Caress of Fire (3 page)

Oscar Yates muttered a base oath. Slapping eating irons on his worktable, the wiry cowboy-cook announced sourly, “Chow's 'bout ready. Where's yer men?”

“I have no idea.”

Gil dug in his saddlebag for the piece of wood he'd been whittling at home and sat in front of the fire to lose himself in his hobby; his knife gouged a chunk from the oaken bluejay. He tossed the half-finished piece into the orange glow.

The bowlegged cookie advanced on the triangle suspended from the chuck wagon, then rang it. The sound pounded in Gil's head like a hammer against a nailhead.

He listened in vain for the approach of feet.

Yates groused, “Ungrateful varmints. Ain't a one of them hasn't complained about having a meal set under their ugly noses. I just don't know about people,” he spat. “Wish I'd stayed in Missoura, that's what I wish. Folks, they be civilized in that part o' the country.”

“The men will get used to your cooking.”

“They sure better.” Again Oscar Yates rang the dinner bell, getting no response.

All of a sudden, Gil had had enough. He charged from the ground, stomped over to the bell, and rang the damned thing for a solid minute. The cowboys began to appear, yet to a man they kept their distance–including the turncoat Sadie Lou.

As was his right as sultan of the chuck wagon, Yates hollered, “Come and get it.”

They didn't.

Gil hoisted his voice to where it could probably be heard all the way to Abilene. “If you intend to be part of the Four Aces outfit, line up and fill your plates. And I do mean now, God damn it!”

Matthias and the collie were the first to reach the chuck fire, and it consoled Gil, his strawboss's show of loyalty, forced though it was. Yet the big German didn't speak as he spooned food onto a tin plate. Yates offered Sadie Lou a piece of charred beef which she dropped as if it were a hot potato.

“Ungrateful bitch,” Yates bellyached. “I oughta skin ya and serve ya up for breakfast.”

Her chin hanging almost as low as her tail, Sadie Lou whimpered and curled up at Gil's side.

The other men fetched their food. Each ate about as much as a whiny three-year-old. Gil frowned in disgust. He had never expected grown men to act like children. In turn, he glanced at Ernst Dietert, Dinky Peele, and Wink Tannington.

These men had been with him for the last three years, since Gil had made his first trip between San Antonio and the Rio Grande to round up the unbranded cattle which thickened that largely unpopulated area of Texas.

“I vould not feed tis zlop to zvine,” Ernst Dietert said.

“Slop, Ernst? I seem to recall you've a hankering for pickled pig's feet and blood sausage. And you're calling good red beef–slop?”

“Richtig!
Zlop.”

Gil shook his head in disgust. He'd made Ernst's acquaintance in San Antonio, had cottoned to the immigrant from Nassau-Hesse. This time last year, Ernst had been the one to suggest that Matthias be hired as strawboss, then he'd pointed out the For Sale sign on the Four Aces.

For all three years, Ernst Dietert had been the epitome of loyalty and acceptance–until now.

“It be right awful,” Dinky added, scratching his nappy crop of hair. “Makes these ole bones pine for plantation food.”

Gil's face clouded. As for the diminutive Dinky, he had known him even longer than Ernst. Back in Natchez, when Dinky Peele had been under the yoke of slavery, his ribs had been the first thing a person noticed. On the day Gil and his company of Union soldiers had freed him, Dinky had grabbed a half-raw pork shoulder right from a cookfire and had gobbled the meat down in less than a couple of minutes.

And he was pining for plantation chow

Wink Tannington poured his fare into the fire. “I ain't hungry.”

Besides Matthias, Wink was the best cowpuncher Gil had ever met. And the Mississippian did his job without the left arm he'd lost at Shiloh. When he reached his home in Biloxi, Wink had learned that each of his four brothers had given their life for the Confederacy and that his missus had run off to a crib in New Orleans. Tannington knew about pain and suffering.

Never had Gil figured these men for scrubby schoolboys.

Then there was Preacher Wilson. Rather than sustain himself after a hard day of punching cows, Eli added the contents of his plate to Tannington's. You'd think a man of the cloth would be above that sort of thing. Weren't preachers supposed to be godly? When he'd hired on, Eli Wilson gnashed at the bit to work his way to his family and a pulpit in Kansas.

Right now, the only thing gnashing about the preacher was his teeth.

Gil didn't bother to observe the other men.

He took a bite of flattened cornbread, then chugged too-damned-weak coffee to wet his abruptly insulted gullet. When he bit into the burnt steak, the act of chewing went all haywire; he sliced the inside of his cheek. Swallowing the clump of beef and a taste of his own blood, he had a hard time staying angry with his men, especially after he swallowed an eating iron of nearly raw pinto beans.

