Nell came to appreciate the men on the ranch, too, with their economy of words and their dry sense of humor. They were polite, sometimes overly polite, but they didn’t patronize her. New Mexico Territory was still too raw to pamper ranch women. Females were not indulged but respected. The men expected everyone to work hard, to do their part. And the women did, without stinting. “Out here, it’s a woman’s job not to complain,” Lucy told her.
Of course, Nell was new, and the men were still testing her. Just that morning, she’d said she’d take the breakfast scraps to the chickens and reached for her shoes. Lucy had warned her to turn them upside down before she put them on. Nell did just that, and a tiny cactus fell out.
“Those dang cowboys!” Lucy said. “Best to check your shoes anyway. You never know where a scorpion’s going to take a nap.” Then Lucy added, “You’ve been a good sport, Nell. The boys like that. Life ain’t easy out here, and the cowboys respect a woman that can take it.”
* * *
It wasn’t more than a day or two after she met Buddy that Nell spotted the rattler curled up under the kitchen table, next to Buddy’s boot. He hadn’t said anything more to her than “Good morning,” or a mumbled thank-you when she set a plate before him. She was disappointed, because she’d been drawn to him from the moment she met him. He was the only one of the cowboys who interested her, the only one who seemed a possibility. After a few weeks on the ranch, she had realized cowboys weren’t much as marriage material. She’d given up on them and had decided she would view her job as a lark, an adventure, before she settled down back in Kansas or someplace more civilized. Maybe Lane Philips was the best she could do. That was before Buddy came along, however. But he’d barely said more than hello. In fact, he seemed to have made a point of ignoring her.
She spied the snake out of the corner of her eye and thought she’d fix Buddy for thinking she was no more than a hired girl he could torment. She’d show him he couldn’t fool her with a dead snake on a string. She’d been serving fried eggs from a heavy cast-iron skillet and slid three of them onto the cowboy’s plate, her arm steady. Just as Buddy moved his hand in what Nell figured was his attempt to raise the reptile’s head, she slammed the skillet on the snake, smashed it once, twice, and a third time for good measure. “Got it!” she said with no more emotion than if she’d swatted a fly.
“Cripes, Miss Nell!” Buddy said, jumping up and knocking over his chair. His plate with the eggs crashed to the floor. The other cowboys jumped up, too, and even Mr. Archer said, “Hell, woman, you sure put him out of business!”
“Anybody want more eggs?” Nell asked. The skillet held one perfectly good egg, although the yolk was broken.
“That’s a damn rattler,” Willy Burden said. He was a shy young fellow who was engaged to Martha, a girl in Albuquerque. He planned to marry her as soon as he saved up a hundred dollars. Another month or two, he’d told Nell, and he was quitting.
“Did you see the way she whacked it? Ain’t no woman I know could do that,” another cowboy said.
“Man neither.”
“It’s just a snake,” Nell said, thinking they were carrying the joke too far.
“You want the rattles?” Buddy asked. “Keep ’em in a jar.” He opened his pocketknife and cut them off, then stood and handed the rattles to her. “Ma’am, I believe that snake would have bit me something bad. I reckon I owe you.” He shook his head. “You were as calm as water in a horse trough.”
She almost laughed to think he had cut off the rattles of his trick snake. Nell put the rattles in her pocket, as Buddy picked up the snake and said he’d take it to the chickens. He held it up by the tail so the cowboys could see how big it was. Nell looked for the string around the snake’s neck, but there wasn’t any. She glanced at Lucy, who was watching her wide-eyed. Slowly, Lucy shook her head, and Nell blanched. That snake had been alive. Nell put her hand over her mouth when she realized what she had done, but Lucy caught her eye and shook her head again.
Later, when the cowboys were gone, Nell asked, “That was a real snake, wasn’t it?”
Lucy nodded.
“I thought they were playing a joke on me.”
“Don’t let them know that. Before the week’s out, you’ll be a legend around here.”
