“Lorna, a woman in pants?” Mary was certain she’d taken leave of her senses.
“They’ll be too long, but we can roll them up,” she decided, and ignored the shocked remark.
Her mind was made up, and she began peeling off her clothes. The pants fit a little snug around the hips, but the shoulder seams of the shirt drooped onto her arm. She rolled the pants legs up until the toes of her shoes showed. The clothes felt very strange, made her feel like she wasn’t really dressed.
“Well?” She looked at Mary.
“Lorna, those pants show everything. It’s scandalous,” her friend declared.
“Then I won’t tuck the shirt in.” Lorna tried to pretend she didn’t feel self-conscious, that it was all very natural and right.
“You’re really going to go through with this, aren’t you?” Mary realized.
“Yes.”
“What are you going to do for a saddle?”
“Jonesy’s saddle is in the back of the chuck wagon.” Lorna had already thought about that. “I’ll use it.” She picked up her sunbonnet and tied it on her head.
Mary laughed, unable to smother it. “You look silly in those pants and that bonnet.”
Lorna grinned, then laughed, too. Both knew the alternative to the sunbonnet was no hat at all, which meant exposure to a blazing Kansas sun. Which was no alternative.
When she swung out of the wagon, unhampered by skirts, Lorna discovered a freedom of movement she’d never known. To cover her nervousness, she walked briskly to the chuck wagon and tried to pretend there was nothing strange about the way she was dressed. There was a shocked and incredulous look on Rusty’s face. It was one of the rare times she’d known him to be speechless.
“Would you catch my horse for me, Rusty?” she asked briskly. “I’m going to relieve Mr. Trumbo from herd duty so he can look for the missing cattle.”
The cook managed to nod and reached in the front of the wagon for a spare rope. All the while that he walked out to the remuda, confined in a rope corral, he kept looking back over his shoulder at Lorna, as if he believed his eyes were playing tricks on him.
The reaction was the same when she rode out to the herd and relieved Jessie Trumbo. The cowboy was dumbstruck at the sight of a woman in pants and sitting astraddle a horse. He kept twisting in the saddle to stare at her as he rode away. Lorna had discovered there was no real trick to riding astride the saddle. It was still a matter of leg strength and balance.
It was late afternoon when Benteen approached the main herd, driving the fifty head he’d found. The cattle trotted quickly when they saw their own kind. Benteen eased his horse back to let the bunch infiltrate the herd on their own.
With a nod to Ely, he started to turn his horse toward camp for a cup of coffee before heading out to make one last sweep while it was still light. Out of the corner of his eye he saw a strange sight. It looked like a man wearing a sunbonnet. It couldn’t be—but it was.
The rider was too slim to be a man—a boy maybe. Benteen didn’t recognize the way he was sitting his horse, either. Then he noticed it was Lorna’s horse. He set his spurs to his horse to intercept the slim rider making a slow circle of the herd. His horse was pulled to a plunging halt directly in her path. Lorna stopped her mount.
Bentee
n raked his gaze over the shirt, plastered to her skin by perspiration, and the pants, drawn tightly across her thighs. Outrage simmered somewhere within him, but he was too stunned for it to have any force.
“What are you doing out here—in that getup?” Benteen frowned.
“I’m taking Mr. Trumbo’s place so he can look for the cattle.” She tried to be calm and very matter-of-fact about the unusual situation. “I knew you were shorthanded, with Mr. Willis laid up and all, so I thought I’d help out. These cattle are just as important to my future as they are to yours.” Lorna had been thinking about that a lot while she rode around the herd.
For a long moment Benteen didn’t say anything. On only one point could he argue with her reasoning, and that was her flagrant defiance of convention by wearing pants. Yet he saw the practicality, the necessity of such clothes if she was going to help. And he certainly could use it.
“When you’re in camp, you wear a dress,” he stated. “I don’t want you walking around in front of the men like that. It shows too much of your body.”
“I will,” Lorna promised, and tried to keep the swell of triumph from curving her lips.
But she sobered at the sudden tension that entered his expression as he seemed to involuntarily lower his gaze to let it wander over her body. There was no attempt to voice the desire she sensed that he felt, nor even an acknowledgment of its existence. Then with apparent calm he turned his horse and rode away.
As she lay alone in bed that night, her body was tired but her mind wouldn’t stop thinking. Benteen was sleeping on the ground outside the wagon. She wondered if he felt as lonely tonight as she did. Lorna remembered how warm his body had been to curl against, how pleasantly solid.
There were so many things about him that she hadn’t understood before. Maybe she had been too inexperienced about life to understand them. He had not been raised as gently as she had. When he got hit, he hit back. He did not threaten idly, as she had done.
She ran a hand over her breast and remembered the way his hand used to claim it and play with the nipple until it was hard and round in his fingers. Gradually she had stopped being shy with him and enjoyed the things he made her feel. Maybe the bad memory was fading. Maybe he could make her feel those things again.