The Renegades: Cole

by Dellin, Genell

  She stared at him.

  “Yeah. But then I wasn’t making anybody scream with pain or killing anyone.”

  “Get over that,” he said. “If it wasn’t them screaming and dying, it’d be us.”

  “I guess so.”

  “I know so.”

  She took another drink of the bracing coffee and didn’t answer.

  He looked at her for a long time with a hard, keen stare.

  “Aurora,” he said, “you need me until we can take care of Gates and you can learn to shoot. After that, you’ll make up your mind whether you want to keep your cattle and your ranch or give them away to the first sidewinder that might scream or die if you shoot him.”

  For the first time since the attack, she laughed a little.

  He smiled, too, but his eyes didn’t.

  “If you think you can or you think you can’t, either way you’ll be right,” he said. “It’s up to you to choose.”

  I choose that you stay with me. I choose you don’t leave when we find my ranch, no matter what kind of man you are.

  And that thought held the most terror of all.

  Chapter 10

  The next afternoon when they headed north to find Cookie and send the chuck wagon on to make camp, the wind rose in a sudden, whistling gale. It made the horses dance sideways and Aurora grab her hat to tighten its strings beneath her chin before it finally, gradually lowered to the boisterous force it had been all day, blowing steadily against every step they made. Scattered drops of rain slapped their faces.

  “That’s all we need—a downpour for camp tonight,” Aurora said wearily.

  “Ah, now, what’s a little rain? I’d think you’d like that better than a gunfight.”

  “I would. I’d get more sleep, even in a flood, than I did last night,” she said.

  “Nobody’s fault but your own,” he said. “I was on guard right outside your wagon.”

  “It wasn’t that,” she said. “I wasn’t scared. I was just …”

  Thinking about you. Remembering your kiss. Wishing for the feel of your hands …

  “Just what?”

  “Thinking about the advice you gave me. Remembering I can do anything I think I can.”

  But he wasn’t listening to her, wasn’t even looking at her anymore.

  “That storm’s coming on fast,” he said, raising his voice as the wind picked up again.

  She followed his gaze to the west, to the tops of the mountains forming that side of the Raton Pass.

  “Welcome to New Mexico Territory,” she said wryly.

  The scudding clouds were mixing and gathering, their gray and dark blue mixing with the purple and red rays of the lowering sun. Lightning flashed low, not far above the green pines.

  “This could be a wild one,” he said thoughtfully.

  “Maybe we should hold the herd north of the pass,” she said, although he was already lifting his horse into a lope, and she knew he’d had the same thought.

  “Yeah. Out here they’ve got too much room to run.”

  The wind rose again in a shrieking rush and howled a warning into her ear. A small, cold knot she’d discovered newly formed in her stomach grew larger.

  They pushed the horses faster.

  “Thank God we changed horses this afternoon,” she called to him, and Cole nodded, pulling his hat down harder on his head.

  So he felt it, too. Tired as the cattle were, this storm was going to be bad enough to make them run.

  They picked up the pace, but they were too late. Border Crossing pointed his nose at the sky and whinnied long and loud to the remuda, coming out of the pass at that very moment right behind Cookie’s wagon, then Nate’s.

  Aurora and Cole moved as one person, going into a long lope at the same moment, looking constantly west at the rising storm. But there was no time.

  The whole southwestern sky went black while they looked at it, the lightning cracked faster and faster, breaking like gunshots through the noise of the wind. They were closer now, within a half mile, maybe, coming closer to the end of the pass, but then Brindle and Lead Steer burst into view at a quick, hard trot, leading the whole herd south as if their very lives depended on getting out into the wide-open spaces.

  Lightning flashed again, blindingly bright, trying to grab them out of the valley and singeing its way along the mountaintops all at once. Almost instantly, thunder broke the ground in two and echoed endlessly against the rocks.

