The Best Man

by Maggie Osborne

  “How did you get interested in acting anyway?”

  “A touring company came through Klees when I was nineteen,” she said tightly. “In retrospect, I realize they weren’t particularly good. They only did melodramas. But it seemed magic at the time. I knew that night that I wanted to be an actor.”

  And oh how she had loved becoming someone different every night. Standing in the wings, awaiting her cue, she had cast Freddy Roark aside and let someone else take her place. It was that someone else who emerged before the gaslights, the shepherdess or the lady-in-waiting or the grande dame or the shop girl. The someone else was never invisible, never overlooked.

  And on stage the worst dilemmas were always solved. The father reconciled with the son or daughter, the prodigal was forgiven, the lovers reunited, the villain was vanquished.

  That’s what she loved about the stage, stepping out of herself into a happy ending. And when the applause came, that swell of approval and recognition was an infusion of life’s blood.

  “You can’t guess how much I miss it,” she whispered. Since returning to Klees she had been waiting her life away, waiting for another chance, waiting for an opportunity to step before the lights again. But Pa would have killed her if she had run off a second time, just like she had almost killed him when she ran off the first time. So she had stayed in the little house he rented for her in town, dreaming hopeless dreams and watching her life slip away, day by day.

  “If we win, you’ll have another chance,” Dal said. He ground his cigar against the saddle tree, then flipped it toward the range. The sweet smoke floated away in the darkness. He flexed his shoulders, rolled his head, then shifted on his saddle. “Time to head in.”

  Abruptly it occurred to her that if she would be tired tomorrow, he would be doubly so. He’d ridden a two-hour night shift with Les then another two-hour shift with her. But she already knew he wouldn’t complain. Oh yes, Pa would have taken to this man like cheese on pie.

  She, on the other hand, was suddenly so tired she could hardly hold her eyelids open. When they returned to tie their horses to the wheel of the chuck wagon, she sat unmoving on her saddle, her eyes closed, searching for the energy to tether the horse and stumble back to her bedroll for the few hours remaining until dawn.

  Strong hands circled her waist and lifted her off the saddle. Dal swung her close to him and slid her slowly down the length of his hard hot body. Freddy gasped, and her eyes snapped wide-open. She gripped his shoulders and stared into narrowed eyes, feeling his powerful arousal as her hips slid past his before he set her on the ground. Holding her tightly against him, he looked into her eyes, and for one breathless moment she thought he would kiss her.

  “All the world’s a stage, and all the men and women merely players,” he said softly, his gaze dropping to her lips. “Except on a cattle drive. Keep that in mind, Frederick.” Then he released her and stepped back, touching a finger to the brim of his hat. “Sleep fast.”

  Freddy’s mouth dropped open. He’d quoted from As You Like It. My God.

  Lips parted, pulse thudding in her temples, she watched him walk away from the campfire and the scattered bedrolls. Damn him. She had lied about his kiss having no effect on her. And she’d be lying now if she claimed that the touch of his body hadn’t scorched her mind and flesh.

  Feeling confused that she had wanted him to kiss her again, furious that he’d quoted Shakespeare and proved her wrong about him, she strode toward her bedroll, this time managing not to wake any of the other drovers. But against all expectations, it was a long time before she finally feel asleep.

  Chapter 11

  The first stampede erupted on the third night, two miles west of San Antonio.

  The noise and shaking earth brought Dal out of his bedroll like he’d been catapulted into the air. He hit the ground running and raced for his night horse. As he’d been expecting this, he was fully dressed, and in less than a minute, he was galloping alongside the terrified herd.

  That minute was long enough to notice the drovers exploding out of their bedrolls, long enough to watch Alex jump to her hands and knees and frantically scramble for her chair, to see Freddy and Les freeze in panic. He hoped to hell neither of them joined in the melee.

