Probably spring fed,” Dewar said at her elbow. “You brave enough to take a bath in that?”

  “Not me. I had one last night that’ll have to do until we get to something warmer. I can use the dishrag to wipe the remaining chocolate from my shirt.”

  “Then if you’ll stay at the camp, me and the boys will get washed up,” Dewar said.

  Her eyes snapped open so wide that she could almost hear the pop. “You are kiddin’ me.”

  “No, ma’am, I am not! You might offer to stir the stew for Coosie so he can get a bath, too. It’s been a long day. I reckon one of our longest since we managed eighteen miles and put on a parade to boot.”

  Haley nodded and went back to the camp. Any man brave enough to shuck his clothes at the first of April and take a bath in ice water was a tougher cookie than she ever thought about being.

  Chapter 6

  She was dreaming of Dewar wrapping his arms around her and drawing her close to his chest as they slept. His warm breath caressed her ear and the heat it generated felt like warm butter in sharp contrast to the chill of a spring morning. She didn’t want to open her eyes and leave the dream behind, so she reached up and her fingertips grazed his face, feeling the bristly growth of a day’s beard.

  That wasn’t a figment of a dream. It was damn sure real! She popped her eyes wide open and crimson filled her cheeks. His face was so close to hers that she could count his eyelashes one by one.

  “Don’t move a muscle. It’s curled up behind you,” he whispered softly.

  “What?” She stiffened.

  He eased an arm over her curled up body, sending tingles down her spine as his hand brushed against places he’d set on fire in her dreams.

  “A huge rattlesnake. I didn’t want to shoot it and scare you. I want you to lie very still and not move. Whatever you do, don’t roll over. And don’t say anything else. You might wake him up.”

  Every nerve in her body itched. Her muscles tensed so tight that they throbbed. She was afraid to blink and her eyes hurt with want for moisture. If he was teasing, he was a dead man. If he wasn’t, he might be anyway.

  He eased a pistol up over her, covered her ear with his hand, and pulled the trigger.

  Her scream would have curdled fresh milk and it brought every other cowboy to a sitting position so fast they looked like a blur. She threw both hands over her ears, shut her eyes, and tried to rip her way out of a zipped sleeping bag.

  “Be still and let me help you,” Dewar yelled.

  His mouth moved, so he was talking, but all she heard was the roar in her ears. She looked away from him and there it was, still coiled up but without a head, as big as King Kong and wicked as Lucifer. She shivered so hard that she feared her toenails had fallen off inside the sleeping bag.

  Chilly wind circled her when Dewar finally got it unzipped to let her out. She wiggled free of the entanglement and danced around, swiping at her arms and neck worse than when the spider crawled inside her lacy underwear. Snakes! Spiders! She was throwing in the towel and going home to Dallas as soon as she found a pay phone. She didn’t care if her father fired her ass. She’d stand on the street corner with a soup can and beg for nickels before she ever got one mile away from civilization again.

  Coyotes and bobcats at a distance were one thing. A snake slithering into bed with her was a whole different ball game. Yes, sir, she was going back to Dallas as soon as she could find a phone. And she would never again go anywhere that did not have hot and cold running water, toilets, and hair spray.

  Coosie picked the snake up by the tail. It was as long as he was tall, even without a head, and its body was as big as his arm.

  “Supper!” He grinned like he was right proud of the dead critter.

  “You are shittin’ me,” she yelled.

  The guys all laughed and she glared at them. There was not one thing funny about a damn snake snuggling up next to her or the roar in her ears. They could have the next one for a bed partner. She wasn’t sticking around to see if there was anything worse than rattlesnakes and panty spiders.

  From the way they used their hands to talk, she guessed the breakfast conversation centered around who’d seen the biggest, baddest snake in the world. Sawyer made a hacking motion like he’d killed his trophy crawling varmint with a shovel or a hoe. Finn must’ve gotten his with a knife, and Coosie used his thumb and forefinger to show them how he’d shot one. To Haley’s way of thinking, there wasn’t a wrong way to kill a snake, so they were all heroes.

  The roar in her ears continued while they saddled up and got under way after breakfast, but by midmorning it had toned down. She and Apache brought up the rear of the whole herd, each minute lasting a whole hour.

  Boredom was what would send the contestants packing. Not snakes or bugs. It would be the pure boredom of day after day looking at a cow’s ass while their own rear ends turned into one big callus.

  Dinner was held on the banks of Stage Stand Creek and consisted of cold biscuits stuffed with sausage and pepper jack cheese. She was glad that she could finally hear enough to listen to the stories the guys told about rattlesnake hunts down around Ringgold. She couldn’t believe any fool would actually go out and hunt those things. And Coosie must have been serious about eating the thing because Buddy asked him if he was going to use cayenne pepper in the cornmeal when he fried it.

  She’d said that she’d eat anything and there wasn’t a doubt in her mind that they’d hold her to her word. But rattlesnake? Maybe they were teasing. She could hope so. Beans again or even peanut butter sandwiches sounded like gourmet food compared to snake. She wouldn’t even make her contestants eat snake.

  Dinner was over too quickly. She’d make a note later to let the contestants draw out the dinner hour occasionally. That’s what she desperately wanted to do that day. Anything beat getting back on the horse and riding another five or six hours.

  She’d barely settled back into the saddle when Apache’s muscles tensed and his front feet were suddenly fighting the air. She slid backwards, the saddle catching her before she scooted right off his backside and onto the ground. She glanced down to see where she was about to fall and a snake slithered by like it had all day to crawl away into the brush. With a force that jarred her teeth, Apache’s front feet came down, hitting the snake right behind its head.

  And then the horse snorted and took off in a dead gallop. It was all she could do to hang on until he reached the edge of the creek and stopped so fast t
hat she had to hug him like a brother or she would have shot right out over his head into the cold water.

  One minute she was moving forward. The next she was jerked back. And then strong arms reached up and hauled her off the horse. Dewar set her firmly on the ground and held her close to his chest. She was amazed that his heart was speeding every bit as fast as hers. She looked up into his worried eyes, but before she could even thank him, cowboys came running through the trees. Buddy was stuttering and stammering and the rest of them weren’t doing much better.

  “You okay, M-m-miz Haley?” Buddy spit out.

  She nodded.

  Coosie patted her on the shoulder. “You done good, girl. Any other fool would have fallen off that horse right on the snake. Now we got enough meat for a real meal tonight. I’ll skin this one and then we’ll get back on the trail.”

  “I’m fine,” she said.

  “You ready to make that phone call? I think Dewar’s phone has a little bit of power left,” Rhett asked.

  She shook her head and said, “Hell, no!”

  Where had those words come from? She wasn’t that brave, that mean, or that crazy. She wanted to go home to air-conditioning, exterminators, and a real bed with no varmints.

  Dewar took his phone from his pocket and handed it to her with a wide grin and a twinkle in his sexy eyes. She flipped it open to see one bar left. She flipped it shut and handed it back to him, crawled up on Apache’s back, and rode him up over the embankment and back to the campsite where Coosie was busy skinning the second snake of the day.

  Her granny Mahalia Jones always said that bad things came in threes. Well, she’d faced all three of hers in less than a week, so the rest of the journey should be smooth sailing. One mean old spider and two damned miserable rattlesnakes. Thank goodness she’d squashed the spider with her boot or Coosie would be rolling it in cornmeal and frying it for supper too.