Broken Spurs

by BJ James

  Carefully, with measured caution, Steve never forced her to go where she wasn’t ready to go, never pushed when she was tired or fear threatened to slide into terror. He worked with her twice each day. First in the early morning hours before the temperature soared. Then, again, in the last of the day when the scorching heat abated and the sun had not quite set.

  As in all things, he never asked as much of the horse as of him self.

  “You can rest soon. You’ve earned it.” He continued stroking the quivering horse, teaching her that his hand would be firm, but never hurtful. Dragging his palms down her hip and hock to the tapered foreleg that seemed much too frail to bear her magnificent form, he knelt in the dust of the corral, examining critical tendons, hooves and shoes.

  As he worked, more labor of love than chore, he looked neither to the western rim of the canyon nor to the patch of scrubby foliage that had overgrown an ancient path the base of the mesa.

  “No company today.” His voice never rose above a croon. It mattered little what he said to the horse in the lullaby that couched no commands. Familiarity was the key, and trust, as Steve trained with methods that were his own. Leading her into the barn and her stall, he attended the routine duties that marked the end of another grueling day. As he worked to settle the mare for the night, and made a final check on the other horses that comprised his growing herd, his mind was filled with thoughts of the rider who came without warning, watched from the vantage of the rim, then left as quietly.

  Quiet. The land was steeped in it as he crossed in falling darkness to the cabin. Even the soft rhythmic throb of the gas generator that would provide heated running water and an hour or so of light did not penetrate the hush that sifted through the night like liquid velvet. The distant ululating cry of a solitary coyote echoing through the canyon only accentuated its depth.

  It should have been lonely for Steve, but he’d never felt so alive, nor so content. After years of wandering as footloose and rootless as tumbleweed, with the next rodeo and the next buckle dictating the direction of his life, he had come home.

  A home worth fighting to keep.

  His steps were weary and halting, their sound muffled as he climbed the weathered boards of the steps leading to the porch. Each new day and each new challenge brought its degree of renewed strength. Muscles that once protested unaccustomed repetition were striated power. His grip was surer, raw and weeping blisters hardened into protective calluses. He rose each day before the sun. Each day he demanded more of himself, and each day a body and brain once grievously injured responded.

  While days slipped into weeks and weeks into months, as he drove himself, doing the work of two, half a man became whole. One by one, difficulties fell away, weakness became strength. And in the greatest gift of recovery, the crippling headaches diminished, then ceased.

  He was weary, but there was fulfillment in his weariness, a sense of accomplishment and satisfaction. Pausing for a moment, leaning on a newly constructed balustrade, he recounted his blessings and looked out at the cloistered land.

  The moon was full, a perfect burnished pearl climbing the canopy of a cloudless blue-black sky. Stars marching in glittering formation seemed impossibly near. A night breeze weaved through cottonwoods, the tumbling stream splashed and chuckled over polished stone. Somewhere, tucked away for the night in its nest of sticks, a mourning dove muttered a low lament. Adding its own harmony, a poor-will called and called again, to be answered by another.

  Music of the canyon rising from a well of ancient and abiding silence.

  In reverence he listened, raising his face to the kiss of the breeze that swirled over the canyon floor, breathing in its captured fragrance. The scent of leaf and grass, of wild flowers and lingering sunlight teased him, recalling a memory and a whispered name.

  As he pushed away from the rail to seek rest and peace for body and mind, his gaze was drawn to the western rim, where empty purple shadows gathered in the first of night. His chest rose in a long held sigh, yearning stirred. An impossible need.

  “Savannah.”

  Crouching deep in the saddle, with her braid whipping about her, Hank dodged a low hanging limb of a tree without slowing Black Jack’s eager pace. In her rush to escape the claustrophobic confines of the ranch house, her hat had been forgotten. It was just as well, for it would only be lost in this mad dash. She hadn’t given the stallion a good run in more than a week, and he flew now, as if he wanted to catch the wind. His excitement was infectious as she bent lower still and gave him his head.

