by Janet Dailey
“Jessie! Shorty!” He waved the two men to come with him and wheeled his horse away from the herd toward the oncoming farmers.
The rifle was in his scabbard. Benteen pulled it out and levered a shell into the firing chamber, taking aim at a slick-haired dog leading the pack. A rifle shot was likely to stampede the cattle again, but so were the dogs. He fired, knocking the first one back into the others. Behind him, Shorty and Jessie were pumping bullets into the pack. Within seconds, those that could still move had turned tail and were kiyipping back the way they’d come. Benteen faced his horse at the wagonload of farmers.
“You killed our dogs!” one cried.
“Did you put that fence up?” Benteen ignored the outraged protest.
“That’s our water!” a farmer shouted.
“Like hell it is. Trail herds have been watering there since the first steer was taken north.”
“You owe us for that fence you cut—and for every steer that took a drink,” another demanded.
“I’m not paying you to water my cattle,” Benteen snapped.
“We’ll see what the marshall has to say about that,” the first one threatened.
“You do that.”
There was a grumbled exchange among the farmers before the team was finally turned around. Benteen watched them go, not turning until they were out of sight. When he shoved the rifle into the scabbard of his saddle, he heard Shorty and Jessie do the same.
“Damn farmers!” Shorty spit. “We shoulda put a couple bullets in them.”
“Let’s get back to the cattle.” Benteen reined his horse toward the restless, uneasy herd milling nervously.
The wagons had reached the night’s campground well ahead of the herd. By that time, Lorna was deeply regretting that she had ever boasted to Benteen that she could manage the team. The four horses pulling their wagon were not the tractable animals that hauled her father’s freight wagon, and her arms ached until they were trembling from holding the reins. There weren’t any roads across the prairie, and after a day of being bounced all over the wagon seat, her body seemed so bruised and battered that there wasn’t a part of her that didn’t hurt. Grimy dust covered her face and clothes, adding to the discomfort.
She was in agony because she hadn’t relieved herself since the noon stop. Lorna climbed carefully down from the wagon seat, not jumping the last two feet, afraid the jar of landing would cause her to humiliate herself. She looked anxiously around. At the noon stop, there had been a small stand of trees where she’d been able to hide herself, but here there was nothing but grass in all directions. She couldn’t even see any bushes.
“I’ll unhitch the horses for you, Mrs. Calder,” a young voice said.
Turning with a start, Lorna saw the dark-haired lad standing on the other side of the team. She recognized him as the one who had driven Mary’s wagon that morning. He couldn’t have been more than two years younger than she was. Lorna felt very young and foolish at the moment, younger than he was, but she was a married woman, so she couldn’t let him know.
“Thank you.” Her smile was hesitant. She doubted if she could have unharnessed this headstrong team without something going wrong.
Walking stiffly, Lorna crossed to the Stanton wagon. She felt less inadequate when she saw Mary being helped by the horse wrangler. The bow-legged man drove the team free from the wagon tongue, handling them from the ground.
“Mary,” Lorna called to her newfound friend and adviser.
The stocky woman came to meet her; a sharpness in her look that was somehow gentled by her tired smile. “How are you feeling?”
“Fine.” If her other matter wasn’t so urgent, Lorna would have continued the idle chatter. Instead, she lowered her voice so none of the three men in camp could overhear. “What do we do about relieving ourselves?”
For an instant there was silence. Lorna dropped her gaze to the prairie sod, certain she had disgraced herself by speaking of bodily functions, but she hadn’t known what else to do.
“You just go off a ways and do it,” Mary said.
Lorna’s glance ran back to the woman in shock. “But it’s so open.” She cast a furtive look at the wrangler unharnessing the horses. “Anyone could see me.”
“Out here, Lorna, there’s times to be modest and other times when it just isn’t possible,” Mary explained gently. Her glance made a swing of the area. “There’s a little hill right over there. Maybe you could go behind it. You’re not exactly out of sight, but it’s as close as you’ll get.”
