The Wildest Ride--A Novel

by Marcella Bell

  No, she and Granddad did it for extra cash. His regular ranch hands could handle their place and look out for Gran for the two to three weeks they were gone, hired out by neighboring ranchers with larger spreads and more cattle than they’d ever have. Usually they drove herds south from Oklahoma, into Texas, where everything was meant to be bigger.

  The drives gave them the money for extras, including Lil’s rodeo dreams. Travel, entrance fees, gear—none of it came cheap. More hopefuls dropped out for that reason than any other. Rodeo was a money pit until you started bringing home prizes, and for youth riders, available prizes tended to be more about scholarships and acknowledgment than liquid compensation.

  So when she’d gotten old enough, Granddad had started to take her along to make her work for it. With seven other men, they led herds from Muskogee to North Texas. Apart from competing in the rodeo and sitting in her gran’s kitchen, there wasn’t a time in Lil’s childhood that she’d been happier than on those drives.

  Lil had always been small, but the men didn’t go easy on her because of it—her granddad wouldn’t have it. There was too much work to be done. She rode drag first, the traditional dusty and smelly job set aside for greenhorns. As she got more experience, she took flank—even as new cowboys, sometimes twice her age, replaced her on drag. Back then, she floated from flank to flank, much like she did today, keeping an eye on the cows, especially looking out for signs of distress, injury, and stragglers. The country they had crossed through back then was vast and dry, a beige ocean meant for pounding hooves, flat-toothed grazers, and long sunsets. Today, tendrils of late spring clung to the landscape, the remaining flowers like little bits of purple lace left where they were thrown during that season’s explosive bursts of love.

  Lil snorted to herself. Love was a pretty strong word to use for the wild rutting most creatures got up to in the springtime, but wide-open spaces tended to have the effect of dragging her mind to poetry.

  Their turn was coming up, though, so the time for poetry was done.

  AJ had already begun to shift left, the lead cows following his steady direction.

  Lil consulted her GPS one last time before pulling wide from the herd for the turn. The cows responded with a chorus of disgruntled moos but turned left, and she grinned. They were good cows.

  AJ was good, too—cool, calm, collected, and all cowboy—like he’d done this a million times. A jolt of electricity that was becoming all too familiar traveled up Lil’s spine and she blew a breath out of her mouth. She didn’t have time for that. She needed to make sure the turn went off without a hitch.

  The herd spread as they moved, loosening their formation as they made the wide turn.

  Gray eyes narrowed, Lil scanned them. If one of them were going to bolt, this would be the time. She rode up and down each flank alongside the herd, noting that a few cows in the rear were slowing. She could speed them up when they straightened out again. For now she’d pulled in closer, gently pressuring the whole group to retighten their bunch.

  A yearling calf chose that as its moment to break away at the front. The creature’s panic took it an arc away from the rest of the herd at full speed to the sound of Lil cursing.

  Taking off after the escapee, Lil startled the cows she’d been near into a trot.

  There’s that, at least, she thought, racing after the calf.

  AJ twisted around in his saddle, calling out, “Alright back there?”

  Lil hollered back, “Yeah, just got a breakaway. Keep ’em going.”

  She cut through the cow’s path with a straight line, lasso shooting out to catch it around the neck.

  Pulling back, body angling against her horse, Lil slowed them all into an easy curve back toward the rest of the herd, grateful it had been as simple as all of that.

  The rest of the herd had mostly straightened out and nicely bunched, so there was no rush to get back to them. All the better to let the one who had spooked settle. It was obvious that something had gotten to her. Her large brown eyes were wild and wide, even still.

  Lil and the calf followed the footsteps of the rest of the herd, coming back to the spot where the cow had bolted in the first place. Keeping an eye out for signs of something that might spook a cow, Lil observed a small cluster of rocks hidden amongst the tall grass, but not much else. Not that it necessarily required a lot to startle a cow.