  Black Jack was as surefooted as a mountain goat; he knew this part of the range, perhaps better than she. There was no need to hold him back, nor to care what trails he chose. Giving herself up to the pure joy of a rare and precious freedom, she rode with reckless abandon. As she hadn’t ridden since she was a young tomboy certain of her invincibility. A naive girl, convinced that as surely as she could master any horse on the ranch, as surely as she rode like a hussar, once her life was her own nothing and no one could ever rule her again.

  With dust boiling from Black Jack’s heels and her laughter trailing behind her, she didn’t dwell on frustrations or the disappointments of shattered fantasies. She was happy and unfettered, one with the horse, going with him where he would.

  Black Jack sailed over fences and small crevices, and each time he was rewarded with his mistress’s laughter. Hank would wonder later if she truly hadn’t noticed where his trail was taking her. And in her truthful way she would deal with it, but now her surprise was no less real when the ground fell away and the stallion came to a rearing halt. As he pulled and chafed against the bit, eager to turn and run again, Hank stared down on Sunrise Canyon.

  Confused by her distraction, the stallion tossed his head and paced, his hooves dangerously close to the crumbling edge. The bunching of his massive muscles warned too late of his panic.

  There was no warning as a figure moved swiftly from a cluster of junipers, darting between flailing hooves and the looming brink of the precipice. A strong brown hand caught at the reins, arching the horse’s powerful neck, drawing his head down, dragging him back.

  “Whoa, boy.” A deep voice soothed the frightened animal, as a powerful grip held him in place on surer ground. “Easy. Easy. You don’t want to do anything foolish.” With each crooning word the massive head fought the reins a little less, muted squeals of terror ceased. As the stallion stood quietly at last, Steve Cody’s heaving chest rose in fury, his seething black stare fastened on Hank. “A kinder judgment than I can make of you.”

  Before she could do more than right herself in the saddle, he moved past the horse’s head, his free hand shot out to catch her wrist in a punishing grip. “What the devil do you think you’re doing?” His voice never changed, but in his pale face the lines and planes were grim. “If you’re hellbent on committing suicide, by God, do it somewhere else.”

  “Let go.” A twist of her wrist failed to break his hold. Her eyes narrowed, her teeth clamped over an angry outburst. As coolly as she could she restated her demand. “I said, let me go.”

  “Not until you tell me what this mad dash was about.” With stone faced care he avoided any mention of the few surreal seconds he’d fought to keep horse and rider from pitching into the canyon. The image of her clinging to the saddle while the ledge crumbled beneath thrashing hooves was too vivid. The abject fear that clawed at him was too raw. A silent cry, his cry, ripped from his lungs only to freeze in terror in his throat, echoed too endlessly in his mind.

  “Damn you!” Fear spilled out in an angry rush. “Damn you to hell, Savannah Benedict!” Only his tight grip kept his fingers from trembling on her arm. “If you don’t give a penny and change about yourself, think of what you might have done to the horse. He could have snapped a leg in a heartbeat.”

  “But he didn’t,” Hank snarled back, her own fury serving as defense for moments of chaos too swift and terrible for the mind to hold.

  “No, he didn’t.” The adm
ission was a low growl. “And he cleared a strand of barbed wire that would have gutted him if he’d been a half foot lower.” And Steve’s heart had threatened to burst from his chest as he watched helplessly from the vantage of a small tower of stone that rose above the trees lining the rim of the canyon. “What did or didn’t happen doesn’t make it any less dangerous.”

  Black Jack had cleared the barbs more times than Hank could remember, and raced across the range as often. She didn’t offer any defense, she saw no reason for it. “I don’t need you to tell me how to ride, Cody.”

  “Maybe not.” He would concede that she rode like few he’d ever seen. If he hadn’t been so terrified for her, he would have admired the way she sat the saddle, her lovely body moving in graceful concert with the powerful pounding of the stallion’s hooves. If he wasn’t struggling so desperately with his own anger now, he would be delighted by the threatening storm that seethed in her silver gaze. “What you need is someone who’s man enough to shake some sense into you.”

