Chapter Two Dust on His Mouth
The herd began moving before the eastern sky had decided on a color.
First came the point riders, then the long-horned body of cattle pressing north in a river of hide, dust, and breath. The swing riders held the flanks. The drag men followed behind in the worst of it, eating the dirt kicked up by every hoof ahead of them.
Hank had placed Drew at drag because he wanted the stranger tired.
By the second hour, Drew understood the cruelty of the decision.
Dust worked beneath his collar and into the corners of his eyes.
His thighs burned from holding the blue roan steady against cattle that seemed determined to reverse direction one animal at a time.
Every breath tasted of dry grass and old leather.
He refused to give Hank the satisfaction of seeing him suffer.
The trail boss rode point in a black hat and faded coat, broad shoulders visible through the haze.
He seemed to feel the herd rather than watch it.
A turn of his head brought one rider forward.
A lifted hand corrected another. Men twice Drew’s size responded to the smallest gesture without hesitation.
Authority fitted Hank more closely than his clothes.
Drew tried not to remember how those clothes had pulled across Hank’s body beside the tack wagon. He failed before sunrise had cleared the horizon.
“Keep staring like that and you will ride into a steer.”
The voice belonged to Will Carter, the young drover Hank had accused of avoiding work. Will was thirty at most, handsome in an unfinished way, with brown curls escaping beneath his hat and a smile too easy for a man riding drag.
“I am watching the trail boss,” Drew said.
“That is what I said.”
Drew turned a calf with the end of his rope. “Does he always ride as though the Almighty appointed him personally?”
“No. Some days he is arrogant.”
“And today?”
“Today he is angry.”
“How can you tell?”
Will nodded toward Hank’s distant back. “He keeps looking behind him.”
Drew glanced away before Hank could catch him doing exactly that.
The morning stretched beneath a rising sun.
They covered eight miles before the first halt, following low grassland cut by shallow washes.
Drew’s elegant saddle began punishing him by noon.
The blue roan, whom Will called Ghost on account of the pale eye, tested his rider whenever Drew’s attention wandered.
Still, the work felt honest.
No one asked about his father. No clerk brought him contracts requiring signatures.
No railroad director watched to see whether Andrew Whitaker laughed at the correct joke.
On the trail he was measured by whether he held his position, protected the cattle beside him, and rose after being knocked down.
He had not known how badly he wanted to be measured by something real.
When the herd paused near a muddy creek, Drew slid from the saddle and nearly betrayed himself with a groan. His legs felt bowed. He led Ghost to water, removed his hat, and poured the last of his canteen over the back of his neck.
Hank appeared beside him without warning.
“You are favoring your left leg.”
Drew kept his gaze on the horse. “I have been riding since before dawn.”
“So has everyone else.”
“Then perhaps everyone else is also sore.”
Hank crouched beside him. Before Drew could object, one rough hand closed around his calf and moved upward, testing for injury through the denim.
The touch was practical.
Drew’s reaction was not.
His body tightened at once. Hank’s hand stopped just below the knee, fingers spread around the muscle. Slowly, he looked up.
Drew’s arousal was already visible beneath his trail-worn trousers. There was no coat to conceal it and no pump trough between them. He watched recognition darken Hank’s eyes.
“Does that hurt?” Hank asked.
His hand moved an inch higher.
Drew gripped Ghost’s saddle. “Not in the manner you mean.”
Hank’s thumb pressed into the inside of his thigh, once. It might have been an examination. It might have been a warning. It felt like neither.
“Nothing strained,” Hank said.
“No.”
“You certain?”
Drew met his gaze. “You could keep checking.”
For a moment, Hank looked capable of forgetting the herd, the crew, and the whole of Texas.
Then Sam called from the chuck wagon.
Hank stood abruptly. Dust marked one knee of his trousers. “Drink more water.”
“Yes, boss.”
“And stop baiting me.”
“You came to examine my leg.”
“I came to see whether you could keep working.”
Drew let his eyes move deliberately over Hank’s body. “Can you?”
Hank walked away with the hard stride of a man fleeing something that had already caught him.
Will Carter had watched enough of the exchange to grin.
Drew said, “Speak and I will arrange an accident involving you and one of these cattle.”
“Would not dream of it.”
“You are dreaming of it now.”
“I am mostly wondering whether Hank knows he looks at you like a starving man outside a bakery.”
Drew mounted Ghost and tried to ignore the heat that remained where Hank’s hand had touched him.
“He knows,” Drew said.