* * *
The next afternoon, Buddy came up onto the portico with a bouquet of brown-eyed Susans. The flowers bloomed along the fence lines in the fall, alone with bright gold chamisa and purple asters. “I’d have brought roses, but they aren’t to be had.”
“Why, you didn’t have to bring me anything.”
“I reckon I owe you something for saving me from that snake. I never saw anybody as cool as you were.” There was a touch of awe in his voice. Or was he teasing her?
“I guess I didn’t know what I was doing. I just kind of, you know, did it.”
“Maybe you thought there was a string around its neck.”
Buddy knew she’d been told about his trick snake, but Nell wasn’t about to admit it. “Sir?”
“I guess I would have smashed a snake with a skillet if I’d knowed it was already dead.”
“It was alive. You saw it yourself. So did the other cowboys.”
Buddy only grinned at her. “Well, you saved my leg anyhow. So I brought you a bouquet. It’s pretty, but it doesn’t smell like much.”
Nell put the flowers to her nose, and as she did, a bee flew out of the bouquet and stung her. She threw the flowers at Buddy and said, “That was a mean trick.”
“I didn’t know that bee was there. I’m real sorry.”
“Like hell you didn’t!” Nell had picked up the expression from the cowboys.
“Ma’am, I swear—”
“Don’t you swear at me, Buddy.”
He blinked a couple of times at the name. “Ma’am, I mean to tell you—”
But Nell turned around and went inside, letting the screen slam.
“Ma’am, I’m not—”
Nell was furious. She’d dreamed about Buddy the night before and had awakened to thoughts of being with him under the night sky. Now she was embarrassed that she had presumed. “You’re not welcome in this kitchen except at mealtimes, and even then I’d be obliged if you didn’t speak. I mean that, Buddy.”
“Don’t call me Buddy,” he said.
“I’ll call you mud if I want to.”
Two cowboys came around the edge of the house just in time to hear the exchange. “Buddy?” one of them asked. “Did she call you Buddy?”
The other slapped his knee with his hat. “She called you Buddy. Well, I guess we know what she thinks of you.”
Buddy waved his hat at the cowhand. “Now, you don’t need to blab it around.”
“Oh, I reckon I do,” he said.
Nell slammed the inner door and went to the Hoosier cupboard for baking soda to put on her nose.
Lucy had heard the whole exchange. “I don’t think he knew that bee was there,” she said.
“Sure he did. You told me yourself he’s a big practical joker.” Nell touched her nose carefully. It had already begun to swell, and it hurt. “He’s meaner than that snake.” There were tears in her eyes at how foolish she’d been to think he might like her.
Lucy found the baking soda and made a paste with a little water and dabbed it on Nell’s nose. “No, you’re wrong about that. Cowboys love to play their jokes, but they’re not mean, not these boys, anyway. I believe you hurt his feelings. I know you made a fool of him.”
“Why, for getting mad?”
“For calling him Buddy.”
“Well, that’s his name, isn’t it? I heard you call him that.”
Lucy shook her head. “Buddy’s the name of his horse.”
CHAPTER THREE
After that, the cowboys razzed Buddy about Nell’s name for him. He asked her to call him by his real name, but she refused. “You’ll always be Buddy to me,” she said.
“Cowboys have got a long memory. You watch out for him,
” Lucy warned. Days went by and then a week or two, and Buddy didn’t retaliate. So Nell figured the practical jokes were done with, and she was glad. She’d all but forgiven him for the bee in the bouquet, and regretted banning him from the kitchen. Still, to Nell’s disappointment, Buddy was polite but kept his distance, although one evening after supper, she came across him sitting on the porch of the adobe farmhouse, playing a song on a harmonica.
“That’s the lonesomest music I ever heard,” she said. In the dark, she didn’t know who the cowboy was, and she sat down on a chair near him.
“It soothes the cattle,” Buddy said. “Those old cattle drives, the boys used to play the mouth organ when the cows got the jitters.”
Nell was surprised to hear Buddy’s voice. But he had just as much right to sit on the porch as any other cowboy. “I guess it’s easier to carry around a mouth organ than a fiddle, although I heard a fiddle the other night. Was that you, too?”