  They passed the rocks without issue and Lil let out a breath she hadn’t realized she’d been holding. She rolled her shoulders and neck and settled back into the ride.

  More rocks stuck out from the ground here and there, but for the most part, the way was smooth and clear.

  Lil held her reins lightly, trusting her horse to navigate the terrain, while keeping a firm grip on the cow’s lead. She wouldn’t put it past the startled youth to bolt again. Rocky ground wasn’t known for calming anxious cows.

  By now, the sky had taken on a dusty film—like daytime had given up fighting the mess and instead settled in for a nice glass of rosé. Twilight and sunset were a ways away yet, but their arrival was inevitable.

  Lil, Becky the horse, and the calf were about thirty feet behind the herd, nearly free of the rocky patch when the cow yanked away for the second time with a wild-eyed moo of panic. With her grip on the lead tight and her reins loose, Lil went flying off the horse.

  After a full rotation in the air, she hit the ground on her stomach hard, but held fast to the rope. The cow dragged her over the jagged stones, once again racing in an arc away from the path and the herd, mooing in a frenzy and stirring up the rest of the cattle at the same time. With considerable effort, Lil finally wrestled her body around to roll up and onto her butt, grounding her boot heels into the ground to bring them to a stop.

  For a moment she didn’t do anything except breathe hard and hold tight to the rope. The cow continued to moo in alarm, drawing other cows to break off from the herd and head her direction.

  Up ahead, AJ had turned and was making slow progress toward her, as was her Becky. She was proud of them both—Becky for keeping her cool and AJ for maintaining his slow and steady pace as he went. It would do no good for him to come harrying off after her and go scattering the herd further.

  The camera van was a speck on the horizon, lacking maneuverability on the terrain and contractually obligated to film at a distance unless given the preapproved warning signal. Lil almost laughed. Reality TV was a trip.

  As its brethren neared, the wayward calf lunged again, but Lil was ready. Her boots dug in and her arms strained, but the cow made it only a few more feet. Then, as suddenly as it had yanked, it gave up, the sudden lack of tension at the end of her rope sending Lil backward, her butt narrowly missing a particularly wicked rock that jutted out.

  Laughing at herself because it beat crying, she noted that the prairie ground here was remarkably hard and rocky and that her derrière had come out the worse for their meeting. Gingerly, she came to her feet, calf still secure.

  Cattle milled about around her, and Becky nosed at her shoulder, having beaten AJ’s sedate pace with her trot.

  After giving Becky’s nose a quick pat, Lil untied the calf, which promptly ambled off to join its mother, and remounted.

  She’d be feeling it tomorrow, and for the next few days after that, but she didn’t think she was any worse for the wear after her fall—other than pride maybe. She’d have made quite the sight, flying through the air after the calf like some kind of human kite at the end of a rope. It made for good television, at least. The Closed Circuit wouldn’t be disappointed with their footage.

  Twisting around in her saddle, she checked behind her, and sure enough, the camera van still trailed behind them, closer now, capturing their follies for the delight of viewers around the world. She saw too that AJ had nearly reached her, his expression relieved, she assumed, to see her whole and hearty after her tumble.

  Relat
ive to the kinds of falls she’d seen cowboys take on the range, she felt lucky. Nothing was broken or even permanently damaged.

  Her smile said as much, airy and full of the cowboy grace that came from walking away from a near miss with the skin still on your knees.

  AJ frowned at her, surprising her by not sharing in the moment.

  Her grin paused.

  Both of AJ’s eyebrows rose to his eyebrows, his eyes widening in panic.

  Lil realized in an instant that he hadn’t been looking at her at all, and that with whatever it was he had been looking at, something wasn’t right.

  Whipping back around in her saddle she saw exactly what had snagged his attention right as he whispered, voice dead serious, “Stampede.”

  19

  AJ had been concerned when Lil had broken away after the calf, and more so when she’d flown off her horse, but she’d seemed to have the problem well in hand.