  A sliver of moon shimmered through the billowing dust, pushing the shadows enough that he wasn’t entirely blind. Squinting into the murk, he saw a tide of clashing horns and pounding hoofs sweeping past him on the right. Stampeding animals gave off a scorching heat, and he felt it on his face, inhaled the nearly overpowering odor of fear and rank cowhide. Shouting orders would have been futile, swallowed by the din of rattling horns and the thunder of eight thousand hooves churning up the ground. He had to trust that his drovers would perform as a unit even though they couldn’t see or hear one another.

  Swearing and shouting, trying to squeeze down the herd and hold them together, he rode hard, praying his horse didn’t stumble in the darkness. The other drovers would be doing the same, trying to reach the point and turn the lead animals toward the tail of the stampeding herd. Once the lead steers turned into a circle, the cattle would twist themselves into a self-stopping ball and eventually the mass would wind so tightly together the stampede would end.

  Thirty minutes after the sun drifted above the horizon, the mill finally ceased churning and his weary drovers began to sort things out and drive the herd back to the bedding ground, which was now three miles behind them. Peach and Daniel rode out to search for animals that might have strayed during the early stages. The first stampede had ended.

  Dal removed his hat and wiped sweat from his face, watching Freddy and Les riding toward him, their faces pale in the morning light. His instinct was to instruct them to leave the mopping-up to men with experience. But sitting on the sidelines never made a cowboy.

  “What are the injuries?” he asked as they rode up. Injured men and horses would return to camp expecting Alex to patch them up. He hoped she knew how to do it.

  “Charlie has a gash on his leg and James broke two toes,” Freddy reported.

  “I never heard or saw anything that terrifying in my life,” Les said in a voice scarcely above a whisper. “I’m sorry we didn’t help. We just… we just…”

  “You were right to stay out of it,” he said wearily. “Later, I’ll review what we did. You’ve heard what to do before, but now that you’ve seen a stampede, it will make more sense.”

  Freddy’s green eyes widened and moved beyond him. “What happened to those steers?”

  “Winding two thousand steers into a tight ball damages them. A steer will lose more weight in a mill than he would if we ran him from here to San Antonio.” He jerked his head toward two dead beeves laying on ruined earth. “Sometimes the center of the mill jams too tight and a few get trampled.” He crossed his wrists on the pommel. “We’ll graze the herd an extra hour this morning to settle them out. You cowboys ride over there and skin and butcher those dead beeves. I’ll tell Alex to hold your breakfast until you’re finished.”

  Their faces blanched beneath sun pinked skin, and they stared at him with huge horrified eyes. Freddy stammered, “You want us to—oh my God—skin and butcher two cows?” She stared at him in disbelief. “Us?”

  “You,” he said pleasantly. Today she hadn’t bothered pinning up her hair but had tied it back at the neck. A light breeze plucked at the black cascade that fell nearly to her waist. “And it would spare me a whole lot of irritation if you’d remember that we’re trailing steers, not cows.”

  Speechless, Freddy watched him ride away, then she blinked at Les with stunned eyes. “I don’t think I can do this,” she whispered, still shocked.

  Les leaned to one side and her chest heaved. If she’d had any breakfast, she would have tossed it over the side of her horse. “It makes me sick just to think about touching a dead steer.”

  Freddy waited, praying that Dal would ride back and tell them he’d been joshing. But it didn’t happen. “I would rather walk back to Klees
buck naked and barefoot than do this.”

  “I would rather spend the rest of my life in a Mexican jail than skin and cut up a dead steer,” Les said, swaying in her saddle.

  “I would empty chamber pots for twenty years rather than go anywhere near those dead beeves.”

  “I’d rather eat a bucket of spiders than do this.”

  “You’re in luck,” Freddy said. “Alex is frying spiders for our breakfast.”

  They stared at each other, then burst into semi-hysterical laughter, laughing until tears ran down their cheeks, until their sides ached and their horses were dancing sideways.

  “I can’t believe this. Did you ever imagine that we—”

  “Never!”

  When Freddy finally caught her breath and wiped the tears from her eyes, the dead steers were still there. She brought her horse under control and sighed as deeply as any tragic heroine ever had. “I hate this, I hate this, I hate this.”

