Cactus Flower (Gone-to-Texas Trilogy) (5 page)

      
He had gone hunting with her several times, giving her tips on tracking and stalking in the open terrain of central Texas, so different from the dense undergrowth of southeast Missouri. A bond of sorts had sprung up between the seasoned Texian and the masquerading girl. She was uneasy, afraid that he might discover her disguise; but he simply chalked her skittishness up to immaturity.

      
“Whut yew figger ta do when yew git ta Santone?” Lon looked at the scruffy figure hunched over a tin coffee mug.

      
“I got me a brother on a big ranch just outside town. He's foreman, practically runs the whole place,” she boasted proudly, recalling all the glowing descriptions in Richard Lee's letters. “You ever heard of the Bluebonnet Ranch?”

      
Lon whistled low. “Thet's one o' th' biggest spreads ‘round Santone—th' whole country, fer thet matter. What'd yew say yore brother's name wuz?”

      
“Richard Lee McAllister,” Charlee said with youthful bravado.

      
“Last I knowed, Asa Ketchum was ramroddin' fer ole Will, but I been gone fer quite a spell. I heered Will Slade up'n died a pretty considerable o' years back, come ta think on it.” For the boy's sake, Lon hoped the older brother wasn't spinning yarns. There was a strange vulnerability about the taciturn youth that made the scout feel oddly protective. Despite his scrawny size, the tad did his fair share of the chores. And he could shoot! “Charley” McAllister could bring down a deer at three hundred yards.

      
Lon had told Charlee a little about San Antonio, or Santone, as the southern-born Texians called it. When she arrived, Charlee understood why the scout had cautioned her that it would be different. During the grueling weeks on the wagon trek across the vast new Republic, Charlee had seen log cabins, corn fields, and people dressed in homespun who spoke English. Texas had seemed American to the Missouri hill girl.

      
San Antonio was far more Mexican than American, a place where vaqueros flashed knives by night to the music of the fandango and women bathed naked in the warmth of sunlit springs. Black-eyed girls dressed in low-cut white blouses and short brightly colored skirts filled jugs at bubbling fountains. Many even smoked cigarillos in public! Swarthy men, dressed gaudily in tight-fitting pants and jackets studded with silver, rode elegant horses whose saddle trappings were scarcely less ornamented than the clothes of their riders. Everywhere the liquid cadences of Spanish flowed, seeming to keep rhythm with the spilling water of the musical fountains.

      
Most of the buildings were of adobe and stone, with walls three to four feet thick to keep the blistering sun at bay. Large iron-grilled windows admitted cool breezes. The domes of several large churches were visible, and tall, graceful cypress trees added welcoming shade to the bustling afternoon scene.

      
Earlier in the day, Charlee had said farewell to the Mosers, who were heading to their land claims north of the town. Lon was returning to Natchitoches after some recreation in Santone. With silent amusement, he rode beside his young companion, watching “his” wide-eyed absorption with the scene in the Main Plaza.

      
Ox-drawn carts full of watermelons creaked along as a vaquero swinging a wide reata raced past them, running a young longhorn to ground. At the side entrance to a fandango hall, two black men unloaded barrels of whiskey. A balky mule was being beaten and cursed inventively by a wiry old Texian while several dogs yipped around the flailing, sharp-hoofed critter. A freight caravan pulled off the main thoroughfare and stopped in front of a frame, two-story structure of Yankee origin, a large, well-stocked general store.

      
Charlee looked to the west at the tall dome of San Fernando Church, awed by its size and cool, inviting beauty. Across to the east was the clock tower of the old cabildo, once the seat of Spanish government in Texas. It was three-thirty in the afternoon, and everyone had come alive after siesta.

      
“This place is even older than St. Genevieve or St. Louis, isn't it, Lon?” Her voice held a hint of wonder.

      
He laughed. “I reckon so, seein's how it was here over a hunnert years ago, back ta th' 1720s, I think one o' them padres tole me once't. It was th' capital o' Spanish Texas way afore th' Mexican government broke free o' th' mother country. Now it's gittin' more American ever’ time I come back.”

