A low, frightened cry bounced off the snow-covered pine trees as the Hereford struggling to keep her head above water in the frigid, ice-choked depths of tiny Butterfly Lake. Her calf—the same one Annie had delivered the month before, if she wasn't mistaken—bawled piteously in answer from the shoreline.
Poor little cow. They'd come upon her five minutes ago, already weak and terrified as she tried to escape her grim, icy fate.
She must have wandered out onto the frozen lake after making her escape through the broken fence, Annie guessed, although for the life of her she couldn't figure out what might have compelled the stupid animal to do such a thing, especially considering there wasn't a single thing edible for a mile in either direction.
Annie had no idea how long the cow had been out there but she could see the animal's efforts to escape becoming more frantic with every passing second. If they didn't hurry, they would lose her.
With agonizingly slow movements, Luke twirled the rope above his head again. She waited, breath held and nerves twitching, while he let the loop out bigger and bigger, then finally threw it.
It hooked one of the cow's horns this time and she thought it might go all the way over her head. But at the last moment it slipped free, taking the rest of Annie's patience with it.
She held out her hand again. "Okay. My turn."
"I can do it," Luke said testily.
"Give me the damn rope," she growled, past caring about his pride.
Luke set his jaw obstinately and she was afraid for a minute she would have to wrestle it away from him, but he finally surrendered it.
She gripped the lariat in her gloved hand. Now what was she supposed to do? She didn't know if she was any better than Luke with a rope, but she refused to stand here twiddling her thumbs while she watched an animal of hers die.
She had a fierce wish that Joe and Colt were there to help. Joe had an uncanny knack for calming even the most fractious of animals and Colt could rope anything that moved. Between the two of them, they would have had the cow out in moments.
But they weren't there. She was. She owned the Double C and she was responsible for everything on it. She couldn't go on using them as her crutch anymore, especially not with Joe leaving.
If she could do this, could achieve what seemed like the impossible, she could do anything. The seductive thought whispered into her mind and she straightened. She could finally prove to herself she was capable of even the most challenging of tasks.
The floundering cow suddenly took on much more significance. Rescuing her suddenly seemed to represent everything about ranch life she found so difficult.
She gazed out at the thrashing cow, beginning to tire now amid the huge chunks of ice all around. She could get her out. She would, even if it killed her.
Just a figure of speech, she assured herself. Nobody needs to get hurt here. Not if she was careful.
She would have a better chance of roping the cow if she were closer to her. Thinking quickly, she raced to Rio and pulled the big gelding over to the shoreline, then tied one end of the rope to the horse's saddle horn before heading back toward the shore.
"What are you doing?" Luke asked, his voice shocked, when she didn't stop at the edge of the ice.
She was too busy testing the strength of the ice to pay him any attention. "I'm going out there. I'll have a better chance of roping her if I'm not so far away."
"No way!"
At his panicked vehemence, she glanced at him and saw that he seemed to have paled several shades. He looked completely aghast at the idea and she felt a moment's misgiving, but she quickly squelched it.
"Just stay here with Rio. When I say the word, he can pull the cow far enough for her to find purchase."
"No! Absolutely not." He came and stood in front of her, blocking her access to the water. "It's just a damn heifer. Not worth your life."
"Yeah, but it's my damn heifer. And besides, nothing's going to happen to me."
"If she can fall through the ice, you can fall through the ice."
"She weighs a few pounds more than I do," Annie pointed out dryly. "The ice didn't hold her but that doesn't mean it won't hold me. Anyway, I have to try. Now get out of my way."
He didn't budge. "No. You'll have to get by me first."
He sounded like a character in one of those bad spaghetti westerns her dad used to watch. She sighed, hating the idea of pulling rank on him. But she'd rather do that than stand here helplessly while an animal suffered and died in front her.
"If you want a job tomorrow," she finally said quietly, "you'll get out of my way now."
He paused, his hands clenched tightly and his breathing huffing as hard as if he'd just run a marathon, then he stepped away, impotent fury in his gaze. "Fine. Don't blame me if you die out there."
She bit her lip, fighting a sudden, hysterical urge to laugh. "I won't, I swear. If I die, you'll be the last one I blame."
In an effort to distribute her weight, she dropped to her stomach on the ice, feeling the cold seep through her heavy layers of clothing. With the rope tightly in her hand, she slowly, carefully, commando-crawled the twenty feet toward where the cow had crashed into the water, praying all the way that the ice would hold.
She had to be crazy. Luke was right, it was just one cow. She had hundreds more.
But she had given up too many times before. After the first few years of her marriage, she had grown so tired of fighting that she had eventually just quietly surrendered. Her will, her self-respect, her spirit.
She wouldn't do it again.
With fresh determination, she inched the final few feet to the cow, her heart pounding thick and fast in her chest and her senses heightened by adrenaline.
Pitching and thrashing, the animal bawled in terror and rolled her eyes back in her head.
"Easy now," Annie crooned softly. "That's the way. Take it easy, sweetheart."
She studied the situation and the best way to reach her objective. She couldn't throw the rope from down here on her stomach but she hesitated to stand and put her weight all in one spot.