  Hank dismissed the remark with a contemptuous laugh. Instead of grappling to free herself from his grasp, she leaned nearer, directing the focus from herself. “I suppose you just happened to be skulking in the bushes today.”

  “I don’t skulk, Benedict. But it was no coincidence that I was here when you rode in. I knew you would come.”

  “Ah, you’re clairvoyant!” There was an edge of wry amusement in her tone. “Lucky you. When this is over and you’ve lost the canyon, you should consider buying a crystal ball and setting up shop.”

  “I won’t be losing the canyon, or buying a crystal ball,” he muttered through gritted teeth. “I wouldn’t need to be clairvoyant to know you’d come. If not today, then tomorrow, or the next day. Always at sundown.”

  Hank shook her head in a slow, pitying motion. “I hate to wreck your arrogant little illusions, but it was Black Jack who chose the trail. I only came along for the ride.”

  Steve turned his attention to the horse, stroking the whiskered muzzle with the reins looped over the back of his fist. When he stopped, Black Jack abandoned his usual wariness, butting Steve’s shoulder hard enough to move him forward a step.

  His sudden smile a flash of white in the weathered darkness of his face, Steve resumed the light, leisurely stroke the stallion begged. The smile faded, but lingered in his eyes as he returned his gaze to Hank’s. “Horses. Creatures of habit.” Without releasing her, his hand shifted over her wrist, the tips of his fingers measuring the furious rush of her pulse. “Black Jack came to the rim out of habit. Because he’d been here so often before.”

  Hank didn’t dispute what she couldn’t. She looked down at him in silence, stoking her anger, willing herself not to care that he knew by the erratic beat of her heart the power he wielded. “So,” she drawled, “you hid in the bushes to spy.”

  Nervy, he mused, allowing his gaze to slide from the willful tilt of her chin and down the slender column of her neck. Letting her feel the weight of his study, he traced the path of a droplet of perspiration that trickled from the base of her throat, then disappeared into the clinging cleavage of her shirt. “No.” He let his look climb slowly back to hers. “I came to catch a spy.”

  “You flatter yourself, Cody,” she snapped, the angle of her chin not easing by even a fraction.

  “Do I?”

  “I have no interest in you, and no need to spy.”

  His mouth tilted at one corner. The gliding pressure of his fingers at her wrist recorded its pulsing leap. “Don’t you?”

  Hank was incensed that he blocked her at every turn, that his hand on her arm was gentle, yet as binding as a steel band. It didn’t help that she found her nemesis so attractive, nor that in other circumstances she would have liked him, even felt a certain kinship with him. “I told you once before that I’m not one of your buckle bunnies. I come to the rim because it’s one of my favorite places, certainly not to stand gazing longingly down at you.”

  Steve laughed, a hearty, pleasing rumble that would melt stone. Black Jack responded by tossing his head and shifting his stance. Steve held him fast and stood his own ground as Hank’s knee and thigh brushed his chest. The heat of her body sent shards of need burning through him like a brand. Need that banked and smoldering fury couldn’t restrain.

  “It never crossed my mind that you were sitting up here lusting after a broken down has-been rodeo bronc rider, Benedict. But I have to admit I’m pleased it crossed yours.”

  “I wouldn’t be too pleased, if I were you.” She stared down with a look that dared any commentary on flags of color that burned her cheeks and turned her eyes the color of wintry moonlight.

  “Wouldn’t dream of it.” In ill concealed amusement he explained, “I didn’t dream of it. I assumed you were simply spying on the competition.”

  “Competition?” Hank was truly puzzled as her mind groped with the lightning changes in him.

  “Sure. You don’t expect me to think you weren’t curious about my method of training horses and the progress I’ve made?” His hold slipped from her wrist to her palm, the pad of his thumb swept slowly over the line of calluses left by years of sawing reins and demanding labor. They were graceful hands; delicate and well shaped. Better suited for more elegant pursuits—playing a piano, strumming a guitar...caressing a man, inflaming him with their tantalizing touch.

