Shag tipped his head and considered the sky.
“The sun don’t reach down to these old bones the way it used to.” He shook his head in bemusement. “Maybe Ruth’s got the right of it. When I start to feeling the cold when the sun’s shining and the first snow ain’t come, maybe I am getting to be an old man.”
Nick knew better than to disagree with Ruth Shagwell in her husband’s hearing—or in this case to agree with her, either. He held silent.
“Ruth’s niece in Chelico wants us to come live with her and her brood.” Shag grimaced. “Well, a man can get used to anything, I suppose. But I’m not leaving the Circle T the way things stand now. Rachel Terhune’s a strong woman, but she needs someone to rely on. Someone who’s not after her land, not after getting her to marry up. Someone willing to work hard and do what’s right.”
Nick felt his face go rigid. Brujo shifted restively, the saddle creaking with the movement.
But the foreman continued to stare straight ahead.
Like a fool. Nick had listened to a bartender’s tale and let himself feel sorry for a poor widow woman caught between two big spreads. He would help her while he waited to buy his land and before he had to get to Texas to buy a herd, and then he’d be on his way. That’s the way he’d planned it. That’s the way it would be.
When they put the last steer in the boxcar in Hammer Butte, he’d pull himself free of the bog hole he’d stepped into the first time he set eyes on Rachel Terhune—and she’d set eyes on him—and he’d walk away. Because he’d be damned if he’d sign on long-term to look after her with the fatherly concern Shag described. Nick Dusaq was no damn father, and he was no damn gelding.
But she wasn’t the sort of woman you could roll in the hay a time or two, then ride away from without a thought. Especially not since he wouldn’t be riding all that far when he left the Circle T. Surely not far enough to escape Shag’s wrath if the foreman ever thought Rachel Terhune had been wronged. And not far enough, either, to outrun his own yen for this woman. Better never to give into the itch than to risk bleeding to death from the scratching of it.
Giving no indication he sensed anything besides lack of interest in Nick’s continued silence. Shag scanned the herd, and gave a deep, satisfied sigh.
“Good-looking beef,” he said. “We’ll trail ‘em easy to the railroad—I’ve got a route with water every camp and good grazing along the way, so they should arrive looking as rested and well-fed as a bunch of politicians.”
Nick gave a grunt of amusement, mixed with relief at the change in topic.
“Looks like we’ll do all right this year,” Shag went on. “A damn sight better than we thought after the losses last winter. And if nature’s a mite kinder this winter, we’ll be headed the right way.”
“You think it was all nature responsible for Circle T losses last winter?”
Nick felt Shag’s look but didn’t return it.
“What’re you thinking, Nick?”
“I’m thinking there’s two big outfits sitting alongside the Circle T and both would benefit from seeing it go under, especially the one who succeeded in grabbing hold of the range, the good water and—” He’d almost said the owner. “The rest. And I’m thinking nature wasn’t nearly so hard on the Lazy W and KD brands last winter as it was on the Circle T.”
Shag said nothing for a long time. “Is there anything more to this than just your thinking?”
“Not much,” Nick acknowledged. “Except some rumblings from men who worked spring roundup for you and stuck.”
“What’d they say?”
“Nothing direct. Nothing I’d ask them to repeat. A word here and there that adds up to having some cattle that carried Circle T brand before roundup having a different mark after.”
“You didn’t ask the boys outright?” Shag’s frown betrayed concern.
“No. If they’d known for sure, they’d have gone to you. They were blowing off steam about suspicions. No need to call them to account on that”
“Good, good. Because I don’t see how those suspicions could be right. Round here, Nick, there’re men from a lot of outfits mixed together at a general roundup come spring, with reps from other outfits all on hand. They’d all have to look away, every last one. I just can’t see it.”
