CHAPTER 44
It was still dark outside when Cal pounded a fist on the door of Denny’s hotel room. She didn’t have to drag herself out of bed, though. She was already awake and dressed, eager to get started on the trail drive to the Circle C.
Cal cocked an eyebrow in surprise when Denny swung the door open. “You look like you’re ready to go,” he commented.
“I am,” she said as she buckled the gun belt and holstered the Colt Lightning around her hips.
“Well, I’m rousting the boys out now. You can come on down to breakfast in a few minutes.”
Denny nodded. She didn’t intend to wait that long. As soon as Cal had moved on to awaken the rest of the hands, she picked up her war bag and Winchester and went downstairs to the dining room. Might as well get a head start on a cup of coffee, she thought.
She wasn’t the only one who’d had that idea, She entered the room and saw Steve Markham already at the long table, sipping from a cup with tendrils of steam rising from it.
“Mornin’,” he said with a smile. “Sleep well?”
“As a matter of fact, I did.” She set the war bag in a corner and leaned the Winchester against the wall beside it. “How about you?”
“Slept the same way I always do. Like a baby.” Markham sipped the coffee again and then grinned. “Yep, fretted and cried all night.”
Denny tried not to smile at the feeble joke, but she couldn’t quite manage it. She sat down beside him, and a yawning waitress brought her a cup of coffee, too.
Over the next quarter of an hour, the other cowboys from the Sugarloaf drifted into the dining room, most of them yawning as well, and sat down to help themselves from the platters of flapjacks, steaks, bacon, biscuits, and eggs that the sleepy waitress carried from the kitchen and placed on the table. Syrup and gravy boats were passed around, and the girl was kept busy making sure their cups stayed full. The clatter of silverware on china punctuated the chorus of chomping and slurping. It wasn’t an elegant meal, like many of the ones Denny had had on the Continent, but it was more important that the hands put away enough grub to fuel them through the long day ahead.
Denny ate with the same enthusiasm as the rest of them. Markham didn’t bother flirting while there was food to be shoveled into his mouth, and Denny was glad of that, while at the same time sort of missing the easy banter that often took place between them.
When they were finished, Cal gave them a few minutes to finish up any final preparations for departure and told them to assemble in a quarter-hour at the pen where the horses were being held. Denny picked up her gear and headed that way.
“I can carry that for you,” Markham offered as he joined her in walking toward the pen at the edge of the settlement.
“You know better than that,” Denny told him.
“Yeah, I reckon I do, but I didn’t think it’d hurt anything to offer.” He grew more serious. “You sure you want to go through with this, Denny? You could wait right here in Stirrup until the rest of us get back from the Circle C.”
She paused to frown at him in amazement. “What are you talking about? You think I came all this way to sit and wait in a hotel in a backwater burg like this? Of course I’m going along on the drive!”
“It’s just that I got to thinkin’—”
“Well, there’s your problem, right there.”
“It’s just that I got to thinkin’,” Markham plowed ahead stubbornly, “that you’ve likely never spent all day in the saddle before. I know you’re a fine rider, but doin’ it for a little while ain’t hardly the same as stayin’ on a cayuse’s back for twelve, fourteen hours straight.”
“I’ll be fine,” Denny said a little stiffly. “I’ve done a lot of riding since Louis and I came back to the Sugarloaf last year. Maybe not for that long at a time, but enough that I know it’s not going to bother me.”
“I just don’t want you sufferin’—”
“Don’t worry about me,” she insisted. “Just worry about yourself.”
He sighed and said, “Believe me, I am.” For once, he didn’t sound as if he were joking.
It took Denny a minute or so to wonder what in blazes he meant by that.
* * *
The horses didn’t give any trouble about leaving the pen, and they stayed together nicely as the cowboys pointed them north. Cal told Denny she could ride point with him and Hack Sherman, but she shook her head.
“I’m the most inexperienced hand,” she said. “I’ll ride drag, just like I’m supposed to.”
Markham was close enough to hear what she said. He laughed. “You’re probably the first person to ever volunteer to ride drag and eat all that dust.”
“I’m just trying to do the right thing,” Denny protested.
“That’s fine,” Cal told her. “Somebody’s got to ride drag. I suppose it might as well be you.”
