Dusty Britches Read online

  “For Pete’s sake, Daddy!” Dusty exclaimed. “I’m wearin’ a white blouse! It’ll be plum see-through from bein’ wet.” She made her way awkwardly out of the trough, pleased by her father’s laughter, and ran to the house, not waiting for Becca to catch up.

  Dusty entered the house not a second before her sister.

  “Daddy’s the devil of a stinker,” Becca giggled, heading toward her room.

  “Wait, wait, wait!” Dusty exclaimed. “You’ll soak the floor.” Becca paused, and both girls unfastened their skirts, dropping piles of petticoats with them where they stood. “He’s a fool. That’s why we love him,” she giggled as she unbuttoned her shirtwaist, tossing it on the heap of clothing at their feet.

  Her smile faded, however, when Becca asked quietly, “You ever gonna love anybody else, Dusty?”

  Dusty looked at her sister, frowning with irritation. “I love you—you and Daddy, and that’s all I need.” Becca looked away, obviously wishing she had never asked. Trying to ease her sister’s discomfort, for she knew Becca meant well, Dusty added, “And Feller. I love Feller too. How could anyone not love ol’ Feller?”

  “He is a loveable ol’ mutt, ain’t he?” Becca whispered, smiling.

  “Yeah.” Dusty offered a forgiving smile. “And he makes a dang good roasted beef.”

  “Come on!” Becca squealed, grabbing Dusty’s hand. “I gotta get cleaned up. There’s a whole new crop of cowboys out there we gotta look over.”

  Changing into dry clothing, Dusty listened to the low hum of masculine voices—the good-natured chuckling and conversation floating from the roasting pit through her bedroom window as the new hands talked with Feller and the others. Times were she would’ve been as excited about the new hands as Becca. Several years ago, before…and she would’ve bathed in that excitement exactly as Becca did now. However, experience had taught Dusty Hunter there was more to life—so many things to be taken far more seriously than flirting and love, sparking under the hay wagon, and dancing at the town socials. There was work to be done. Hard work! The garden, the house, the meals, the mending—that’s what life was all about. That and tending to her father and his needs since her mother had died.

  Still, deep down inside, somewhere in the pit of her stomach, somewhere in the aching of her heart, burned a tiny resentment as she heard Becca leave the house and greet each new cowboy in turn—her silky, soft voice no doubt mesmerizing them all instantly. To all those tough men that had been riding a dusty cattle trail for so many weeks without the sight of a woman, Becca was an angel of heaven personified. Her daddy would pay them all just after breakfast tomorrow morning, and most would leave, not wanting to tarry. One or two others would perhaps be hired on for a while. Becca would probably have her heartstrings plucked before the winter was over. But not Dusty! She’d stopped falling in love with ranch hands and cowboys when she was fourteen years old—the first time her heart was broken—shattered by an intriguing, handsome, capable young cowboy. But it was the second man who hammered the final nail in her coffin of romance and love. And since then, she’d had no use for matters of the heart.

  Dusty dressed, and as she smoothed back a stray hair, she watched the goings-on at the roasting pit from her window. Feller was busy talking to several new hands as he tended the meat on the skewer. Dusty’s heart panged a twinge when she saw the bullwhip strapped to the saddle of one of the horses tied to the corral fence. Why today? she wondered. Why was her memory tarrying on the young cowboy from five years ago?

  Becca had the complete attention of three or four men as she smiled and sweetly tossed her head in conversation. Her daddy, dried off some and sitting on the old tree stump with Guthrie, Ruff, and Titch, was no doubt telling them details of the drive. As she quickly straightened her skirt, Dusty noted that several of the drive hands were quite tall, a couple with dark hair, a few with blond. One had hair as black as night like Guthrie and Titch. As the scent of the beef beginning to cook reached her, she turned and left the room, intent on helping Feller with the meal.

  Oh, how she hated the porch door—the way it always slammed shut! Why had she let go of it so easily—let it slam? Instantly, every set of eyes at the pit turned to look at her—watch her approach. There was nothing to do but walk quickly toward them and wave a greeting.

  “That there’s my daughter Angelina,” she heard her father announce. She felt her face turn crimson. She was…uncomfortable with her first name. She hadn’t gone by Angelina since she was about ten years old. Dusty, she corrected him silently in her mind. Dusty!