  “We’re going to get blood on us,” Les said. “They have guts in them. Oh God.”

  “Damn it.” Freddy rubbed her forehead. “We don’t have any choice. We have to do it.”

  Les pounded a fist on the pommel. “I’ll take the smaller one.”

  “The hell you will. This will go faster if we work together.” Dal would have been thrilled to hear those words fall out of her mouth. But in this case, he was right. The steers were too heavy to wrestle around alone. She and Les considered each other for a long minute, adjusting to the idea of working together, accepting the wisdom of the idea, but not liking it much.

  “All right,” Les said, riding up beside her. “But just don’t go telling me what to do every other minute. You don’t know any more about skinning and butchering than I do.”

  There was no way Freddy could pretend this repugnant task was a role or stage business or anything else that would help her get through it. She couldn’t hide behind pretense this time. She would have galloped for home if Les hadn’t been with her.

  But if Les wasn’t running away, neither would she. But she sure wanted to.

  “My sisters are doing what?” Alex asked, spinning around, then shading her eyes against the sun. Far out on the range she saw Freddy’s and Les’s horses and two figures hunched over the dead steers. A shudder passed down her frame.

  Dal poured a cup of coffee from the ever-present pot hanging over the fire, then helped himself to one of the steaks Alex had fried for breakfast. “When they signal, you and Grady drive out there and get the meat. Wrap the pieces in slickers and load them in the wagon.”

  “Oh my God.” She was going to have to be part of it after all.

  Grady leaned against the chuck wagon, sipping scalding coffee and scowling toward the range. “We better not wait. Better go out there soon and make sure they don’t throw away the heart and liver and the other small parts.”

  Alex placed a hand on her stomach as the air rushed out of her body. “Why shouldn’t they throw away those parts?”

  “You use those items to make son of bitch stew. It’s a favorite with the drovers,” Dal said, looking up as Luther and Caldwell’s wagon returned to camp from a trip into San Antonio. “The tube linking a longhorn’s stomachs gives the stew a distinctive flavor,” he added absently.

  She imagined it did. Alex gripped the handle of her crutch until her knuckles turned white, and her stomach rolled as she thought about touching a stomach tube, or cooking it, or, God forbid, eating such a revolting thing. When she opened her eyes, Dal had gone, walking toward the returning wagon, but Grady still leaned against her worktable, watching her curiously.

  “You ain’t one of those prisses with a delicate stomach, are you?”

  She knew the origins of stewed chicken and bacon and pot roasts, but she’d never been subjected to the starting point of wringing the actual chicken’s neck, dealing with a pig, or skinning a steer. Lord. Now she was going to have to touch and cook pieces of a steer that ought to be buried in the ground and forgotten.

  “I really hate being here.” She had compromised everything she had believed she stood for.

  In the few short weeks that she had been relying on the crutch, it had become indispensable, and she detested that. Being mobile again was a betrayal of Payton. She hated cooking, it was a task for a menial, and she loathed everything it entailed. And she despised washing dishes that seemed to multiply into an endless number of dirty cups and plates.

  She hated sleeping on the ground near snoring men, some of whom slept in their long johns, hated the lack of privacy, hated performing her toilette at dawn, hated careening over the range fearing for her life. She hated and dreaded those moments alone in the middle of nowhere before Grady arrived with the remuda.

  Most of all, she hated having no one to talk to.

  Freddy’s competitiveness was exhausting, but Alex responded to it, which made Freddy one of the last people Alex would admit fear to. If she tried to talk to Les, she’d end up reassuring Les and find no assurance herself. Grady expected her to take everything in stride and was annoyed by any show of weakness. Dal was too busy for idle chat. The drovers were so far beneath her that talking to them about anything other than what went into their stomachs was unthinkable. She didn’t like Ward Hamm or Jack Caldwell.

  That left Luther Moreland, who was walking toward her now, carrying a box of eggs he’d purchased in San Antonio. She had known Luther for years, and he was a presentable man, but too shy for easy conversation. A sigh lifted her chest. The aching loneliness she was experiencing on this terrible journey was a taste of what she could expect for the rest of her life.

