“… what if I had to try to do it all myself?”
“You couldn’t. Neither could a man rancher. Don’t let this one traitor make you think your whole crew’ll leave you. They’re decent men. They’ll stick until you can replace them if they want to go—and don’t think that’s special treatment because you’re a woman. It’d be the same with a man.”
Already, the helpless feeling was leaving her.
“Sometimes I just think what in the world have I done, dragging these cattle and this crew—and you—way out here to go even farther down the trail, risking everybody’s lives without even knowing what we’ll find when we get to the Panhandle.”
“We know we’ll find grass and plenty of room,” he said, still holding her with that sharp look. “Listen to me. You’ve made the right decisions, time after time. You’ve proved you can defend yourself—and without letting go of your first rustler to boot!”
She swallowed hard around the lump in her throat.
“That’s what spooked my mount. I should’ve turned the other horse loose but I couldn’t uncurl my fingers from around those reins.”
“Now you’re talking, Rory. Never give up a prisoner.”
The nickname sent a thrill running through her. No one else had ever called her Rory.
“Cole,” she said, “thanks for encouraging me. And thanks for not saying ‘I told you so’ about Skeeter.”
“Never,” he said. “You lost a friend.”
That made her tears well up and spill over. She fought them back and resolved not to think about Skeeter any more.
“So you really think I can do it?”
“I know you can. You’re fractious today because of the gunplay and the blood and your own cowboy betraying you. But that’s why I’m trying to toughen you up, because this is real, it’s the way life is. Don’t worry, you can ride it to a standstill.”
“Not so long ago you were telling me to sell the herd.”
“Because of days like this. You could’ve been killed. My God, Rory,” he said, and he tightened his arms around her, opened his stance just a fraction to pull her closer in, “you could’ve been captured and … mishandled.”
She shivered. She hadn’t even thought of that.
“I’d hate so bad to see you hurt,” he said in that low, slow drawl that poured pure heat all the way to her bones.
Without thinking, she clung to his slender waist, came up onto tiptoe to bring her mouth nearer his.
But he didn’t bend to kiss her. He wanted to, though. She could feel it.
“But if any woman can build a ranch in the Panhandle of Texas, you’re the one,” he said, looking deep into her eyes. “You’re a strong woman. Now it’s time to get stronger.”
She shook her head.
“This is the biggest irony. Remember the first conversation we ever had? You have completely switched sides, Cole McCord.”
He gave her his mischievous grin.
“That’s because it’s too late for me to back out now.”
She stayed where she was, but still he made no move.
“You’re too far from home down the trail with your fate in my hands, is that it?”
“Right,” he said, flashing that grin again as if he’d never wanted to kiss her in his entire life. “That’s why I want you strong and savvy.”
“And sassy, too?”
She tilted her head and smiled up at him in her most flirtatious way, letting her gaze wander from his eyes to his lips, waiting for him to kiss her. They had never felt so close. At least he surely would kiss her!
But when he took her shoulders in both his big hands he set her a step away from him instead of pulling her up to take her mouth with his.
“Remember what you said today about me being a salty shooter?”
“Yes, Lightning, I remember.”
He smiled but quickly went solemn again.
“That’s what I am,” he said fiercely. “That’s all I am. Don’t be thinking I’m more.”
A cold wind blew through her.
“So that proves you’re bad, is that what you’re trying to tell me?”
He gave that quick, abrupt nod of authority that always made his silences more commanding than other men’s words.
She looked at his strong, brown hands on her shoulders, at the right one, then at the left.
“And holding me away from you when I want to kiss you and hug your neck as I would any other friend is … what? A noble gesture? If you’re really bad, Shoots-Like-Striking-Lightning, you’d throw me to the ground and ravish me right here like you’re wanting to do.”
The fleeting glint of shock in his eyes made her raise her eyebrows in triumph, but he wouldn’t acknowledge it.
“You and I are as far from being like any other friends,” he growled, “as a badger is from a bear. You know that.”
“I know you’re not bad,” she said, looking steadily into his eyes. “And I can prove it.”
“How?”
“Because you’re traveling to see your partner’s widow. Because a man who was bad wouldn’t bother.”
This time she let the triumph into her voice as well as her eyes.
Again he ignored it.
“You don’t know enough to even talk about that.”
“And you’re encouraging me to take heart. You’re telling me I can do this incredible thing and you’ve got me believing again that I can. You care, for my sake, whether I can do it.”
He frowned at her, but he didn’t let her go.
“Bad men don’t do things like that,” she said.
“You are, without a shadow of a doubt, the stubbornest woman I have ever met in all my life.”
“And you are the stubbornest man in mine.”
Her calm, judgmental tone made them both laugh. He turned her loose, and they stood looking at each other for a long time.
But still he wouldn’t kiss her.
“I’ve gotta see about our visitors,” he said, when she thought she couldn’t bear it any more not to reach for him.
He turned away, but then he stopped.
