“We’ll find ‘em,” he said. “I’ve decided that I won’t sleep until we do.”
A sudden mischievous grin lit her face. That was one thing that made it so hard for him—she fascinated him, for he never knew what she’d do or say next.
“Great! I won’t, either! We’ll lie in wait!”
“N-o-o,” he said firmly, unable to resist grinning back at her. “This isn’t one of your famous adventures. And why lie in wait all night when there’s never any tracks in the morning? That’s not what I meant.”
“Well, whatever you meant, I’m going with you.”
He lifted Border Crossing into a short lope for a change of pace.
“Nope.”
Then he bit his lip. The one thing he could predict about her was that telling her she couldn’t do something was sure to make her do it.
“Look,” he said quickly, “this is nothing but an augurin’ match. What we’re gonna do is whatever we have to do when we figure out who’s thinning our herd and how.”
“Oh, yeah,” she said. “I forgot to tell you that it’s your twenty head that they took so far.”
He looked at her and laughed.
“Last I heard from ol’ Monte’s count, we’ve lost around sixty head, all told. Some of ‘em’s bound to be yours.”
“You’re right! So that means I ride beside you to get them back.”
He shook his head.
“Tricky,” he said. “Tricky woman. I have to watch you like a hawk.”
“As if you can be trusted,” she said. “Nearly drowning me in the cold river when the bet was that I’d get dunked only once.”
“I’m not getting into that argument again,” he said, chuckling, giving her a teasing glance. “What’s done is done. You’ve already been dunked twice.”
She made a face at him.
“You look about six years old,” he said, as she stuck out her tongue.
He tried to imagine her as a child. Had she been a little tomboy? Or a pretty little lady?
“Aurora, what did you mean that time you said you had to grow up fast?”
She stared at him.
“When did I say that?”
“When Nate was getting attached to your dog. I said he had to get tough.”
“I’m amazed you even remember that.”
I remember everything about you. Probably every word we ever said to each other. Every look we ever exchanged.
“I remember. That’s always been a big help in Rangering.”
She nodded.
“I meant that I’ve had to take care of myself almost since I could walk and talk. Mama died when I was ten, but she was sick in bed a lot before that and Papa was always caught up in ranching. Cookie tried to look after me and I rode with Papa some, but mostly I did as I pleased.”
Loneliness from the past echoed in her voice.
“I reckon that explains it, then,” he drawled.
“Explains what?”
“You still think you ought to do as you please. No questions asked.”
Her laughter rewarded him.
“You should talk, Cole McCord.”
After a moment’s comfortable silence moving across the fresh, new country, she turned to him again.
“What about you? Did your mother take good care of you?”
“She tried, in between working in the fields and cooking and trying to make do. When the work was done every fall, she took me to see her Chickasaw people. But she died when I was sixteen, and, since I never got along with my pa, that’s when I joined the Rangers.”
“Any brothers and sisters?”
The question shot a lump into his throat.
“One brother who died young,” he said gruffly. “And a partner who was more than a brother to me.”
All the old pain slammed into him like a wall of water roaring down a dry gulch. Helpless. God Almighty, he had never been so helpless as he’d been that hellish day. His limbs felt paralyzed just thinking about it.
It was sure too late now. There was nothing he could do to redeem himself.
“Tell me about him,” she said, so softly he almost didn’t hear.
“Travis,” he said. “Trav Henderson. He was one to ride the river with.”
“Was?”
“Shot to pieces,” he said, and nearly choked on the words. “Last year. On the Nueces.”
“I’m so sorry, Cole.”
He couldn’t look at her for a while. When he finally did, her blue gaze caught his and comforted him, told him she understood. She didn’t ask any more, she didn’t say everything would be all right.
Because it wouldn’t, and she could see that. Because she was hurting because he was hurting.
He wanted to be in her arms. He wanted his head on her breast.
“I was goin’ back to Texas anyhow,” he said, tearing his eyes away and staring straight ahead, “to see a woman.”
He told it as a lie to throw up a barrier between them. But as soon as the words were out of his mouth, he knew he couldn’t let it stand.
It made him feel hollowed out so much he could blow right off his horse and away in the wind. He couldn’t do it. Aurora needed to know he was bad, all right, but he couldn’t do that to himself—let her think that he’d made love with her while he was riding hundreds of miles to see another woman.
Besides, suddenly he knew that it was the truth. This was one reason he was going back to Texas.
“Travis’s widow. I want to see if she needs anything.”
“That’s good of you,” Aurora said quietly.
She waited, sensing something more. From the very minute they met, she could read his mind. She knew him, or she was beginning to. Nobody else but Travis ever had.
He couldn’t say any more, though, he wouldn’t say more. And that was all right with her, too.
They rode on in silence, watching the horizon, while he tried to calm the turmoil in his heart. It wasn’t all guilt and regret over Travis, either.
Layered over all those old feelings was one that was brand new. Was he really going to see Ellie to keep Aurora at a distance, to have a reason to leave her at the end of the trail, to keep her from thinking she was important enough or persuasive enough to him to have brought him on this upside-down and backwards, north-to-south trail drive?
