Caress of Fire Read Online Free Page A

chocolate for Karl and Viktor.
    Somewhere between the lullaby and the cookstove, Lisette made a decision. Gil McLoughlin would hire her as his cook. And that was all there was to it.
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    The Four Aces outfit left Fredericksburg a day early, Gil McLoughlin being itchy to get on the trail. Unfortunately they left without a cook. Gil had hired one a couple of days after Lisette Keller’s preposterous offer, but the fellow hadn’t shown up the morning they’d set out. And Gil saw no value in tarrying.
    Oscar Yates, a grizzled and cantankerous cowpoke, got conscripted to the chuck wagon. Trouble was, Yates’s chow didn’t even suit Gil’s collie cowdog, Sadie Lou.
    Two days into the trip, the men threatened mutiny.
    By the third morning, six of his crew of eighteen saddled up and headed south. The remaining dozen refused to speak to their trail boss. It bothered him, as the sun set and Yates toiled at the cookfire, that his second-in-charge for the drive still sided with the others. A strawboss ought to be loyal to the man paying his salary.
    Of course he ought to be furious with Matthias Gruene for lying, for saying Lisette Keller was a lady. Matt probably didn’t know any better, for he was as green as his name when it came to females. Besides, even life-seasoned men had been fooled by women since Adam took a bite of that apple, so Gil didn’t fault him.
    Anyway, quit thinking about that Keller woman.
    Gil grabbed a cup of coffee and downed the watery brew He glanced around the camp. Not so much as a single cowpoke lounged around the fire, which, outside of a saloon or a whorehouse, was a cowboy’s favorite gathering place at day’s end. Even Sadie Lou had abandoned her favorite spot under the worktable that opened by hinges from the top of the chuck box.
    The collie had seen fit to follow Matthias, the duo nowhere to be seen in the fading light.
    â€œDamn ’em,” Gil muttered under his breath.
    The cook, a smoke dangling from the corner of his whiskered mouth, reached for a Dutch oven. “Ye got a burr under yer saddle, cap’n?”
    â€œTend to your cooking, Yates.”
    â€œI’d rather be tendin’ cows, I would. And that’s what ye hired me to do. It ain’t right, I say. It just ain’t right, yer makin’ me cook. Why, ye’re makin’ a steer outta me. Did I ever tell you about the time my Susie–”
    â€œOh, please,” Gil broke in, thoroughly versed in Yates’s revered departed wife.
    He’d tried to do Yates a favor, putting him in charge of the cook fire. The cowpuncher was getting too far along in years for the rigors of herding, and it was the natural course for older men to take over chuck wagons. It was also natural for cookies to be grumpy. “Never mess with a mule, a skunk, or a cook” was a widely used expression in the West–so Gil tried to be patient.
    â€œYou’re earning top pay,” he reminded him.
    â€œIt ain’t money I be needin’, cap’n. I be needin’ to get back with the dogies.” Yates squinted at him. “Ye shoulda taken time to hire a cook whilst we be in Fred’icksburg.”
    Gil had enough on his mind, worrying over the possible problems of driving three thousand longhorns between the jagged hills of Indian country and beyond; he didn’t need to fret over cowhands and their palates. They would have to accept Yates’s culinary misadventures, and Yates would have to accept his lot.
    The reluctant cook’s pride had bruises all over it, though, and Gil attempted to placate him. “This early spring we’re having could signal a blistering summer. We have to make tracks while the making is good.”
    Oscar Yates muttered a base oath. Slapping eating irons on his worktable, the wiry cowboy-cook announced sourly, “Chow’s ’bout ready. Where’s yer men?”
    â€œI have no idea.”
    Gil dug in his