      
“Yeah. I reckon there are Texians as well as
Tejanos
living here.” Charlee was proud of her newly acquired vocabulary. “My brother works for a Texian named Slade. Said he even fought at San Jacinto with President Houston.”

      
Lon quirked a brow. “If’n yew mean Jim Slade, he's kinda a mix o' Texian an’
Tejano
”

      
“What do you mean?” she asked, as they dipped their canteens in the cool spring water of a well.

      
“His pa was from Virginey, from what I heered, but his ma was from an ole
Tejano
family right here in Santone. Lots o' them early adventurers who settled hereabouts married local women. Colonel Bowie hisself had a Mexican wife an’ two kids. When they died o' fever, he went plumb loco. Some said thet's why he chose ta stand 'n die at th' Alamo. Yew got yew a lot ta learn.”

      
Charlee pondered her surroundings. She suddenly felt far from home and very lonely.
Don't be stupid, girl,
she thought.
Richard Lee is all the family you have left and he's here. Together we'll make a home in this wild new land.

* * * *

      
On the solitary ride to Bluebonnet, Charlee considered how Richard Lee would react to her unexpected appearance. She could bathe and don her gingham dress, so he couldn't yell at her. Or she could keep the trail filth and breeches. It would be armor against his inevitable proclamations that a girl couldn't survive on a ranch. However, she saw no place to bathe in security along the way, and even if she had, her only dress was dusty and wrinkled. She decided it was better to remain a grimy male urchin rather than become an ill-groomed white-trash female.

      
Charlee recalled her brother's letters describing the ranch, the outbuildings, and the three clear creeks that ran through the lush rolling hills of Bluebonnet. The ranch was named for the brilliant wildflowers that covered the countryside each spring. She remembered the descriptions of his place, the foreman's cabin, tucked beneath a stand of live oaks. The small house sported a high chimney and cool dog-run porch between its two rooms. Of course, the Slades' big ranch house was lots fancier, two stories high and built of imported hardwood with all the lumber milled into clean whitewashed boards. The boss, Mr. Slade, lived there.

      
Curiously, Charlee tried to imagine what he would look like. In all of her brother's letters describing the lay of the land, the buildings, and the idiosyncrasies of the cowboys, he had mentioned little of Jim Slade except that he was a war hero of sorts, quiet and hard working. Richard Lee had never described the man who had come into such a splendid inheritance, nor mentioned that he was half Mexican.

      
She recalled a man she'd seen in San Antonio, lounging in the doorway of a fandango hall. He'd been short and stocky with a rounded, smiling face and dancing black eyes. Yes, Slade was probably a genial, plump, dark-haired fellow wearing a serape and sandals. She hoped he would not mind his foreman taking in an orphaned kid sister, then assured herself that there was no possible reason he should object. After all, she was a hard worker, a fair country cook, and a superb shot. She could take care of herself and hold her own with the best or worst Texas had to offer.

      
When she crested the hill and saw the panorama of Bluebonnet before her, Charlee gasped. It was grand, much grander than Richard Lee's letters had been able to convey. The big house was a brilliant white frame building shaded by rustling cottonwoods and gracious live oak trees. A wide veranda stretched across the front of the first and second stories. Large neatly constructed corrals held horses and cattle. The bunkhouse stood nearby, a long, low building beneath more dense shade trees. There was a wash house, a blacksmith shed, and several other structures.

      
“Lordy, I been in towns with nary so many buildings,” she breathed to herself. Then she saw the small house, behind the big bunk house, half hidden by the trees. It was just as her brother described—his place! She quickly kneed her tired old nag and eagerly trotted toward her new home.

      
It was late afternoon and only a few people were around the corral. Most of the hands would not ride in until dark. Knowing she was filthy, Charlee decided she would rather face her brother alone and not risk embarrassing him in front of his friends. She rode slowly and inconspicuously through a tall stand of grass, avoiding the open road to the complex of buildings and circling to the rear of the foreman's cabin. She slid from the back of the old gray and stealthily crept up to the porch between the cabin rooms. A door stood ajar and Charlee peeked inside. Before her eyes could adjust to the dim light, a fierce, rumbling growl and a sharp tearing sound interrupted her inspection. Then, a burning pain lanced through her right buttock. A large black mongrel dog had a singularly uncomfortable hold on her.

