The Western Dare (Harlequin Heartwarming) (3 page)

Camp closed his eyes and massaged his temples. “So,” he said, dragging one hand over the hollows in his cheeks, “judging by the address on your application, I assume you’re attending our sister college. Instead of trekking across the prairie this summer, Mrs. Benton, I suggest you sign up for bonehead classes to help bring up those abominable grades.” His words were cold, Camp knew. But her application stated she was a widow. She probably needed extra schooling to ensure a better job to help raise those kids she’d mentioned. Actually, he was doing her a favor, turning her down.

Not only that, he didn’t want to deal with the tension of seeing her every day—something he was loath to admit. Folding his hands, he squared his shoulders and met her eyes. Almost.

“Student? Abominable grades?” Emily clapped a hand to her head a moment. Then it dawned. “Oh, the papers.” She kicked the bag at her feet. “I teach in the women’s program. Those are my students’ papers.” She grimaced. “They
are
deplorable, aren’t they? But I imagine that the women in our program are lucky to be in class. Some we barely coached through GEDs. A few of our older students finished high school, but thanks to crafty divorce lawyers they’re being forced into an alien work environment. Most have no marketable skills, nor have they cracked a textbook in years.” Her speech faltered. Why was she telling him this? According to Sherry, the man had some pretty dated ideas about women.

Emily lifted her chin, gathering her dignity. “I hold a Master’s in psychology and one in sociology. I didn’t realize a degree was required to go on your wagon train.”

“I, ah, no, it isn’t.” Taking in a deep breath, Camp forced himself to study her application. Man, she looked as if a stiff wind would blow her away.

Emily couldn’t say how she knew he was getting ready to turn her down. But the feeling was strong. She’d promised herself that after the humiliation of dealing with Dave—after years of trying to be the perfect wife and putting her career on hold—she’d never beg another man for anything. Lowering her gaze to clasped hands turning white at the knuckles, she murmured, “Please, Mr. Campbell. My children think money grows on trees. I need this trip to teach them some solid values this summer.”

Camp’s stomach churned. He hated looking down on her bent head. He needed her, too—to fill his contracted portion of the train. But the last thing he
wanted
was daily contact with this woman. Wait a minute, though. Pioneer women traveled with children. Emily Benton and her kids offered a unique opportunity to contrast a contemporary single mother with her pioneer cousins. This was business, after all. Nothing more. Besides, he’d only see her at night when he collected the data sheets.

“Sign here.” Brusquely he handed her a release form. “I’ll mail you the final packet of information in a week or so.”

Emily didn’t trust herself to meet his eyes. Her hand shook as she scribbled her name. If it wasn’t for the fact that her in-laws were stealing her kids’ affections by buying them everything under the sun, she’d tell this snob exactly what he could do with his trip. And it wasn’t pretty.

CHAPTER TWO

“Naturally, men take credit for winning the West. Hollywood says they did.”

—
Camp overheard a woman tell Sherry this.

A
FTER
POSTING
HIS
spring-semester grades with the registrar’s office, Camp loaded his laptop computer in the car, along with his suitcase, and headed for Boonville. He felt curiously lighthearted—sort of like Tom Sawyer or Huck Finn. Probably because it was the first year in ten he’d skipped teaching summer classes. Until he’d begun to pack, he hadn’t realized how stagnant his life had become. Or how badly he needed a break.

The thirty-mile drive seemed less. Historically speaking, Franklin, across the Missouri River from Boonville, was the “Cradle of the Santa Fe Trail.” But old Franklin was destroyed by a flood in 1826, and Boonville took up the slack. Maizie Boone’s wagon train, the one Camp had begun to refer to as
his train,
would leave from the original cobblestone square in Boonville. This was real history, not some Hollywood script.

He reached the town’s outskirts, slowed and navigated tree-lined streets, looking for the lot where Maizie had told him to park. He rounded a corner and saw them—a complement of Conestoga wagons framed against the riverbank. He gawked. Seeing the wagons up close, Camp suffered his first stab of apprehension. White canvas billowed above gigantic blue boxes, their running gear painted bright red. They reminded Camp of a fleet of sailboats on wheels. He’d booked four of those monsters on a dare. Had knowingly filled them with greenhorns—or whatever they called novice trail drivers. With women yet. Women whose stamina he had reason to doubt. With the exception of Gina Ames.

