“This is called the honda,” he explained. “Uncoil a few feet of rope and slip it through the honda to form a loop, like this.”
Emma mimicked his actions and adjusted her loop until it was the same size as Luke’s. It looked like a giant noose. Beside her, Rebecca and Papa did likewise.
Luke eyed all three and nodded. “Good. Now, leave yourself a few feet of free rope. You’ll need it when you start swinging. What you’re going to do is swing the lariat over your head a few times until you get a good feel for the rope and where it’s going.”
He demonstrated as he spoke. He raised the loop above his head and swung it around from right to left, the other hand holding several feet of loose rope and the coils looped over his arm. “Keep your wrist loose and let it do the work. It should swing like a wheel going around and around above your head.”
The loop grew larger as he swung, and it opened up, like a wide, yawning mouth.
“It’s taking a long time,” said Rebecca. “If you were doing this for real, hasn’t the cow already run away by now?”
Someone behind them snorted, and Luke grinned. “Once you get the feel for your rope, you won’t have to swing it so much. But for now we’re taking our time, making sure we have control.” The lariat continued to circle above his head as he spoke. “Don’t forget to keep an eye on your target. I’m looking at the stump on your right. When you’re ready—”
He took a quick step forward and released the rope. The loop sailed through the air without losing its circular form, pulling a couple of coils of rope off his arm like a tail, and landed neatly around the gnarly stump. He stepped back and pulled the rope. The noose tightened around the stump with a snap.
Applause and cheers broke out from their audience.
“Not bad, Luke,” Jesse called. “Maybe you could get a job as a cattle wrangler someday.”
The jab was met with good-natured laughter. Emma tried to ignore their audience, which had grown to include almost the entire outfit. Was she about to make a fool of herself again? Well, if she did, at least she’d have Rebecca and Papa as fellow buffoons this time.
“All right, who wants to go first?” Luke looked directly at her, but Papa stepped forward.
“I will.”
“Fine.” Luke gestured for Emma and Rebecca to step back. “Give him some room, ladies. Okay, Jonas, now grab the loop about a foot or so away from the honda. Give yourself plenty of loose rope in the other hand. Looks good.” Luke backed away. “Start swinging.”
Papa raised his hand, and the noose began to circle in the air above his head. Within a few swings it opened up like Luke’s.
“Good job, Jonas.” A note of surprise filled Luke’s voice. “Now get the feel of the rope and let it swing until you’re—”
Before he finished speaking, Papa let loose his rope. The loop sailed through the air and landed half-on and half-off the stump. He gave the excess a jerk, and the noose tightened and held.
“Papa, you lassoed a stump!” Rebecca’s squeal joined the applause of the group behind them while Luke stared.
He recovered himself. “You’ve done this before, haven’t you, Jonas?”
Recoiling the rope carefully around his arm, Papa lifted a shoulder. “Once or twice.”
“Uh-huh.” After a slap on the back, Luke pointed. “You can go over there and pick another stump to practice on. This one is for beginners.”
Papa stepped back but didn’t move away. Apparently he wasn’t about to let the lesson continue without his watchful eye.
“Who’s next?”
Luke glanced at Emma, but before she could speak Rebecca ran forward to take the spot Papa had vacated.
“I am. Show me one more time.”
Under the guise of watching the lesson, Emma was free to stare at Luke all she wanted. He’d taken off his hat, and the breeze ruffled through the waves of his hair. The sun had tanned his skin to a warm shade that made his dark eyes stand out. When he raised his arm above his head to demonstrate, the fabric of his shirt stretched across muscles strengthened from years of hard work on the trail. And his hands, the very ones that had circled her waist—
With a start, Emma jerked her mind away from that trail. Perhaps there was nothing wrong in looking, but the Lord surely wouldn’t approve of thoughts that lingered on touching.
“Good, Rebecca.” He took a step backward to give her room. “Now swing the loop above your head, right to left.”
Rebecca raised her arm and swung, with little effect. Instead of rising into the air, the limp rope circled her body. Frustrated, she dropped her arm to her side with a slap against her leg. “I think this one is broken.”
