Last Chance Cowboys: The Drifter

by Anna Schmidt

  And then there was no more need to guess what that might be. The distant thunder of thousands of hooves told Maria exactly what had happened. Something or someone had spooked the cattle, and they were stampeding. Although the closest grazing fields were still some distance from the complex, there was no mistaking that sound. She could hear the night riders firing shots in the air to try to contain the herd. At the same time, the rest of the men came running from the bunkhouse. Their loyalty touched her, especially in light of the fact that they had not been paid in weeks and most of them had just come in off the trail and would need to be back out there in just a few hours. But she was even more impressed when she saw that the drifter did not hesitate to saddle his horse and take off after the others, his dog racing to keep up.

  “Now what?” Amanda demanded. She seemed very close to tears. “Roger Turnbull is gone, and there’s no one to take charge and Papa…” She burst into sobs.

  Maria sat on her sister’s bed and held her. “The men know what to do. It will be all right. Shhh.”

  “But this ranch was everything to Papa and now…”

  “It’s a stampede. We’ve been through them before, and this one is no different. Now pull yourself together, and go check on Mama and Trey while I get dressed.” She was already reaching for her riding pants and pulling them on, stuffing her nightgown into them like an oversized shirt. “Toss me my boots,” she said as Amanda headed for the hallway where Trey was just emerging from his room, a puzzled smile on his face.

  “What’s going on?”

  “It’s a stampede, dummy,” Amanda barked as she flung Maria’s boots across the room and hurried down the hall. “Put down that book for once and make yourself useful.”

  Maria shook her head as, from long-standing habit, she shook out each boot before tugging it on just in case a scorpion or some other critter had decided to take a nap. Amanda had always treated Trey as if he were the healthiest member of the family and more of a laggard than someone who had been seriously ill for much of his young life. Certain that Amanda would watch over Trey and their mother, she ran to the kitchen.

  “And just where do you think you’re going, young lady?” Juanita demanded, already at the stove preparing the coffee the men would need once they had things under control.

  “To do what I can to help. Where’s my blasted hat?”

  “Do not use that language in my kitchen, Maria Porterfield. You may think you’re one of the hired hands, but you are not. Do you understand me?”

  “Yes, ma’am. Where is my hat?”

  “I hid it.” Her words were delivered with infuriating nonchalance.

  “Why would you do that?”

  “Because I had to think fast, and it was the only way I thought I might be able to stop you from going off half-cocked and getting yourself trampled to death.” Juanita handed her a cold biscuit and a cup for the tea already steeping in a pot on the kitchen table. “There are experienced hands out there, so you just need to sit yourself down. We’ll wait together for our boys to return. It’ll be daylight soon enough.”

  Reluctantly seeing the wisdom in Juanita’s words even if she was itching to get out there to help, Maria sat. And waited.

  A few hours later, they heard the creaking wheels of the chuck wagon outside the kitchen door. Eduardo entered the kitchen, and both women straightened. “Well?” Juanita demanded.

  “They got the herd turned in on itself. It slowed them down, but…”

  “Any idea how many we lost?” Maria asked, resigned to the fact that in a stampede, the weaker and smaller animals were in as much danger of being trampled as any fence might be.

  “We’ll know more once it gets light out.”

  “What started it?”

  “Aw, Miss Maria, you know it could have been anything. A cowhand striking a match is enough sometimes, and the herd was already restless with the coming storm and all.”

  “I suppose.” She glanced outside, where the sky roiled with storm clouds but as of yet, not a drop of rain had fallen. “You don’t think it might have been deliberate?” There had been more than one occasion when a rancher’s refusal to sell to Tipton Brothers had been followed by a fire or a stampede or a tainted water supply just when the owners seemed most vulnerable. Maria didn’t want to say aloud what she was thinking, but the fact was that for all his good qualities, Roger had a temper, and he did not like being crossed. Might this be a warning he’d decided to send her to prove that he was right? “Eduardo, did any of the men say they saw—”

  Eduardo shrugged. “Like I said, Miss Maria, there’s no way of knowing for sure what started things going.” He turned to his wife. “The boys said they would stay out there rounding up the strays and making sure the rest of the herd is all right. I just came back to get Javier and the wagon. They’ll be needing breakfast,” he added.

  Juanita nodded and began packing food that her husband then loaded onto the wagon he’d brought to the kitchen door. Then she wrapped towels around the handles of two large coffee pots and handed them to him. “This should hold them until you get the fire going,” she said.

  Eduardo leaned in and kissed her cheek. “I’ll send Rico back to help with the milking,” he promised.

  “Amanda, Trey, and I can handle that,” Maria assured him. “Just let the men know how much I appreciate their quick action. That as much as anything probably saved everybody some loss.”

  “It was that Florida fella that made the difference. The night riders were having a devil of a time getting things calmed down. If it hadn’t been for him…” He just shook his head, then flicked the reins to set the team in motion. “You shoulda seen the way he snapped that whip of his.”

  “Seems like that drifter might be good for something after all,” Juanita said as she waved good-bye, then turned back to the kitchen.