  As she reached them, all the cowboys nodded in turn. She found herself unable to meet any of them eye-to-eye. Her father’s announcing her by her given name was humiliating. It seemed so…too…familiar. Only her father and sister called her Angelina—and only on occasion. She focused on Feller, who grinned with understanding.

  “What do you need me to do, Feller?” she asked.

  “I need ya to help Miss Becca keep all these young pups occupied while I fix some supper,” he chuckled, knowing full well it was the last thing on earth she wanted to do.

  “Well…now,” a deep, masculine voice said from behind her, “if it ain’t Miss Dusty Britches.”

  Dusty felt the warmth and color fade from her face. Her very blood seemed to drain from the rest of her body and puddle in her feet. She was dizzy and nauseated all at once. She looked again to Feller, who raised his eyebrows and grinned a knowing grin.

  “I think your daddy picked himself out a cowboy that’s crossed your path before, Dusty,” Feller said quietly.

  There was no need for him to have spoken this information aloud. She already knew. Only one person on the whole of the earth had ever called her “Dusty Britches.” That was the cowboy who had given her the nickname in the first place. Feeling she might die of shock, of…of something, Dusty slowly turned to see standing before her a man whose eyes were those of a boy she’d once known—a boy who grew into a man. A man who…

  Ryder Maddox’s broad smile was even more captivating than Dusty remembered. “You remember me, don’t ya, Dusty…uh…Miss Hunter?” he asked in a voice heartbreakingly familiar, yet deeper than she remembered.

  “Of—of course,” Dusty stammered. She stood in awe of his height and staggeringly handsome face and form.

  He’d grown! At least three or four inches by the look of him. His shoulders were broader than when he’d been twenty and worked for her father those many years ago. His upper torso, arms, and legs were thick and firm with the muscular development of a fully matured man. Had it not been for his eyes—those oddly tinted, brown-sugar-colored eyes, accented by dark eyelashes—she would not have known him. His face was much broader, his jaw chiseled and squared, his hair darker than she remembered—almost a cedar-bark brown. He had grown to be a very, very, very attractive man!

  “Um…Ryder Maddox,” Dusty added, realizing she’d been standing in awed silence for several moments.

  “Yep,” he confirmed. His smile broadened. He chuckled as he studied her from head to toe. “You done some growin’ since I last saw you, Miss Britches.”

  Dusty blushed from the top of her scalp to the soles of her feet. The sensation quite unnerved her, for it had been years, literally, since she’d experienced it. Miss Britches. She’d almost forgotten he’d called her that. How divine it was to hear him say it again! And then Dusty Hunter, the woman—no longer the fourteen-year-old girl prone to matters of the heart—pulled her thoughts, feelings, and self up short. Stone cold. No feeling. Only irritation.

  “Yes. It happens to us all,” she stated flatly, forcing a friendly smile. “I’d say you’re a mite taller yourself.”

  Ryder’s brow puckered. He said, “I guess so.”

  He seemed to study her intently for a moment, especially her eyes. It made her uncomfortable. He’d always made her uncomfortable. Now that wasn’t exactly true, she admitted somewhere deep, deep down inside her soul.

  “We met up with old Ryder in
Tucumcari,” her father interjected. “He’d just finished a drive and was hangin’ ’round the yards. I talked him into comin’ on home with me.”

  Dusty looked to her father as he slapped the man on the back. Hank’s smile was wide, and his eyes had a pleasant, delighted twinkle. Dusty remembered how fond her mother had been of Ryder Maddox. Elly Hunter always said that if she’d had a son, Ryder Maddox would’ve been the spitting image of him! If her mother had favored the man, it stood to reason her father had too.

  “Well, welcome back to the ranch, Mr. Maddox,” Dusty said. “If you’ll excuse me…I must get to helpin’ Feller.” Turning away from her father and Ryder, she walked to where Feller was spooning his special sauce over the skewered beef.

  She felt the unfamiliar, yet all too familiar, sting of tears rising in her eyes. He was perfect! More perfect than she even remembered. And she wasn’t. There she stood before him, having just been wrung out of trough water, hair wet, simple brown skirt and calico shirtwaist. Even more infuriating and upsetting was that she cared!

