She turned to Wyatt. “I’d better get back to work. Are we even on the apologies now?”
“Dead even, I’d say.” The boys made a sudden concerted break for freedom, and only six years of hard-learned lessons kept Wyatt one step ahead of them.
“Then maybe we should never speak to each other again,” she said.
Wyatt thought she sounded kind of sad.
“Quit while we’re ahead?” he suggested.
“Something like that.”
Wolf shouted from across the yard, “I’m ready to load the old bull. I can use a hand, Buffy.”
“We’d better get out of your way,” Wyatt said.
He saw Buffy look past Wolf to the buffalo, and he felt her attention drawing toward the big animals. Her heart wasn’t in it when she gathered herself and turned back to him. She looked down at Sally and tried to be diplomatic, “Anyway, she’s been known to. . .”
Wyatt saw the trust in that baby girl’s blue eyes and knew Buffy still wanted to say something about Jeanie but couldn’t in front of Sally.
Buffy was helpless against that look. She shrugged again and said, “Uh. . .over—”
Jeanie came to the door behind Wyatt. She’d lost that breathy, dumb blond voice and now spoke in a tone that made the hair on the back of his neck stand straight up. “Buffy, when are you going to get some groceries? There’s nothing in the house to eat. Why do I always have to— Oh, hi, Wyatt.” The crooning voice was back. He heard her jogging down the porch steps.
Wyatt gave Buffy a wild look.
“She’s been known to. . .you might say. . .over-depend.” With the tiniest possible trace of malice, Buffy added, “I suspect depending on you will do as well as depending on me.”
Wyatt shuddered at the thought. “Well, gotta go. We’re late. Let’s get out of here, boys.” He scooped the boys up, one per arm, and held them like a human shield as he practically ran for his truck. He couldn’t see any one of the three women for the cloud of dust he left behind. But as the road curved away from the Buffalo Commons, he saw Buffy striding toward the buffalo pen, tugging on her leather gloves.
Five
Buffy woke to the crack of thunder.
She jerked awake and was already getting dressed without taking a second to try and figure out what was going on. Whatever it was, she wanted to face it with her boots on.
The thunder rumbled again, and she was running down the steps toward the kitchen, when she heard Wolf yelling for all he was worth. The only word she could make out was “stampede.” She didn’t need to hear more.
She met Wolf at the back door. A ball of lightning split the night, and an explosion rang far across the black sky. A flare of fire could be seen in the distance.
Wolf turned away from the blaze. “That last bolt of lightning set a tree on fire. The herd is already running. We’ve got to get out there.”
Buffy ran for her truck. She shouted at her rapidly moving hired men, “Someone take a couple of rigs around the outside of the fence. If you can beat them to the end of the pasture, honk and flash your headlights. That might head them off. If they hit that fence running this hard, they could knock it down.”
“I’ll drive myself,” Wolf shouted over the howling wind. “We might need every truck on the place.”
Buffy had the truck started and floored before she got the door shut. In just two weeks at the Buffalo Commons, she was on her second mad scramble across the prairie.
❧
Wyatt jerked out of a sound sleep.
He’d never felt an earthquake before, but he was feeling one now. Then a second later, he knew better. Stampede!
He yanked on his pants, jammed his feet into his boots, grabbed his shirt, and was already dressed and running by the time he was fully awake. He ran past Anna, who came stumbling out of her room. He skidded to a stop and grabbed her arm so hard he knew she’d be bruised tomorrow. “I’m going to get the boys. You stay up here. The herd is out. They’re stampeding around the house.”
“The cattle?” Anna asked. “The cattle have never stampeded before, Uncle Wyatt. And you don’t have the herd on any pasture around here, do you?”
Bright flashes of lightning glared out the upstairs window. “The storm must have set them off.” He was already down the stairs, his boots clumping on each step, his unbuttoned shirt flying.
Bodies crashed against the house, which shook on its foundation. The deafening noise drowned out everything.