What were they going to do between here and Lampasas? With any luck, he'd find a proper cook there. But it would take weeks to reach town. Furthermore, Gil had no desire to make a trip with a bunch of cowhands who might desert over dessert.

The strangest thought popped into his mind: he wondered what Lisette Keller's cooking would taste like.

His food joined the growing pile on the campfire, and Gil stomped over to his bedroll. That fool woman. Whatever possessed her, thinking she could go along on a trail drive?

“No lady would ever so much as consider such a thing,” he muttered under his breath.

Sadie Lou barked twice. Gil glanced first at the chuck wagon, where the dog stood next to Matthias, then toward the cattle grazing and resting alongside the cottonwood-lined creek. He listened to the night. Beyond the sounds of cattle, the gentle movement of water, and the chorus of a thousand crickets, he heard nothing. Yet Sadie Lou pulled back her lip and growled.

A voice floated from the vicinity of a copse of oaks: “Hello there!”

A woman.

A woman? What was some female doing in the thick of Comanche country? Or was this some redskin trick?

Gil's hand went to his gunbelt to clutch the six-shooter he long ago and for no particular reason had dubbed Thelma. By now, all the cowpunchers, firearms drawn, were edging closer to the intruder.

“Who goes there?” Gil shouted into the dark of night, and advanced in the intruder's direction.

“A friend from Fredericksburg.”

That couldn't be ... of course not. The night was playing tricks. Gil cocked Thelma's hammer. “Raise your hands and make yourself seen.”

Two figures appeared, walking side by side. One was human, the other a mule. They were about twenty feet away. Sadie Lou rushed around a prickly pear en route to protecting her interests. The human bent down, and Gil heard the woman say something in German.

The collie wagged her tail.

Gil lowered the barrel. “Just as I suspected. Damn you, what are
you
doing here?”

Gil waited for a response from Lisette Keller. But his men were closing in, and dealing with her was something he preferred to face alone. He called over his shoulder, “Keep your distance. I'll handle this.”

At their retreat, he stepped forward. Rather than let loose a barrage of obscenities, Gil honed in on the mule. The thing was a pitiable sight, swaybacked and loaded down with packs. It looked as unhappy as the Four Aces crew.

The mule reached down to nip at the circling Sadie Lou. Stalking with teeth bared and hackles raised, the collie clipped around to the beast of burden's rear, and for that lapse in strategy, she got a kick to her brisket.

“Willensstark, bad boy,” Lisette admonished her traveling companion as the cowdog yapped and beat for camp.

Gil couldn't help chuckling. It was an unusual day when Sadie Lou found herself bested. But he mustn't ignore the trouble standing in front of him.

Lisette worried a strand of blond hair peeking from beneath a man's horrible and aged hat, and Gil recalled the way sunlight could dance through her blond braids. Remembering the way he'd felt upon sopping up that spilt beer–

“What are you doing here?” he repeated.

“I want to be your cook.”

Admonitions about a lot of things scattered like roaches at first light when he studied her somber face and her absurd attire: a man's shirt, ill-fitting, and–by the Holyrood!–
trousers.

“What're you doing in that getup? If you're thinking to pass yourself off as a man, think again. You wouldn't fool a village idiot.” Gil eyed her prominent breasts. “After few days on the trail, you'd look like a goddess to my hungry-eyed men.”

Lisette tugged at the waistcoat's hem. “I didn't intend to fool anyone. I wanted to downplay my femininity.”

“Downplay it somewhere else.”

“You don't need a cook?”

The taste of Oscar Yates' burnt steak lingering on his tongue, Gil's mind flooded with images of all those disheartened, hungry cowboys. Yet pride and prejudice were mean bedfellows.

“I have a cook.”

“Oh.”

He couldn't help responding to her final, simple sound of defeat. “I'm having a hard time understanding what you're about, Lisette.” This was the first time Gil had addressed her in the familiar; he wasn't concerned about his gaffe. “Why is hiring on with me important to you?”

“Because . . .”

She grappled for something, was it English or an explanation? Her shaking hand moved to rub one of her eyes, and Gil felt his heart melting now that he'd begun to recover from the shock of her appearing here. This was a woman in trouble.

As if they had minds of their own, his feet stepped toward her and his hands went to her elbows in a comforting fashion. “Honey, what's wrong?”

“E-e-e-everything.”

He warned his body not to take heed of her closeness. A tough warning, yet Gil McLoughlin was mostly a tough man. The edge of his thumb lifted to dry one of a dozen of her tears. She sniffled a “Thank you.” There were a dozen reasons why he ought to step back, none of which popped to mind.