By midafternoon the country had flattened into an ocean of tawny grass. Heat shimmered above the ground. The herd had settled into a steady pace, but the longhorns near the eastern flank grew restless whenever the wind brought the smell of distant water.
Hank moved from point to swing, checking the line.
He had spent hours refusing to look toward the drag. The refusal made him aware of Drew every moment.
He heard Drew’s voice when the stranger called to another rider. He recognized the higher note of Ghost’s whinny among the remuda. When the wind shifted, he imagined he could smell the same clean soap that had tormented him the day before.
The morning beside the creek had been a mistake.
Hank had seen Drew dismount stiffly and told himself he was checking for injury. That was all. A trail boss protected his riders. A man with a strained leg became a danger to himself and everyone near him.
None of that explained why Hank still remembered the solid muscle beneath his palm.
Or the way Drew had hardened at his touch.
Or the nearly insolent invitation in his eyes.
Hank adjusted himself in the saddle, grateful for the concealment of his coat and the absence of Sam’s commentary.
A bawling cry cut across the herd.
One of the steers broke from the eastern side, a red animal with wide horns and panic in its eyes. It swung behind a rider, found an opening, and charged across the front line.
Hank turned his horse.
The steer changed direction with him.
For a second they faced each other across twenty yards of grass. Then the animal lowered its head.
Hank drove his heels into his horse.
The mare lunged sideways, but a hidden prairie-dog hole collapsed beneath her front hoof. She stumbled to her knees. Hank came out of the saddle, struck the ground shoulder-first, and rolled.
He heard men shouting.
He heard the steer coming.
Then Ghost flashed across his vision.
Drew rode between Hank and the charging animal at an angle so sharp it should have brought horse and rider down. He leaned from the saddle, slapped the steer’s muzzle with his coiled rope, and shouted. Ghost’s pale eye rolled, but the roan held.
The steer swerved.
One horn passed close enough to tear Drew’s sleeve. Will Carter and another rider closed from the opposite side, driving the animal back toward the herd.
Hank got to his feet.
His shoulder burned. The greater pain was the sight of Drew turning Ghost toward him, face bloodless beneath the dust.
“Are you hurt?” Drew demanded.
Hank caught Ghost’s bridle. “Get down.”
“Hank—”
“Now.”
Drew dismounted. Hank seized his upper arm and pulled him toward the dry creek bed at the edge of the trail.
“I just saved your life.”
“You nearly traded me yours.”
“I knew what I was doing.”
“You put yourself between a charging steer and a man on the ground.”
“Yes.”
“Why?”
Drew wrenched his arm free. “Would you rather I had watched?”
“I would rather you had done your assigned job.”
“My assigned job became keeping you alive.”
Hank drove him backward down the shallow bank. “You have known me two days.”
“And that makes you disposable?”
“It makes your decision reckless.”
Drew’s back struck the sun-warmed earth. Hank followed, one hand planted beside his head, the other gripping his torn shirt.
“Say thank you,” Drew said.
“I ought to dismiss you.”
“Say it.”
“You do not give me orders.”
“Then stop looking at me as if you want to.”
The last of Hank’s restraint snapped.
He kissed him.
There was nothing cautious in it. Hank caught Drew’s jaw and took the mouth that had challenged him since the stockyard gate. Drew made a sound against his lips and pulled him down harder, fingers closing in the back of Hank’s coat.
The kiss tasted of dust, salt, and fury.
Hank expected resistance and found hunger equal to his own.
Drew opened to him, then turned his head and took control of the kiss with a deliberate pressure that made Hank’s body answer violently.
Their hips met. The hard evidence of Drew’s desire pressed against him through two layers of worn cloth, and Hank knew his own arousal was just as obvious.
Drew broke the kiss only long enough to breathe.
“Thank you,” Hank said against his mouth.
Drew smiled. “You are welcome.”
Hank kissed the smile away.
His hand moved from Drew’s torn collar to the warm skin beneath it. Drew arched into the touch, all elegance gone, the response honest enough to frighten Hank. He wanted to feel more. He wanted the stranger’s shirt open, his body bare beneath the Texas sun, his careful voice ruined.
A low thunder rose beyond the bank.
The herd.
Hank lifted his head. Longhorns moved past the creek in a dense, shifting wall less than thirty yards away. A rider shouted Drew’s name.
They separated.
Drew’s lips were swollen. Dust clung to his hair. His chest rose beneath the torn shirt, and the front of his trousers made concealment impossible.
Hank had done that.
The thought nearly drove him back down.
Instead, he stood and offered a hand. Drew looked at it before accepting.