Read Online Rose's Pledge by Dianna Crawford, Sally Laity - Free Book Online Page B

not farin’ so good. I’ll have the boys get a fire started fer ya an’ fetch the fixin’s fer some mush whilst you go milk the fresh cow.”
    Still perched on her horse, Rose swept a glance around. “I’m sorry. I don’t see a place to cook in.”
    With an incredulous grimace that scrunched up one side of his scruffy face, he shrugged. “Place! There ain’t no place. Just pick a spot.” He shook his head in disgust.
    She stared dumbly down at the man. “Surely you’re not saying we’ll be staying here! On the ground!”
    “That’s right, missy. Right here on the ground. Now get yerself down. I’m hungry.” He started to walk away.
    “Wait!” Rose tried to come up with some graceful way of getting off her mount while renewed panic filled her. “I’m not sure I know what mush is, and I’ve never milked a cow before in my life.”
    Smith stopped in his tracks and turned to gawk at her then narrowed his eyes. “Ya said ya was a cook. Were ya gullin’ me?”
    “No, sir. Not at all.”
    “Then it’s best ya get busy, ain’t it?” He reached up without so much as a by-your-leave and hauled her right off the horse.
    It was most fortunate that he kept hold of her momentarily, because her legs felt really strange after riding on a saddle all afternoon. It was all she could do not to sink to the ground in a graceless heap. Doing what she could to gather herself together, she gave him her most forthright look. “I daresay I’m considered quite a fine cook …in an actual kitchen …with milk already waiting in a pail. And what, might I ask, is mush?” She waved aside a pesky fly.
    The trader rolled his eyes and muttered something unintelligible under his breath as he wagged his head in scorn—actions he repeated numerous times over the course of the next quarter hour while he demonstrated how to dispense milk from a cow’s udder.
    Rose found the squeeze-and-pull chore a touch more difficult than it looked—especially with so many muscles in her lower regions aching while she stooped. And the fact that her Indian audience grinned and snickered at her clumsy efforts didn’t make it any easier. Apparently they considered her as inept as Mr. Smith did—these Indians who were supposed to be so dangerous. Though she still felt a bit ill at ease in their presence, they had yet to do anything threatening other than leer in her direction from time to time. Again she concluded that their exploits must have been exaggerated back in England. She purposely disregarded them and continued doing her best while they unloaded several items from the packhorses. She was glad to have a bit of space between her and them. Whenever they were near, she detected a stench she couldn’t identify.
    After she’d managed to acquire a reasonable amount of milk from the soft-eyed cow, Mr. Smith directed Rose to a blazing campfire, where a tripod fashioned from sturdy sticks held a blackened pot suspended above the heat.
    “Watch.” If he’d said that once during the last half hour, he’d said it a dozen times. He poured water from his flask into the kettle then opened a gunnysack slumped nearby along with several others. More than a little exasperated, he rammed his filthy hand into the bag and pulled out a fistful of gritty yellow powder. “Cornmeal.” Eyeing her pointedly, he tossed the grain into the pot then added a second handful.
    It took all of Rose’s fortitude to restrain herself from giving the man a piece of her mind, but knowing it would be wiser to hold her tongue, she clamped her lips together. After all, she needed no reminder that she was in the middle of nowhere—a lone female with seven men—a precarious situation if ever there was one.
    The trader grabbed a stick from a pile of kindling off to the side and rubbed it across his grubby pants as if that would do more to clean it than recent rains could have done, then used it to stir the contents of the pot. After that, she surmised, he no doubt expected