  The point rider on this side of the herd was Frank; she recognized the stocky gray gelding that was the best in his mount. He saw the space spreading out before him, started to wave his hat and try to turn the herd, then realized, as Aurora just had, that if too many of them were trapped in the pass they’d trample each other to death. They had to let the herd through and try to hold them out here.

  Cole slowed his horse and started turning south again. He had figured it out, too.

  Lightning flashed again, and the wind went crazy. The last clear look that Aurora had at the herd before the driving rain began was a sight to strike terror into the toughest trail boss’s heart. Long, wicked fingers of lightning reached for the cattle, found a place to play along their horns, hit them sizzling, quick licks and then ran and danced in eerie blue balls of fire that jumped from the Lead Steer to Old Brindle, to the cow behind her and then the next, sending the poor beasts into a state of pure terror.

  She saw all that, somehow, in one thin, miraculous sliver of time, and she saw the leaders turn at the slightest angle toward the southwest and commence to run. But more than seeing it, she sensed it, that great mass of living, breathing animals armed with horns and hooves, gathering in greater and greater numbers to run straight at her and Cole.

  Then, in the space of one heartbeat, the sheet of rain became a wall she couldn’t see through.

  She couldn’t hear, except for a raw, raging roar. She made one mighty effort, but she couldn’t think, either. Only one word: Cole. He had to stay safe.

  Her instincts did work, though, flooding her arms and legs with the strength to hold on, her body with enough calm to settle deep into the saddle and Shy Boy’s rhythm. She was strong and vigorous, there was hardly a glimmer of memory that she might be tired. This was a stampede, this was life and death, and there was no such word as tired.

  This was survival for her horse and herself and her cattle, and, by the God who had brought them alive out of Colorado, they were all going to survive. With a primal knowledge that streamed into her body on the breath she snatched from the wind, she knew that Cole rode behind her. The two of them were the only riders who had a chance to turn the herd. Frank could help, but the leaders had got past him.

  She only hoped the speeding Border Crossing would sense her and Shy Boy before he ran over them—there was no way Cole could see them before they would collide. There was no way she could see him and know if his horse was still on his feet.

  The wind sucked her breath. She bent over Shy Boy’s neck until the saddle horn bruised her stomach and she rode with no air in her, with all of it outside her and her horse swirling away, stolen away into the ruthless arms of the storm. The sky lashed her with rain like a madman with a buggy whip in his hands. But the herd would turn.

  They would, by God, turn. She and Cole would make them turn.

  Somehow, by some miracle, she loosened the ties behind her cantle and pulled her slicker free. At first, she had no power to lift it against the wind, but she managed to wrestle it forward to rest against her leg. Then she lifted it—she couldn’t flap it, but she did drag it across some hairy, wild-eyed face. Then she slapped it against a shoulder, caught it on a horn that could impale Shy Boy—or her—like a sword.

  The horn cut a long slit and tore her weapon into two parts with one long, dark stroke. The wind died for a second, and she heard shots. Cole or one of the men trying to frighten the cattle into a turn.

  They would, by all the strength in her body, turn, damn their rotten hides! She had not defied
Lloyd Gates and risked dying by Virgil Whoever’s shotgun blast to let these creatures scatter from here to kingdom come.

  “You’re going to Texas, damn you!”

  She shrieked it into the whipping wind and it was lost in that instant, way before it ever reached a cow’s ears, but it made her feel more powerful somehow. At least she had snatched back enough breath to speak.

  That meant she would live through this. That meant that she would win.

  Oh, please God, keep Cole safe, too.

  She found enough leeway against the wind to lift the shreds of the slicker, to move them at the one cow … she slitted her eyes against the rain, for her hat was long since off her head and streaming out behind her with the stampede strings cutting into her neck until they choked her … Old Brindle!

  There had been a miracle, and she had reached Old Brindle. She flapped the slicker as best she could into the mottled face, over the wild and rolling bloodshot eyes and prayed to keep her seat in the saddle and her feet in the stirrups.