  “We have a wager.” His voice roughened, deepened. “We both have a lot to win, or a lot to lose.”

  Her hand convulsed in his. A harsh breath grated through her teeth. She pulled her hand away, and this time he let her go, his fingers curling instead around the pommel of her saddle. “Have you forgotten what’s at stake if you lose, Savannah?”

  “I haven’t forgotten anything.”

  “Is that why you come here? Do you sit on the rim, brooding, thinking of the day when I call your bet?”

  Caught in the web of spiraling emotions, Hank stared down at him, discovering that eyes that had seemed black were truly, richly brown, but shades darker than flecks of gold reflecting in the light. The scar, once a whitely sullen reminder of all he’d lost, had darkened and tightened. As it curved over forehead and cheek before disappearing into the fringe of unruly waves visible beneath the band of his Stetson, it had become a symbol of strength. The mark of a warrior. A man who would fight to keep what was rightfully his and revel in the fortunes of victory.

  But not this time. Straightening in the saddle with a snap of her spine, infusing her voice with all the disdain she could muster, she said evenly, “You’re a dreamer, Cody. And you’re a loser.”

  “Am I?” One brow lifted over narrowed eyes, the angle of his lips never changed.

  Hank gave an abrupt inclination of her head. “When the chips are down.”

  His gaze searched hers, holding it, probing its depths, before gliding over her, lingering lazily with undisguised admiration at every intriguing curve and hollow. “Ah, but you do forget. The chips were never quite so beguiling before. What’s a silver buckle compared to a woman like you? One who promises paradise with every move and a taste of honey with every smile.”

  A trill of sound that could have been honest laughter or derision burst from her. “I was wrong, Cody. You’re not a dreamer.” Her drawl held that haunting hint of the South he’d heard before. “You’re a fool. I promise you hell, not paradise. Venom, not honey.”

  “If I win.”

  “You won’t.”

  “But you’re not quite so sure anymore, or you wouldn’t be here, would you, Savannah?”

  “Lord love a duck!” She laughed, a pretty, smoky note, as false as her icy smile. “Are you deaf? I just told you it was Black Jack who chose this path...”

  “And you came along for the ride,” Steve finished for her. The withering look she slanted at him only sent his blood pressure off the scale. God help me, he thought, this is more than I wanted. With the sun at her back, its light marking every regal line of her body in fire, she was magnificent. Haughty
and willful, and stubborn to the end. Standing her ground, when the ground was crumbling be neath her feet.

  Was it a tactic she learned from Jake, or the only weapon a very young, untried Savannah had possessed to use against him? “Is this now you looked? Is this what it was like for you?”

  “What?” A frown scored her brow as she lost the thread of his conversation again.

  “Is this how you looked when you were caught with your hand on the cookie jar? Proud and regal, so unwavering, and so innocent. Even with cookie crumbs here.” With his thumb he retraced he curve of her upper lip and tugged at the enticing fullness of the ower.

  A second too late, Hank turned her head away, refusing to acknowledge the quiver of sensation that began deep in the pit of her tomach, then, as quickly, threatened to become an avalanche. He was the enemy. He had to stay the enemy. If she couldn’t keep that perspective, it would be so easy to fall under his spell, forgetting everything but the strange longing he could quicken with a touch. A response, she had already learned, so powerful it wove itself into and through anger, until there was nothing left of it. Nothing but the wanting.

  She’d walked among men, worked with them, lived the life they lived. Yet this was new to her. No man frustrated or bested her at every turn as he had. Only Steve Cody made her feel as she did now.

  “No.” She didn’t realize she’d spoken aloud, she knew only that she couldn’t let this happen. The next step would be falling in love, the surrender of that part of herself she kept inviolate. A vulnerability she couldn’t risk. “I can’t do this.”

  Hearing the utter panic in her, fearing another wild, reckless ride, Steve caught the reins tighter before she snatched at them to wheel the stallion around. Holding fast, he refused to give ground, refused to let her run.

  Settling the horse with a low command, he reached for her, turning her face to him. “What can’t you do, sweetheart?”

  “Let me go!”