Under the circumstances, there seemed little she could do except what Mary had suggested. Lorna had never felt so self-conscious in all her life as when she pretended to idly stroll behind that little hill. No one appeared to notice her, or at least they weren’t looking. Lorna tried to make herself as small as possible when she knew she couldn’t wait any longer.
Her long skirt and petticoats provided a degree of covering. When she heard someone walking in the grass, they were also a hindrance, getting in her way when she tried to hurriedly pull up her undergarments. Her back was to the sound, which made it worse, because she had no idea who was coming. She darted a furtive glance over her shoulder and recognized the cook. Apparently lost in thought, he was studying the sky as he walked.
Standing up, Lorna frantically smoothed her skirts and started swiftly for the campsite. Red-faced, she slid a quick look in his direction, hoping he would ignore her. Humiliation was doubled when she discovered he was not. She couldn’t bear the thought that he knew what she had been doing out here.
“I came out for a closer look at the wildflowers.” Lorna came up with a desperate lie to explain her presence.
A twinkle leaped into his eyes. “I reckon I got the same idea, ma’am.” He touched the drooping brim of his hat and walked on by.
Lorna wished the ground would swallow her up. She hadn’t fooled him for a minute. And she hadn’t really wanted to know that his intention was the same as hers had been.
When she reached the wagons, neither the wrangler nor his helper paid any attention to her, but it felt like a hundred eyes were watching her. She heard the din of the approaching herd. Benteen and another rider were at the water hole, cutting the wire that fenced it in.
10
Lorna shared a small pan of water with Mary to wash some of the grime from her face and hands. Bathing was out of the question. The cook had returned from his stroll on the prairie and was adding a few dead limbs to the already blazing fire. The wood had been gathered along the trail that day by the wrangler and stowed in a hammocklike contraption stretched under the bottom of the chuck wagon, called a cooney. The metal coffeepot was already set out to boil for its usual half-hour.
“I think we should offer to help with supper, even if it won’t be accepted,” Mary suggested with a faint grimace.
“Why not?” Lorna wasn’t too anxious to face the cook, but she didn’t understand why anyone would refuse help in the kitchen—even a prairie kitchen.
“Ely says that cooks on these drives jealously guard their positions. They don’t like being given advice about anything related to cooking,” she explained. “But let’s make the gesture anyway.”
With Mary for moral support, Lorna walked over to the chuck wagon. The end gate was down, making a small worktable. Satisfied that the fire was burning well, the cook had returned to his outdoor kitchen. He was taking sourdough batter out of a keg for the requisite biscuits that accompanied nearly every meal, and adding more flour, salt, and water to ferment with the remaining batter to keep the starter going.
“Is there something we can do to help?” Mary asked.
“Nope.” He didn’t even turn around to answer.
A rumbling started and grew into a roar. “What’s that?” Lorna turned toward the sound in alarm.
“Stampede.” The cook stopped his work to look. “They ain’t comin’ our way.” He turned back to the table.
Lorna stared at the mad rush of cattle, a quarter-mile
distance giving her a view of the entire scene. She had heard tales about cattle stampedes and riders being trampled under their hooves. Her heart was in her throat at the sight of riders racing pell-mell, stride for stride with the thundering herd. Benteen was out there somewhere, but in the haze of dust and the mass of running bodies, she couldn’t pick him out. Fear for him paralyzed her, rooting her feet to the ground and riveting her eyes to the scene.
Rusty continued his work, but kept one eye on what was happening. Until he found out whether he was going to be cook, doctor, or undertaker, there were biscuits to be made. When he saw the cattle slowly circling back into themselves, he nodded his approval. “They got ’em turned,” he announced. “It’s all over but the shoutin’ now.”
It wasn’t until Lorna heard the loud bellowing of the cattle that she realized the animals hadn’t made a sound during the panicked run. The din was awful. Dust boiled to encapsulate the milling herd and hide the riders. She still couldn’t see Benteen anywhere.