  “Smoke gettin’ to ya, Dusty?” Feller inquired innocently, noticing the moisture in her eyes. After all, Dusty Hunter didn’t cry anymore—ever.

  “A bit, Feller,” she lied. “I’m all right. Here…let me do that,” she said, smiling and taking the large spoon and pail full of sauce from him. Feller stepped back as Dusty continued to baste the meat.

  “What do ya think of that, Dusty?” he asked quietly.

  “Think of what?” she asked, though she knew full well what.

  “’Bout your daddy pickin’ up Ryder Maddox along the way home. Small world, ain’t it?”

  Dusty knew Feller was all too aware of her past concerning Ryder Maddox, but she played the innocent anyway. “Yep. Small world.”

  Feller Lance decided not to push his young friend about the matter. His eyes narrowed as he watched her nervously basting the beef. She was a complete emotional mess. He knew her all too well. The handsome cowboy who’d arrived with her daddy had looped her rope entirely. And Feller loved it! It was about time Dusty climbed out of the deep, dark hole she’d sunk in two years before when Cash Richardson did her heart in. And Feller knew if there were a man on earth to dig her out, it was Ryder Maddox.

  Feller’s and Dusty’s heads both popped around when they heard Becca exclaim suddenly, “Oh my heck! Ryder Maddox!”

  Dusty fought the painful twinge of regret and jealousy pricking her heart as she watched her little sister throw her arms around the handsome cowboy’s neck in a warm and welcoming hug. It should’ve been her place—her arms around him, her body receiving his returned embrace. After all, she thought—watching Ryder hugging Becca in return, wrapping his arms around her waist and lifting her off the ground—it had been her place before. Becca giggled as her feet swayed back and forth like the clapper of a bell.

  When they finally ended their rather long embrace, Becca sighed, “Ryder Maddox! Where on earth did Daddy dig you up?”

  “Tucumcari, New Mexico, sweet thing,” the man chuckled in his warm, deep voice.

  “You got so big,” Becca said.

  “And old,” Ryder added.

  “And handsome,” Becca added. Dusty flinched at her sister’s innocent flirtatious honesty—though somewhere in her mind she knew where her sister had learned it and tried to forget. She wanted to crawl into the roasting pit with the intended supper when Becca added, “Did ya see Dusty? She’s grown up too since last time we saw you.”

  “Oh, yeah,” Ryder agreed. “Both you girls have…changed,” he admitted, drawing out the last word for emphasis. “Makes me feel like an old man.”

  “Think on how it makes me feel,” Hank chuckled.

  Old. The word echoed through Dusty’s mind hauntingly. She did feel old—like she’d lived for more than nineteen short years on this green earth. And Ryder? He would be, what, twenty-five by now? A true man, in years—a man who’d most likely lived a lot of life—a man who’d undoubtedly had women in that life. Dusty shook her head, turned, and handed the sauce pail back to Feller.

  “We’ll be needin’ more forks,” she mumbled. She left quickly and tried to keep from running too headlong toward the shelter of the house.

  Once inside, she said, “Stop! Stop, stop, stop, stop, stop!” She had to quit thinking of him—had to block the memories of her youth and Ryder Maddox. She had to remind her heart what a man could do to your life—what he’d done to her life! And with new resolve, she went to the silver drawer to get more forks.

  But as she rummaged through the drawer housing all manner of eating utensils, she could not keep her thoughts from him. Everything—every moment of those days so long ago—seemed to be rushing back into her mind. There were too many things to remember all at once: visions of Ryder snapping his whip as he herded cattle—images of his walking toward her, smiling the delicious, mischievous smile he owned. Sounds echoed through her mind: the low intonation of his chuckle, his voice. She fancied she could actually hear him singing in the barn as he tended the milk cows during the dark morning hours. She could almost, not quite but almost, smell the scent of soap and saddle leather clinging to him. It was incredible! For just an instant, for just a breath of time, she closed her eyes and was fourteen years old again—fourteen years old and untainted by the disappointments of life—fourteen years old and completely in love with her daddy’s favorite cowhand.

