“Why are you bothering to ask?” Even her lips were white. Her hands shook on the wheels of the chair. But no tears brimmed in her eyes, just anger and frustration. “Even if I could reach everything and dig a fire pit, I don’t have the faintest notion how to cook over an open fire.” Lowering her head, she pressed her fingertips against her forehead. “This is hopeless.”
“Difficult, but not hopeless,” he said, leaning a shoulder against the chuck wagon. Truly, she was a beautiful woman, with an elegance of dress and manner that would have made it impossible to imagine her on a cattle drive even if she’d had both of her legs. She belonged back East in her social, cultured world, not out here on the range.
“I don’t know what I’m going to do,” she whispered, fixing her gaze on the utensils hanging on the side of the chuck wagon. “My husband… everyone thought we were… but it cost more than you imagine to keep up appearances, and we…” Halting, she dropped her glove and raised her head. “I need my share of the inheritance. I can’t support myself without it.”
Her gloves had picked up dust from the wheels of her chair, and touching her forehead had left five distinct points of dust on her forehead. The smudges made her suddenly real to him, and he could see what it cost her to admit she needed something. He stared at the dust prints on her forehead and remembered how it felt when your pride cracked, shattered, and fell away.
“I’d give you an assistant if I could, Mrs. Mills. But we’re restricted to twelve men in the outfit, including you and your sisters. I can’t spare one of those twelve as a cook’s assistant without jeopardizing the success of the drive.”
“How can I do this?” she whispered, looking up at him.
“Get out of that chair,” he said, glancing at the dust prints. “Or don’t go.”
Turning the chair into the wind, she closed her eyes and let the breeze cool her face. “I hate this place,” she said in a low voice. “The ranch, Texas, the smell of cattle and manure, all the empty space. I hate it more than you can imagine.”
He waited, watching the back of her head, and he knew when her pride hit the ground.
“How soon can you have a crutch made?” she inquired in a low, anguished voice.
“The day after tomorrow,” he said, standing away from the chuck wagon. He pushed her back to the buckboard. “I’ll have a provisioned chuck wagon brought up to the back of the house. Study where everything is and how it’s loaded. When my wrangler arrives—his name is Grady Cole—I’ll send him up to talk to you. He can tell you what kind of food the outfit will expect. The food on a drive is simple, but it must be plentiful and tasty. Practice cooking those items. Food is one of the few things the boys have to look forward to on a cattle drive.”
Alex didn’t speak a single word during the return drive to the ranch house.
As if he hadn’t had enough woman trouble for one day, he found a note from Lola when he returned to the boardinghouse. Eyes narrowed, Dal read the message twice, then crumpled the paper into a ball and threw it against the wall.
He’d been half-expecting a message from her, so the invitation to stop by her rental house wasn’t entirely a surprise. She hadn’t been too far from his thoughts since the day he saw her in the Klees cemetery, and he guessed that she’d sent a thought or two in his direction.
Looking back, he was glad there had never been anything romantic between them, although she’d made it clear that she wouldn’t say no. They might have ended between the sheets if he hadn’t spent more time on the trail than he’d spent in New Orleans, or if the war had lasted longer or if she hadn’t double-crossed him. The times had been crazy.
Long before Appomattox, Dal had known that the captain of the Quartermaster Corp was feathering his nest by diverting supplies gathered to be sent on to the troops. When the end was finally impossible to deny, corruption had exploded into scandalous proportions. It seemed like everyone in the South was scrambling to salvage something for himself, stealing beef, whiskey, tinned food, tobacco, even horses intended for the retreating army, and selling them to the French.
When Lola suggested that Dal was a fool not to profit like everyone else, he had let himself be convinced. The cause was lost. It was every man for himself. Why should the rest of the corps line their pockets but not him? He had let her persuade him to sell his next herd to the French instead of taking the steers into New Orleans to be shipped to the troops.
The first surprise came when Lola’s French contact informed him that Lola was holding the money from the sale. Even as he watched the Frenchman ride off with the army’s cattle, he hadn’t yet grasped that Lola had played him for a sucker.