“Not if you worked it right. Not if you had the right men cooperating.” Nick faced Shag, and saw that the idea had occurred to the foreman. “Not if the Circle T’s representative was paid to work it that way. Somebody brings in a cow, says this brand’s not real clear, could be Circle T. All the rep does is say, ‘No, that’s Lazy W or KD,’ and the Circle T’s lost a cow and calf. Wouldn’t take many to make it seem you’d had a real bad winter.”
“Damn hard to prove,” the older man said with some regret.
“Those men you hired this spring that went over to Dunn after roundup, what were their names?”
“Bert Overton and Matthew Sprewell.”
“You ever see them before this spring?”
“No.”
“Where’d they come from?”
“They had a letter from a rancher down in Colorado.”
“Thomas Dunn has holdings in Colorado, doesn’t he?”
The heavy silence was an answer of a kind.
Nick knew Shag had argued long and loud over a letter Rachel Terhune drafted to Dunn about his visitor’s abuse of Fanny. In the end, her temper cooled and Shag prevailed, getting the letter torn up and coaching her into a more restrained protest. That drew a response expressing Dunn’s sorrow that his visitor’s more manly approach to animals perturbed her womanly sensibilities. And neatly suggesting she was entirely too sensitive to participate in such a rough business.
Every hand heard her reaction, since she’d read the letter in the office while they ate supper. They’d also heard Shag argue that venting her anger in a return letter could be a costly indulgence.
“Yeah, Dunn has holdings there,” the foreman confirmed. He shook his head. “There’s suspicion, and there’s proof.”
“There’re things you can know without having to prove them.”
“Can’t argue that. But then what do you do? It can be right dangerous to act on something you know without being able to prove it. Especially dealing with a certain kind of man.”
Nick looked to the golden glow of the horizon. “Sometimes a man’s got to live dangerously.”
Shag sighed. “Sometimes a man can’t afford to.”
* * * *
The critical first day of trailing the beef herd was nearly over and it had gone well. Rachel was pleased.
Getting cattle into the habit of going along placidly won half the battle. But it took vigilance. Because a few of the more cantankerous steers would take any excuse to start running—a loud sound, a stray leaf scudding across the ground, a jackrabbit popping out of the sagebrush—and once started, the running could become an epidemic, with outbreaks all along the trail.
So far there’d been no symptoms.
They eased toward the grazing ground Shag had set for the first night’s camp. Rachel rode along the herd telling the men where to head. She’d reached the rear of the herd where Nick took his turn with the drags.
It was the least desirable job on the trail, with the cowhand sifting through the dust of several thousand hooves. Top hands could insist on not taking that duty. But Nick hadn’t done that
At least with the slow pace, the dust didn’t churn its worst. A strong crosswind helped, too, though the hands riding leeward of the herd might disagree. Plus, a beef herd like this didn’t have the old, sick, weak animals that could make riding the drags like herding turtles.
But as she spotted Nick astride the gray named Marley, Rachel was reminded that a beef herd’s drags could include ornery and sly steers. Nick and Marley faced one right now.
As if he knew what awaited him at the end of his journey, the brindled steer had sliced away from the herd and scooted into a dry creekbed. But Marley and Nick stood in his wa
y. Each step the steer took to pass, they moved, as one, to block. And each maneuver turned the steer toward the direction Nick wanted him to go.
Rachel watched the dance of animals and man from a little distance for a full two minutes before she caught the flick of Nick’s eyes coming up to her. Had he known all along she was there?
The thought barely had formed when everything seemed to happen at once.
The spotted steer, in a sudden frenzy to escape, ran a dozen yards along the creekbed, with Marley at his flank. Just as the horse passed a high part of the bank, the steer turned and charged.
Horse and rider were caught between the cut bank and the slicing sharp points of a pair of horns backed by an enraged package of muscle, bone and beef.
Even as she spurred Dandy forward and readied her rope, Rachel saw that Nick had his lariat at hand, but didn’t have room to swing because of the earthen wall behind him. Nick and Marley both twisted in a seemingly impossible contortion as the steer turned and dipped his head, then jerked it up, as if trying to scoop out flesh from man and beast with the point of its horn.