A guffaw sounded from the direction of their wagon. Jesse.
Luke ignored him. “It’s fine. You just need to put a little more energy into it. Swing harder.”
A sigh came from her lips as she reset her stance and tried again. At first the loop behaved the same, but at Luke’s urging Rebecca increased the speed of her arm. Slowly, the loop opened. Not a perfect circle, as Papa’s had been, but it was at least recognizable as a lariat.
“You’re doing great.” Luke’s approval brought a quick smile to Rebecca’s face, which immediately returned to an expression of fierce concentration as the lariat swung round and round above her head.
His words kindled a fierce desire in Emma to hear the same encouragement. She watched her sister, noting the placement of her feet and the speed of her swing.
“Move your arm a tiny bit and feel the rope react.”
“I feel it.” Rebecca’s head faced toward the stump, but her eyes turned upward and circled with the rope.
“Focus on your target,” Luke said. “When you’re ready, release the noose as it swings forward. Drop your wrist down and then let your palm swing open.”
She did so, and the noose went flying through the air. It hit the ground at least ten feet short of the stump.
Rebecca’s lower lip protruded. “I missed.”
“But that was a good try!” No one could doubt the sincere enthusiasm of Luke’s praise. “That’s one of the best first throws I’ve ever seen. It took Jesse a week to get that close to the target when he was learning.”
“Hey!” Jesse yelled, protesting from his chair. “I was six years old.”
“Yeah?” Charlie’s shout was tinged with laughter. “So what’s your excuse for missing that calf last week?”
Several others joined in the teasing.
Jesse took the ribbing with good humor. “You wait till this leg of mine heals. Then we’ll see who can out-rope any man in this outfit.”
Nerves skipped across Emma’s muscles, leaving them tense and her stomach uneasy. She watched closely as Rebecca threw four more times, each time her aim improving and her rope coming closer to her target. Her sister had always been the more active of the two, even besting boys in games and races. What if Emma couldn’t manage to do as well? Her little sister would show her up in front of Luke and everyone else.
After a few tries, Luke said, “You’re trained, Rebecca. All you need is practice. Go on over there and pick out a stump of your own.”
When she ran off with the coiled rope draped over her arm, he raised his eyes to Emma. “Your turn.”
She couldn’t manage to force a sound out of her tight throat, so she nodded. Feet dragging in the dust, she made her way to stand in the place her sister and father had taken. This was supposed to be fun, wasn’t it? Why did her stomach churn as though she might be sick?
Luke’s smile calmed her nerves a bit. She managed to return it as she positioned herself the way the others had.
He examined her stance. “Place your feet a little farther apart, about the width of your shoulders, and one slightly in front of the other.” His hands on her arms as he positioned her sent her nerves dancing again. She ignored them and tried to concentrate on following directions.
“You have your noose, right?”
Swallowing, she nodded and
held it up for inspection.
“Hold it right about here.”
He slid her right hand into position. The shock of the skin-on-skin contact almost made her drop the rope, and she found she couldn’t quite look him in the eye. Did he feel that too?
“Good. Now, let out about six feet of rope off the coil. For a reference, that’s about how tall I am.”
Though he no doubt meant to be helpful, her thoughts were momentarily pulled off task as she took in his height. Standing next to him like this, the top of her head came at nose level to him.
Focus, Emma!
“That’s right. You’re ready to start swinging.”
When he’d stepped back, she raised her arm and swung the rope. “Like this?”
“No, swing it the other way. From right to left.”
She dropped her arm too fast. The momentum of the rope continued, and circled once around her neck. The end of the loop caught her in the face.
“Ow!” She couldn’t help gasping at the stinging slap.
“Are you okay?” Luke’s concerned eyes scanned her face. “That’s gonna raise a welt.”
Terrific.
She managed a smile. “I’m fine. Let me try again.”
As he backed away once more, she untangled the rope from her neck and recoiled it around her arm. She checked the size of her loop and grabbed it in the same place he had instructed. This time when she raised her arm, she swung the rope right to left, the way he said. The rope whirled above her head.
