Page 78 of Wellspring
“It’s the traditional last night before the drive meal.Would have been better if Cade hadn’t messed up my plans.We’ll be eating jerky for dinner tomorrow.”Javier grinned at Cade.“You couldn’t have waited one more day to come back?”
“Not even for your smoked brisket,” Cade replied easily.“As good as it is, finally getting Erick to marry me is better.Although I know you.We won’t be eating jerky for dinner tomorrow or any other night.”
The food at Wellspring was very different from what Erick had grown up with, spicier, earthier, and often with unfamiliar ingredients, but while the dishes were exotic to his Prussian palate, he wouldn’t trade them for the bland dishes from his former home for anything, even without taking everything else he’d gained into consideration.
Michele joined them, sitting close enough to Javier that their legs were surely touching beneath the table.Erick couldn’t help the smile that brought as Cade reached across the table and squeezed her hand.“Thank you, all of you really, for the cabin.It’s perfect.”
“I do know you,petit loup,” she teased.“I think I’m capable of decorating a one-room cabin to suit you.”
Cade shook his head.“It’s more than that.It’s the fact that everyone contributed in some way.You saw me in the months after I first left my tribe.You know how lost I was.”He took Erick’s hand in his other hand.“I’m not lost anymore.”
“We have both found our home.”Erick could not have imagined, when he took ship for America, that he would find not only a way to leave his past behind but work with real meaning, friends who accepted him as he was, and a man who loved him as much as Erick loved him back.He swallowed past the emotion that threatened to choke him and then realized he no longer had to hide behind a stoic facade.He caught Cade’s other hand and brought it to his lips, smiling at his friends.“I am truly blessed.”
“You did not tell me the food would be this good when you told me we could eat with the rest of the outfit, man??su nar?.”
“Not that nickname again, Nocona,” Cade protested.
“What does it mean?”Erick asked.
“Wild child,” Cade replied before Nocona could.
“He was very uncivilized when we found him,” Nocona added primly.He took a bite of his dinner.“Tatsinuupi has already declared she will never cook again.”
“She may change her mind when Javier isn’t here,” Cade replied with a chuckle.“He’ll go with the hands who drive the herd to Abilene, and no one else cooks nearly as well as he does.”
“Perhaps, but in how many other ranches would we even be allowed at the table?”
“Wellspring is special,” Erick said.
“T?taat? Isa told me this was so, but it is only now that I am seeing how very true that is.”
Payne rose from his seat at one of the other tables.“Now that we’re all back”—he glared at Cade, who ignored him in favor of leaning into Erick’s shoulder—”we’ll leave for Abilene the day after tomorrow.Trujillo, you’re in charge of provisions.Make sure the chuckwagon has enough for the road there.We can resupply for the trip back after we sell the herd.Burke, as much as it pains me, you’re riding shotgun.We can’t afford to have an axle break and not be able to fix it.”
“You know you’d be lost without me,” Burke preened.“The rest of you will just have to miss me while I’m gone.”
“Yeah, miss you like dysentery,” someone called out to raucous laughter.
Erick’s mood turned suddenly sour.He’d counted on riding in the chuckwagon with Javier if Payne didn’t choose him as one of the trail hands.Now that option was closed to him.
Payne turned his eye on Burke, who subsided but continued to murmur under his breath to Javier.“The rest of the trail crew will consist of Webster, Logan, MacRae, Svensen, Bessette, Chiles, Beaufort—”
“At least we won’t have to suffer through Jesse’s cooking for the next three months!”someone called out.
“I’ll keep you fed while they’re gone—this year.”Becca Spencer stood and stared down Payne.“Next year I’ll be joining him on the drive.”
Grace, seated at Payne’s side, laughed.It was hard to hear over the chatter at Becca’s announcement, but it sounded like she repeated “women’s bunkhouse.”
Payne scowled and raised his hand for quiet.“Braddock, Quinn, Walsh.”
Erick’s heart fell.Those were the ten hands Payne had said he’d need.Cade squeezed his hand and started to speak, but Erick shook his head.There was no way he would let Cade refuse to take part in the drive.
“And Heller will wrangle the remuda,” Payne finished.
Erick’s gaze flew from Payne to Cade, almost afraid to hope.“I—I do not know that word,” he admitted, stunned.Did it mean he was going on the drive?
“It means the string of horses we take with us,” Cade explained.“We need at least two horses per hand to let them switch off, plus extras in case any of them run off or get hurt.”
“Told you you were in charge of the horses,” Payne rumbled.“’Less you don’t want to come along.”