  Maria was surprised that Juanita would even consider this sudden change of heart. Most of the time, once she made up her mind about a person, it took a lot more than something like this to get her to switch opinions. “Maybe I should offer him a job after all.”

  “Don’t go getting all carried away, mi hija. My guess is that Roger Turnbull and those others will be back here wantin’ their old jobs back once they see that working for Tipton Brothers is no barn dance. And then where will you be? You were the one all worried about making the payroll.”

  Juanita was right, of course. On the other hand, if Roger and the others did not return and if the drifter was as good as Eduardo said, wouldn’t she be foolish to let him go?

  * * *

  The rain started around six that morning, and it was what Maria’s father would have labeled a “right smart gully washer,” soaking the ground and filling the creek in what seemed like no time at all. It was still coming down when the men who’d been out the longest finally came back to grab a couple hours’ sleep. “Based on the tally we did a couple of days ago, there’s only three more missing, Miss Maria,” Bunker reported. He had been on the night shift when the stampede started, and now he stood under the overhang outside the kitchen door, rainwater running off his hat and his beard soaked. “I have to give the fella from Florida his due. He was something to see the way he cracked that whip of his and turned the herd.” He stroked his beard, and his eyes softened. “Sorry now that I was so hard on him earlier.”

  “Where is Mr. Hunter? I’d like to thank him.”

  “He took off once we’d calmed the herd and made the best count we could. Didn’t say nothing—just waved his hat and started riding west like the very devil was after him.”

  Maria did not want to admit how disappointed she was. She’d spent some time thinking about him while she and Trey had milked the dairy cows, waiting for the men to return and report the damage. She’d thought about the way he’d spoken to her and Eduardo when he’d first arrived and about how he’d been credited with making a difference when
it came to stopping the stampede…and mostly about how Amanda had described his eyes. They sparkle. She was more than a little annoyed at herself for wishing she could get a look at those eyes.

  * * *

  Chet had gotten next to no sleep, and his eyes were bleary, making it hard to focus. He could see that it was raining in the distance—probably at the Porterfield ranch, but he was miles from there and the sky was clear. The dust that the wind was whipping up kept him from seeing more than a foot in front of his horse’s nose, and the fact was that the missing cows were almost the same color as the landscape. According to Bunker’s best guess, a steer and two calves were still missing. Bunker and the other hands seemed willing to accept the losses as normal, apparently satisfied that they had rounded up most of the herd and the damage was not too great. But Chet didn’t like leaving even one animal behind. Not knowing their fate ate at him.

  Cracker scouted ahead, then ran back, tail wagging. She knew the drill but not the territory, and she was being extra cautious. After an hour with no luck, Chet turned away from the river and the terrain changed from parched grassland to barren dry rock formations that jutted up out of the land as if they’d exploded. Chet thought he heard something, and Cracker turned and sniffed the air to their left.

  There it was again. The bleating cry told Chet it was one of the calves, and he gently kneed his horse’s sides, at the same time signaling Cracker to approach with caution. They wound their way around an outcropping of jagged rocks and there stood the calf, none the worse for his adventure but obviously scared and confused. Chet loosed his rope from the back of his saddle and dismounted.

  “Hey there, young man,” he said, keeping his voice low and soft and forming his noose as he approached. The calf backed away and let out another loud bleat for help. “Your mama’s probably back at the ranch by now. How ’bout we go find her?” He swung the rope once and let it fall right over the calf’s head and neck. The calf startled and turned to run, but Cracker was right there. Chet hung on, planting his boot heels in the dirt. “Whoa there, my little friend.”

  It took less than five minutes for him to gain control of the calf and mount up again to continue the search. He doubted that the steer would go along as easily…if he even found it.

  Another hour, then two. The sun had reached its peak, and Chet drained the last of his water. He hadn’t bothered to refill it before turning away from the river. In fact, he’d not filled it last night before turning in, distracted by the way the day had gone. He’d been more concentrated on brushing down his horse and ridding Cracker of the dust and dirt of their journey. Then he’d washed up and put on a clean shirt, thinking all the time about how he might best approach Maria Porterfield, who seemed—in spite of her gender and the fact that she couldn’t be more than twenty, if that—to be in charge of the ranch.

  He had to figure out the right way to speak to her so she might offer him a job. From the minute he’d stumbled across the fenced land of the Tipton Brothers Company, he’d begun to have his doubts about working for that outfit. He tended to be a live-and-let-live kind of guy. Judging by all that barbed wire, those who ran Tipton Brothers liked being in control. There would be a lot of rules and probably not much pay. Men who owned big companies like that could be pretty tightfisted when it came to sharing the profits. If he could work at a smaller spread like the Porterfield ranch, it would probably be a better fit.

  Eduardo had come to the barn while Chet was washing up. Chet hadn’t been fooled for one minute when the Mexican babbled on about needing to stay out there for the night. Something about a coyote coming after the chickens. Truth was that he was glad for the company. Eduardo seemed inclined to talk, and that suited Chet just fine. It had been Eduardo who had advised him to wait until morning before trying to talk to “Miss Maria.”

