by Laura Wright
“Should be,” he said, his dusty white Stetson casting a shadow over half his Hollywood-handsome face.
“Any idea how long she’s been stuck?” Mac called as the hot wind lashed over her skin.
“Overnight, most like.”
“How deep?”
“With the amount of rain we got last night, I can’t imagine it’s more than a couple feet.”
In all the years she’d been doing this ride and rescue, she’d prayed the cow would still be breathing by the time she got there. Never had she prayed for a speedy excavation. Slow and steady was the way to keep an animal calm and intact, but there wasn’t a shitload of time.
“Of all the days for this to happen,” she called over the wind.
Blue turned and flashed her a broad grin, his striking eyes matching the perfect summer-blue sky. “Ranch life don’t stop for a funeral, Mac. Not even for Everett’s.”
Just the mention of Everett Cavanaugh, her mentor, friend, savior, and damn, Cass’s father, made Mac’s gut twist painfully. He was gone. From the ranch and from her life. Shoot, they were all without a patriarch now, the Triple C’s future in the hands of lawyers. God only knew what that would mean for her and for Blue. For everyone in River Black who loved the Triple C, who called it home, and all those who counted on it for their livelihood.
“Giddyap, Gyps!” she called, giving her horse a kick as she spotted the watering hole in the distance.
She had just two hours to get the cow freed and get herself to the church. And somewhere in there, a shower needed to be had. She wasn’t showing up to Everett’s funeral stinking to high heaven; that was certain.
With Blue just a fox length behind her, Mac raced toward the hole and the groaning cow. When she got there and reined in her horse next to the promised tractor, she tipped her hat back and eyed the situation. The freshly dug trench was deep and lined with a wood ramp. Frank had done a damn fine job, she thought. And he’d done it fast. Maybe the cowboy had been looking at his watch, too.
She nodded her approval to the muddy eighteen – year-old hand as Blue’s horse snorted and jerked her head from the abrupt change of pace. “Leaving us the best part, eh, Frank?” she said, slipping from the saddle with a grin.
The cowboy lifted his head and flashed her some straight white teeth. “I know you appreciate working the hind end, foreman.”
“Better than actually being the hind end, Frank,” Mac shot back before slipping on her gloves and walking into the thick black muck.
“She got you there, cowboy.” Blue chuckled as he grabbed the strap from the cab of the tractor and tossed it to Mac.
“Get up on the Kioti, Frank,” Mac called to the cowboy. “This poor girl’s looking panicky, and we got a funeral to go to. I’d at least like to change my boots before I head to the church.”
As Frank climbed up onto the tractor, Blue and Mac worked with the cargo strap, sliding it down the cow’s back to her rump. While Mac held it in place, whispering encouragement to the cow, Blue attached both sides of the strap to the tractor.
“All right,” Mac called. “Go slow and gentle, Frank. She’s not all that deep, but even so, the suction’s going to put a lot of pressure on her legs.”
As Blue moved around the cow’s rear, Mac joined him. When Frank started the tractor forward, the two of them pushed. A deep wail sounded from the cow, followed by a sucking sound as she tried to pull her feet out of the muck.
“Come on, girl,” Mac uttered, leaning in, digging her boots in further, using her shoulder to push the cow’s hind end.
Blue grunted beside her. “Give it a little more gas, Frank!” he called out. His eyes connected with Mac’s. “On three, Mac, okay?”
She nodded. “Let’s do it.”
“One. Two. Push fucking hard.”
With every ounce of strength she had in her, Mac pushed against heavily muscled cow flesh. Her skin tightened around her muscles, and her breath rushed out of her lungs. She clamped her eyes shut and gritted her teeth, hoping that would give her just a little extra power. It seemed like hours, but truly it was only seconds before the sucking sounds of hooves pulling from mud rent the air. Hot damn! The cow found her purchase, and, groaning, she clambered onto the wood boards. Maybe the old gal darted away too fast and Mac wasn’t expecting it. Or maybe Mac’s boots were just too deeply embedded in the mud. Or, shit, maybe she was thinking about how she’d never do this with Everett again, this life-and-death moment that both of them had loved so damn much it had bonded them forever.
Whatever the reason, when the cow lurched forward, so did Mac. Knees and palms hitting the wet black earth in a resounding splat.
“She’s out!” Frank called from the cab.
“No shit!” Mac called back, laughing in spite of herself, in spite of the thoughts about Everett.
Eyes bright with amusement, Blue extended a muddy hand, and Mac took it and pulled herself up.
“Good thing you have time for a shower,” he said, chuckling.
