Cherish by Catherine Anderson Read Free Book Online

rough that it was all Race could do to keep his charge from bouncing off the pallet. At one point, when the going smoothed out for a bit, he tried to get some water down her. Just as he tipped the mouth of the canteen to her lips, one of the wheels hit a hole. He sloshed water all over her, soaking her hair and the front of her dress.
    By the time Pete finally drew the oxen to a halt behind the trail-camp chuck wagon, Race was wishing there were a way he might weasel out of caring for her. She couldn’t be left in wet clothes all night or she’d take a chill. That meant someone needed to get her into a dry nightdress. The thought brought Race surging to his feet, and the next second, he was scrambling out the back of the wagon to go find Cookie.
    The cantankerous but good-hearted cook didn’t take kindly to Race’s suggestion that he assume responsibility of caring for the girl. “Hah!” he cried. “You gotta be jokin’. No how, no way. I ain’t gettin’ wrangled into doin’ no such thing!”
    “Now, Cookie,” Race replied, putting as much sternness into his voice as he could muster, “this ain’t a matter of choice. None of them prune-faced Bible thumpers in Cutter Gulch is gonna come huntin’ for you with a preacher in tow. Plus, I have a herd to get moved. I need to be supervisin’ my men.”
    “Well, now, that sounds like quite a wrinkle.” As Cookie spoke, he clanked the ladle on the edge of the pot to rid it of sauce, his green eyes flashing in the flickering amber light of the lantern suspended above him. The lamp hanger, a rusty iron rod with a hooked arm at the top, hadn’t been driven far enough into the sun-baked earth and wobbled a bit with every gust of wind. “A real bad wrinkle, sure enough. But it’s yours to iron, not mine. I’m a cook, not a nurse, and a danged good cook at that!”
    A short, stocky little fellow with long, grizzled hair as coarse as fence wire and a matching beard that billowed over his chest, Cookie put Race in mind of a stump that had sprouted new growth at the top. The tattered gray Stetson he constantly wore, even while sleeping, only added to the effect. Foot-long, corkscrew strands of grizzled hair poked out from under the hat brim like gnarly twigs going in all directions. Unfortunately, Cookie could also be as immovable as a stump when the mood struck.
    “I realize you’re a fine cook,” Race conceded, “and I know that cookin’ is all you wanna do. But this is—”
    “If’n you got ideas about me doin’ somethin’ else, you can find yourself another man to keep your boys’ bellies filled. Put that in your pipe and smoke on it!”
    Cookie always threatened to quit his job when the least little thing didn’t go his way. If any of the other men had dared to speak to Race this way, he would have cut him his pay and told him to ride out. But good cooks were hard to find, and Race couldn’t keep men on the payroll without one.
    “You’re the senior man, Cookie, and you know more about nursin’ sick folks than all the rest of us put together. The girl’d be better off with you tendin’ her than someone like—well, a young pup like Johnny Graves, for instance. Nobody’ll raise their eyebrows over you takin’ care of her.”
    “Johnny?” Cookie’s mouth fell open, his toothless gums gleaming in the lantern light. “You ain’t actually considerin’ him for the job!”
    “Not unless I don’t got a choice. I was just tryin’ to point out that of all of us, you’re the”—Race frantically searched his mind for a tactful way of putting it—“most seasoned.” At the expression that came over Cookie’s face, he rushed to add, “And the most trustworthy.”
    “Another words, too old to be needin’ a poke.” Cookie huffed with indignation. “And the rest of you yahoos ain’t?”
    “No, that isn’t what I meant at all.”
    “Too old to be a threat, then? Let me tell you somethin’, son. I need me a poke now and ag’in, same as