  Forcing her eyes open, Dusty remembered the rest. She felt her eyebrows pucker into a frown as familiar pain pricked her heart—reminding her how it had ended and of what had gone on years afterward. Grabbing a fistful of forks, she slammed the drawer shut, spun around, and stormed out of the house. As she stomped her way toward the roasting pit, her mind filled with angry, hateful thoughts—any thoughts that would harden her heart and stop her confounded memories from being so sentimental and sappy. Because she was being hateful and determinedly unhappy, she didn’t hear the wild drumming of unrestrained hooves. She was so set on mounting her defenses against anyone’s offer of kindness, she didn’t hear her daddy shouting, “Dusty! Watch out!”

  It wasn’t until she looked up to see Ryder Maddox in a dead run toward her—her daddy and several other cowboys at his heels—that she stopped dead in her tracks. Only then did she hear the approach of a runaway team and a woman screaming.

  Chapter Two

  Dusty looked to her left to the team pulling a wagon, heading straight for her and entirely out of control! In those few seconds, Dusty noted Miss Raynetta McCarthy bouncing about on the wagon’s seat like a cricket in a frying pan. Holding on for dear life now and again, the woman was screeching for help at the top of her lungs.

  Suddenly, Dusty’s breath was violently driven from her. For a moment, every inch of her body throbbed with pain as she was thrown backward to land hard on the ground. The horrible panic and pain of not being able to inhale a breath kept her silent.

  Ryder Maddox raised himself from on top of her and mumbled, “Who saved your bacon when I wasn’t around anymore?” Dusty watched in painful, breathless silence as he stood. He turned to watch Dusty’s father and several hands struggling to control the team some distance away. Turning back to her, he smiled, offered a hand to assist her to her feet, and said, “I see Miss Raynetta is still a wild hare.”

  Without thinking, Dusty placed her hand in Ryder’s, and he pulled her to her feet. In the next instant, her wits had returned, and she abruptly yanked her hand from his. The cowboy responded with a puzzled frown.

  Finally able to draw a breath, Dusty said, “Thank you, Mr. Maddox. I should pay more attention to where I’m goin’.”

  Her chest hurt from lacking breath. Though her body still ached as well, it was her pride that was most damaged. How humiliating—to be so distracted she hadn’t heard the danger! Further humiliating still was Ryder Maddox having been the one to save her. How completely mortifying he’d saved her by coming at a dead run, grabbing her body, and lifting her out of the way as they sailed through
the air together—landing in a heap in the dirt! At least she hadn’t dropped the handful of forks. She glanced down, amazed to see she still held them tightly in her fist.

  “You’re welcome, I guess…Miss Hunter,” he told her awkwardly. The puzzled frown on his face deepened.

  Dusty didn’t like the way he studied her with obvious disapproval. She could almost hear his thoughts. What have you become? she felt him thinking. She thought back at him, The end result of what you began!

  With a scowl, she turned from him and headed toward the wagon where her father and several hands were dealing with the team and a hysterical Miss Raynetta McCarthy.

  “Oh, good gravy, Hank!” Miss Raynetta exclaimed breathlessly. She dramatically pressed her hand to her bosom as Hank Hunter helped her down from the wagon. “I thought I was goin’! I just thought I was plum a-goin’ up to gossip with the geese there for a moment!”

  “Now settle down there, Miss Raynetta,” Hank chuckled. He nodded at Feller in a gesture he should tend the team.

  Miss Raynetta shook her head, fanning her face with one tiny hand. “Truly, Hank!” she assured him emphatically. “I seen it all!” She opened her hands and stretched her palms toward the sky. “My whole life a-flashin’ before my eyes like lightnin’ in the heavens!” Dusty watched as her daddy looked to Ruff and smiled knowingly and completely amused. “There I was,” Miss Raynetta continued in an awed whisper, “there I was when I was eight, a-stealin’ molasses from my mama’s cupboard.” She looked to Hank and shook her head. “Truth be told, Hank…everythin’ I ever done wrong…just a-flashin’ in front of me like judgment day!”

  “Well, if stealin’ molasses was the worst thing you ever done, Miss Raynetta,” Hank began, taking her arm and leading her toward the roasting pit. Dusty followed, all too aware of Ryder Maddox walking behind her in ponderous silence.

  “Oh! But it weren’t the worst of it!” Miss Raynetta exclaimed, intent on proving her villainy. “I dare not tell ya the rest, Hank! You’ll send me down to the devil yourself!”