Sylvie's Cowboy Read online

  Sylvie lifted Maude from waist to shoulder high.

  Walt grinned.

  Butch drooled.

  Sylvie lifted Maude as high overhead as she could.

  Looking from Butch to Walt, eyes wide with fear, Sylvie stammered, “I couldn’t ... I had to ... Maude and I didn’t have anywhere else to go....”

  “Yeah, I sorta been expectin’ ya,” Walt said, lifting Maude into his arms. He looked at the little dog. “Maude, is it? Lord, that’s perfect. Looks just like her.”

  “Just like whom?” asked Sylvie.

  “Maude Stokes. Old busybody, lives in that yeller house where you stopped and gave her gossip fodder to last into next month. She always gave Harry—and me—a hard time.”

  He placed Maude on the ground and restrained Sylvie with an outstretched arm while the two dogs disappeared playfully around the corner of the house. Sylvie stared after Maude, obviously concerned. Meanwhile, Walt studied Sylvie’s motley car.

  “Nuther one of Harry’s ‘classics,’ huh?” he said.

  “What? Oh, yeah. ‘Harry’s Folly’ I call it,” answered Sylvie.

  Walt nodded. “Yeah. Can’t park it here, though. I mean, it’s okay ‘til we get ya unloaded, but I’ll show ya a place in the truck shed to park it.”

  Sylvie tried to put her puppy out of her thoughts for the moment. Butch had probably swallowed Maude whole by now, anyway. Sylvie straightened her shoulders and prepared to enter her new domain.

  “Would you have someone bring in my things, please? I’d like to freshen up.” She sauntered past Walt, went into his house, and closed the door. Walt looked at the closed door for three long seconds, then shrugged and began unloading the Volkswagen.

  Sylvie was using the bathroom mirror and touching up her makeup when Walt staggered past the bathroom door, navigating the hallway from the living room to a bedroom on his left. He entered the room, dropped the luggage on the floor, and pushed past Sylvie, who had followed him in. She gave the bedroom the same horrified look she had given his dog.

  “I can’t sleep in this room!”

  The only answer was the front door slamming as Walt went out for another load of luggage. Sylvie took a long, slow look around the bedroom.

  She saw a plain, heavy, wooden bed, dresser, wardrobe, Navajo blanket for a bedspread, and old Venetian blinds on the windows. The antlers of a ten-point buck, a bearskin with head and claws intact, a moose head, mountain lion bust, big horn sheep trophy, and rifle rack crowded the walls. The front door slammed again; Walt returning.

  Thinking out loud, Sylvie murmured to herself, “My own father was a cold-blooded killer! The man who cried in ‘Bambi’ when I was seven went out and blasted warm, fuzzy creatures to kingdom come the minute my back was turned!”

  Walt schlepped into the room and dumped a final load of luggage on top of the first. He leaned against the doorjamb to catch his breath.

  “There are ... are parts ... and things ... of dead animals hanging on the walls!” Sylvie told him, as if warning him to run for his life. He didn’t respond. She clarified for him: “I can’t sleep in this room!”

  “You want to sleep in mine?” he said.

  Sylvie looked at him as if he had asked her to swallow live cockroaches.

  “That’s settled,” he said. “Somethin’ to drink?”

  “Sparkling water, please. Swiss, not French. With a slice of lemon. Make sure the lemon is freshly sliced, not sitting in the refrigerator since breakfast. And crushed ice, no cubes.” Sylvie bent to inspect the Navajo blanket for vermin. She didn’t see the look Walt gave her before he shook his head and left the room.

  Walt entered his homespun, cozy kitchen whistling “Your Cheatin’ Heart.” He plundered through a cabinet of mismatched glasses, found one tinted green, and put it on the Formica counter.

  He opened his refrigerator and studied a case of diet root beer, many jars of homemade preserves and pickles, fresh vegetables and fruit, bread, and sandwich condiments. No sparkling water, Swiss or French. No lemons, sliced or otherwise.

  Closing the refrigerator door, Walt filled the green glass with tap water. He opened a cupboard, found the Alka-Seltzer, broke a tablet in half, and dropped it into the glass. Predictably, it fizzed.

  He scooped a yellow squash from a basket on the floor and impaled it on a countertop cutting board with the hunting knife from his belt. Then he sliced a thin wagon-wheel shape off it and, using his knife, poked the piece of squash to the bottom of the green glass of Alka-Seltzer.