She decided she could risk being on her knees. It was awkward looping the lariat from down here but she tried to remember everything Colt and Joe had ever taught her about using a rope.
Her first throw missed the cow completely but she forced herself to patiently coil the rope again and start all over. This time her meticulous efforts were rewarded. This second attempt was textbook perfect, sailing square over the Hereford's horns, and she pulled the rope taut.
"Yes!" Luke yelled from the shore, his huff apparently forgotten, and Annie grinned at him over her shoulder. She wanted to jump up and perform a little victory dance but decided it probably wouldn't be the wisest thing in the world when she was literally on thin ice.
"Should I back him up now?" Luke called from Rio's side.
"Not yet. Wait until I'm out of the way."
She dropped to her stomach again and started to crawl back the way she had come, feeling inordinately proud of herself. She had done it. She had actually done it!
But when she was still only halfway to shore, that pride turned to alarm. She heard a huge crash behind her and whipped her head around just in time to see the cow lunge through the ice, using the extra leverage afforded her by the rope in her panic to be free of the water.
Annie tried to slide out of the way but she wasn't fast enough. She felt the ice shudder, heard an ominous crack, and the next thing she knew, she was in the water.
Cold.
Breath-stealing, mind-numbing cold.
The water wasn't deep here, probably only about six feet, but it was still over her head.
The layers of heavy clothing that had seemed so comforting earlier in the day now acted as an anchor, pulling her down, down, and for one panicked second she couldn't move, tangled amid her coat and sweater and shirt. Then, with a mighty heave, she fought her way back to the surface.
She came up gasping and choking, conscious only of th
e cold freezing her muscles and snatching away any air she could force into her lungs.
She was going to die here, in this frigid water. She was going to lose everything important to her—C.J. and Leah, the ranch, Joe—because of one stupid cow.
Not if she could help it. She gripped the edge of the ice so she wouldn't go down again and hung on with all her might.
"Annie?" Luke called. "Can you hear me?"
She tried to answer him but couldn't draw enough air in to her tortured lungs to make her vocal cords work so she just nodded her head, hoping he could see her.
"I've got the rope here. I took it off the cow and now I'm gonna try to toss it to you. Can you catch it?"
She nodded again, then waited while he looped it over his head and tossed it. This time, he did what he hadn't been able to do in a dozen tries with the cow and managed to throw where he was aiming, just inches away from her.
She reached for it and tried to twist her hands around it but her fingers were numb, unwieldy, and she couldn't hang on.
Tears of frustration welled up in her eyes when the rope slipped out of her hands.
"Come on, Miz Annie." Luke called, sounding on the verge of tears himself. "Come on. You can do it."
She tried. She really tried. Through three more tosses of the lariat she would catch hold of the rope but couldn't keep her fingers around it enough for Luke to pull her out of the water.
She had probably been in the water only a few moments but it felt like hours. Days. By the fifth throw, her muscles had gone rigid, uncooperative, and she felt her vision dim around the edges.
Just when she was beginning to think it wouldn't be so terrible to just slide into the icy depths, a miracle burst through the trees.
* * *
He loved it up here in the winter.
This corner of Montana was beautiful throughout every season but Joe had always found a special peace and solitude up here in wintertime, when the mountain slept and the only sounds came from the wind mourning through the pines and the high cry of a hawk soaring the air currents along the high ridgeline.
Quixote picked his way carefully through the snow, following the trail forged by a snowmobile—maybe even the very one he'd seen from the ranch. Joe could also see that two horses had come this way sometime after the snowmobiler, judging by the way the tread pattern had been disturbed by horse hooves.
Not that he was a tracking expert. That was just a stereotype. Folks tended to think just because he had Native American blood he automatically possessed some magical, mystical gift that allowed him to read trail sign. The funny thing was, everything he knew about nature and his place in it he'd picked up from Bill McKendrick, Colt's father.
He laughed to himself at the irony just as he breached the top of the mountain. Through the trees, he could see the snow-covered Butterfly Lake, nestled in a bowl-shaped cirque on the mountain exactly halfway between the Double C and the Broken Spur.
Most of his best memories were connected to this place somehow. He and Colt and Annie had considered it their own private domain, although technically it was part of the surrounding national forest. The three of them spent hours up here, fishing, cooking foil-wrapped hobo dinners over a fire, and camping—minus Annie, usually, since her dad wouldn't allow it.
He remembered she had defied her father and come with them only once, the summer she was eleven. She had snuck away from the Double C and spent the whole evening jittery and anxious, watching the trail for any sign of her father. Probably hadn't enjoyed a minute of it.
He asked her the next day how hard her whipping had been. To his astonishment, she shook her head and said she hadn't gotten a whipping. Her father had only told her he was disappointed in her.
At the time, Joe couldn't believe any father could be so lenient. He thought she must be the luckiest kid in the world. If it had been Albert Redhawk doling out the punishments, she wouldn't have been able to sit down for at least a couple of weeks.