  He’d only even planned to check on her for caution’s sake, trusting that the steadiness in her stance and the smile on her face were enough evidence to suggest she hadn’t sustained any serious damage.

  But when the cows started to get restless again, he knew something was wrong.

  As time was wont to do in the rodeo, seconds warped, truncating themselves even further than their regular momentary scale. In an instant, the cows went from milling about in mild disgruntlement to racing at full speed, every one pointed in the same wrong direction, a small, docile herd transformed into a single, enormously powerful beast.

  “GO!” Lil screamed, taking off after the herd.

  “How do we stop them?” AJ called, racing after her.

  “We don’t!” she hollered back. “We just hope they tire out soon!”

  And that’s what they did, racing to keep up with the cows until the herd exhausted itself, breaking up once again into clusters of cows.

  Horses and riders breathing hard, sun beginning to set overhead, AJ reached into his saddlebag for his GPS device while his heartbeat slowed.

  They’d veered off their course to the northwest in a large arc—almost a half circle.

  At his side, Lil’s tired rasp broke into his mapping. “The van’s gone.”

  Looking up and around, he realized she was right. They must’ve lost them in the process of keeping up with the herd. But while the circuit would be sorry to lose the footage, he and Lil had bigger fish to fry, most pressingly, the fact that their little stampede had taken them an extra twenty miles off course.

  “We’ve got a problem,” he said.

  She laughed, “Besides the fact we misplaced a camera crew?”

  Snorting, he retorted, “They lost us.” Sobering, he added, “But we do have a problem. We’re about twenty miles off course.”

  Lil’s curse ended in a long hiss.

  “That’s going to be tough to make up,” she said.

  He nodded, though it was an understatement. By more than doubling the distance they had to travel, their chances at placing in the challenge had all but vanished. And to think the whole drama had taken less than an hour.

  He smiled. “Good thing we’re the best there is.”

  Her smile was tired, but real, and seeing it, he felt oddly stronger, like coaxing the mirth out of her had given his own battery a charge.

  Straightening in her saddle, shadowed and fierce in the twilight, she said, “We’re not out of this yet. Here’s what we’re going to do. It’s early, but we’ll set up camp now. If we hit the hay early, we can wake early and get going before dawn. Current evidence to the contrary, these are well-trained cows. It’ll be a stretch, but if we push them double-time, we’ve still got a chance at a good time.”

  AJ nodded. “I like it. But before all that, I’m going to check you out.”

  “What?” Exasperation colored the word, as if she couldn’t believe he would stoop to cheap flirtation in a situation like this. Serious person that she was, she had yet to learn that there was always time for cheap flirtation.

  “You took a pretty bad fall there.” He held up two fingers. “How many fingers am I holding up?”

  The look she gave him was dry and dusty and just like the Lil he knew and loved. Or rather, didn’t really know at all but...enjoyed all the same.

  “We’re not doing this whole thing,” she said.

  His heart stuttered in his chest, his brain miscomputing her words for an instant, before he covered it all with a stretched-out drawl, languid and lazy as a cat. “We sure are.”

  Her mouth formed a stubborn line, but he continued on, unbothered. “We’re going through the whole rigmarole and if you don’t pass we’re heading straight in. Forget the cows.”

  She raised her eyebrow. “Oh, we are, are we?”

  He stared her dead in her eyes. “We sure as hell are. No competition is worth your life.”

  A flash of lightning streaked through her eyes, but she gave a sharp nod.

  “Two fingers,” she said.

  AJ’s smile returned. “Good. What’s your birthday?”

  “October 26.”

  “How old are you?”

  “Twenty-seven.” Her answers came fast and curt, which was reassuring since it was both like her and further sign that she wasn’t experiencing any obvious cognitive side effects.

  “What’s your address?” he asked, getting a little trickier with the questions.