  Whistling all the while, he shed his work shirt and then his sweat-stained undershirt. He wrapped a handful of ice cubes into his undershirt. He slipped his outer shirt back on, hefted the ice-filled undershirt, and opened the kitchen door.

  He stepped out onto the porch and bashed the undershirt against the concrete stoop in rhythm with the tune he was whistling. Voilá! Crushed ice.

  In her new bedroom, Sylvie was staring at the walls and muttering to herself, “Why not just bury them all at once instead of keeping pieces of them in the house? It looks like Druids have been sacrificing in here.” She looked heavenward and addressed the Higher Power: “This is not what I meant when I asked to be smothered in fur!”

  In the kitchen, Walt scooped crushed ice from his undershirt and dribbled it into the green class. He tossed the wet undershirt into the sink.

  In the bedroom, Sylvie was controlling the urge to cry.

  In the kitchen, Walt held the green glass up to the light and decided it would do.

  When Walt arrived in the bedroom and presented the green glass to Sylvie, she had regained her composure with a stalwart effort.

  “I could just take them down and give them a decent burial,” she suggested. “Then I can redo the room the way I want it—in Laura Ashley or Ralph Lauren, maybe.”

  “Yeah. Knock yourself out, Mrs. Audubon,” said Walt. He gestured to her drink. “We’re all out of little umbrellas. Listen, I gotta go run some errands in town. You just settle in. Help yourself to anything you want in the kitchen.”

  After he left the room, Sylvie sipped the Alka-Seltzer/squash concoction from the green glass. She made a sour face. “Oh, great,” she said. “Neither one of us can cook.” And she continued sipping the drink and surveying the room with little hope for the future.

  CHAPTER SEVEN - THE SNAKE

  At the Palm Beach Polo Club, it was just another day in paradise for the rich, the filthy rich, and the ridiculously rich. Leslye Larrimore and a helmeted polo player walked across the perfectly green, perfectly groomed polo field—which was a neat trick for Leslye since she was dressed in haute couture as usual, right down to her six-inch heels. The polo player was Daniel Stern, wearing knee-high black riding boots, carrying in his hand the Ostrich-skin dress boots out of which he had changed.

  “So, Sylvie’s Ferrari is a total loss, and the insurance company swears the policy was canceled at the customer’s request,” said Dan. “Sounds like we’ve got a poltergeist.”

  “Just like the one that wire transferred half the money out of our King’s Cay account in the Bahamas yesterday,” Leslye responded.

  “Right.”

  They arrived at a bus-long horse trailer surrounded by a string of eight grazing polo ponies. Dan stashed his Ostrich boots in the trailer. He inspected his mounts and gear as they talked. “Maybe Harry’s ghost is making l-o-o-o-o-ng distance phone calls. ‘H. P. phone home,’ eh?”

  “It’s not funny,” said Leslye.

  “It’s a computer glitch with the insurance company. And with the bank. You’ll get them both corrected. Relax. Take another pill.”

  Leslye subsided a little. She withdrew an envelope from her purse and offered it to him. “You’re right,” she said. “Mistakes happen. We’ll get it corrected. I don’t know why I’m overreacting. Too much caffeine, probably. Here’s what I really came to show you.”

  Dan retrieved his riding helmet from the trailer and wedged it under an elbow while he opened the document. It
was an attractive brochure featuring colorful drawings of a high-rise building called Pace Tower. “Very nice,” he said. “Good work, Les. Looks like a million dollars—or maybe a hundred million.”

  Leslye smiled. “I’ve got a Japanese conglomerate interested. Ichi-Nobuko. They want to sign preliminary acquisition agreements next week. We’re talking a ten million cash deposit to hold in our escrow account.”

  “Ten mil. Nice,” said Dan. “Just about pay off the rest of the crooked bureaucrats.”

  Leslye snatched the brochure and stuffed it back into her purse. “Watch your mouth! Everything’s a joke to you, isn’t it!”

  “Calm down. There’s nobody here but us ponies.” He put one arm on her shoulder to soothe and direct her, and he led a saddled pony with the other hand as they walked across the field toward the grandstands.