Or was it to confess everything and ask for Ellie’s forgiveness? To try to make himself a better man, one more deserving of Aurora?
God help him if that’s what it was.
After the nooning, Aurora remounted and waited for Cole to catch his fresh horse. The men were throwing the cattle back onto the trail, Cookie and Nate were breaking camp, and, after a hot meal and a rest in the shade, everybody seemed ready for a long afternoon’s drive. If they drove far enough, fast enough, could they outrun the rustlers?
The very question made her furious. She had to think of something. She had to do something.
Monte came trotting toward her and jarred her out of her reverie.
“I’ve done a quick, rough count,” he said, “and I’d say we’ve lost another ten head or so.”
“You mean since we’ve been here?”
“Since sunup. I counted then.”
Monte was known for his ability to ride through a herd and estimate its number to within a cow or two. Some men could do that, just as some men could throw a rope onto anything that moved and some men could ride to a standstill every bronc they climbed on. Monte was not mistaken.
A chill ran through her. Her cattle were being spirited invisibly right out from under her nose.
Cole rode up to them.
“From the looks on your faces I think I know what you’re talking about,” he said.
“Ten head,” Aurora said. “Since sunup.”
But Cole was looking at Monte.
“What position did Skeeter ride this morning?”
Monte immediately cocked his head and gave Cole a sharp look. Aurora’s breath stopped.
“Cole!”
she said. “There’s no call for that! I told you, Skeeter’s been with us …”
Cole held up his hand to hush her, but that wasn’t the reason she closed her mouth.
Her mind whirled, trying to think of a way to smooth over the fact that he’d asked one of the men such a leading question before. It was one thing to voice his suspicions of Skeeter privately, and entirely another to say something to Monte when the very question was an insult to one of his crew. Among the Slash A riders, as among the cowboys of any ranch or trail drive worth the name, an insult to one was taken as an insult to all.
But Monte didn’t take offense. He didn’t bristle with indignation. “Drag,” he said, eyeing Cole as if trying to read his mind. “He ain’t one of the newest men, but he likes to eat dust, I reckon.”
Cole nodded. Skeeter had been volunteering for one of the two drag positions, which most cowboys hated to ride. Monte had told them that without actually informing on Skeeter.
So. Monte must have his own suspicions.
A sick feeling spread through her.
“Right drag?” Cole asked.
“Right.”
Cole nodded, and the two men exchanged a look she couldn’t quite read before Monte wheeled his horse and rode away.
“Let’s lope on out to our own usual position,” Cole said, “and once we’re over that ridge yonder we’ll double back.”
“To the breaks over there to the south.”
He gave her a long, straight look that held a warning. And sympathy.
“Let’s ride,” he said.
She worried in silence while they followed his plan, passing the front half of the herd, riding off to the southeast as if on their usual scout, then doubling back under cover of the roll in the land so that when the Slash A riders came on, she and Cole would be out of sight. Then she started worrying out loud.
“We have to be very careful what we say to Skeeter or about him until we know for sure,” she said. “I still can’t believe it.”
He didn’t answer for a minute.
“I’m sorry,” he finally said. “But if you can drive a herd to Texas, you can face life. It’s a hard fact that sometimes people you trust will betray you.”
“If we accuse Skeeter without proof, though, the whole crew might quit.”
“We’ll be careful about that.”
His tone held so much empathy for her that she felt foolish. Cole could handle this.
But she didn’t know whether she could, no matter how much noise she had made about being the trail boss. She forced her mind into the present moment.
“You guessed right drag because of the broken country over there,” she said.
“Yes. The trees are thick in spots and, in the low places, somebody could hide quite a little herd.”
“So you think Skeeter is cutting them out or letting them stray …”
“Or even driving them into cover when it’s handy,” Cole said encouragingly.
“Then Gates’s men are gathering them and changing the brands.”
“That’s about the way I picture it.”
“That would explain no tracks to or from the herd in the morning dew,” she said.
“And Skeeter calling you to walk in front of the fire the night they shot up our camp.”
She turned in the saddle to stare at him. She felt sick, sick enough to throw up.
“We can’t prove that,” she said. “And how can we prove he’s in on this, even when we find the cows? He’s long gone with the herd.”
“Somebody’ll talk,” he said. “A noose in a rope does wonders for loosening tongues.”
They had to be quiet, then, because voices carried on the wind and bounced back and forth against the rocky land. They kept to dirt footing so as to save the noise of hooves scraping on stone, and they kept their eyes on the sky, looking for smoke.
Along about the middle of the afternoon, they saw it, both of them at almost the same instant.
“By their reckoning, we’re too far gone to see the smoke,” he whispered. “I’ll bet they brand this time every day.”
Then, as the smoke grew clearer and closer, he said, “No more talking from here on in.”
Thirty yards later they dismounted and tied the horses, crept on in closer to the fire. Aurora found them the best cover, while Cole led her to the most secure spot to see out of it.
Two men, which made sense because Gates was notoriously cheap, were working over a branding fire. Grazing in a small, creek-fed valley were the missing Slash A cattle. Aurora recognized several head of them. Silently, they watched for what seemed to be hours.