  “I brought you some fresh eggs,” Luther said, placing the box on her worktable. “They’re packed in sand. I wish I could have found more, but there are more saloons in San Antonio than henhouses. Still, you’ll have enough for a couple of breakfasts.”

  “Thank you.” She started cleaning her area, putting away dishes and cups, irritated when Dal returned and took a clean cup that she would have to wash later.

  “Did you notice if Caldwell met up with Lola in San Antonio?” he asked Luther.

  “I believe he did, yes,” Luther said uncomfortably.

  Dal squinted toward Freddy and Les, and Alex thought she could guess what he was thinking. They had lost two more steers. Three days into a drive, and they had already lost eight animals. Undoubtedly Lola and Jack were celebrating a promising beginning.

  “How many miles did we make today?” Now that she’d seen a stampede, Freddy wasn’t anxious to see another. Dal didn’t have to remind her to keep her voice low.

  “Not enough with the late start we got. Nine miles, maybe ten.”

  She hated to admit it, but she would miss him and the scent of his cigars when he stopped sharing her night shift. There was another thing she wasn’t eager to concede, but she owed him. “Les and I worked together skinning the steers. It was a horrible, nasty chore and…” She bit off describing a task she wanted to forget and hoped never to have to do again. “Anyway. We decided to work together on the drag, and we didn’t lose any steers today.” She paused, then admitted the rest. “We probably would have lost a couple if we hadn’t helped each other.”

  “The cimarrones are settling in. You’ll have an occasional steer who wants to head back to the bedding grounds, but the worst should be over now. For the most part, your job is to keep the laggards moving. And eat dust.” A grin sounded in his voice.

  His matter-of-fact tone annoyed her. She’d expected him to praise her and Les for deciding to work together and stop splitting their territory in half. But of course he didn’t know what a huge concession it was for her and Les to trust each other and try to work together.

  They completed a full turn around the herd before either of them spoke again.

  “Was that the only line of Shakespeare you know?” Freddy asked. She’d been wrestling this question all day, wondering. Staring in his direction, she watched the end of his cigar flare briefly, then move away from his li
ps.

  “I hate to disappoint you, but I’m an educated man. Part schooling, part self-taught.”

  “Oh.” It did indeed disappoint her. It was much easier to think of him as a simple cowboy, knowing cowboy things and not much else.

  “Love is a sickness full of woes,” he quoted suddenly in a tone that suggested he was showing off. “Do you know who said that?”

  “Well, of course I do.” When he waited, expecting her to state the author, she lifted a hand. “I can’t think of his name right now.” When Frisco still didn’t speak, she glared across the short distance separating them. “Listen, even the best actresses can’t remember every line or recall the author of every play ever written.” She tossed her head and felt her cheeks burning in the darkness. It was appalling to think he might have read more plays than she had.

  He laughed softly. “Samuel Daniel. Hymen’s Triumph.”

  She didn’t even know if Hymen’s Triumph was a play or a poem or a story or what it might be. Not for the first time, she silently cursed the disparity between a man’s education and a woman’s. It wasn’t fair that he could quote something she didn’t recognize.

  His leg brushed hers and she jerked away, angry and seeking a way to hit back at him for quoting a line unknown to her and thus embarrassing her. “Do you think you’ll start drinking again?” she asked abruptly. When she noticed him stiffen in his saddle, she smiled, ashamed of herself but also pleased that she appeared to have rattled a man who didn’t often get rattled.

  “Not on this drive,” he said curtly.

  “Is it true that you lost your last two herds because you were drunk all the time?”

  “Could be,” he said after a pause. “Luck plays a role on any drive, and the skill of the drovers, and the weather, and a hundred other things. My drinking didn’t help.”

  Ordinarily Freddy wouldn’t have dreamed of asking or answering personal questions. Somehow, she and Dal had moved quickly into a peculiar intimacy that made her uneasy when she thought about it. And she thought about him a lot during the long hours riding drag.