“I hate to disappoint you, but I’m an educated man. Part schooling, part self-taught.”
“Oh.” It did indeed disappoint her. It was much easier to think of him as a simple cowboy, knowing cowboy things and not much else.
“Love is a sickness full of woes,” he quoted suddenly in a tone that suggested he was showing off. “Do you know who said that?”
“Well, of course I do.” When he waited, expecting her to state the author, she lifted a hand. “I can’t think of his name right now.” When Frisco still didn’t speak, she glared across the short distance separating them. “Listen, even the best actresses can’t remember every line or recall the author of every play ever written.” She tossed her head and felt her cheeks burning in the darkness. It was appalling to think he might have read more plays than she had.
He laughed softly. “Samuel Daniel. Hymen’s Triumph.”
She didn’t even know if Hymen’s Triumph was a play or a poem or a story or what it might be. Not for the first time, she silently cursed the disparity between a man’s education and a woman’s. It wasn’t fair that he could quote something she didn’t recognize.
His leg brushed hers and she jerked away, angry and seeking a way to hit back at him for quoting a line unknown to her and thus embarrassing her. “Do you think you’ll start drinking again?” she asked abruptly. When she noticed him stiffen in his saddle, she smiled, ashamed of herself but also pleased that she appeared to have rattled a man who didn’t often get rattled.
“Not on this drive,” he said curtly.
“Is it true that you lost your last two herds because you were drunk all the time?”
“Could be,” he said after a pause. “Luck plays a role on any drive, and the skill of the drovers, and the weather, and a hundred other things. My drinking didn’t help.”
Ordinarily Freddy wouldn’t have dreamed of asking or answering personal questions. Somehow, she and Dal had moved quickly into a peculiar intimacy that made her uneasy when she thought about it. And she thought about him a lot during the long hours riding drag.
He surprised her by humming as they rode and then by adding words. In a smooth rich baritone, he softly sang, “Nearer My God to Thee,” and Freddy listened in astonishment. Dal had a beautiful singing voice that would have done credit to a professional. He would have been a tremendous asset in the olios following a stage production. She couldn’t believe her ears.
At the end of the third verse, she strained to see his face through the darkness. “Are you a religious man?” There she went again, prying into personal areas.
“Not especially,” he said, lighting another cigar. She saw him tilt his head back and gaze at the stars, then sweep a glance across the dozing cattle. “But a man doesn’t get much closer to God than this.”
Freddy understood. Riding night watch made a person ponder the firmament and the sweet earth, brought strange and weighty thoughts into a person’s mind.
“The beeves like that song. Here’s another one they like.”
He sang a version of “Dan Tucker” containing lyrics that bordered on risque and caused Freddy to clap a hand over her mouth to smother gales of laughter. On the far side of the herd, she heard Drinkwater take up the refrain and wished she could hear the words to his version, too. As Dal had promised, the singing did seem to soothe the steers. A few tails twitched and a few steers made the blowing sound that always startled her, but there was no sign of trouble tonight.
When Dal’s voice died away, she felt a twinge of disappointment. That aggravated her so much she blurted out a question which had been bothering her. “Are you brushing against my leg on purpose?” Every time his leg touched hers, it was like a tingle shot out of his chaps and ran up and down her leg. “Stop doing it.”
Without a word, he rode ahead. Instantly Freddy felt the darkness close around her as she hadn’t before. Now she had a taste of the solitude she would face when he stopped sharing her night shift, and she realized it was going to be difficult riding in circles for two hours alone in the darkness. She had never much cared for the company of her own thoughts.
Urging her horse forward, she tried to catch up, but Dal paced her, staying in front until they headed in at the end of the shift. Angry and disappointed and trying not to show it, she sat on her horse in front of the chuck wagon, half-hoping he would lift her down from her saddle again. But he walked toward the coffeepot hanging over the fire. She sighed and followed.
“This is one of those times when you’re really irritating me,” she said in a voice soft enough not to wake anyone. Pouring herself a cup of coffee, she sat on the ground near him and glared at the low flames beneath the pot.