  And for Shy Boy to keep his feet under him and his speed up until it was safe to slow down.

  She did. He did. And finally, after what seemed another whole lifetime, Old Brindle began to turn. Shots sounded from several directions, the cow turned more, shaking her horns angrily back and forth, but doing what Aurora wanted. The lead steers followed, yielding to pressure that had to be from Cole, although she couldn’t see him yet.

  Aurora stayed with them, giving no quarter, feeling Cole behind her, somewhere near in the lessening storm. But when she threw a quick look back over her shoulder, she couldn’t see him. He was there. Surely he was.

  A subterranean panic welled up in her, surging toward her heart. Border Crossing, good as he was, was a mortal horse. Any stumble, any fall, and Cole would’ve been trampled.

  She twisted in the saddle and searched again. The rain still stabbed at her face, but it was thinner now; she could see a little. The wind whipped her hair around her face instead of trying to rip it from her scalp. She faced front again, looking at the cattle, looking for other riders.

  And she resorted to patience and faith. If she waited to look again while she counted to twenty, Cole would be there when she turned around.

  Tears mingled with the raindrops running down her face. Cole had to be all right. Everyone had to be all right. The whole Slash A outfit, on whatever side of the herd they’d been riding when it started to run, had to be all right or she’d never forgive herself. Those men risked their lives for her sake every day, and they had to be in their saddles and unhurt when the storm passed.

  It was moving away already, thunder crashing, but less loud, lightning out of sight. The cold rain lessened even more, although it still drummed down on her bare head.

  The cattle were slowing for sure, starting to mill. Shy Boy was slowing with them. He was blowing some, but he was all right, she could tell by the feel of him beneath her.

  “Aurora!”

  She took in a great lungful of air, as if she hadn’t drawn breath for an age, and wheeled the startled Shy Boy around, rushing toward the sound of Cole’s voice. He was headed to her at a long, fast trot, bareheaded, his smile flashing white, sitting his horse as easily as if they’d been on a pleasure ride through a flower-strewn meadow. He was soaking wet, however, and scraps of yellow slicker hung from his saddle.

  Without a word, without breaking the look, they rode to meet, standing in their stirrups too soon to reach for each other, unable to truly believe what they saw until they touched. He caught her up with a need so fierce it took her breath away, pulled her into his saddle with him, into his arms, into the hot haven of his mouth.

  His kiss struck flame in the center of her being, banished the cold from her body from the inside out. It lifted her high above the earth, where she would never again have a need for solid ground.

  His mouth was her sun, her heat, her light. Her world. She clung to him with hands that trembled, he caressed her throat, her breasts, gathered her up so close against him again that their wet clothes glued them together against even the air.

  Every place that his body touched hers its heat consumed the chill in her skin, it flamed in her blood and penetrated her flesh all the way to the bone. He drew back, broke the kiss so he could look at her.

  “I never was so scared in all my life,” he said, his eyes blazing with the same passion as his kiss. “I’m not tough enough to see you hurt, Aurora.”

  His gaze devoured her as if trying to burn her image into his memory.

  “I wasn’t worried for a minute about you,” she lied. “I figured that after the Federales a few thousand head of longhorns wouldn’t even put you and your running horse into a high lope.”

  He started untangling her stampede strings with one hand, but he kept the other nestled firmly at the small of her back.

  “Can’t keep from reminding me of my old sins, can you?” he drawled. “Reckon I’m gonna have to commit some new ones just to give you a change of subject.”

  His fingertips touching her throat here and there, hot and tantalizing as they were, couldn’t break the unguarded look shimmering between them.

  “Any ideas to suggest?”

  Yes. Right now. Except it would be so right it wouldn’t be a sin.

  “I … I …” she whispered, her lips aching so with the desire to kiss him again that she could barely speak, let alone think.

  “Hey!” someone shouted, off in what seemed to be another world. Then again, closer, “Hey, Monte!”

  She reached to help Cole with the strings to her hat.