“That’d be Wendell. He’s practicing up for a barbecue and dance over to the Iverson place on Saturday night. You heard about that?”
“I surely did,” Nell said. She smiled in the darkness, thinking Buddy would ask to escort her. Maybe he really was interested.
“It’ll be a real nice affair. Iversons got a piano, and there’ll be one or two playing the squawk boxes.”
“It sounds like a nice evening.”
“I expect you’d like to go.”
“I would.” Nell all but grinned, thinking maybe she’d been right to dream about riding under the stars with Buddy.
He slapped the harmonica on his sleeve, then slipped it into his pocket. “Well, maybe if you’re lucky, some cowpoke’ll ask you.” Buddy stood and walked toward the bunkhouse without a backward glance.
For a moment, Nell seethed at the insult. Then tears came into her eyes as she realized she had opened herself up, but Buddy didn’t care.
* * *
A cowboy did invite Nell to the barbecue. In fact, two of them did, but Nell turned them down in favor of going with Lucy and Mr. Archer. The party was just for ranch folks, Lucy explained. No town rowdies or fancy girls. The Iversons barbecued a calf, roasted it in a pit, and served it up along with smoked venison. The guests brought pinto beans and baked beans and frijoles, potato salad and creamed potatoes, creamed onions, and green and red chili. And every woman in the valley brought her best cake or pie. Lucy and Nell together baked an apple cake, and each made a pie. Lucy’s was raisin sour-cream, while Nell made lemon with meringue that stood four inches high. “Why, it looks like the Sangre de Cristos,” Mr. Archer said when he came into the kitchen and saw it. One of the cowboys said it looked more like calf slobbers.
The cowboys came up to the ranch house to escort them. The men had washed and shaved and were feathered out in new shirts, their hair slicked down with bacon grease, and one or two smelled of barber oil. Nell promised each of them a dance, as she climbed into the carriage with Lucy and Mr. Archer. Buddy wasn’t among the cowboys, and Nell wondered if he was staying behind, but not for anything would she ask. Maybe he’d gone on ahead with Wendell, she thought. Well, what did it matter? She had no intention of dancing with him. After the way he’d embarrassed her, he could dance with a cow. Then she thought, well, maybe if he asked nicely …
A moon as bright as a five-dollar gold piece hung in the sky, and the Iverson barn was decorated with a dozen lanterns. Mr. Archer helped the women out of the carriage and handed them the hamper with the cake and pies inside. Then he reached under the seat and took out a jug, which he gave to one of the hands, warning him not to get booze-blind.
Hands from the Rockin’ A as well as the other ranches gathered around to offer to carry the hamper. Nell thought they wanted to see what the women had prepared, but Lucy snorted, “I guess the word’s out we got a new girl at the ranch.” She handed the basket to the cleanest cowboy while Nell glanced about, noticing that Buddy wasn’t there. Lucy handed their wraps to one of the hands to take into the house, where the women’s shawls and the men’s coats were piled on a bed. She’d insisted Nell take a shawl with her because when they went home, the night would be cold.
Monty, one of the Rockin’ A cowboys, took Nell’s arm and asked if he could bring her a plate of barbecue. She nodded. Supper was already under way, and people were sitting on cottonwood logs in the yard or perched on bales of hay in the barn, tin plates of food in their laps. Nell looked around, figuring there were only one or two women for every ten men. Wendell and the other musicians were already tuning up in the barn, and Monty hurried her through supper so that he could claim the first dance. She’d eat dessert later, she thought, although with the way the pies and cakes were disappearing, she wondered if there would be any left. She was pleased to see her lemon meringue pie plate was empty.
Monty followed her to the dance floor, then gripped her awkwardly and began to dance. What he lacked in skill, he made up for in enthusiasm. All the cowpokes did. Willy Burden claimed her next, and he was just as lively as Monty. “I’m planning to dance at my wedding,” he said. “I lack but a month’s wages to reach that hundred dollars I need.” Then he asked shyly, “Miss Nell, I would consider it a favor if you’d advise me on the purchase of a wedding ring.” Nell agreed.