Finally, Cole nodded.
“Looks like there’re only the two,” he whispered. “We’ll creep down close and round them up. Yours is the one in the blue shirt. All you have to do is be ready to shoot if he goes for his gun.”
She swallowed hard.
“I can do it.”
“Play it as it goes. Stay close to me until I signal.”
And so, with Aurora’s blood roaring in her ears and her heart pounding out of her chest, they made their way closer to the unsuspecting thieves. Finally, Cole waved her away and pointed to a small tangle of bushes. She crept to it, into it, and began to watch and wait some more. Sweat trickled between her breasts and down her spine although the afternoon was a cool one.
She took her gun from her holster and held it in both hands, muzzle trained on the middle of the blue shirt shining in the sun. Trying not to breathe so as not to shake, she prayed that whatever Cole was about to do, he would do it fast.
The rustlers’ voices muttered low, the branding iron clinked against a rock when the blue-shirted one turned it in the fire. The other started toward his horse, building a loop to catch another calf.
“Hands up and turn around!”
Cole’s voice rang like iron on an anvil.
The roper dropped his rope and whirled, she heard a shot fired, but she didn’t let herself look toward the sound even though it jangled everything inside her. The other one was her man, and she could only help Cole by taking him out of the fight.
Blue Shirt threw down the branding iron and went for his gun, whirling around to face Cole as he started to stand up. She sighted down the barrel of her gun and jerked the trigger. It seemed to take forever to do that, much less squeeze the trigger slowly, as Cole had taught her.
Blue Shirt fell.
The next thing she knew, she was running, she was out of the bushes and running toward Cole, who was already standing over the man he had shot, bending to pick up his gun. He was taking Blue Shirt’s gun when she got to him.
“Are you hurt?” she cried.
“No,” he said, looking down at her target.
“I killed him,” she cried, following his gaze. “Oh, Cole, I’ve killed a man.”
“Not quite,” he drawled, “it’s more like you’ve stunned him.”
The fall had knocked the man’s hat off, the bullet had left a barely bleeding crease across the back of his neck. But Cole had hit his target more seriously—blood was spreading fast over the man’s chest, running down his sleeve.
For a long moment Aurora couldn’t speak, couldn’t breathe, couldn’t think what to do. Cole stuffed both rustlers’ guns into the waist of his pants.
“Can you go get their horses?” he asked. “Aurora?”
She looked directly at him. His coolly satisfied expression jolted her back to herself.
“Y-yes.”
And she forced her trembling legs to carry her toward the horse saddled and tied to a tree a dozen yards away. The other one saddled for the roper to ride was the other she was supposed to take to Cole. That’s all she had to do before she could sit down: get two horses and take them to Cole.
By the time she had done it, though, her heartbeat had slowed, her legs had stopped shaking, and she had realized completely that these cattle with the ugly, messed-up new brand that she couldn’t even read were her cattle, part of the only thing she owned and
the only livelihood she had. She welcomed the anger that swept through her.
The man she had shot was stirring slightly while Cole tied his hands behind him. The bleeding man was already tied.
“You best git me some help,” he said, “ ‘fore I bleed plumb to death.”
“And send the doctor bill to Lloyd Gates?” Cole said. “Reckon he’ll take it out of your pay?”
The way he sounded so friendly, so conversational, was a wonder to Aurora, considering the hard set of his jaw. He jerked the last knot tight and dragged Blue Shirt to his horse, threw him over the saddle, and tied him on.
“I may be dyin’,” the bleeding man said.
“You ain’t that lucky,” Cole said in that same nonchalant way. “You’ll have to decorate a Cottonwood tree before you turn up your toes.”
He ripped the man’s shirttail from his pants and tore strips of it off. Very quickly, so fast her eyes could hardly follow, he competently packed some of the cloth against the wound and tied the bandage on.
“Too tight,” the man gasped.
“Shut up,” Cole said.
He dragged the man to the horse Aurora held and practically threw him into the saddle.
“Let’s go,” he said.
Each of them leading a horse, they started toward the spot where they’d left their own.
“I kin tell you one thing,” the conscious rustler said, “I don’t aim t’ hang fer Lloyd Gates, the tightfisted son of a bitch. I’ll never work fer him agin.”
“You’re as good as hanged already, son,” Cole said. “Save your breath.”
They reached their horses and untied them.
“Turn us loose, little lady,” the thief said, “and we’ll take that snake in the grass Skeeter with us. I’ll git rid of him fer you. I never could abide a man that signed on and then wouldn’t ride for a brand.”
Aurora’s eyes met Cole’s. Her heart sank like a stone through the soles of her feet. Cole had been right.
But he didn’t say so. He only looked at her to see how she was taking the proof she’d demanded.
Never, in all her life, had she wanted to touch him so much as in that instant. She wanted him to kiss her hair and press her head to his chest, cradle her cheek in his big, calloused hand. She wanted it desperately. She wanted him to hold out his open arms and take her in to safety, because her childhood and the world she knew had just been cut out from under her.
The Renegades: Cole Page 19