From the far side of the herd came the baying bark of dogs, or so Lorna thought. She jumped at the rapid-fire explosions that followed, and glanced in alarm at the cook.
“Are those gunshots?”
Rusty nodded. “I reckon Benteen met up with the folks who strung the wire. He’s probably explainin’ the situation to ’em.”
The gunfire stopped seconds after it had started. But Lorna knew she wasn’t going to draw an easy breath until she saw Benteen again—safe and unharmed. She continued to scan the area, trying to pick out horse and rider from the churning mass of longhorned beasts.
“There’s Ely,” Mary breathed, standing next to her.
Lorna hadn’t considered that her friend was experiencing the same anxiety she was. Her hand closed on the woman’s arm in a silent expression of gladness that Ely Stanton had made it unscathed.
“But where’s Benteen?” Lorna murmured.
It was an eternity of minutes before she spotted him with the other cowboys surrounding the herd. Her legs started shaking and she felt amost sick with relief.
“The excitement’s over for a while,” the cook stated, eyeing both women discreetly. “Why don’t you sit yourselves down and have some coffee?”
“Thank you,” Mary said. “I think we will.”
The coffee was so strong and black that Lorna nearly gagged on the first swallow.
“Ely always said my coffee was weak.” Mary’s laugh was thin. “I didn’t believe him when he said you could float a pistol in trail coffee.”
Untying the bow to her bonnet, Lorna slipped it off and smiled her agreement to Mary’s remark. She felt emotionally drained. At least the strong coffee partially revived her, despite its appalling taste.
Benteen stayed with the herd until it had been watered and thrown off the trail to graze awhile before bedding down for the night. When he rode to camp, the wrangler Yates was bringing the cavvy in so each rider could get his night horse for his two-hour watch. He dismounted at the chuck wagon.
Rusty handed him a tin cup, knowing he’d want coffee first thing. “Anybody hurt?”
“Nope.” Benteen held the cup while Rusty poured it full of coffee from the pot. “Taylor’s horse stepped in a prairie-dog hole and went down, but he went off clear of the herd. Says he’s all right.” He drank the coffee down, not giving it a chance to cool.
“All that commotion gave your bride quite a scare.” Rusty passed on the information carelessly, but noticed Benteen’s quick glance toward the wagon.
Lorna stood poised at the back of the covered wagon, an uncertainty in her manner as she stared at Benteen. He set the cup on the makeshift worktable of the chuck box and crossed the camp circle. Her gaze went over him from head to toe, inspecting him for damages. Unconvinced, she searched his face when he finally stopped in front of her.
“Are you all right?” she asked.
“Not a scratch.” The corners of his mouth deepened at this concern for him.
She swayed toward him, then slid her hands around his middle to hold him close, his solidness more reassuring than his words. “I was so worried,” Lorna admitted, and felt a hand on her hair.
“It’s all part of a day’s work,” he said. She shuddered that he could be so nonchalant about it. “Besides, something good came out of it.”
“What?” It seemed impossible.
“You’re not angry anymore.”
Keeping her head down, Lorna pulled reluctantly away from him. “I wasn’t angry before.” But she didn’t try to explain the hurt she’d felt at his lack of understanding about her parents and the indifference he’d shown for what she was going through. “We heard some shooting.” She changed the subject.
“A bunch of farmers sicced their dogs on the cattle.” Benteen shrugged, making light of the incident.
“Were they the ones who fenced in the water?” she asked, to see if the cook had been right.
“They said they were.”
“I suppose they were upset about it,” Lorna guessed. “Wasn’t it wrong to cut it down? I mean, you shouldn’t destroy other people’s property, should you?”
“A man doesn’t have any right to fence thirsty cattle away from good water.” His lids were shielding his eyes, but she sensed his displeasure at her questions.
“But shouldn’t you have asked before you cut it? The farmers probably wouldn’t have been so angry if you had.”
“While I sent somebody to look them up and ask permission, what was I supposed to do with twenty-five hundred head of thirsty Longhorns? They would have torn the fence down to get to that water, and cut themselves up bad.” Benteen was curt with her, and she saw the hardness in his eyes. “This isn’t Fort Worth, Lorna. Life is different out here.”