Camp passed a hand over his sagging jaw. He’d agreed to arrive a week ahead of his researchers in order to stock the wagons and rent the draft horses destined to carry city dwellers many miles from the comforts of home.

The image of one particular city dweller, Emily Benton, loomed starkly before his eyes. Camp pictured her, reins in hand, clad in a flowing, flowery pioneer dress—a matching sunbonnet tossed carelessly back so that her riot of red hair caught flame in the afternoon sun.

He blinked hard to dispel the vision. A sudden cool breeze lifted the hair on the back of his neck, as if ghosts from the original Becknell caravans mocked his imprudence in accepting Emily’s application.
Why did you?
they taunted.

“Hey, they all read the brochures.” Not a woman had backed out, even though he’d half expected it after his secretary sent out Maizie’s six pages of rules and regs.

Camp stripped off his sport coat and tossed it in the back seat. Rolling his shirt sleeves midway up his arms, he sauntered toward the rustic building that housed Boone’s Frontier Adventures.

A young, freckle-faced woman sat at a desk, phone to her ear. Karen Boone, according to her nameplate. One of Maizie’s many grandchildren, Camp decided, gazing around the cracker-box office. Two chairs flanked a glass-topped table stacked with brochures like the one Sherry had brandished like a red flag to start this madness. Rather than sit, he studied a laminated parchment wall map boldly marking the Santa Fe Trail. He’d memorized the route, but the old map reminded him of the risks encountered by the original wagon trains. So did the watercolor paintings depicting the old forts along the trail. Perusing each, Camp felt an odd kinship with the pioneers.

“May I help you?”

He spun at the sound of the girl’s voice. He’d been so immersed in his own thoughts, he hadn’t heard her hang up the phone. “I’m Nolan Campbell.” He ambled up to her desk. “I believe Mrs. Boone is expecting me.”

The girl’s green eyes twinkled. “I could ask which Mrs. Boone. There are fifty here. More spread all the way to Boone’s Lick. I’ve typed your name a zillion times these last few weeks, so I’d guess you mean Maizie. Want a tip? Don’t call her ‘Mrs.’ If you haven’t already figured it out, my grandmother is her own woman.”

“I gathered that. But based on your smile, her bark must be worse than her bite.”

“True, but I’ll deny it if you tell her I said so. The image, you understand? Right now she’s two miles out of town at her son Micah’s ranch. We board the horses there. Let me draw you a map. She said to send you out to pick the animals that’ll pull your wagons.”

“Me? You mean it’s not just a matter of paying rental fees?”

The girl glanced up from her drawing. “Another tip. Don’t let Maizie hear panic in your voice. March right into the pasture and examine each horse. Run a hand over their legs and say ‘um’ a few times. Then casually ask her expert advice.” No spark of humor showed this time when Karen passed Camp the map.

“Uh, thanks. For everything,” he said, folding the paper several times as he backed out the door.

On the sidewalk again, Camp took a deep breath. What he knew about draft horses you could inscribe in capital letters on the head of a pin. A very small pin. Oh, during his preteen years he’d ridden his uncle’s saddle horses. He’d curried them and seen to their care when his aunt and uncle took vacations, but...

“I suppose...a horse is a horse is a horse,” he muttered, hurrying back to his car.

He drove the length of the small picturesque town and beyond, to where lush fields of sorghum replaced rural homes. When the road split around a huge, gnarled oak—the one sketched on his map—he slowed the car and began to search for the Boone mailbox. It wasn’t difficult to locate. A green valley off to his left suddenly sprouted gargantuan horses contentedly munching grass. It struck Camp how wrong his earlier assessment had been. A horse
wasn’t
just a horse. Each of those bruisers could easily make two saddle horses.

Car virtually at a crawl, he whistled through his teeth. “Some of those suckers have feet the size of dinner plates.”