  …

  A little over an hour west of the Palm Beach Polo Club was a different world, a world of wildlife and wild country, of farms and ranches and small towns, and horses that would mostly not play polo.

  Outside his barn, Walt McGurk had saddled two horses while the mismatched dogs, Butch and Maude, played nearby. Sylvie approached from the house. She wore high, flat-heeled, glossy black riding boots, silk shirt, and jodhpurs. Under her arm were a riding helmet and leather crop.

  “How long will this take?” she asked.

  “What do you care? You’re unemployed.”

  “I am not unemployed. I am at leisure. There is a vast difference.”

  Walt looked her up and down, unimpressed. “Honey, with Harry’s money you were at leisure. Without it, you’re unemployed. Either way, we’ll be back by supper. Course, if it’s an imposition, you don’t have to go at all.”

  Sylvie plopped her helmet atop her head. “I think one should be familiar with one’s assets. I did not ask to be a partner in this ... this enterprise, but partner I am, and I intend to take an active role in making it profitable. Leg up, please.”

  Walt boosted her into the saddle. He gestured to her helmet. “What’s that for?” He swung into his saddle and brought his horse close alongside hers.

  “So I won’t crack my skull if I fall,” she said.

  “You fall a lot?”

  “Never!”

  Walt removed Sylvie’s helmet over her squeal of protest and tossed it into the tack shed a few feet away. He sidled his horse close to the shed door, took an old straw cowboy hat from a nail on the shed wall, then leaned over and smushed it onto her head.

  “Reckon you’re more likely to get sunstroke than a concussion. And when it rains, this’ll keep the water outta yer collar, too.”

  He led the way. They walked their horses out of the ranch yard and onto a narrow trail through trees and brush.

  Walt turned in his saddle. “Next time we get to town, we’ll do somethin’ about them boots, too. Hold your reins in one hand.”

  “I’m used to riding English,” Sylvie protested.

  “Fine for you, but this ain’t an English horse. This here’s a Florida Cracker horse, and he knows his bidniss. He don’t need you to confuse him.”

  Sylvie complied, moving her reins to one hand with elaborate gestures.

  Walt increased their pace from a walk to a trot. Recalling a steep dip in the trail ahead, he though it chivalrous to warn Sylvie. If she kept bouncing loosely in her saddle, she’d part company with her horse when the cayuse did a quick-step into the six-foot ditch and back up again. Walt shouted over his shoulder, “Ride yer stirrups!”

  “What?” she said.

  The earth dropped away, Sylvie’s horse bounced down into the ditch, and Sylvie tumbled arse-over-teakettle into the grass.

  She was standing up, rubbing her backside, when Walt rode back to her, leading her horse.

  “Thought you said you never fall off,” he deadpanned.

  “And I thought if you didn’t want to ride English, you’d at least try to speak it,” she said.

  Walt dismounted and gave her a leg up onto her horse. “All I said was, ‘ride yer stirrups.’ You apparently took that to mean somethin’ acrobatic.”

  Sylvie looked daggers at him as he mounted his own horse. “Why don’t I go first for a while?” she suggested.

  “Suit yerself. Just stay on the trail, right on through there.”

  Sylvie started off. The trail wound through pines, vines, spiky palmetto, and moss-draped live oaks. She pushed a low-hanging, limber branch forward and let it go as she passed it. She smiled at the resulting thump and “Oof!” behind her.

  Half a day later, Sylvie, the horses, and the dogs rested beside a lazy creek while Walt prepared lunch with his all-purpose knife.

  “So, how do you like your ranch so far, City Mouse?” he asked.

  “It’s bigger than I thought,” she said. “And smaller, in a way. I expected more ... I don’t know ... corn as high as an elephant’s eye, amber waves of grain, I don’t know.”

  “This ain’t Kansas, Dorothy.”

  Sylvie gave him a look. He concentrated on his lunch preparations.

  Sylvie said, “I haven’t seen many cows.”

  Walt chuckled. “Beef ain’t the money maker it once was. All your friends in the hoi polloi are eatin’ raw fish instead of steak nowadays. We got a few head of cattle in partnership at a dairy up at Okeechobee, and we’ve kept one cranky old bull whose sorta a pet, but I’m doing better with horses. Been marketin’ to rodeos, polo clubs, Ocala breeders—”

  “Polo clubs!” Sylvie interrupted. “How far is it from here to Palm Beach? Wouldn’t it boost our profits if I could get us some buyers?”