Rachel swung her rope in the familiar overhand motion without hesitation. It cut through the gusting wind and settled surely over the widespread horns. She snugged the rope, and that jerked the steer’s head away from Nick and Marley. Pressure on the reins brought Dandy from full acceleration to a shuddering halt, his hoofs sending up spurts of loose earth.
But the danger wasn’t past. Her rope could hold the steer away from Marley, but she had no way to stop him if he charged her and Dandy, who stood crossways in the narrow creekbed. The steer tried to yank free of the rope, turned in the direction of this new frustration and took a lumbering step toward her.
Before he completed a second step, Nick’s rope whistled through the air, and looped around the steer’s rear hooves.
Nick had put the room her maneuver gained him to good use. The steer was well and truly caught between ropes held taut in opposite directions.
“Back to the herd,” Nick shouted.
They dragged the animal over the loose dirt the short distance to where the last of the drags slowly passed. They released him, then waited a tense moment to see if he would round on them again.
“If you do,” Rachel muttered to the heedless steer, “you’ll be tomorrow’s dinner.”
But the brindled steer saw the community of his brethren moving away and lumbered off to join them, his temporary rebellion forgotten.
A stream of breath escaped Rachel. She felt as if she’d held that breath from the instant she’d seen the horns swing around toward Nick.
By one accord, they moved their horses to the windbreak provided by the cut bank. Nick dismounted immediately, stripped off one glove and ran an assessing hand down his horse’s side.
“Did he catch a horn?” Rachel asked, repeating his actions and joining the examination.
“Don’t think so.”
A few more minutes satisfied them both.
Relieved and feeling the welcome letdown after the tension, Rachel dropped to the sloped ground and, in a most unladylike manner, propped her elbows on her bent knees.
“Good thing that happened away from the herd. Could have started a run,” she said.
Nick grunted agreement from behind her.
A second sound drew her head around to where he was retrieving a canteen from his saddlebags. She caught the tail end of a wince.
“How about you, Nick? Did he catch you?”
When he turned to her, a glint of devilment in his usually impassive eyes surprised Rachel.
“Just now thinking of that?” He sat beside her, his long legs extending farther down the slope than hers. Another grunt indicated a new soreness, perhaps from the twisting move he’d used. “I could have bled to death waiting for you to get around to me.”
He’d been her first fear; the image of that horn slicing through his flesh had spurred her as surely as she had spurred Dandy, and had dug a good deal deeper. But that hardly bore thinking about, much less speaking of. Instead, she shot back. “It just now occurred to me that if you’d caught a horn, I’d most likely be the one who had to minister to you, and put blowfly medicine to your wound.”
“I can think of worse things.”
For the second time in as many sentences, he stunned her. Did he mean to imply he would have liked her to minister to him? Or was she loco?
“Well, I can’t,” she blurted out. “It stinks to high heaven. I hate using the stuff.”
For the first time in her acquaintance with him Nick Dusaq laughed out loud.
It was a startling sound. Low and a little rusty, especially when it was interrupted by a cough. When he coughed a second time, she took the canteen, uncorked it and held it to his mouth.
His hands came up to cup hers as he drank.
The sight of his hands—one gloved in worn rawhide, the other showing marks of rough usage on the bare, dark skin—covering hers; one also gloved in worn rawhide, the other unpampered, but so much paler and more delicate than his—mingled with the sensation of his enveloping touch, as if the two senses had tangled together like bits of ribbon in a heap. She saw, she felt. And which sense recorded which sensation she didn’t know. The heat of his flesh, the faint coolness of the canteen under her palm, the line of his long fingers, the rub of rawhide over the back of her hand, the flex of his palm against the covering of her gloved hand.
She jerked her gaze away, but that gave no escape. Her eyes fastened on the workings of his throat, the slide and rise of his Adam’s apple as he swallowed the liquid.