“Your shooting’ll improve with practice,” he said lightly. “You did fine today. Another week or two of shooting airtights every night and you won’t even need me anymore.”
I will! I will need you forever!
That was the truth. She reached for Shy Boy’s solid bulk, felt behind her with both hands for it, clung to her stirrup leather and leaned back against him.
She would need Cole forever.
Without his hard hands on her, without the glint in his chocolate eyes, without the wry drawl of his voice, she would float up into the sky and drift away from the very earth. She felt as if that could happen any minute.
Oh, dear God, what could she do? Surely her need for him was only physical. That must be it. He was the only man she’d ever lain with, and that was why she thought she couldn’t do without him.
That and the thought that she needed him to protect her. Soon she’d be able to do that for herself, to rely only on herself, as she’d done all her life.
Yes, by the end of the trail she’d be able to let him go because they weren’t going to make love any more. And that was good—she might fall in love with him if they did. That would never do. She would be powerless to keep him with her always, for the restlessness in him was infinite.
They weren’t going to make love any more. Cole wouldn’t even kiss her.
Something changed between them after that day. He learned that he was a stronger man than he had ever thought he could be. He had refrained from doing more than taking her into his arms when she was wanting him to kiss her. Right then they’d grown close as two pine saplings, yet as far apart as the moon and the stars.
But thinking about it did no good whatsoever. Maybe he ought to admit the truth, that instead of being strong he’d only been scared.
His heart had been open right then, open like an abyss, because he’d realized she could’ve been shot or
raped, and that had shaken him to the core. God knew, he had to get a grip on himself, for he cared way too much about her. He’d told her the truth when he’d said he’d be bad for her. For her sake, if for no other reason, he could never stay with her.
Cole stepped up into the saddle and looked ahead, out over the land that should be the last of the two days of dry drive. Dawn was still just a shadow on the horizon, the moon was still high, but they were moving out anyway, after traveling until midnight as they had done for the past two nights. He stood in the stirrups and stretched his arms into the air, moved them in circles trying to get waked up.
Damn! He must be getting old. A hot breakfast in his belly only made him sleepy now, when normally it and the four hours’ sleep he’d had would’ve made him good to ride all the way to the Rio Grande and fight the whole Mexican Army when he got there.
What was he doing thinking about staying with Rory, anyhow? His mind normally didn’t run like that, never, for he was nothing but a renegade drifter, and that was the God’s truth. He cared too much about her, but it wasn’t the usual attraction a woman had for him, he wasn’t falling for her or anything like that. He admired her, that was all.
He sat his saddle, rubbing old Border’s neck and murmuring to him, trying not to think about it. But his thoughts went right back to her like a stud to a mare.
She was the most courageous woman he’d ever known, and it wasn’t blind courage, either. She knew what she was facing, yet there had been not a doubting peep out of her since that day they’d got the rustlers.
The only reason she had faltered then was because one thing Rory was was loyal beyond measure. Loyal to a fault. She could not hurt Skeeter, even though he’d betrayed her.
He grinned and glanced toward her wagon, which was already hitched to its mules, where she was doing God knew what, getting ready to ride. Rory.
He always called her Rory now, and she called him only Lightning, and they tended to read each other’s thoughts without words. That was the damndest thing. She had read him like a book ever since they met, but now he could read her, too.
She pulled back the canvas door and stepped down from the wagon, flashing a wide smile at the twin who was on his way through the darkness to drive it.
“Good morning, Nate,” she called to him. “Gonna find water today.”
“Yes, ma’am! Reckon we’ll get us a bath?”
“Could be. I’m sure hoping so, aren’t you?”
Her voice was as cheerful as a chirping bird’s on the morning air. He shook his head in wonder. That was what he admired about her the most, it must be—her determined cheerfulness ever since that day Skeeter had ridden for the sunset.
A sullenness, a tension, had fallen over the crew as they sat around the fire that night, learning Skeeter’s sins from the talkative thief, and the mood wasn’t quite gone yet. An anecdote would come up, and before the storyteller could stop it, he’d realize that Skeeter figured in it. Or just in the course of the work someone would mention his name. But it didn’t help for everyone to be on guard not to speak it, either. There was a bitterness of betrayal in the air, made worse somehow by the fact that it had gone unpunished, yet when that was stated out loud, others pointed out how bad it would’ve been to have to turn over one of their own to the law, maybe to be hanged.
And the fact that they’d known the dry drive was coming hadn’t helped any, either. They all dreaded that, Rory especially, but she had teased the crew and jollied them around and kept that smile on her face day after day, quicksand or no, cactus or no. Gallant, he’d call it.
Then she was running lightly toward him and her horse, and he stepped off Border Crossing to give her a leg up. Even the feel of her small foot in his palm would stay with him all day.
“You don’t have to do that, Lightning,” she said softly. “If I’m going to be a rancher I certainly should be able to mount by myself.”
“You can,” he said. “When you are a rancher.”
She gave him a playful swat.
“I am now, and you better know it.”
“No, you’re not. You’ve gotta have land to put these critters out to graze.”
