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“You just go off a ways and do it,” Mary said.
Lorna’s glance ran back to the woman in shock. “But it’s so open.” She cast a furtive look at the wrangler unharnessing the horses. “Anyone could see me.”
“Out here, Lorna, there’s times to be modest and other times when it just isn’t possible,” Mary explained gently. Her glance made a swing of the area. “There’s a little hill right over there. Maybe you could go behind it. You’re not exactly out of sight, but it’s as close as you’ll get.”
Under the circumstances, there seemed little she could do except what Mary had suggested. Lorna had never felt so self-conscious in all her life as when she pretended to idly stroll behind that little hill. No one appeared to notice her, or at least they weren’t looking. Lorna tried to make herself as small as possible when she knew she couldn’t wait any longer.
Her long skirt and petticoats provided a degree of covering. When she heard someone walking in the grass, they were also a hindrance, getting in her way when she tried to hurriedly pull up her undergarments. Her back was to the sound, which made it worse, because she had no idea who was coming. She darted a furtive glance over her shoulder and recognized the cook. Apparently lost in thought, he was studying the sky as he walked.
Standing up, Lorna frantically smoothed her skirts and started swiftly for the campsite. Red-faced, she slid a quick look in his direction, hoping he would ignore her. Humiliation was doubled when she discovered he was not. She couldn’t bear the thought that he knew what she had been doing out here.
“I came out for a closer look at the wildflowers.” Lorna came up with a desperate lie to explain her presence.
A twinkle leaped into his eyes. “I reckon I got the same idea, ma’am.” He touched the drooping brim of his hat and walked on by.
Lorna wished the ground would swallow her up. She hadn’t fooled him for a minute. And she hadn’t really wanted to know that his intention was the same as hers had been.
When she reached the wagons, neither the wrangler nor his helper paid any attention to her, but it felt like a hundred eyes were watching her. She heard the din of the approaching herd. Benteen and another rider were at the water hole, cutting the wire that fenced it in.
10
Lorna shared a small pan of water with Mary to wash some of the grime from her face and hands. Bathing was out of the question. The cook had returned from his stroll on the prairie and was adding a few dead limbs to the already blazing fire. The wood had been gathered along the trail that day by the wrangler and stowed in a hammocklike contraption stretched under the bottom of the chuck wagon, called a cooney. The metal coffeepot was already set out to boil for its usual half-hour.
“I think we should offer to help with supper, even if it won’t be accepted,” Mary suggested with a faint grimace.
“Why not?” Lorna wasn’t too anxious to face the cook, but she didn’t understand why anyone would refuse help in the kitchen—even a prairie kitchen.
“Ely says that cooks on these drives jealously guard their positions. They don’t like being given advice about anything related to cooking,” she explained. “But let’s make the gesture anyway.”
With Mary for moral support, Lorna walked over to the chuck wagon. The end gate was down, making a small worktable. Satisfied that the fire was burning well, the cook had returned to his outdoor kitchen. He was taking sourdough batter out of a keg for the requisite biscuits that accompanied nearly every meal, and adding more flour, salt, and water to ferment with the remaining batter to keep the starter going.
“Is there something we can do to help?” Mary asked.
“Nope.” He didn’t even turn around to answer.
A rumbling started and grew into a roar. “What’s that?” Lorna turned toward the sound in alarm.
“Stampede.” The cook stopped his work to look. “They ain’t comin’ our way.” He turned back to the table.
Lorna stared at the mad rush of cattle, a quarter-mile
distance giving her a view of the entire scene. She had heard tales about cattle stampedes and riders being trampled under their hooves. Her heart was in her throat at the sight of riders racing pell-mell, stride for stride with the thundering herd. Benteen was out there somewhere, but in the haze of dust and the mass of running bodies, she couldn’t pick him out. Fear for him paralyzed her, rooting her feet to the ground and riveting her eyes to the scene.
Rusty continued his work, but kept one eye on what was happening. Until he found out whether he was going to be cook, doctor, or undertaker, there were biscuits to be made. When he saw the cattle slowly circling back into themselves, he nodded his approval. “They got ’em turned,” he announced. “It’s all over but the shoutin’ now.”
It wasn’t until Lorna heard the loud bellowing of the cattle that she realized the animals hadn’t made a sound during the panicked run. The din was awful. Dust boiled to encapsulate the milling herd and hide the riders. She still couldn’t see Benteen anywhere.
From the far side of the herd came the baying bark of dogs, or so Lorna thought. She jumped at the rapid-fire explosions that followed, and glanced in alarm at the cook.
“Are those gunshots?”
Rusty nodded. “I reckon Benteen met up with the folks who strung the wire. He’s probably explainin’ the situation to ’em.”
The gunfire stopped seconds after it had started. But Lorna knew she wasn’t going to draw an easy breath until she saw Benteen again—safe and unharmed. She continued to scan the area, trying to pick out horse and rider from the churning mass of longhorned beasts.
“There’s Ely,” Mary breathed, standing next to her.
Lorna hadn’t considered that her friend was experiencing the same anxiety she was. Her hand closed on the woman’s arm in a silent expression of gladness that Ely Stanton had made it unscathed.
