Alex pressed her lips together and gripped her hands. “I guess I could try.” Her chin lifted. “If that’s the only… I’ll do the cooking.”
“Start figuring what supplies you’ll need to feed twelve hands for four months. In a day or so I’ll take you out to a brush popper’s camp and show you a chuck wagon.” He swung his gaze toward Freddy and Les. “Before this drive starts trailing, I want to see both of you cut a beeve out of the herd, rope a steer, and hit a target with a six-shooter. You’ve got about six weeks to learn, seven at the outside. We leave the first of April.”
Freddy stared in disbelief. She glanced at Les’s open mouth, then back at Frisco. “That’s… we can’t… how are we going…”
Frisco looked at her with an intensity that made her press backward into the sofa cushion. “In case no one has explained this, here’s what you’re going to do. You’ll herd cattle. You’ll ride night watch. You’ll handle a stampede when it happens. Not if it happens, Miss Roark, when it happens. You’ll ford rivers and swim cattle. You’ll chase strays.” He shrugged broad shoulders. “Before we reach Abilene, you’ll have been hotter than you’ve ever been, wetter than you’ve ever been, and more exhausted than you believed was possible. You’ll be dirty, sunburned, and you’ll stink of horseflesh and cowhide. I hope to hell all of you will still be alive. A cattle drive is a brutish, dangerous undertaking, and there are going to be times when you’re lonely and frightened. If you think you can’t pull your share, if you can’t learn what you need to learn, say so now and withdraw.”
“We can’t possibly learn all that in six weeks,” Les whispered. Her face was as white as the lace doilies covering the arms of her chair.
“No, you can’t. You’ll have to learn most of it on the trail, and I hope all of you learn fast. But unless you can perform the basics before we ride out, you don’t go. Those are my conditions. If you can’t stay in the saddle for ten hours, if you can’t rope a steer or shoot at a predator, then I don’t want you. Ignorance can get you or someone else killed.”
“What if none of us can perform the miracles you’re demanding?” Freddy snapped.
He gazed at her from clear blue eyes as cool as a winter sky. “Then I’m out of a job, and you three lose your inheritance. We leave on April 1, or we don’t go at all. If we leave any later, the herds ahead of us will have grazed out most of the good grass.”
Freddy glared back at him, but she didn’t speak. He was calling the shots as if they worked for him instead of the other way around. But he also sounded confident and sure of himself. When he spoke, there was no doubt that he knew what he was talking about.
“You’ll handle the money?” he asked Luther. When Luther frowned and nodded, he issued his next directive. “Go over our budget and find me enough money to hire some brush poppers. Five men at a dollar a day for two weeks ought to do it.”
“Brush poppers?” Alex asked in a faint voice. She still looked stunned.
“Yes, ma’am. You need to sell two thousand cattle in Abilene. We’re going to lose a few along the way, so we’ll try to start with about twenty-three hundred if we can. Roark is supplying you two thousand beeves in his will, but he didn’t restrict you to that number. Right?”
“That’s correct,” Luther said.
“We’ll pull some extra beeves out of the brush. They’ll be wild as hell until we get them road broke, but they’ll give you a little breathing room.” He glanced at the liquor decanter on the tray near the bookcase. “One thing you all need to understand. You take your orders from me.”
Freddy opened her mouth, then changed her mind and made herself remain silent, uncertain why she felt combative when she looked at him. The feeling was instinctive, almost protective, as if the force of his masculinity might overwhelm her if she didn’t resist.
“If you don’t pull your weight, if you endanger my outfit, then you’re out. I’ll make the decision, and I’ll leave you in the nearest populated area. If you don’t agree to this condition, then we don’t have a deal.”
Freddy stood. “And if you take one drink along this drive, Mr. Frisco, then you’re out.”
His confidence and cool assurance, the way he was laying down rules, irritated her. He should have expressed at least a little gratitude that they were offering him a chance to redeem his reputation when no one else would.
His gaze intensified and a half smile pulled at his lips. “Fair enough.” A long slow glance traveled over her black gown up to the curly dark tendrils pulling out of the twist on her neck. His frank appraisal heated Freddy’s cheeks and made her mouth go dry, made her want to slap his face. She might have if his stare had lasted a moment longer, but he turned to include the others. “We didn’t discuss my fee.”
She sat down abruptly, deeply annoyed by her strong reactions to this man.