He dashed into the boys’ room in time to see Cody running for a window. Wyatt sprinted across the room, grabbed his son, and lifted him. Colt was only a step behind his brother, and Wyatt managed to grab him, too, then turn to the window in time to have it shatter in his face. He shoved the boys behind his back as flying glass slit his skin.
A huge head slammed through. A buffalo head.
The boys screamed. Wyatt staggered and backed away, clinging to his sons.
The big beast let out a strangled, roaring bellow. One front leg came through into the room. The animal kicked as if to tear out the wall and run all of them down. Then, with a plaintive bawl of pain, the buffalo pulled its head back and thundered across his porch.
Wyatt, with a son in each arm, ran to the window, his feet crunching on countless shards of glass. Another buffalo ran past his window so close he could have slapped it.
Cody reached out one hand, and Wyatt took a quick step back. The buffalo got past, and he saw more of them. More and more. Everywhere. His high-powered yard lights lit up a boiling sea of coarse brown fur and bobbing horns. He heard the bellow of frantic animals. Hundreds of them. Maybe thousands.
The three poles that held his yard lights began quivering as they took one hard hit after another. They began teetering then swaying. One at a time, in a shower of sparks, they fell. One landed on the beautiful old barn built by his grandfather at the turn of the century.
Wyatt watched in horror as flames began to flicker in the haymow. Forcing himself to look away from the destruction, he whirled and ran with the boys up the steps to Anna. “Hang on to them. None of you come down!”
He raced back to the living room and gripped the edge of the window to keep from running for the barn to fight the fire. Running out into that raging herd was certain death.
He saw headlights, still a mile away, following the herd. The car was coming out of a field, not the road. A flare of lightning lit up the yard, and he saw the fence around the horse corral trampled under massive hooves. Gumby ran wild with the buffalo; then, just as another blaze of lightning exploded overhead, the horse stumbled. Wyatt couldn’t see if Gumby stayed on his feet or not.
“No, boys,” Anna yelled. “Get back here.”
“Dad? We want to watch.” Cody came charging down the stairs. Wyatt realized the boy wore nothing but gym shorts. Colt was right behind him, running straight for the glass-coated floor in his bare feet.
Wyatt turned on his sons. “Get back up those stairs and stay there.”
Cody froze on the spot. Wyatt had never heard that sound from his own mouth. It was an order no one—man, woman, or child—would ever disobey. Cody and Colt whirled around and dashed back up the stairs.
Wyatt turned back to the window and saw the flaming roof of his barn. It stood away from his steel machine shed, but sparks raised to the sky toward his house. If the house caught fire, they had to run outside. . . .
Wyatt began to pray. He felt as if he were falling. Sinking back into the past.
The herd came and came and came. He’d heard stories of buffalo herds on the prairie. Herds so large the whole world was alive with them. They spread from one end of the horizon to the other.
“Dear God, what’s going on? Don’t let anyone be hurt.”
He thought of Buffy and wondered if they’d overrun her place first. He imagined Buffy crushed beyond recognition under thousands of hooves. He knew she’d never let this happen if she could humanly prevent it. What had happened?
“Dear God, let the
m be all right.”
There were more homes on down the road. They weren’t that far from the little town of Cold Creek. How many people might die before these beasts stopped their stampede? He thought of Bill. One buffalo, alone, running wild. He hadn’t been easy to bring down. How did anyone ever round up a herd this size? They trampled everything, and still they came.
He fumbled for the phone, not knowing whom he’d call. Buffy? 911? The line was dead.
He heard the crashing and brawling of the huge bodies blundering through his farm equipment, his outbuildings. His barn was reduced nearly to ashes already, but nothing else had caught. A gust of wind whooshed over the barn, and sparks flew. Wyatt heard a soft whumph and saw his truck start to burn. A ruptured gas tank, maybe? A spark from the barn or a sharp hoof? Anna’s car went next.
Then his own internal gas tank ruptured. He went tearing for the back of the house and his locked gun cabinet. He was so mad he couldn’t remember where he’d left the key for a few minutes. He finally got it open, then had to load it, and then had to lock the cabinet back up. How had John Wayne ever gotten anything done?