But now he could see that Samuel Calhoun's brand of punishment left just as many scars. He had always been disappointed in Annie and she had spent her whole life trying to change that.
Qui started down the other side of the steep trail. Joe was careful to keep the horse to the inside of the trail, as far as he could get from the steep drop-off. He knew that the slightest misstep could send both horse and rider hurtling over the edge.
He was so busy watching the snowy trail that he didn't see the drama unfolding below him until he was almost halfway down. Through a break in the trees, he scanned the little valley and saw a heifer floundering to break free of the ice.
Annie and Luke were on the shore of the lake, and from here they appeared to be arguing about something.
He saw her toss her red head—and had just a moment to wonder where her blasted hat was—then he saw her grab something from Luke. He sat forward in the saddle trying to get a better look just as Annie pushed her way past the ranch hand and headed toward the ice.
His heart caught in his throat. She couldn't be. Surely she wouldn't be so foolhardy.
But she was.
He drew in a ragged breath as he watched her drop to her stomach and inch carefully out on the frozen lake, a rope in her outstretched hand.
He wanted to yell, to shout, to throw something at her to make her stop but he knew she wouldn't hear him from this distance, so he did the only thing he could. He spurred Quixote the rest of the way down the trail, heedless now of the dangerous conditions.
Because of the trees towering on either side, he couldn't tell what was happening below until he reached the bottom of the trail. The first thing he saw was the stray cow, now standing casually near the trees nudging her calf as if nothing had happened.
Then he saw Annie in the water.
Panic washed over him colder than any glacial lake and he jumped from his horse and raced toward the ice.
Luke caught sight of him when he was still a few yards away. The kid looked like he was going to start blubbering any second now.
"I tried to stop her, Joe!" he cried. "I swear I did. She wouldn't listen to me! If she had listened to me, everything would have been fine."
"Annie!" he shouted. "Hang on, sweetheart."
"I tried to get her to grab the rope but her hands kept slipping off."
"So why the hell didn't you go in after her?" he growled, throwing off his hat and coat.
"I…I was just getting ready to do that," Luke mumbled, but Joe barely heard him, consumed only with Annie and the way her efforts to break free seemed to grow more feeble by the second.
He grabbed the rope from Luke, grateful somebody had at least had the foresight to tie one end to Annie's horse. He tied the other end around his waist then dropped to his stomach and slithered out to her
"It's c-c-cold," she whimpered when he neared her.
"I know, sweetheart. Hang on. We'll get you out of there."
He knew the tricky part would be near the jagged edge where she had fallen through the ice. It would be weak and unstable and probably wouldn't support his weight.
Ordinarily, he would have tried to extend a branch for her to grab hold of, but if she couldn't hang on to the rope, she wouldn't be able to hang on to a branch.
But he could hang onto her and that's what he decided to try. "Can you give me one of your hands?"
She nodded and held a slim, painfully white hand out of the water. He gripped her wrist tightly. His touch probably hurt like hell but it sure beat the alternative. Dying.
"Good girl. I'm going to give you a tug so you can get back on the ice, okay?"
She didn't even nod this time, just looked at him with complete trust in her eyes. Straining every muscle, he pulled as hard as he could against her waterlogged weight, afraid he was going to yank her shoulder out but knowing he didn't have a choice.
She slid from the water suddenly and flopped onto the ice, then she was in his arms.
He thought they were home free from there. They should have
been. But the combined weight of both of them was more than the weakened ice could hold. Before he could catch his breath or even give her a reassuring squeeze, they were in the icy water.
How had she stood it, even for the few minutes she'd been in the frigid lake? He gasped, fighting to take a breath, and kept his arms around her tightly.
Fortunately, for once Luke was smart enough to do exactly what needed to be done. He slowly backed up Rio. Joe felt a tug on his waist as the rope went taut, then the horse dragged them free of the water, back onto the ice, then to the shore.
He lay there in the snow for a moment, soaked and freezing, with Annie still tight in his arms.
He wanted to shake her until her teeth rattled out of her head and then he wanted to kiss her and never, never stop.
The force of the impulse stunned him. So much for working to control his emotions. He had about as much control of them as he did those ice floes out there.
"Th…thanks," she gasped out, then coughed up a mouthful of lake water and he knew he couldn't afford to stay here even long enough for his heart to start again.
The water had been bitter cold but being out of it was worse. An icy wind cut through their wet clothes, stabbing them with a thousand blades. Already Annie's lips had gone beyond blue. They looked completely bloodless and she was shaking uncontrollably.
As much as he wanted to tear a strip or two out of her hide for doing something so crazy, it would have to wait until he could get her out of those wet clothes and into something warm.
Riding the two miles back to the Double C in her condition would finish the job the icy water had started, he knew. It would be much closer to take her to the old Broken Spur line shack, halfway up the cirque.
When he was foreman for Colt, he always kept it well-stocked with blankets, food and a first aid kit in case of emergencies. He hoped like hell Colt had continued the tradition.
Knowing he didn't have much time, that she was already hypothermic and he was well on the way, he whistled for Quixote then scooped Annie out of the snow.
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