Farther along, he spotted someone inside the fence filling water troughs with a hose. Maizie, he presumed. The wagon mistress was everything he’d imagined and more. Calamity Jane without the cigarillo. Iron-gray hair hung straight to the woman’s shoulders from beneath a battered, wide-brimmed hat. A shirt of fringed buck leather topped a split denim skirt. Her scuffed Wellingtons were caked with dirt and run-down at the heels.

As Camp climbed from the car, she glanced up and greeted him with a grin that pleated her sun-weathered cheeks into a profusion of wrinkles. His mind had already begun spinning the human interest portion of his paper.

“You’d be that Campbell fella, I suppose,” she rasped. “I’m Maizie.” After crushing his fingers in a solid handshake, she spit a stream of tobacco less than an inch to the right of his new black loafers. “Them’er fancy shoes, boy. If you got boots in the car, you better fetch ’em. These Clydes, Percherons and Belgian drafts leave ankle-deep calling cards.” She placed one foot on the bottom rung of the fence and scraped a layer of dark muck onto the wood rail as if for emphasis.

The pungent aroma told Camp he’d been wrong about that being dirt caked on her boots. It also crossed his mind that Calamity’s cigarillo might be preferable to Maizie’s chew. He jerked a thumb toward his car. “I brought boots. Give me a minute to change.” Thankfully, he’d packed his oldest jeans. He doubted if new denim would pass her muster. As he poked the legs of his best worsted wool slacks into his boot tops, Camp wished he’d changed clothes before leaving campus.

“Ready,” he said, rejoining her. “How many horses are we talking?” As Karen had suggested, he knelt and ran a hand down the iron-hard leg of a horse with gentle eyes.

“Four per team, and two per wagon spare. I’m a stickler for rotating stock. We have vets meeting us in Fort Larned and McNees Crossing. My son Terrill will deliver us feed and fresh water. We won’t run our animals into the ground the way pioneers did. This is a reenactment, not the real McCoy. That’s why I asked drivers to arrive a day early. So you’ll all learn to hitch, unhitch and handle these babies.”

Babies? Hippo babies, maybe.
Camp stood. “Uh, Maizie...all my drivers are women. I never mentioned it—never presumed that
my
role mattered. I’m a college professor conducting a study comparing modern and pioneer women. My volunteers aren’t exactly the types who work out with weights or anything.” Again, Emily Benton came to mind. Smooth, unblemished skin and a waist Camp could span with his hands. If her head reached his shoulder, he’d be surprised. Camp suffered a second wave of guilt as he eyed the tons of muscle. “Why don’t I leave the choosing to you,” he said smoothly, remembering the last part of Karen’s advice.

“Uh-huh!” Maizie stroked a callused hand down the back of a massive brown-and-white horse. “We’ll go with the Clydesdales for your ladies. At seventeen to eighteen hands, they’re a little taller than the Percherons, but more even-tempered. Perches are bred with Arabians, so they’re more feisty. Belgians are the biggest. Strongest, too. Most are nineteen to twenty hands. You men can drive them.”

“Well, I...” He tugged an ear. “I’m not exactly going with the train.”

“Uh-huh. Where
do
you fit in, sonny? You’re laying out a passel of dough for somebody who’s missing the fun.”

Camp summarized his plans and ended by saying, “I’d prefer others on the train didn’t know about my study. I don’t want them purposely helping the women. Ruins the results, you understand.”

“It’s been my experience that people on these trips either start out friendly and hate one another before the end, or they begin every man for himself and finish up pulling together. Thing I can’t see...is women with any guts a’tall lettin’ you study ’em like pet rats, ’n you stayin’ out of the maze.” She spit another stream past his ear, pinning him with faded, all-knowing eyes.

“Of course they will. My paper isn’t about how
I’d
fare in the wilds. Men haven’t gone soft. We still do manual labor.”

“Uh-huh.” Maizie gave the horse a final pat. “How well do you know women, boy?” she asked, leading the way out of the pasture. “Claim to be an expert, do you?”