“And I’ll be back there with you,” Markham said.
Denny frowned. “It’s Cal’s job to decide where everybody’s going to ride.”
“Yeah, but if a man wants to volunteer for that job, I’m not going to stop him,” the foreman said. “Go ahead, Markham. You and Denny fall back behind the herd.”
Markham grinned and ticked a finger against his hat brim. As he turned his horse, he said, “Come on, Denny. We got dust to eat.”
Denny glanced at Cal, who shrugged. He had warned her that he wasn’t going to interfere, for or against, where she and Steve Markham were concerned. She had wanted him to treat her like any of the other hands, and that was exactly what he was doing.
With a nod to him, she pulled her horse around and followed Markham toward the rear of the herd.
She found that in those grassy hills, the horses didn’t really raise that much dust, so riding drag there wasn’t as unpleasant a chore as it would have been if they’d been pushing several thousand head of longhorns across Indian Territory toward the railhead in Kansas. Denny had heard old cowboys talk about those drives some thirty to thirty-five years earlier. The old-timers always had fondness in their voices, but she was willing to bet that they hadn’t enjoyed it much at the time.
She didn’t mind jogging along at an easy pace with Markham beside her and the huge blue vault of the Montana sky overhead. The horses they were driving were well-behaved; occasionally one or two of the animals dropped back too far or even stopped to crop at a particularly appealing patch of grass. When that happened Denny and Markham would prod them ahead and make them rejoin the herd. The most stubborn was a big bay that tried to veer off to the side every now and then.
“I know this isn’t anything like the old days,” Denny commented later in the morning, “but I’m glad I got to experience it anyway.”
Markham took off his hat and sleeved sweat from his forehead. The sun was high enough in the sky that heat was starting to build. As he settled the hat on his red thatch again, he said, “Nothin’s really like it was in the old days, I reckon. The West is tame now. It won’t ever be the same.”
Remembering her experiences with outlaws and killers the summer before, as well as the previous Christmas, Denny said, “I don’t think it’s completely tamed. There’ll be some new sort of troublemaker crop up sooner or later, I’ll bet. There’ll always be owlhoots, my pa says. We’ll just call them something else.” She laughed. “Like politicians, maybe.”
“Yeah, I guess.” Markham paused, then asked, “Denny, you plan on runnin’ that ranch one of these days, don’t you?”
“That’s right,” she answered without hesitation. “Although not anytime soon, I don’t expect. Smoke’s still a long way from stepping aside and taking up a rocking chair on the front porch.”
“Smoke Jensen in a rockin’ chair,” mused Markham. “Yeah, that is sort of hard to imagine, ain’t it? But what I was gettin’ at, since you’re gonna be in charge sooner or later, maybe you ought to stop actin’ like a common puncher and be the boss, instead. Ride on ahead of the herd and get to the Circle C first so you can finish up the deal with Coburn. He’ll have a bill of sale drawn up, I expect, and he’ll still have to pay you. I’ll bet if you pushed on ahead this afternoon, you could make good enough time that you’d get there tomorrow instead of the next day.”
Denny shook her head. “There’s no rush. There’ll be plenty of time for all that once we get there. Besides, I want to enjoy every bit of this trip.” She grunted. “Anyway, Cal wouldn’t like it if I rode on ahead by myself.”
“Well, I didn’t really figure on you headin’ off like that by yourself . . .”
“Oh, so that’s it,” Denny said as understanding dawned on her. “This whole idea was just an excuse for you to get me off somewhere by myself so you could woo me.”
A sheepish grin appeared on Markham’s face. “Well, you can’t hardly blame a fella for tryin’, can you?”
“I suppose not. And riding along with your main view being dozens of horses’ rear ends isn’t the most romantic activity in the world, is it?”
“That’s the honest truth! So what do you say? Cal can get somebody else to ride drag.”
“Of course he can, but that’s not the point. This is our job, and we’re going to do it.”
“Whatever you say,” Markham replied. He was still smiling, but his voice was a little cooler. His jaw tightened slightly, as if he were under some sort of strain.
Denny wondered for a second if something more was going on than was apparent.
But then Markham started cracking jokes about horses’ rear ends, and Denny couldn’t help but laugh as she rode on, completely forgetting about that fleeing moment of misgiving.