  Walt tossed her an old coffee can from his saddle bags. “Boost lunch if you could get us some water from the creek. To answer your first question, it’s ‘bout 80 miles from here to Palm Beach. Take you a good hour to get there if you had a fast car, which you don’t.” He continued with his lunch chores.

  Sylvie rose, holding the disgusting coffee can at arm’s length, and walked toward the creek. “We’d split the profits fifty-fifty if I sold some horses, right?” she asked.

  Walt stood as Sylvie neared the creek bank, and as he came up from the ground he palmed his pistol from his boot. He leveled it in Sylvie’s direction as she leaned over the water. “I’ll regret this,” he muttered, “but I did promise Harry I’d take care of you.”

  “What?” said Sylvie.

  Ka-boom! Walt fired.

  Sylvie jerked around, stunned, deafened, and terrified. She stared at him as he walked toward her, still holding the smoking pistol. Two feet away, Walt stooped and lifted from the grass the headless, writing body of a deadly copperhead. Sylvie gaped at the snake. Then she fainted.

  Walt was cooking over a campfire when Sylvie awoke and found herself laid out on saddle blankets. Maude licked Sylvie’s face. Sylvie looked around, orienting herself, then spoke to Walt. “You killed it?”

  “Deader’n dirt. He would’ve done the same for you, I reckon,” he said, stirring his culinary creation.

  Vaguely, Sylvie murmured, “I don’t approve of killing.”

  “Maybe I shoulda hung back and let y’all discuss it.” He dished up a bowl of chili from the pot over the fire. He brought it to her. “Here. Help ya get yer feet back under ya.”

  He went back to the fireside, served himself, and dug into his chili. Sylvie stared at him, food untouched in her hand. She said, “Did you ever ... have you ever killed a person ... a human being?”

  He looked at her and at the chili in her bowl. “Not with my cookin’,” he said.

  He went back to eating.

  Sylvie collected herself and took a bite. She survived. She took another.

  CHAPTER EIGHT - THE GAME

  The ladies in the stands at the Palm Beach polo grounds looked like Sax Fifth Avenue models dressed for a photo shoot at Tara. Every woman in the place, with the possible exception of one illegal immigrant who was cleaning the bathrooms, looked like a million bucks. Okay, five million, if you added the value
of their jewelry to the cost of their ensembles, mani-pedis, facelifts, tummy tucks, hairstyles, and stunning wide-brimmed hats.

  Leslye Larrimore and Sylvie Pace were no exceptions. Both ladies glowed in the sunshine and basked in the admiration of envious fellow spectators. Sylvie, newly impoverished, had been forced to wear a dress one or two people had seen before, but she was counting on their discretion. How gauche it would be to announce to the competition that one of the belles was too slight in the bankroll to be premiering a new frock at the day’s match!

  Blending with, and even outclassing some of, the polo spectators, Sylvie and Leslye surveyed the players as they took the field for warm-ups.

  Leslye spoke confidentially near Sylvie’s ear, “So, how are you really, after two weeks of the working-class culture?”

  “I’ll make it,” Sylvie replied with chipper tone and perky smile. “Coming here helps. Seeing you. Friends.”

  “And how’s the cowboy? Bad as you expected?”

  “Worse. Les, you cannot believe it, but less than two hours from here is another planet, where Visigoths rule and I’m forced to sleep beneath the remains of their kills.” Sylvie pointed at one of the players on the field. “There’s Dan. You know, I wonder if he wouldn’t be in the market for a new horse.”

  Suddenly Sylvie’s eye was drawn to one of the players taking the field for the opposing team. She inhaled sharply and grabbed Leslye’s arm. “Great Caesar’s ghost,” Sylvie whispered, “would you look at that!”

  “What?” Leslye craned her neck to follow Sylvie’s gaze to the end of the field and the opposing team.

  “There! Number three for the other side. It’s him, isn’t it?” Sylvie shook Leslye’s arm for emphasis.

  “I don’t think so,” said Leslye, carefully removing Sylvie’s fingers from her arm. “It just looks like him.”

  “No, it doesn’t. It doesn’t look like him at all. I’ve never seen him look like that, but it is him. That lying son of a gun! He never told me he played, and he certainly never said anything about coming here!”