Camp’s laughter held a nervous edge. “Show me a man who claims to be an expert on females and I’ll show you a bald-faced liar. Even so, I know some in my group will stick until death to prove that anything pioneer women did, modern women can do better.”

“Uh-huh!” Maizie dug a stubby pencil and a wrinkled pad from her skirt pocket and wrote out a rental slip for the horses. “Stop by the office and pay Karen. Meet me at the general store on Market Street tomorrow at ten to buy supplies. I hope you’ve got the muscle to stock four wagons. It’s definitely manual labor—loading bags of flour, coffee, sugar, salt, beans, crackers and sides of home-cured bacon.”

Camp took the bill and climbed into his car. Had he made an error taking her into his confidence? The way she said
uh-huh,
a body would think Maizie Boone had a Ph.D. in psychology. He chuckled as he started the car. Her advice, like little Lucy’s in the
Peanuts
cartoons, was probably worth the same—about five cents.

* * *

W
HEN
S
ATURDAY
rolled around, the day Maizie had set aside to teach drivers how to hitch and unhitch the teams, Camp expected his research subjects to trickle in one by one. They surprised him, arriving en masse, accompanied by a television crew from Columbia and a woman reporter from the campus newspaper—which didn’t please him.

“Whose bright idea was this?” he muttered, sidling up to his sister.

“Yvette’s. What’s the matter, Nolan, afraid they’ll steal your thunder?”

Camp shrugged. “No, but neither do I want them turning this into some kind of farce. Why do you all look like you stepped off the pages of Mule Creek Mercantile’s catalog?” The women, all except Sherry’s roommate, sported brand-new boots, blue jeans and Stetsons. Yvette was Hollywood all the way, in white jeans and a purple suede halter top trimmed with fringe, feathers and beads. She wore matching purple moccasins. Camp would have bet the farm she’d come dressed like this.

“Ugh! What stinks?” Yvette ran up to them holding her nose. Her pristine moccasins landed in a fresh pile of manure. She slipped, slid, then went down squarely on her rump. “Ick! Yuck,” she squealed as Camp hid a smile and stretched out a hand to help her up.

“You’re laughing, Nolan Campbell.” She smacked his hand away. “Don’t touch me.” Instead, she accepted help from a member of the press. The instant she was up, Yvette turned on Sherry. “I assumed they’d pull the wagons with something civilized, like tractors.” Sniffing the air, she wrinkled her dainty nose. “This is positively gross. I’m not spending ten weeks smelling horse poop.” She clapped a palm over the closest camera lens. “Those shots had better end up on the cutting-room floor, my friend. I know the station manager. Grab your stuff out of my car, Sherry. I’m outta here.”

Sherry gaped at her roommate’s retreating figure. “Yvette, wait! You promised! I paid your half of the rent for the whole summer.”

The blonde gingerly picked her way to the car, paying no attention. She peeled off her moccasins and threw them in a nearby trash barrel. Hopping the remaining distance on bare feet, she unlocked the car and tumbled inside.

Sherry took one look at Camp’s smirk and ran after her friend. “Oh, for pity’s sake, Yvette. I’ll pay off your Visa,” Sherry wheedled. “Come on, this is exactly what Nolan expects. What happened to striking a blow for modern womanhood?”

“You strike it.” Yvette knelt on the front seat, leaned over into the back and started pitching Sherry’s bedding and duffel bags out on the ground.

“Fine! Leave. Be a traitor.” Sherry grumbled as she snatched her things. “And I want that money back!”

Yvette slammed her door, cranked the engine and peeled out of the lot.

Maizie Boone jabbed an elbow into Camp’s side. “Uh-huh! What’d I tell you?”

He scowled. “Shall we proceed with the lesson? My sister’s capable of handling a wagon alone. The way I see it, I still have four drivers.”

Maizie inclined her head toward his dwindling group. “Maybe you haven’t been listening to those kids. They’ve been bellyaching to leave since they got here. Seein’ how frazzled the mom looks, I’ll bet you a plate of wings at Sammy’s Bar that she splits next.”