      
“Git, you consarned son of a bitch! Lumpy plug-ugly hound!” As Charlee whirled to kick at the beast, the ripping sound intensified and a sudden draft hit her nether parts. Feeling gingerly with one hand, she held the sentinel at bay with her booted foot. “Blood! You worthless pile of cow shit, you've gone 'n bit me in the ass! I never!”

      
She wavered between fury over the indignity of being bitten by a miserable cur, and stark terror, for the hound was not backing down. His beady eyes looked hate filled and menacing. If only she could reach her horse and leap into the saddle. But every time she tried to edge off the porch, the growling dog made a vicious snapping lunge, thwarting her plans. Too humiliated to call for help, Charlee seethed and swore.

      
Just then, a dark orange blur came barreling out of the open door behind her. The creature screeched fiercely as the dog whirled and snapped at its tail. Charlee was forgotten and the chase was on, but only for the distance of a few yards in front of the cabin. There beside a live oak the orange fur ball took its stand with back arched wickedly.

      
The cat was the most enormous tom Charlee had ever seen, with fangs at least three quarters of an inch long, easily visible in his large, spitting mouth. His dark green eyes glared balefully at the crouching dog. One well-chewed ear lopped over the side of his head. Numerous scars and nicks across his body attested to his valor or foolhardiness, depending on whether one liked cats. Charlee did, and she was not going to stand by while a hundred-and-ten-pound mongrel devoured a twenty-pound cat.

      
Searching frantically for a weapon, she spied a branch fallen from the canopy of the oak. As the antagonists warily circled each other, emitting low, throaty growls, Charlee edged toward the crude cudgel. Just as she picked it up, a piercing scream erupted, accompanied by a baying howl, both loud enough to peel bark right off a tree. Charlee charged into the churning melee of black and orange fur, flailing wildly with the awkward club. Big spongy chunks of rotted wood flew in all directions, little deterring the combatants, who seemed impervious to her ill-timed blows.

      
“Leave him be, you low-life cruddy pissant!” She hoped that most of her blows were striking the much larger dog, not the cat, whose yowls went on uninterrupted.

      
Charlee continued to beat and swear until a sudden deluge of cold water put an abrupt end to the contest. The cat sprang away, back arched and defiant, still spitting and undaunted. The dog let out a whimper and ran around the side of the cabin. In his haste to escape, he knocked Charlee into the newly created mud wallow.

      
Most of the water had hit the girl, who now lay sodden and hiccupping for breath in the ooze beneath the tree. The cat turned abruptly and began licking his back as if he had not a care in the world.

      
“I swan ta Jasus, all th' cream in Santone's prob'ly been curdled by thet catterwallin!” The high-pitched yet peculiarly raspy voice belonged to an enormous mountain of a man who dropped a big oak bucket on the ground in front of Charlee. “Who in tarnation are yew? Wal, speak up, boy...wait a minute, yore no boy! A gal! Wut 'n hellfire is a gal doin sneakin' ‘round Asa's place, settin' Mutt off like thet?”

      
Horrified, Charlee looked down at her water-soaked person. The bindings around her breasts had slipped down during the hullabaloo, and the thin cotton shirt clearly revealed her sex, clinging transparently to every curve.

      
“I’m Charlee McAllister, Richard Lee's sister, and I wasn't either sneakin'!” Angrily she struggled to rise, only to take a quick seat in the mud once more when the cool breeze reminded her of her exposed derriere. “Oooh, damblast that hound!”

      
A strange expression came over the big man's face. “Yer Dick's sister? Seems ta me he did mention havin' a kid sister once't er so, back in Missourah, warn’t it? How'd yew git here, a gal all alone?”

      
Shifting uncomfortably in the slimy mud as her fanny began to ache from the dog bite, Charlee replied peevishly, “I can take care of myself. I hired with a wagon train after takin' the steamer down the Mississippi and up the Red. They're rivers,” she added with arrogant defiance, wanting someone else to feel the sting of humiliation.