“Boy, are you particular,” she said. “I thought I could just keep ‘em moving forever.”
“Delightful as this trip is,” he said as he remounted, “I think we’d finally want to end it. Especially when the blue northers blow.”
“Aw, come on, Cole, cowboy up,” she said. “Driving in a blizzard is just when it gets interesting.”
Then she rode out a little way so she could see most of the crew.
“We should reach water about midday,” she called to them, “and they won’t graze well this early, so push them on. Cole and I’ll carry the lantern until good daylight but if you men on drag can’t see it, don’t worry. Let ‘em hold a good pace.”
“Another good decision,” he said as she rode back to him with the lighted lantern Cookie handed to her.
“Thank you so much,” she said with light sarcasm. “An old trail hand like you ought to know.”
“I’ve may have gone up the trail all the way to Montana for all you know,” he said, as she raised the lantern and led off. “I’ve had a lot of experiences you know nothing about.”
“I don’t doubt that for a minute,” she said, her eyes straight ahead on the trail, “and I’d be willing to bet that most of them I don’t want to know.”
Then they set a good pace and quit talking.
They were never very far apart, though, even after the sun came up. They never were, not for long, but they both were careful not to touch. He couldn’t get away from her because his job was to protect her, yet he couldn’t truly be with her because they would become too attached.
It was torture, pure and simple, Cole decided, an ordeal that a god with a sense of humor had concocted to punish him for his sins.
Chapter 14
Another week of hard driving, but this one with sufficient watering places, and they struck the endless grasslands of the Llano Estacado. Aurora and Cole rode far ahead of the herd onto the lush, waiting range, as awestruck as if they were entering the promised land. The only sound for half a mile was that of their stirrups swishing through the tall buffalo grass. At last, Cole spoke.
“We’re here. You did it, Rory.”
She turned to smile at him.
“But where’s here?”
They laughed. Out here, a person could look for miles in every direction beneath an even more infinite sky.
“You expect to find a ranch house, outbuildings and corrals with a sign reading Slash A hanging over the yard gate?”
“Why not? We deserve that, after all we’ve been through.”
He shook his head.
“Greedy, greedy,” he said ruefully. “All I’ve heard for two months now is ‘get this herd to Texas’ and now that they’re here you’re angling for your work to be done already so you can settle down and wait for winter.”
A little stab of panic shot through her. Winter. Cole would be gone.
But that wasn’t what was making her feel suddenly so forlorn. Not at all, because she was prepared for that. She had always known it.
No, it was the land itself. Somehow, this land felt bigger and more lonesome than any they’d passed through. Maybe the Comanches weren’t the only reason the Llano had been left unsettled.
“Building a house and corrals isn’t even half of it,” she said. “We’ve got to ride herd on these cattle every day. They could drift from here to Fort Worth with nothing to stop them, straight into the clutches of every outlaw and settler and traveler or trader that comes along.”
Cole took a long look around.
“Doubt we’ll have that worry today.”
She laughed, then sobered.
“I wonder how far we’d have to ride to find another person,” she said, some of her desolate feeling creeping into her voice.
“Like a merchant with a store full of supplies or a dressmaker
or a milliner or a …”
“Isn’t that just like a man!”
She put her fists on her hips in mock anger and entered into the game for the distraction he was offering. She had worked too hard to get here to let the awful, let-down feeling take her over.
You think just because I’m a woman I’ll be pining away for new clothes and hats with feathers on them. What do you expect? That I’ll be branding calves and sawing logs in my Sunday best?”
He grinned.
“I don’t see any trees.”
She glared at him.
“Mixing adobe, then!”
“That’s my stubborn Rory,” he said. “Don’t let anything stop you.”
That last word rang like a bell in the air between them.
He would be gone. By the time her hands started helping her build a house, whatever materials they had to use, Cole would be gone.
You. That sounded so strange after weeks and weeks of we and us.
Soon he’d be gone, and she would never see him again. The thought hollowed her heart right out of her body.
Don’t go. Stay, Cole. Don’t go.
The whishing of their stirrups through the grass echoed the desperate whispering in her heart.
Stay. Touch me, Cole. I’m dying of this blazing pain.
How could she have known that going to his bed for one adventure, one new experience, would set her on fire for him? That it would call for more and more, forever?
How could she have known that his arms would be so strong, his hands so skilled, his lips so hot?
How could she hold that memory in her heart for all her life without it burning her to ashes?
For the next few days, while they held the herd on the banks of the Canadian River and made forays to the south and east looking for ranch sites, she fought the mysterious bond that had pulled her and Cole together since the moment they’d met. It had been created from her need for protection from Gates, that was all, and now that need was gone.
Whatever had come out in the trials of Gates’s henchmen, whatever had been proved against him, his name had been dragged through the mud sufficiently to stop him for now. Plus now she had taken the herd so far from Pueblo City and into such a vast, untracked country that she would be devilishly hard to find.
The Renegades: Cole Page 21