Hot On His Trail

Her soft, voluptuous curves pressed against him, and for one brief moment Matt considered her request. It had been much too long since he’d held a woman in his arms. Maybe she could assuage the loneliness that seemed to seep into his bones during the long nights on the range.

His silence encouraged her to snake her arms around his neck and press her face into the crook of his shoulder.

“Please take me with you,” she entreated in the singsong voice of a little girl. “Please, Matt.”

He gently disengaged himself from her, then took a step back. “Sorry, Marla. I always travel solo.”

She shrugged, a petulant pout on her lips. “Fine. Then I’ll ask Boyd to take me with him.”

Matt bit back a smile at the thought of Tupper’s hapless nephew. “Where is Boyd going?”

“With you on the cattle drive,” she retorted. “I heard Tupper tell Boyd it would make a man out of him.”

“Hell,” Matt muttered under his breath. This drive was going to be complicated enough without dragging along a spoiled city boy. “Don’t waste your time sweet-talking Boyd, Marla. I’m the boss out on the trail and I’m not allowing any distractions on this trip. It’s too important.”

“Fine.” Anger flared in her brown eyes. “I hope all the cattle stampede and fall off a cliff! I hope your precious horse kicks you in the head! I hope you get lost in the desert and your cojones dry up and fall off.”

“Gracious as always, I see,” he said, smiling as he reached into his pocket for the keys to his pickup truck. He tossed them to her. “You can still leave, Marla. Anytime you want. My truck has seen a lot of miles, but it’s dependable. It will take you anywhere you want to go.”

“I just want you to go to hell,” she cried, throwing the keys back at his feet. Then she spun around and ran toward the barn.

Matt stared at the keys for a moment, then turned and walked away. Marla might change her mind when her temper cooled off. Or she might decide to mow Rufus down. Either way, he wanted to help her out. She was a sweet kid when she wasn’t contemplating destruction of certain portions of his anatomy.

With Marla’s curse still ringing in his ears, Matt walked to the ranch house. Heat lightning flashed across the sky.

“Where the hell have you been?”

Matt looked up to see Rufus Tupper standing on the front porch. He wore a paisley silk robe and a pair of ostrich skin cowboy boots.

“You wanted to see me?”

“Hell, yes,” Rufus grumbled. “You can’t leave without a proper send-off. And I’m sure as hell not gettin’ out of bed before sunrise. Meet me in my study.” He turned around without another word and ambled back into the house.

By the time Matt reached Rufus’s study, the rancher had poured two whiskeys.

“A toast,” Rufus said, handing one of the tumblers to Matt. Then he raised his own glass in the air. “To the best trail boss west of the Mississippi.”

Matt took a sip of the whiskey. It burned its way into his stomach and made him feel slightly queasy. But then, so did Rufus Tupper.

Matt set down his glass. “What do you want?”

“Hell, Radcliffe,” Rufus said, pouring himself another whiskey. “You always this suspicious?”

“It comes with the job. I’ve got to be on the lookout for rattlesnakes, coyotes and other predators.”

“I’ll take that as a compliment.” Rufus settled into his chair. “I just want to make sure that everything is all set. I’ve got a lot of money riding on this bet with Lester Hobbs. In fact, we’ve decided to up the ante.”

Matt felt himself tense. Rufus and Lester were rich men with too much time and money on their hands. One whiskey-soaked night they’d reminisced about the good old days when a man could prove his mettle by driving cattle to market. Nowadays, most cattle were transported via semitrailer truck. Cattle drives were either short jaunts from one pasture to the next, or part of a tourist package for bored city slickers who wanted to play cowboy for a week.

Rufus and Lester decided to take a trip down memory lane by recreating an old-fashioned cattle drive on the Goodnight-Loving Trail, which had run west from Central Texas to Fort Sumner, New Mexico, well over a hundred years ago. Tupper had just laughed when Matt pointed out that the drive they had routed was headed in the wrong direction, running east instead of west.

“Up the ante?” Matt echoed. “You mean you’ve decided to make my job even harder?”

Rufus chuckled. “Hey, if you want to win that half a million dollars, you’ve gotta earn it. Or have you changed your mind?”

Matt folded his arms across his chest. “Are you going to tell me the new terms of the bet or are you just going to keep wasting my time?”

Rufus swirled the whiskey in his glass. “Basically the same as before. Lester and I each send one hundred longhorn steers on a cattle drive from here to my ranch near Jacksboro, Texas. First one to pass over the property line at the Lazy R wins the race.”

“And?” Matt prompted.

“And we’ve set the death loss at five percent. Which means if more than five steers die on the trail, the bet is forfeited. It would be too easy to win by cutting down the herd.”

Matt narrowed his eyes. “I don’t know what you’ve heard about me, but I don’t shoot cattle just to make my job easier.”

Rufus slowly sipped his whiskey. “Actually, I’ve heard so many good things about you I’m starting to wonder if you hired a publicity agent. You’ve got a reputation as the best long-distance trail boss in the country. Even better than Rich Weaver, who Lester hired to lead his drive. Now let’s see if you live up to it.”

Matt knew people spoke highly of him, marveling at his dedication to his work. They never seemed to realize that he didn’t have anything else.

But that was all about to change.

“I want a check for five hundred thousand dollars waiting for me at the bank in Jacksboro.”

Rufus pulled open his top desk drawer. “That reminds me. I had a contract drawn up so we do everything legal. That damn IRS is always breathing down my neck.”

Matt picked up the contract, leafing through the pages. Despite the legalese, he could see it clearly spelled out that Rufus would pay him the amount they’d agreed upon if Matt and his crew were the first ones across the finish line.

“Do you have a pen?”

Rufus fumbled in his drawer, then handed him one. “So when do you expect to hit Jacksboro?”

“I’m hoping to travel ten to fifteen miles a day, depending on the weather.” Matt scribbled his signature across the bottom of the contract, right below Tupper’s messy scrawl. “We’ll drive the cattle hard for five days at a time, then graze for two. With a little luck, we should arrive at the Lazy R about a month from now. Probably mid-February.”

Rufus scowled. “You’d get there a lot faster if you didn’t stop to graze.”

“Three hundred miles is a long way to go. Your steers would be nothing but skin and bones by the time we got to Jacksboro. If they made it that far.”

“I don’t give a damn about that.” Rufus scowled. “I just don’t want to lose.”

Matt slid the contract back across the desk. “I don’t intend to lose.”

“Good.” Rufus settled back in his chair. “Although I should warn you that Lester cheats at cards. No reason to believe he won’t find a way to cheat on the trail, too.”

“I’ll keep my eyes open.”

The rancher smirked. “’Course, I wouldn’t mind if you caused Lester’s cowboys a little trouble along the way. I even put a few ideas in Boyd’s head that should add some fun to the trip. Did I mention he’s going along?”

“So I heard.” Matt stood up, planting both palms on the polished surface of Tupper’s desk. “But let’s get one thing straight. I don’t cheat. And any man on my crew who decides to implement one of your plans will find himself walking barefoot back to Fort Sumner.”