As soon as the dance with Willy was finished, a man stepped up to claim Nell for the next one, dragging her around the barn, stepping on her feet, even ripping the hem of her skirt—her best one. She was vain, so she’d worn a cream-colored skirt and starched white blouse, with a tight belt. Most of the cowboys had never seen her without an apron, which gave her a shape like a flour sack, and she wanted to show off her small waist. But she knew as soon as she arrived that she’d chosen the wrong outfit. The skirt was already dirty from where it had scraped the barn floor, and the blouse was stained from the not-too-clean hands of her dance partners. There was even a streak of barbecue sauce where a cowboy had danced her too close to one of the tables. Nell knew she looked a mess, with her soiled dress, the blouse pulled out from her skirt in places, her hair falling out of her combs, but that didn’t stop the cowboys from lining up to dance with her.
She had just finished a fast dance with a cowboy she suspected had never been on a dance floor in his life, and was hoping for a break, when Buddy took her arm. “I guess it’d be rude if I didn’t ask for a dance with our hired girl,” he said.
“Why, I thought I’d already danced with all the hired hands,” she shot back at him. “I guess I was wrong.”
He held out his arms, and they began to sway with the music. At least he didn’t leap around the room and step on her feet. She felt his arms tight around her, and despite herself, she smiled at him.
Buddy smiled back, and she saw again that he had all his teeth in that warm smile. “You know, the boys say you have eyes as blue as the mountains at sunset.”
Was he flirting with her? Or was he setting her up for something? “What do you say?” she asked.
“I’d say they look more like turquoise nuggets. I think I’ll call you Miss Nellie Blue-Eyes.”
Nell flushed. Maybe Buddy liked her at that. Maybe he’d just been cautious. Or shy. That was all right with her.
They finished the dance, and Nell said her feet hurt so much that she wasn’t sure she’d ever walk again, so they went outside and sat down on a log.
“Is that what you’d call a harvest moon?” Buddy asked, looking up at the sky.
“That’s what we called it in Kansas.”
“Here we call it a Comanche moon and sometimes a spooning moon. I kind of like that one.”
Nell flushed. “We didn’t hit it off so good at first, did we?” she asked.
Now it was Buddy’s turn to blush.
“I keep thinking you’re going to play a mean joke on me,” she said.
“You don’t like them?”
“Not so much.”
Buddy smiled and looked a little sheepish. “I never really played a joke on you yet, Miss Nell.”
�
��I hope you’re not thinking up one right now.”
“Me?”
“Yes, you.”
“Now, Miss Nellie Blue-Eyes, don’t you think a fellow’s got the right to a little fun?”
“Not at my expense.”
Buddy kicked the log with the pointed toe of his boot. “You do not trust a person, do you?”
The music had stopped, and Wendell came out of the barn with his fiddle and went up to Buddy. “You taken care of—” He stopped when he saw Nell and said, “Well, howdy, Miss Nell.”
“What were you saying?” she asked. “Don’t mind me.”
“I was just asking this ugly old cowpoke if he’d had a dance yet. He better hurry up, because folks are commencing to go home. Won’t be long before we’re playing ‘Leaving Cheyenne.’” Lucy had told Nell that was the last song played at a cowboy dance.
The two men glanced toward the ranch house, where people were collecting their coats from the bedroom and gathering their baskets and pie plates and cake pans. Nell wondered if Wendell had been about to ask Buddy if he had a bottle. She’d noticed a number of the cowpokes stumbling around smelling of busthead.
“I think I ought to find Lucy and Mr. Archer,” she said, standing up and brushing off her skirt. It was doubtful that she’d ever get it clean.
“I’ll walk you back to the ranch house,” Buddy said, but just as they started toward the building, a woman stopped in front of Nell and demanded, “Is this yours?” She held out a white handkerchief doused in cheap perfume. “I found it in my man’s coat pocket. It has your initials on it. I don’t know there’s any other woman here with them initials.”
The Patchwork Bride Page 3