Mac lifted an eyebrow at his clothes caked in mud and sticking to his tall, lean-muscled frame. “Not you. You’re all set. Say, why don’t you head over to the church right now?”
“Come on, Mac,” he drawled, wiping his hands on his jeans as he started out of the mud hole. “I can’t go like this.”
Mac followed him. “What do you mean? You look downright perfect to me.”
“Shit, woman.” Standing on high, dry ground now, Blue took off his Stetson, revealing his short black hair. “You know I need a different hat. This one’s way too dirty for church.”
Mac broke out into another bout of laughter. It felt good to be joking after some hard-won labor. It felt right in this setting, on this day in particular. Everett would have approved. Nothing he’d liked better than the sound of laughter riding on the wind.
Overhead, another sound broke through their laughter and stole their attention. And it wasn’t one Everett would have thought kindly on.
Frank glanced up from tending to the exhausted cow and shaded his eyes. “What the hell’s that?”
Mac tilted her face to the sky and the gleaming black helicopter with a name she recognized painted on the side in fancy silver lettering. Instantly, her pulse sped up and her damned heart sank into her shit-caked boots.
“That’d be trouble,” she said in a quiet voice.
“With a capital C,” Blue agreed, his eyes following the movement of the chopper, too. “Looks like the eldest Cavanaugh has come home to bury his daddy.”
“And bury us right along with it,” Mac added dryly.
“You think?” Blue asked.
“Hell, yes.” As the chopper moved on, heading toward the sizable ranch land Deacon Cavanaugh had bought a few years back, Mac’s gaze slid back to Blue. “He’s been trying to get his hands on the Triple C since he walked out its gate ten years ago. I’m guessing he thinks this is his big chance.”
“But he’s got all that property now,” Blue observed. “More land than we got here. A house being framed up, the whole thing fenced in for cattle.” He shrugged. “Maybe he’s over wanting to run the Triple C.”
Mac smiled grimly. “I don’t think he ever wanted to run this place, Blue.”
That had the cowboy looking confused and curious. “Then what? Why would he work so hard and offer so much money for something he didn’t want?”
Mac shook her head, dug the tip of her boot into the dirt, into the land she loved. “I don’t know. I’m not sure about his reasons. I just know they ain’t pure. I tried talking to Everett about it a few times, ’bout why Deacon was pushing him so hard, being such a slick-ass bastard—trying to take over the very home he and James and Cole had all run from as soon as they were able. But he brushed me off, said all his boys had been changed in the head after Cass was taken, and they weren’t thinking right.” Mac chewed her lip, shook her head. That explanation had never made sense to her, but she didn’t push it. Everett had gone through hell, and if he hadn’t wanted
to talk about it, that had to be respected.
’Course, that didn’t mean she hadn’t tried to work it out in her head a few times.
“I always wondered if it was just Deacon’s way of doing business,” she continued. “How he makes his money. Buying and selling off pieces of other people’s dreams and sweat.” Her eyes lifted to meet Blue’s. “But he could do that anywhere. Why the Triple C?”
Blue was silent for a moment. Granted, the cowboy knew some of the history with Deacon, his father, and the ranch, because Mac had filled him in when the former had started his war with Everett six years ago. But Blue didn’t know the particulars of the loss the Cavanaugh boys had endured before they’d left home. He didn’t know about the day Cass had been taken or the night Sheriff Hunter had come to their door with the news that her body had been found. He didn’t know that her killer was never caught, or about the morning they all sat in the very same church Everett Cavanaugh would be eulogized in today, over a beautiful white casket, their lives changed forever.
But Mac knew. And hell’s bells, she’d shared that unending grief along with them. Her best friend gone before she’d seen her fourteenth birthday. It wasn’t right. For any of them. But neither was taking that grief out on people. Especially family. Especially a man as good-hearted as Everett.
“So you think this is Deacon’s big chance?” Blue asked her, his face a mask of seriousness now. “You think he’s gonna get his hands on the Triple C?”
“Not if I can help it,” Mac uttered tightly.
She watched the helicopter shrink to the size of a dime and then finally disappear behind the mountain. She didn’t know what Everett’s will was going to say, whom he’d left the Triple C to. But she did know that whoever it was, they’d have her standing over them, watching every move they made. Making sure that this land she’d come to love so damn much was taken care of properly.
“Let’s drive this cow home to her friends, boys,” she called out. Determination coursing through her, she walked over to Gypsy and shoved her boot in the stirrup. “Let’s do the job we’ve been hired on to do, then go pay our last respects to our boss, our friend, and hand-to-God, one of the best men I’ve ever known, Everett Cavanaugh.”