Freddy’s green eyes widened and moved beyond him. “What happened to those steers?”
“Winding two thousand steers into a tight ball damages them. A steer will lose more weight in a mill than he would if we ran him from here to San Antonio.” He jerked his head toward two dead beeves laying on ruined earth. “Sometimes the center of the mill jams too tight and a few get trampled.” He crossed his wrists on the pommel. “We’ll graze the herd an extra hour this morning to settle them out. You cowboys ride over there and skin and butcher those dead beeves. I’ll tell Alex to hold your breakfast until you’re finished.”
Their faces blanched beneath sun pinked skin, and they stared at him with huge horrified eyes. Freddy stammered, “You want us to—oh my God—skin and butcher two cows?” She stared at him in disbelief. “Us?”
“You,” he said pleasantly. Today she hadn’t bothered pinning up her hair but had tied it back at the neck. A light breeze plucked at the black cascade that fell nearly to her waist. “And it would spare me a whole lot of irritation if you’d remember that we’re trailing steers, not cows.”
Speechless, Freddy watched him ride away, then she blinked at Les with stunned eyes. “I don’t think I can do this,” she whispered, still shocked.
Les leaned to one side and her chest heaved. If she’d had any breakfast, she would have tossed it over the side of her horse. “It makes me sick just to think about touching a dead steer.”
Freddy waited, praying that Dal would ride back and tell them he’d been joshing. But it didn’t happen. “I would rather walk back to Klees buck naked and barefoot than do this.”
“I would rather spend the rest of my life in a Mexican jail than skin and cut up a dead steer,” Les said, swaying in her saddle.
“I would empty chamber pots for twenty years rather than go anywhere near those dead beeves.”
“I’d rather eat a bucket of spiders than do this.”
“You’re in luck,” Freddy said. “Alex is frying spiders for our breakfast.”
They stared at each other, then burst into semi-hysterical laughter, laughing until tears ran down their cheeks, until their sides ached and their horses were dancing sideways.
“I can’t believe this. Did you ever imagine that we—”
“Never!”
When Freddy finally caught her breath and wiped the tears from her eyes, the dead steers were still there. She brought her horse under control and sighed as deeply as any tragic heroine ever had. “I hate this, I hate this, I hate this.”
“We’re going to get blood on us,” Les said. “They have guts in them. Oh God.”
“Damn it.” Freddy rubbed her forehead. “We don’t have any choice. We have to do it.”
Les pounded a fist on the pommel. “I’ll take the smaller one.”
“The hell you will. This will go faster if we work together.” Dal would have been thrilled to hear those words fall out of her mouth. But in this case, he was right. The steers were too heavy to wrestle around alone. She and Les considered each other for a long minute, adjusting to the idea of working together, accepting the wisdom of the idea, but not liking it much.
“All right,” Les said, riding up beside her. “But just don’t go telling me what to do every other minute. You don’t know any more about skinning and butchering than I do.”
There was no way Freddy could pretend this repugnant task was a role or stage business or anything else that would help her get through it. She couldn’t hide behind pretense this time. She would have galloped for home if Les hadn’t been with her.
But if Les wasn’t running away, neither would she. But she sure wanted to.
“My sisters are doing what?” Alex asked, spinning around, then shading her eyes against the sun. Far out on the range she saw Freddy’s and Les’s horses and two figures hunched over the dead steers. A shudder passed down her frame.
Dal poured a cup of coffee from the ever-present pot hanging over the fire, then helped himself to one of the steaks Alex had fried for breakfast. “When they signal, you and Grady drive out there and get the meat. Wrap the pieces in slickers and load them in the wagon.”
“Oh my God.” She was going to have to be part of it after all.
Grady leaned against the chuck wagon, sipping scalding coffee and scowling toward the range. “We better not wait. Better go out there soon and make sure they don’t throw away the heart and liver and the other small parts.”
Alex placed a hand on her stomach as the air rushed out of her body. “Why shouldn’t they throw away those parts?”