Cradling her head against his chest, he asked, “What's this ‘everything'?”

“I cannot abide living in another woman's home–not even a day longer. I had to get away.”

He said nothing, knowing intuitively that more would come.

“I stole my brother's mule and a lot of Adolf's provisions and I took Monika's sewing kit–even though she's never used it–and I can't go back. I just can't.”

What could he do to help?

He could be gallant, could take her home. The trip would take upwards of a week, even if they encountered no trouble along the way, and given the black moods of his cowpunchers, Gil could see no smarts in leaving them alone for as much as an hour.

He
could
ask Matthias or the preacher to escort her back to Fredericksburg, but why should he cut loose one of his men, when he needed each and every one on the trail?

José Vasquez, his remaining Mexican
vaquero,
called out from around the chuck wagon,
“Mi jefe,
do you need help?”

“No!”

“Everything all right, boss?” asked Wink Tannington.

“Nothing I can't handle.” He didn't doubt his words, and if anything was right about this situation, it was that Lisette Keller felt right fine in his arms.

She pulled away “Please tell me. I'm curious who you chose for a cook.”

“No one, really”

“Would you let me fix a meal?” she asked. “As a tryout?”

Responding to the desperation in her voice, he conceded, “Maybe just this once.”

Tomorrow she'd have to go. Yet her eyes, those guileless eyes, haunted him. A man ought to protect all that innocence. She was innocent–and vulnerable and desperate. She might be lacking in judgment, stealing her brother's effects and taking off after a pack of men, but Matthias had told him she was a lady, and Gil decided against all reason and judgment that Matthias hadn't lied.

Lisette Keller
was
a lady.

A lady in need of rescue.

 

 

“Girl, ye be born to a chuck wagon,” Oscar Yates announced a few minutes after he'd begun to show Lisette around the domain he was eager to abandon.

While his words sounded nice, supper had yet to be started. Thus his praise was premature at best. Looking about, Lisette saw shovels and axes, ammunition and firearms, plus a huge pile of bedrolls. The wagon had but one entrance, up by the spring seat. Directly behind the seat, in a corner, was an upright wooden trunk.

After stepping over those bedrolls, the conscripted cook led his prospective replacement outside, to the rear of the wagon. Cowboys not guarding the herd waited for another supper. Six men, sitting cross-legged, circled the fire trench while Yates rambled on. They were a youthful group. Even the whiskered cookie seemed more spry than his years. Lisette guessed he was sixty or more.

Matthias Gruene wasn't among the group; she supposed he was on night patrol. Although she knew Jakob Lindemann and Ernst Dietert through church, she wasn't close to either, and she'd be glad when Matthias appeared. Maybe she could talk him into having a word on her behalf with the absent Gil McLoughlin.

“This here's where ye do most o' yer work,” Yates explained, calling her attention to the drop-leaf table. “Ye'll find ever'thing in easy reach, girl. This wagon has nearabouts all the conven'nces of a real kitchen. Now, the cap'n, he's gone to a lotta expense, he has, to stock it right nice. Cowboys be grateful for that sorta respect. And we got ever' kinda staple a good doughboy–'scuse me, girl, I mean cook–could want. Ye won't need a durned thing.”

Except for the job.

Yates had told her to call him by his given name, so she replied, “Thank you, Oscar.”

With bowlegged strides, Yates went over to the youngest of the group, Willie Gaines. “Nighthawk, she be ready to fix us a tasty meal, so ye need to dig another fire pit.”

Jakob Lindemann scratched his armpit. “What does she need with another fire?”

“Ye dimwit, for extry cooking pans.”

Lindemann nodded, and Willie set to digging.

“Fraulein,
do you know how to make son-of-a-bitch stew?” asked Lindemann.

“Gawddammit, Lindyman, watch yer lang'ge.” Yates rushed over to thump the man's head. “I ain't havin' ye yammerin' nasty to the lady.” He flushed beneath his whiskered face. “Pardon me, girl, I didn't mean to take the Lawd's name in vain.”

“I don't expect special treatment because I'm a woman.”

“Welp, I be glad o' that, 'cause me and the boys 're about beyond redem'tion.” Yates returned to the tour. “Ain't amiss for no medicines, neither, girl. Quineen. Turpinteen. Here be calomel–case one o' the boys gets stopped up–and this here's horse linnymint.” He whispered, “We got snakebite medicine, but the boys ain't supposed to have it less'n they gets bit.”

“He's talking about Scotch whisky,” Johns–not John, she'd quickly learned–Clark explained while snickering.

“Aw, shut up.” Yates shook a finger. “It ain't nice overlistenin' to what other people be sayin'.”