  “The … the men,” she managed to say, although her tongue was already demanding to taste his again, “the men and the herd. Cole …”

  They both looked around them, at the milling, bawling herd and the rain-slashed land, as if they’d never seen any of it before.

  “I need my horse,” she said, but made no move to get down from his.

  Her gaze went right back to Cole’s mouth, which she needed even more.

  “He’s right there,” Cole said, but he didn’t even glance in Shy Boy’s direction.

  “We make a pair, don’t we darlin’?” he drawled. “You and me, we turned a stampede.”

  Her whole body thrilled at the endearment. At the tone of his low voice. At the look in his dark, dark eyes.

  We make a pair. Yes, we do.

  “We only did it because you’re so stubborn,” he said, his dark eyes twinkling with mischief. “I was gonna let ‘em scatter from Santa Fe to El Paso, but I was ashamed to quit if you wouldn’t.”

  She laughed.

  “That’s the reason I kept hanging on,” she said. “I hated for you to disgrace yourself in front of the whole Slash A outfit.”

  The circling herd was growing as more cattle poured in from the pass; it was shifting closer now, bawling and clacking horns. The cowboys rode tighter circles around the edges, pushed the cattle in on themselves even more.

  “Miss Aurora, you all right?” Monte called.

  Aurora began to pull herself back together, quickly finished untangling her hat and put it back onto her head.

  “I’m fine,” she called back, realizing how she must look up on Cole’s horse with him. “My hat strings were about to strangle me, is all.”

  She thought Monte gave her a questioning glance, but he would never say anything, nor would any of the other men. They would think and talk to each other about it, plenty, though, and she had her authority to think about.

  Dear Lord, she had her whole crew, the whole outfit to think about!

  “Is everybody accounted for?” she called to Monte across the short distance and the heads of the cattle.

  A wave of frightening guilt swept through her. How could she forget about everyone and everything except Cole?

  “Don’t know yet …” Monte said, the last of his words lost in the noises of the herd.

  Aurora thought he said something about the chuck wagon. She turned to Cole.


  “Oh, dear God, Cookie! Were he and Nate able to get the wagons out of the way when the herd began to run?”

  She began scrambling to get down, but Cole, as if he couldn’t bring himself to let her go, tightened his arms around her, stood in the stirrup and dismounted.

  “Cookie’s been through more than one stampede,” he said comfortingly. “He’s probably built a fire and is stirring up some supper about now.”

  That helped her a lot. The more she thought about it, the more she remembered the wagons and the remuda being far enough ahead to be out of the stampede.

  Cole held his hands out for her to step into and boosted her up onto Shy Boy.

  “That helps,” she said. “My legs seem to be just a tad bit shaky, for some reason.”

  “Mine, too,” he said, looking up at her with his irresistible grin.

  With his knowing, tempting brown eyes that wouldn’t let her look away.

  “Oh, sure,” she said sarcastically. “You seem about done in to me.”

  “Let’s lay over all day tomorrow and take a nap,” he said. “I need it.”

  “You’ve got a job to do, cowboy. No naps.”

  He shook his head in mock dismay.

  “Stubbornest woman I ever did see,” he said to Shy Boy. “She’s liable to work us both to death, boy, if we don’t dig our heels in.”

  She smiled wickedly.

  “I’m going to change horses and let him go as soon as I find the remuda,” she said. “You’ll have to rebel all by yourself.”

  He laughed up at her, and she wanted nothing so much as to reach down and touch his face, trace the shape of his cheekbone, smooth his wet hair into shape behind his ear.

  “You needn’t run this stubborn business into the ground just because I told you it was your best feature,” he said. “Can I at least have a minute to change clothes?”

  She frowned while she looked him over, head to toe. That was a real mistake, because the sight of his magnificently muscled body showing through his clothes, soaked to the skin, sped up her pulse until she thought her heart would beat out of her chest.

  “You’ll dry,” she said, grinning at him. “Cowboy up.”