He ran back to his broken window and—nothing. They were gone. The splinters of glass and the gaping window were proof they had been here. Choking dust filled the air and covered everything in the house. But only a rumble of faraway hooves marked their passing. He wanted to sit down. He wanted to collapse.
He wanted to shoot a buffalo.
He cocked his rifle and stormed out of the house. A wind that drove the storm clouds high overhead caught at his shirt as he ran down the wrecked steps of his porch. He couldn’t drive after the herd because his truck and Anna’s car were destroyed.
Buffy came flying into the yard in her rig. She slammed on the brakes when she saw him and leaned over to throw open the passenger door. “Are you all right?” she asked frantically. “Did anyone get hurt?”
Wyatt heard the needle-sharp edge of hysteria in her voice. “We’re all right. My ranch is destroyed, and my livestock are all dead or run off, but the kids and I are fine.”
He was as close to being in a killing fury as a man could be.
She took a wild look at his rifle as if she wondered if he’d use it on her then glanced at his face. “You’re bleeding!” She scrambled across the seat and stood in front of him.
He looked down at his bare chest and saw rivulets of blood streaming down. He wiped his sleeve over his face, and it came away red. He did a quick inventory of his wounds then buttoned his shirt. “They’re just scratches. A buffalo tried to climb through my living room window. It’s nothing.” His tone of voice could have burned a barn down on its own, no buffalo stampede required.
“It’s not nothing.” Buffy checked him over, her callused hands gentle on him.
He didn’t want to like this female softness. . .but he did.
She dabbed at his face then pulled a handkerchief out of her pocket and dabbed some more. At last she was satisfied. “None of them are deep. You’ll be all right. I’ve got to get after the herd.”
“Don’t move. I’m going with you, but I can’t leave the boys.”
“I’ve got to go,” Buffy shouted.
Wyatt forgot all about her gentle touch. He grabbed her arm. “You owe me. You wait right here.”
Buffy looked in his eyes then gave a short nod of her head.
“Buffy, this is Wolf. Come in. I’ve got the sheriff on his way, and I’ve called everyone I can think of to come help. I’ve got a shipment of tranquilizers coming by helicopter. Mr. Leonard is pulling out all the stops. No expense spared.”
Wyatt nearly ripped the passenger’s side door open and grabbed the handset of Buffy’s CB radio. “That’s because he knows he’s going to get sued until his ears bleed.”
“That you, Wyatt?” Wolf asked.
“It’s me.”
“What happened at your place?” Wolf sounded exhausted.
“We all lived. But they took everything on the place except the house. They’re a menace, Wolf. I’ve been telling you that from the first.”
“It’s not the fault of those buffalo. If lightning stampeded your cattle, they could do just as much damage.”
“They never have, and you know it.” Wyatt dropped his head into his hands, trying to get hold of himself.
Buffy took the mike. “The buffalo are following Wyatt’s lane out to the road. The herd is running straight north. They can’t run much farther without tiring. Call the rest of the men and tell them to try again to get ahead of them.”
“When we first brought them into the country,” Wolf said, “we held them in some pens just south of Cold Creek. That holding area is still there. If we could get them stopped, then maybe we could toss them some hay and lead them to it.”
“You know how they follow your truck when you drive out and throw bales?” Buffy asked.
“Yeah, once they’ve calmed down, that might work. We could lead them into the pen and load them from there.”
“How far to the pen?”
Wyatt was suddenly in possession of the CB again. “I know where it is. I’ll give her directions. There’ll be stragglers, Wolf. You’ll never get them in one sweep.”
“No, but we can cut the odds in our favor real quick.”
“And the stragglers will be in every herd in the area. It might take weeks to round them up. Every rancher around here could lose their whole herd.”
“Mr. Leonard will make it right, Wyatt,” Wolf said quietly. “You won’t be out anything.”
“Money,” Wyatt snarled. “That’s your answer to everything.”