“You got it.” Luke’s encouragement heartened her. “Swing a little faster.”
She did as instructed. The loop failed to open, stubbornly remaining shut. She might as well have been swinging a clothesline over her head.
“Your wrist is locked, Emma. Loosen it up.” Luke’s voice, raised enough to cover the distance between them, sounded every bit as patient as it had a moment before. Why, then, did she feel like an unteachable dunce?
Rebecca’s shriek of success pierced the air. “I did it! Look, Luke. I lassoed my stump!”
The watching men responded with applause and whoops of congratulations. Luke turned to award her a big grin. Emma let her rope drop again, but this time she released the other side and covered her face with her hand. One welt was too many already. As the rope lost momentum, it wrapped around her body.
Wonderful. I’ve managed to hog-tie myself.
The expression on Luke’s face when he turned from Rebecca back to her was carefully clear of pity. She flushed hotly. The complete lack of visible emotion said it all. Behind her, the audience fell silent. The fact that they didn’t laugh at her expense was probably meant kindly, but their silence was even more humiliating than their jokes.
“I guess I’m better at cooking and sewing than roping stumps.” Her gaze avoided his face as she unwound the rope from her body.
“It takes practice.” He took a step forward to help her recoil the rope. “Come on. Try it one more time.”
Giving up and slinking off to nurse her embarrassment alone sounded like a much better option, but Emma bit back a sigh and repositioned her feet.
“That’s good. Take hold of the noose here.”
When he positioned her hand this time she was too miserable to feel a single tingle. She did as instructed, gripped the rope in exactly the right place, and when he stepped back she swung the loop up above her head, right to left. Her wrist was loose. Her body swayed slightly on her feet in motion with the circling rope.
“That’s it! You’ve got it going.”
Griff and Jesse and the others echoed Luke’s cheer. Emma risked a quick upward glance and saw that her loop had, indeed, begun to open up. Not a wide circle like Luke’s, but sort of a long oval in the shape of a giant cucumber. She increased the pace of her arm, remembering to keep her wrist loose, and the cucumber became a watermelon.
“Good,” Luke shouted. “Can you feel how your movements affect the lariat?”
“Yes, I feel it.” She focused more on making her wrist work like the axle of a wagon and the lariat the turning wheel.
The watermelon became a pumpkin.
“Now look at your target. Take aim, and when you’re ready, you’ll release the lariat when it swings around to the front. Keep your movements smooth. Have you got your eye on your target?”
A movement a little ways beyond the stump drew Emma’s attention. A line of steers wandered past on their way to the watering hole. An idea took shape and bloomed in an instant. Leave the stumps to Rebecca. She would lasso a cow.
An oblivious steer stopped and lowered its head to tear up a mouthful of grass.
“Yes,” she shouted back to Luke. “I see my target.”
“Okay. Whenever you’re ready, let her fly.”
She did. The release wasn’t quite as smooth as she planned, but at least the lariat sailed through the air and didn’t slap her in the face. The pumpkin shriveled back into a cucumber, and the long loop wavered unsteadily before dropping toward the ground.
When it landed, Emma could hardly believe her eyes. The loop had managed to snag on the point of one long steer horn. Startled, the animal raised his head, and the rope slid all the way over the horn.
With a shriek of victory, Emma pulled the rope tight. She turned her head to grin at Luke.
In the next moment she was jerked off her feet. Instinctively, she grasped onto the rope and was pulled face first across the ground as the startled steer took off in a run.
“Emma!”
Luke’s voice sounded from somewhere behind her, but she couldn’t look back at him. Her eyes squeezed tight as she was dragged across tall grass and prickly sagebrush bushes. She was dimly aware of other voices joining Luke’s—Rebecca’s and Papa’s—and farther away, Jesse’s and Griff ’s.
Her body sailed over dips and ripples in the land like a stone skipping across a pond. Her shoulders felt as if they had been pulled from their sockets with every ditch. The shouts behind her persisted, and she managed a backward glimpse.
