The Cowboy Meets His Match

by Meagan Mckinney

  “The hand pump and the metal sink were added in the 1890s,” he explained. “Pump should still work. Most everything else is original.”

  He pointed to a bed of leather webbing along a side wall. “That thing is actually comfortable after you spread a sleeping bag on it.”

  Yes, she thought, but which one of us is going to be comfortable on it? And after yesterday, did the male-female formalities still apply? She didn’t know. Right now she could only get some dry clothes on.

  He quickly built up a fire in the stove.

  “I’ll take care of the horses,” he said again, stepping back outside. “Then I think I’ll do some fishing.”

  Before he shut the door he added, his tone laced with innuendo, “I’ll leave the latchstring in.”

  Jacquelyn heated up a big pan of water on the stove, then stripped off her wet clothing. Nervously watching the door, she gave herself a quick but thorough bath and washed her hair. Feeling like a new woman, she pulled on her last pair of clean jeans and a soft cotton shirt.

  When A.J. returned, his hair was wet and slicked back.

  “Took a skinny-dip in the brook,” he boasted. “Colder than polar bear poop.”

  He slacked into one of the cowhide chairs, weary. She watched him stretch out those long legs and cross them at the ankles. For a moment their eyes met and held. Both of them glanced away, self-conscious.

  “I set a trotline up,” he told her. “There’ll be at least two fat bass or trout on it by suppertime. Look in that cabinet behind you.”

  She did. Airtight metal containers were labeled Flour, Sugar, Salt, Coffee, and Baking Soda.

  “Any bugs in that flour?” he demanded. “I brought it up fresh my last trip here.”

  “Eeech. Bugs?” She twisted off the lid to inspect it. “Looks fine.”

  “Good. Woman, you are in for one legendary treat. The Clayburn men make the best biscuits in the West. My biscuits are so light you have to hold ’em down.”

  She smiled at his boasting tone. No Southern macho man worth his gun rack ever boasted about his cooking skills. In Montana, however, cowboys even got into fistfights defending their cherished recipes for stew or biscuits or chokecherry cobbler.

  “Fresh fish and hot biscuits,” she marveled. “A veritable feast after the fare of the past few days. All we need is some wine.”

  “Let not your heart be troubled,” he assured her, a gleam in his eye. “Look behind the canisters.”

  She slid them aside and spotted an unopened bottle of Old Taylor bourbon.

  “Not exactly wine,” he conceded, “but Jake hated wine. Said it was nothing but vinegar sneaking up on old age. Colonel Taylor was a war buddy of his. So Jake allowed no other spirits but Old Taylor in his house. But it’ll do to wash our teeth.”

  Normally Jacquelyn avoided alcohol, disheartened by her mother’s unhealthy dependence on the stuff. But marooned on top of the world like this, and plagued as she was by this growing yearning—maybe a “spot of the giant killer,” as her mother called it, might be in order.

  By now the cabin was cheerfully warm. She felt so exhausted she couldn’t stifle her yawns.

  “Take a nap,” he suggested. He spread his sleeping bag open on the leather webbing. “When you wake up, I’ll fix our supper.”

  “Wait a minute,” she challenged, unable to take it anymore. “Where’s the tough guy who refused to help me with my tent? Gave me a lecture how he was nobody’s slave? Now you tuck me in and fix my supper?”

  He grinned. “Yeah, I know what you’re thinking. Still flattering yourself that I mean to expand my harem. But that woman I refused to help a few days ago hadn’t earned my servitude. The woman I’m with right now saved my butt on Devil’s Slope. Us Clayburns don’t forget a debt like that. I owe you a good meal.”

  So it was just a point of honor, she thought, feeling oddly disappointed. Did that disappointment mean she wanted him to scheme and seduce her? Had she lost her mind?

  She gazed at the temptingly comfortable-looking bed.

  “Well, maybe just a little catnap,” she said, giving in.

  For all her awkward feelings, sleep claimed her only moments after she lay down. But her rest was haunted by disturbing, confusing dream sequences.