  “She’s been having a pretty hard time of it these last few months. My Juanita says she hasn’t even grieved properly for her papa.”

  Over the course of the evening, he’d learned all about Mr. Porterfield’s tragic death, the fact that the eldest son had taken his inheritance out in cash and headed east, and the details of how the ranch’s foreman had just that morning quit and left with three of the ranch’s most experienced hands. What he hadn’t been able to get Eduardo to talk about was the women of the house—especially the fair-haired beauty the men called Miss Maria in a tone that bordered on reverence. As he rode on, searching for the other missing animals, he realized that as much as he wanted to find out what had happened to those strays, he wanted more than anything to return them to Miss Maria. He wondered if that might even make her smile. She struck him as someone who did not smile nearly enough.

  * * *

  It was late afternoon when Maria saw Roger Turnbull’s mustang gallop into the courtyard. He slid from the saddle and ran toward her as if he had just discovered that the house was on fire and he was needed to rescue its occupants.

  “Maria, are you all right? Is everyone all right?”

  It occurred to Maria that there had been a time before her father died that he would never have been so familiar—Miss Maria, yes. Just Maria? Certainly not.

  As she had feared, the rain had come and gone and done about as much good as someone spitting on a patch of dirt and hoping grass would grow. The ground was so hard packed that the rain had simply run off the surface. But at least when she’d gone to wash clothes, she’d been thankful to see that the stream that ran through their property had risen some. She continued to hang clothes on the line that stretched across the yard while she spoke to Roger around a wooden clothespin she held between her teeth—a clothespin that would bear the mark of those teeth. The minute she had seen him galloping up to the gate, she had bitten down hard.

  “We are fine.”

  Roger tipped his hat back and surveyed the area. “How many did we lose?”

  His proprietary tone was her breaking point. “We? We! You left yesterday if you recall, taking three of my men with you. Why do you care how many of the herd I lost?”

  “Now, Maria, just calm down. I am here now and…”

  Just then Maria became aware of a ruckus near the corral. “Well, will you look at that?” she heard Bunker bellow, followed by whistles and cheers from the other men.

  “Who the devil is that?” Roger growled as he watched the drifter ride up to the corral leading a calf and a steer with another smaller calf draped across the saddle in front of him.

  Maria slowly removed the clothespin from her mouth. With her eyes riveted on Chet Hunter as he and the other men carried the wounded calf out of the heat and into the barn, she started walking away from Roger.

  “Maria? Who is that?” he demanded as he caught up to her, matching her stride for stride.

  She smiled and said, “That is our new foreman.”

  Three

  Roger let out a derisive laugh. “That cowboy? How do you know him?”

  “I don’t, but as you can see, he appears to have already earned the respect of the men. Where the others were satisfied with a loss of three animals—as you would have been, as you taught them to be—he did not give up. So in answer to your question about how many we lost, the answer is apparently not one single animal.” Maria turned and strode away.

  By the time she reached the barn, she heard Bunker saying, “I have to hand it to you, Florida, you did one fine job saving this little guy.”

  “Thank you for that, but could we get one thing straight? My name is either Chet or Hunter.”

  The circle of men froze. No one—not even Turnbull—crossed Bunker. But then Bunker let out a laugh and clapped the drifter on the back. “Got it,” he said. “Tell you what. How about you teach me and the other boys here a little something about the way you use that whip, and we’ll count you as one of us?”

  Someone spotted Maria and nudged Bunker, and the men fell silent as they whipped off their hats in a gesture
of respect. Maria was well aware that while their deference was partly because she was their boss, more likely it was born of habit. Hired help had a long and unbreakable tradition of showing special respect for their boss’s female family members. They might court the daughter of a neighboring rancher, but she knew that not a man among them would think of showing that kind of interest in either her or Amanda. No man except Roger, she thought. But then Roger did not consider himself one of the men. She walked directly to the drifter and looked up at him.

  “Mr. Hunter, I would like to thank you. You certainly did not need to go out of your way to find these strays, but I am truly grateful that you did.”

  “You’re welcome, ma’am.”

  He ducked his head, and with all the shadows in the barn, she could not see if Amanda’s assessment of his eyes was correct. “I wonder if I might speak to you after you’ve finished here,” she added.

  “I expect these men know a good deal more than I do about how to save this little guy, ma’am.” With his hat, he gestured toward the doors and waited for her to lead the way. The problem was that Roger was between them and the door, observing every move she made—as usual. So she turned in the opposite direction, moving deeper into the shadows. The drifter hesitated, then followed her, and thankfully the rest of the men turned their attention back to the injured calf, discussing treatments and whether or not the little guy would make it.

  “I believe you mentioned that you are looking for work, Mr. Hunter?”

  He was still holding his hat, and he cocked his head to one side as he looked down at her. “You don’t call the others Mister. Why me?”

  Rattled by his sudden switch in topic, Maria felt her cheeks flush and was glad for the protection of the shadows. From the corner of her eye, she saw that Roger had moved closer and was now standing on the edge of the circle of men, pretending to give his advice on the calf, but Maria was not fooled. She decided to ignore the stranger’s question and get to the point.