  “1000 Bear Lane, Muskogee, Oklahoma 74447.”

  She rattled off the numbers without thinking, so he threw her a harder one. “What’s thirty-six times seventy-two?”

  “Seriously? I couldn’t tell you that before I hit my head.”

  AJ responded with a withering look and said, “Guess we’re going back in without the cows.”

  Lil glared at him silently for less time than it would have taken him to do the problem in his head and came back with, “Two-thousand, five-hundred and ninety-two. Happy?”

  AJ shook his head and took out his phone. He opened the calculator and nodded only after he confirmed the answer, grinning at her outrage. “Good work. You pass.”

  She snorted. “It wasn’t a bad fall.”

  “Better safe than sorry.”

  “This from a rodeo cowboy?” She lifted an eyebrow.

  “A man can be complex, Lil.”

  She laughed out loud. “Sure they can.”

  That she could smile like that, coltish and free even when she’d been thrown from her horse and they’d been blown badly off course, struck him as powerfully as the beauty of it did.

  “You sit,” he said. “I’ll set up camp.”

  She raised an eyebrow. “Do you even know how to set up a camp?”

  AJ mirrored her expression, “Didn’t know you had to own a ranch to go camping.”

  “Who knows what you people get up to in the city...” Lil’s words echoed between them, laced with electricity, and he decided it was a good time to set up camp. Clearing her throat, she wiped her palms on the front of her jeans, and added, “We’ll set up camp together.”

  And that was just what they did.

  20

  “Who taught you how to start a fire?” Lil’s voice was filled with a strange combination of respect and confusion.

  The fire came to life and AJ smiled. “The Old Man. He forced us all out enough times that we learned how to camp.”

  “Your dad?” she asked.

  AJ shook his head in a firm negative. “No. Henry Bowman—the founder of CityBoyz.”

  “The CityBoyz are the ‘us,’ then?”

  AJ nodded, adding the rest of the smaller kindling to the fire. “D and I were part of the first group to go through the program. There’ve been eight more since.”

  “I’ve never seen anyone start a fire like that,” she said, coming back to it, and he understood.

 
He’d only ever seen The Old Man do it like that.

  Her husky voice slid over his skin like silk, which he tried to ignore while his body ignored him.

  “The Old Man is one of a kind,” he said, escaping the moment in business. “What sounds good for dinner? We’ve got beans and chili and s’mores supplies.”

  Lil stared at him blankly. “You’re joking.”

  AJ held up a bag of marshmallows. “Gladly, no.”

  Lil closed her eyes on a sigh. “That is seriously the least cowboy thing ever.”

  “I don’t know. Chasing a wild herd of cattle off course seems pretty cowboy to me. So, you want the chili, then?”

  “Absolutely no to chili, and they’re hardly wild.”

  AJ laughed. “What do you want, then?” he asked, even though he knew the answer.

  When she mumbled her reply, AJ cupped his ear. “What was that? I couldn’t hear you.”

  “You’re an asshole.”

  “Hurtful, but audible. Why don’t you try again with your dinner request? What does the big bad cowboy want for dinner?”

  Lil muttered, “S’mores,” and AJ let out a whoop.

  In the darkness, the cows mooed.

  Though she obviously resisted it, across the fire Lil smiled, bringing her fingers up to pinch the bridge of her nose, a chuckle escaping as she moved.

  AJ forgot about the s’mores.

  He forgot about the challenge.

  He forgot about CityBoyz and the gaping lifetime stretching out ahead of him, and for the first time since he’d found it, he forgot about rodeo.

  The only thing on his mind was figuring out the key to unlocking that easy, private, smile. Something told him it might be the kind of mystery that took years to unravel.

  “Hand that stick over,” Lil demanded, breaking into his swirling thoughts.

  She sat close to the fire, legs crisscrossed, arm outstretched. He looked down at the marshmallow stick he held before he handed it to her.