  She saw vivid images of Jake and Libbie in the flush of their youth. Laughing in the brittle morning sunshine; holding each other in the evening twilight on the summit; a pair intertwined as one to face the cold, harsh, workaday world far below them.

  Only, in an eyeblink, the faces would change. Jake and Libbie became Joe and Gina, their eyes mocking Jacquelyn—who always stood off to one side of the dream scenes, watching everyone else’s happiness like a rented video. See how it’s done, ice princess? Joe’s eyes taunted her.

  When she woke up, the cabin windows were pitch-black with night. Both kerosene bracket lamps glowed brightly. A delicious aroma of hot food filled the room.

  “There you are,” he greeted her, standing near the stove. “I was about to hold a mirror in front of your mouth, see if you were still alive.”

  “Why didn’t you wake me?” she asked sleepily.

  “Hazel says you never pick up a happy baby.” He gave her a strange, curious glance. “You know anything about babies?”

  She flushed a little as she stood up and straightened her clothing. “Not a thing.”

  “I hear they’re easy to get.” He smiled deviously with a mouthful of strong white teeth.

  She looked at him. “I’m surprised someone like you doesn’t have a stableful of those right now, too.”

  “Thinking about getting me some.” He looked down at what he was cooking.

  She suddenly felt very warm. Too warm. “Well, I wouldn’t know about all that,” she offered, uneasy. “I’m more the…the filly type rather than the brood mare type, if you catch my drift there, cowboy.”

  “Ah, you underestimate yourself.”

  She opened her mouth to tell him he’d got it all wrong. But then the effort seemed too much. She wasn’t going to make him into a yuppie, and he wasn’t going to make her into Annie Oakley, so there was no point in bothering.

  “You sure you’re okay? You frowned a lot in your sleep. I watched you,” he added.

  “I’m fine,” she said, perhaps a bit too defensively. “And maybe you shouldn’t be watching me.”

  “Takes too much effort not to.” He glanced at her again with those dark gray eyes like a thunderhead. “Only a fool makes an effort to avoid seeing what’s pretty.”

  She was rattled, unsure where he was going with all this. “I know that’s probably a compliment,” she admitted.

  “Not really,” he dismissed, rattling pans and seasoning fish. “Taking credit for a pretty face is like bragging when you’re dealt an ace. Hell, that rhymed! Why’n’t you quote it?”

  “Maybe I will,” she said, again trying to hide the stab of disappointment at his words.

  There it was again, she told herself, feeling more hurt and baffled than angry. The recurring theme: looks don’t equal character. A pretty face and a good figure were little more than an empty shell if they were hollow inside.

  And the irony of it all. Here she was on a trek that somehow seemed to be trying to teach her character, as if her looks had ever helped her. As if anyone had ever bothered to know what she was like inside. She only knew that she wasn’t the one who needed character. She wasn’t shallow. It was others who were. Others who saw only surfaces, only ice. Not the heat that bubbled below, not the hidden human yearnings. Not the fiery heart and warm spirit.

  “You’re frowning again,” he informed her. He pulled the chairs closer to the table. “Come eat. Part of your problem is just plain old hunger.”

  “I’m really not too—”

  “You’ll eat,” he insisted, “and there’s the end. I’m damned if I slaved over this hot stove so you can nibble on granola bars. East Coast rabbit food! No wonder you can’t keep up a head of steam.”

  Despite her f
oul mood she laughed at his motherly fussing. Part of it was put on, but part of it was genuine.

  “Okay,” she said, surrendering. “I’ll eat. But can’t a girl get a drink around here to whet her appetite?”

  He raised an eyebrow like a melodramatic villain. She watched him use a case knife to turn the fish, sizzling in a black iron skillet atop the stove.

  “A drink? Ladies drink free in this saloon. You’ll find a few glasses in the cabinet. Pour me a jolt, too.”

  She found two barrel glasses and wiped the dust out of them with her shirttail, then she cracked the seal on the bourbon bottle and poured a couple fingers of the shimmering amber liquid into each glass. She handed one to him.

  “To Jake and Libbie,” he proposed.

  She smiled. The perfect irony. “To Jake and Libbie.” She clinked her glass to his.