“Didn't your precious Susie ever tell you it's not nice to whisper?” was Clark's comeback.

“Leave that sainted lady outta this.” Yates returned to his style of inducement. “I always did like a wuman what be handy with a skillet. That why I marr'd my Susie. May she rest in peace. She could whip up a meal like nobody's business.”

After imagining the poor woman hobbled to a cookstove, Lisette told herself not to make judgments. Besides, she rather liked Oscar. She poked through drawers of coffee, sugar, baking powder, and decided that while the trail boss might not want her along on this drive, Oscar certainly did.

“There ain't nothin' finer, I always says, than a good pan o' biscuits and a purty lady to fix 'em,” Yates continued as Lisette began a Dutch oven of braised beef.

“Say, Yates.” Wink Tannington adroitly lit a cigarette with his single hand. “You're doing such a fine job of selling, you ought to hire on with a general store. Why, I bet you could even sell liquor to redskins.”

The cowhands roared with laughter, urging Tannington to go on. “Why don't you leave the lady alone, Yates?”

Yates huffed over to the cowboy. “Shut up, ye one-armed scalawag. All what's been outta yer mealy mouth's been gripe about my chow, and I be gettin' us a cook.”

Tannington poured a cup of coffee and propped his maimed arm on a saddle. “Why don't you show a little mercy, and get out of her way? Your breath would run off a skunk.”

Lisette almost added a protest in defense of Oscar Yates, but she mixed sourdough biscuits instead. There was a good-natured air to the awful things these men said to each other. The cowboys were enjoying themselves. Lisette enjoyed them, too, and she was thankful no one complained about the length of time it was taking to prepare a meal. But where was the trail boss?

By the time she'd peeled potatoes and onions, a Mexican
vaquero
appeared, carrying a guitar. He sported a wide smile and an even wider sombrero.

“Give us a song, José,” Johns Clark prompted.

The
vaquero
proved an excellent guitar picker, and Lisette delighted in the romantic sounds of his Spanish melodies.

The main course simmering on a rack above the extra fire, she said, “Oscar, I can't find any dried fruit.”

“Apples be in that there drawer to the right o' the tobacco. Or is it the left?” He lifted his short arms to study each hand. “I never can fig're out which be which.”

“That's cause you're as stupid as a Four Aces cow,” Johns Clark teased.

“Stupid? If I's so stupid, how come I can out rope the likes o' ye, Mister Smarty Pants?”

“Two bits says you can't.”

“Ye're on.” The bowlegged cowpoke went for his lariat and the two men got on with their contest.

Realizing how warm she'd become standing over these fires, Lisette took off the waistcoat and rolled up her shirtsleeves. She set about making turnovers.

“Anything I can do to help, miss?” Willie Gaines tried to flatten the carrot-red hair sticking straight up from his head.

“You can bring those jars of turnip greens from my packs, and open them.” At the mention of turnip greens, Lisette felt guilty; she'd stolen them from the Keller larder.

When Willie returned with the jars, he admitted shyly, “I hope you stay on, miss. You remind me of my sister. Pearlie's real sweet and nice, and she's real cotton-headed, too.”

Lisette hoped he referred to hair color rather than lack of good judgment. She smiled, figuring the youth meant it as a compliment. “Thank you, but I'm not always ‘sweet and nice.' ”

“I think you are.” His face turned the hue of a ripe beet. “Uh, um, this wagon's a sight to behold, ain't it?”

“It's bigger and wider than any wagon I've ever seen.”

“Did you know it takes six draught horses to pull it? Got lots of weight to pack, miss, what with all that water and molasses and sugar and flour and lard and kerosene.”

“It is well stocked.”

“Oh, yes, miss. It's got extra steel reinforcing the undercarriage, too. Never have to worry about breaking an axle.”

She'd never driven anything heavier than Adolf's cart. Could she handle this monstrosity?
Don't get the cart before the horse.

Please don't let anything go wrong
, she prayed. When she'd purloined Adolf's provisions and his mule, Lisette had feared nothing except for Gil McLoughlin's turning her away, but leading Willensstark through miles of open country had given her a sharp dose of fright. Wild beasts and even wilder Indians were never far away, yet nothing or no one had accosted her. Had she imagined them?

Don't be ridiculous. They are hiding out there.
Her own sister had fallen victim to Comanches. Poor, sweet Olga, who had lived hell in her death. Lisette sucked in her breath, gaining control over her sorrow of eight years' standing.

She could do nothing for her adored sister, but she must look out for herself–if nothing else, in Olga's memory.

After she slathered the apple turnovers with boiled sugar, she rang the dinner bell. The collie dog, the same one Willensstark had kicked, came limping up to the campfire.