A parade of people ran after her. In the lead, Luke’s face shone blood-red, and his hands cupped his mouth as he shouted. Behind him, Rebecca had gathered her skirts above her knees and seemed intent on proving that she could still outrun the boys. Papa was close behind Rebecca, and Charlie brought up the rear. Every mouth was open as they screamed in her direction.
Finally, Luke’s voice rose above the chaos, and she heard what he was saying.
“Let go of the rope! Let go!”
Until that moment, she had not realized that she still clutched the rope in a death grip. Well, of course. What a dunce.
She let go with her left hand first, and dropped her arm behind her back. When she’d freed herself from the coil of rope, she released her right hand. Her wild ride across the prairie ended abruptly, with her face planted in sagebrush.
Luke caught up with her first. She found herself being lifted off the ground by strong hands, and in the next instant her body was turned and crushed to his. His arms encircled her with such force she couldn’t manage to get air into her lungs.
She didn’t care in the least.
“Emma!” She heard his voice break. He relaxed his hold and held her at arm’s length. “You scared the dickens out of me! You could have been killed.” His eyes moved as he searched her face. “Are you okay?”
Okay? Well, mostly yes, except for her head ringing from his embrace. She took a quick inventory. Her hands stung from where the rope had burned them. Her shoulders ached. Where was her apron? Gone somewhere. Grass and dirt and even sticks clung to her dress, and a large rip along the side seam showed that Papa’s trousers would need to be mended as well. Her face stung as though she’d scrubbed it with a thorny rosebush. But all her bones appeared to be in one piece.
“I’m not hurt,” she said as Rebecca arrived, followed shortly by Papa, huffing and puffing and scanning her head to toe for signs of injury.
A huge sense of victory welled up inside her as Charlie arrived. S
he grinned at Rebecca, and then she turned a look of triumph on Luke.
“I lassoed a cow.” She didn’t bother to filter the pride out of her voice.
Luke grinned, and Emma’s heart twisted in response. “Yes, you did. But your technique needs a little work before you try that again, okay?”
“Okay,” she agreed, and then she allowed him to lead her back to the wagon.
At least she’d proven she wasn’t a complete fool.
TWENTY-FIVE
Luke hovered nearby as Mrs. Switzer attended to Emma’s wounds. She sat on the tongue of the chuck wagon, her posture stiffly erect, and winced as the scrapes on her face were washed with a clean cloth dipped in a cup of murky liquid.
“What is that stuff?” he asked.
Mrs. Switzer answered without looking away from her task. “Violet tea.”
“You mean, like the flower?”
The woman nodded. “The leaves. Keeps infection away.”
“Doesn’t do anything thing for the pain, though.” Emma winced again as the cloth scrubbed at a scratch on her cheek.
McCann stuck his head out of the chuck wagon’s canvas cover. “It’s an old granny remedy. Won’t do a thing to help. The only person who feels better is the granny who uses it.”
Creased lips tightened into a line as Mrs. Switzer daubed at the last remaining abrasion, but at least she didn’t snap back a reply.
With the dirt washed away, the wounds on Emma’s face didn’t look nearly as bad as Luke had feared. When she stood, he saw that she had changed into a different dress, this one with obvious signs of mending. It must have been one recovered from the rustlers’ attack and stitched up by Mrs. Switzer. Strips of cloth were wrapped around each palm.
“Rope burns?”
When she nodded, he cringed. Nothing was more painful than a rope burn.
Griff sidled up to join them and peered into Emma’s face. “You okay, gal?”
Emma replied without hesitation. “Yes. Sore and stiff, but everything will heal.”
A chuckle started down deep in his belly and twitched at his lips. “I’ll never be able to get that picture out of my mind. That steer running scared, and you dangling along behind him at the end of that rope. And you.” He slapped a hand across Luke’s back. “You running after her screaming your head off, and the other girl after you, and then their pa, and then Charlie bringing up the rear.” All effort to suppress his mirth evaporated, and Griff gave himself over to laughter. He bent over, hee-hawing and slapping a hand on his thigh. “That was the funniest thing I ever saw in all my born days.”
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