  The bourbon burned in a straight line to her stomach, smooth but strong.

  “Oh,” she breathed, her eyes filming with tears. “That’s…volatile stuff, isn’t it? I’d better watch it.”

  “’Nuther?”

  He tempted her by lifting the bottle.

  “Maybe.”

  He laughed. “Yeah, I see how you’re ‘watching it.”’

  She took down her second drink like an old pro, even smacking her lips. “It grows on you, doesn’t it?”

  “Like a lot of other things,” he answered, his words heavy with meaning.

  “S’matter, cowboy?” she demanded with a smile. “’Fraid you’ll get hurt by Miss Manners?”

  He looked at her with a crafty glint in his eyes. “I’ll be damned, you little firecracker.” He eyed her glass, then filled it up again. “We better feed you while your…appetite is good.”

  “You do that, rodeo boy,” she flung at him, meeting his eyes until he actually turned away, flustered. Now it was her turn to laugh on the offensive.

  “I’m whacking the cork on you, lady. No more hooch until after supper.”

  “Well, you’re no fun,” she dismissed.

  “Oh, yes I am,” he told her almost in a whisper. “More fun than those dreams that make you frown. So much fun that liquor ain’t needed. Now you eat.”

  Fourteen

  Hot food filled her, and the giddy light-headedness deserted her. A dulling sense of lethargy also followed as the sudden alcohol high ebbed. The cabin grew small again. Every movement between them seemed exaggerated and almost ominous. Jacquelyn felt the raw sexual tension between her and A.J. lurking like a coiled beast in the shadows.

  “Guess you can tell I don’t drink much,” she confessed as she pushed her blue-enameled plate away.

  “Yeah, I noticed. Good thing you don’t, too. You’d be an easy mark.”

  She gave him a weary smile. “I believe the saying is ‘She’s a cheap drunk.”’

  “It’s all one.”

  “Delicious supper,” she mentioned, quick to change the subject. “Thanks.”

  She became aware of a faint sound like tiny claws scratching at the windows.

  “It’s snowing again!” she exclaimed, her voice climbing an octave with sudden apprehension. “I can hear it pelting the windows!”

  “Don’t worry, nervous Nellie.” He sipped his powerful cowboy coffee from a battered metal cup and watched her across the table from caged eyes. “It’s just big flakes—a drifting snow, not heavy pack. This ain’t no Die-up.”

  This ain’t no Die-up. She’d heard lots of Montana natives say that when discussing weather. The “Great Die-up” of 1886 was the state’s worst winter on record. Snow piled up past the eaves of houses, and entire herds were smothered to death in the cattle-rich Judith Basin. The animals couldn’t be fed, and the starving cattle even resorted to eating tar paper from the walls of shacks.

  “Speaking of snow,” she said, watching his angular, cleanly handsome face in the burnished lamplight, “why does it bother you so much, A.J.? The way you seem to know so much about it—you’re like a soldier who’s studied the enemy he fears and respects.”

  He’d heard the question. She could tell that from the way he looked at her, a little irritated. At first he said nothing. She had already noticed something about the way A. J. Clayburn engaged in so-called conversation. It was actually more like taking a deposition, where he always elicited information, but seldom gave any.

  This time, however, he surprised her with an answer, albeit a confusing one at first.

  “Angle of repose,” he told her cryptically.

  “Pardon me?”

  “I said angle of repose. That’s why I respect the snow so much. It’s an engineering term. Refers to the exact angle where the weight of a given substance overcomes gravity. Like when a solid ridge of snow becomes a moving avalanche.”

  “There you go again,” she said, impressed. “Are you an armchair disaster expert?”

  “Nope. Not knowing anything about angle of repose is what killed my parents when I was eight years old. They didn’t know a thirty-eight-degree angle means snow can give at any moment. That ignorance killed them.”

  He spoke matter-of-factly, simply answering her question. But she suddenly felt heat behind her eyes as she recalled the look in his eyes back on those slopes. Mystery explained.