Behind them, Rusty banged a metal pan. “Come an’ get it or I’ll throw it out!”
Benteen half-turned at the sound, then faced Lorna again. “Supper’s ready. Are you hungry?”
“Yes.” Actually she was starved, but he had made her feel young and ignorant again. She resented that, and retaliated by shutting him out from her private thoughts.
He curved a hand under her arm. “I want to introduce you to the men. Some of them you know, but the others haven’t met you.”
While the cowboys waited in line for Rusty to dish up their plates of stew, Benteen identified them individually to her. Two of the shyer ones turned red when she was introduced to them. Shorty Niles flattered her outrageously, making her laugh, but all of them treated her with the utmost respect. They weren’t at all like the foul-talking, loud trailhands she’d seen on the streets of Fort Worth.
There was no order to the meal, no formality observed. The men sat on the ground, leaving their hats on and shoveling the food into their mouths as if there might not be another meal for days. Lorna found it difficult to appear at all ladylike when she was sitting cross-legged on the ground with her skirts billowing around her and holding the plate of stew she was eating. Rusty came around with the coffeepot to refill the cups.
“This stew is very unusual.” She had been taught to compliment the cook. Since she hadn’t eaten anything that tasted quite like it before, it seemed logical to mention it. “What’s it called?”
There was a lull in the conversation. Rusty glanced at Benteen. Everyone was fully aware of his orders about swearing in front of the women.
“It’s called … son-of-a-gun stew,” Rusty said finally, and a few of the cowboys chuckled aloud.
Lorna didn’t understand the joke and slid a questioning glance at Benteen. His mouth was slanted in a half-smile, but he kept his gaze down.
“It’s made with beef, isn’t it?” Lorna guessed.
“Well, yes, ma’am.” Rusty seemed to hesitate before admitting it. “It’s made from beef parts—the heart, liver, tongue. ’Course, it gets its flavor from the marrow gut.”
“Marrow gut,” Lorna repeated, and let her fork rest on the plate. “What’s that?”
“It comes from the tube that
connects a cow’s two stomachs.” Having spent a great deal of his life at sea, Rusty knew sailors had to have some greens in their diet to keep from getting sick and diseased. So did cowboys on the trail. Meat and beans alone weren’t enough. Since cattle ate grass, the necessary nutritious elements were in the marrow of the tube connecting their stomachs. If a cowboy ate it, he got the benefit of the greens. “Son-of-a-bitch stew,” as it was more widely known, usually contained it.
“Oh.” Lorna stared at her plate and wished she had never asked. There wasn’t any way she could eat another bite. And the food that was in her stomach didn’t feel like it wanted to stay there. She looked across the way at Mary, but she didn’t appear to have been listening.
As if she hadn’t been through enough that day, here she was eating animal guts. It was too much. She set her plate on the ground, not caring that the cutlery clattered off the side, and scrambled to her feet.
“Excuse me,” Lorna mumbled, conscious of Benteen’s frowning look.
Gathering her skirts tightly around her, she ran from the campfire area and sought refuge in the back of the wagon. She sprawled the length of the quilt-topped mattress and started to cry. She just couldn’t take any more.
A guilty look of regret stole across Rusty’s lined face. “Sorry, Benteen. I fergot such talk offends a lady’s delicate sensibilities.”
A hush had settled over the men at Lorna’s flight. Benteen was conscious that they were waiting to see what he was going to do. He was irritated at the awkward position Lorna had put him in.
He forced himself to smile. “Don’t worry about it, Rusty. There’s a lot of things she’s going to have to learn to accept.”
He put his plate aside and rolled to his feet. Crossing the camp with slow deliberation, Benteen raised the canvas flap of the wagon and ducked his head to climb inside, aware of the smothered sounds of Lorna’s crying. He struggled to control his impatience. She lifted her head from the quilt long enough to look at him, then turned it quickly away.