Buffy wrestled him for the mike. Because he wasn’t prepared, she got it. She clicked the Talk button. “Make it happen, Wolf. I’m going to make sure Wyatt’s family is safe; then I’ll follow the buffalo and keep tabs on them. Open up that holding pen. Get the hay you need. I’ll let Wyatt yell at me while I’m trailing the herd.”
“I can take it, Buffy. This has been between Wyatt and me from the first.”
“I know. But you’ve got work to do.”
Wyatt clenched his teeth until she hung up. “You don’t need to talk about me like I’m another chore that has to be finished. If you think—”
“See to your family, Wyatt. Can Anna drive herself over to my place? She and the boys can stay with Jeanie and Sally.”
Wyatt looked at the wreckage of his place. “What are they supposed to drive?” But even when he said it, he knew. “I’ll be right back.”
He turned and ran toward the house. He stumbled to a stop over the body of a baby buffalo. He saw it had been crushed to death, run over by the herd. He dropped to one knee even as he recognized the contradiction of the rifle clutched in his hand. He felt the compassion every rancher has for creatures who die before their time. He turned wearily to Buffy. “You lost a calf.”
He heard her gasp.
He strode into the house. “Anna!”
Anna appeared at the head of the stairs. She and the boys were fully dressed. “Are you hurt, Uncle Wyatt? You’re bleeding.”
“The cuts aren’t deep. The bleeding has already stopped.”
Anna accepted it better than Buffy had. “I saw it from up here. Is the old pickup in the machine shed?”
That was exactly what Wyatt had in mind. Anna had lived with him for four summers now. She’d learned to drive on that old truck. “Take it over to the Buffalo Commons. You can sleep there. I don’t think the house is going to burn. The barn has died down.”
“And my car,” Anna added bitterly.
Wyatt looked again and saw tears had left tracks in the dirt on Anna’s face. Dust covered everything and everyone. Wyatt couldn’t imagine the effort it was going to take to clean up this mess.
“And the Buffalo Commons house is fine?” Anna asked, her voice laced with anger. “The buffalo didn’t hurt their place?”
Wyatt didn’t like the settled look of hatred on Anna’s face. He wondered if his face looked the same. He tried to c
ontrol himself for her sake and the boys’. “I just had the old truck going yesterday. It’ll start up. Let’s get you out of here.”
Anna gave a tense nod of her head. “But I think I’ll go over to the Swensons’.” She mentioned an elderly couple who ranched about ten miles to the west. “I’d just as soon stay there.”
“I don’t want you driving that way, Anna. The herd may have fanned out in that direction. You could find out the Swensons had their own stampede. You could be walking from the truck to the house and get attacked by one of the big brutes. The one place we know the buffalo are not is the Commons.”
“Fine,” Anna said sullenly. “We’ll go there. . .at least until morning.”
“Thanks. I want you out of here before I leave, in case of fire.”
They went out the door and saw Buffy kneeling beside the buffalo calf. Anna walked past the calf and Buffy without speaking. The boys, subdued for once, stared wide-eyed at the baby. Wyatt kept them moving.
When he had them loaded in the truck, he said to a white-faced Anna, “Be careful. The herd is past us, but there might be stragglers. Don’t drive fast in case one would jump out in front of you.”
“A little worse than that deer you hit last spring,” Anna said with vicious sarcasm.
“If something happens—a flat tire or anything—stay in the truck until someone comes to help you.” Wyatt patted her awkwardly on the shoulder. “Your cell phone won’t work out here, but you’ve got a CB in there, so call for help if you need it.” He added, “We’ll get your car fixed, honey. It’s insured. It’ll be okay.”
Anna twisted her lips in something that was a horrible imitation of a smile. “And that makes it right? This nightmare?” Anna’s voice began rising in delayed panic. “What if the boys had gotten outside?”
Wyatt knew she was right. Cody and Colt couldn’t resist getting out to see what the ruckus was.
“They’d have been killed,” Anna said in a hoarse whisper that Wyatt knew the boys, who were hanging on every word, had to hear.
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