Then the canteen lowered, his hands guiding hers in the movement. A sheen of moisture remained on his lips, blending with the dust at one corner to form a streak of mud that tempted her to rub it away with a finger. And she looked up to find his black eyes searing into her.
Still with his eyes on her, he wiped the back of his hand across his mouth, catching the streak, though not all the moisture. One-handed, he untied his bandanna and used the corner to wipe the rim of the canteen. She watched as he set it back in her unresisting hands. He wrapped her fingers around it, and raised it to her lips, her eyes following the motion until they rose to meet his.
Her throat abruptly felt drought-dry, and she squeezed her eyes shut as she took a quick swallow of water. Almost too quick, as she had to take a sharp indrawn breath to keep from coughing.
Only when she lowered the canteen did she realize his hands still cupped hers. She tried to read his eyes. But he was looking down, with his face an unrevealing pattern of angles and lines.
She followed the direction of his gaze, to where his hands enfolded hers. His ungloved fingers slid inside the flared cuff of her glove, across her inner wrist, returned as lightly, then repeated the caress. A movement of his thumb turned down the cuff, and his fingers delved inside, tracing shivering lines of sensation along her palm.
Lassitude spread over Rachel, a longing to close her eyes and drift on this current of sensation. Such a small touch to make her feel so alive and tingling. Such a gentle touch. So different from the harsh hold that had bruised this same wrist not many weeks before. So different, too, from the way she had touched him to break his hold on Harris. So very different . . .
A faint, shrill warning broke through her pleasure.
Her eyelids, drifting lower, shot up, and she saw the intense, taut cast of his face with a clutch of alarm. His gaze rested on her lips, as if they could quench a thirst the water had not. He slowly raised his eyes to meet hers, the sleepy eyelids not hiding a burn of emotions in his black eyes that was far from gentle.
She would have held her ground against a rattler, stilling her instincts because she knew she had to in order to survive. But she couldn’t with this man. She scrambled up, overturning the canteen.
Only when she was standing, no longer touching or being touched, did she pause to draw in a deep breath, and cover her escape as best she could.
“I have to, uh, get to camp.�
� She hurriedly brushed off her seat and pressed her hat more firmly on her head. “See everything’s set for night watch and all.”
He rose slowly, recorked the canteen and shook out his bandanna. She mounted Dandy.
“Thanks for coming to my aid, Mrs. Terhune.” Only a quarter of his face was visible as he nearly turned his back on her, but she heard him clearly.
His tone made her stomach clench. “No thanks needed. It’s nothing I wouldn’t—”
“I know.” His hard words cut her off, and she stared as he mounted Marley then turned to face her. His eyes were polished, black marble that no emotion could penetrate. “I know,” he repeated, quieter, but with the same sharp edge. “It’s nothing you wouldn’t have done for anyone else.”
An irrational fury tempted her. She wanted to chip at that marble in his eyes and his soul, to break it apart and crumble it in her fingers.
“That’s true,” she said before spurring Dandy, her back as ramrod straight as her mother could ever have wished. “But I was going to say that it was nothing I wouldn’t have expected you to do for me if circumstances were reversed.”
* * * *
The drive continued as smoothly as Shag had predicted.
The third night they’d camped near Chelico. Nick rode into town to complete his business with Armstrong and returned in time for midnight watch, with the deed to the old Wallace place in his bags. If anyone noticed he’d been gone, nobody commented to him.
Four more nights and they were within a day’s ride of their destination.
This morning, Rachel Terhune had gone ahead with Fred’s camp wagon. The herd was trail-hardened, so her absence was hardly noticeable, Nick told himself. When they got to evening camp, not far outside the burgeoning town of Hammer Butte where they would ship out the cattle, she wasn’t there.
“Thought Mrs. Terhune came with you,” Joe-Max said to Fred.
Nick didn’t move from his spot turning a rib of beef over the fire, but his attention was sharp enough to hear Fred’s breath as he prepared to answer.
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