  “I saw it happen,” he added. “I was skiing on a nearby slope. We all dug for hours, but over two hundred tons of snow slid on top them. They were pulled out way too late.”

  Heavy silence lingered between them.

  Finally she whispered, “I guess I found an old wound. I’m sorry.”

  “Hell, I was just a kid, anyway. Nothing I could do about it. But you know, it haunts you all your life when something like that happens. You run it over and over in your head, wondering if you could have done something to save them.”

  The distant expression in his eyes mirrored his words. “They were both just…” He clearly struggled to control both his voice and his emotions. “They were both just…just gone in a heartbeat. One moment I was laughing at them while they clowned around. The next, they were buried in hundreds of feet of snow. It kinda left me…” His words faded again.

  “Left you what?” she pressed with a whisper.

  He shook his head as if trying to clear it of his turbulent thoughts.

  “I don’t know,” he admitted. “It just kinda left me afraid of…forever. That everything I cared about would be taken away from me forever.” He paused for a long moment. “God, it’s an awful word. Forever.”

  As he gave voice to these painful memories, the only sign of his inner tension was his tightly doubled fists on the table in front of him.

  Her heart swelling, she placed a hand on each fist.

  “You were too little to help them,” she reminded him. “But you saved me today when that snow ledge collapsed. From their tragedy came your vigilance that saved me. Your parents would be proud of you.”

  “Saving you was just a moment of weakness,” he said from a deadpan, and she slugged his arm.

  “Far as them being proud of me,” he resumed, “it sounds crazy, but my becoming a rodeo champ was partly meant to do that, even though they’re gone. You know…somehow, in my mind, that accomplishment makes up at least a little for my helplessness as a kid.”

  It didn’t sound at all crazy to her. Her own secret dream, to someday become a nationally respected feature writer, was also a form of compensation. Yes, her own parents were still alive. But they, too, had left her with a powerful sense of inadequacy—of “helplessness,” to use his word.

  Only now did a note of bitterness creep into his tone.

  “Trouble with being a rodeo champ—you’re only as good as your next ride. And with my knee busted up so bad in that last throw, I might not get a next ride. That World Cup ain’t like a Superbowl ring you get to wear for life. It has to be won all over each season.”

  “So what if you do have to retire from the rodeo circuit?” she countered earnestly. “It has to happen sometime. Nobody can take back your accomplishments. And
anyhow, I can’t see you growing paunchy and lazy in middle age.”

  “If it was just for my own sake, I’d hack it fine. Every pilot gets grounded someday. But…ahh, I feel like I had a present. And now they’re taking it back, y’know?”

  She was still holding his clenched fists. Her heart responded completely to the plaintive sense of longing in his voice. She knew full well what it meant to want something unattainable. To have presents given, then asked for back. In the same futile way that he had sought to impress his dead parents, she sought a love and a sense of belonging that appeared forever beyond her emotionally limited grasp.

  For a long moment their eyes met across the table. Her pulse quickened with some unspoken expectation.

  He stood up, and she tensed, not sure what was about to happen or what she meant to do about it. But he only crossed to the stove, banged open the rusted iron door and tossed in a stove-length of wood.

  However, he stopped behind her chair on his way back. His strong hands began kneading her sore shoulders and back.

  At the very first contact she almost drew away. But some other part of herself told her this was what she needed right now. Maybe even what he needed.

  “Mmm.” She finally surrendered, feeling her muscles grow heavy with relaxation.

  “You sober now?” he said close to her ear, his voice low and husky.

  “Yes.”

  “Good. I guess that has to mean,” he told her as his hands slid around to the top button of her shirt, “that I have your willing consent to do this?”

  He undid the top two buttons and slid his hands inside her shirt.

  Her instincts were to stop him, but then she wondered why she should. She hadn’t been with a man since Joe, and he was ancient history. True, she wanted more than a quickie with a beefed-up rodeo star, but if that was all that was offered her, what was keeping her cold and alone tonight? It sure wasn’t propriety. That had gone by the wayside days ago. Love figured in the whole thing, but love had passed her by once, and she was hardened to it now. It couldn’t hurt her again. She wouldn’t let it.