Cowgirl, Unexpectedly

by Vicki Tharp

  Boomer wasn’t familiar with all the players so he sat back and soaked it all in. I asked, “What if it’s Doris who’s behind all this?”

  “Then we’re hoping Tate might mention something to her. That’s if we’re correct about her and the sheriff sleeping together,” Hank said.

  “How will we know if Link is involved?” I asked.

  “We won’t. Not with this plan. Not for sure.” Dale paced with the unopened bottle of water in his hand. “The way to know for sure if Link is involved is to not tell anyone. If we did that and someone makes a play for the horses, we know it came from him. However, Link is also my least likely suspect. Especially after the description Jenna got from the sheriff down in Laramie.”

  “So who’s going to be where?” Boomer asked.

  Hank said, “Jenna’s back in school tomorrow now that her spring break is over. Lottie will be taking Becca to the airport, which keeps them out of the fray.”

  “You two”—Dale pointed his bottle at me and then Boomer like a laser sight— “will stay here on the pretense of finishing up the last cross fence since you two don’t know the land as well. You’ll also be responsible for bringing the stock trailers to the pickup point to transfer the horses back to the ranch.”

  Hank copied Boomer and boosted himself onto the counter. “That also gives you the freedom to watch our flanks at night without anyone knowing.”

  Boomer asked, “What do we have for comms—communication?”

  Dale answered. “Hand-held radios are the most reliable. Everyone has one, but the range isn’t very good unless you’re on high ground, and, unfortunately, the weather moving in will exacerbate the problem.”

  “Leave us one of your radios so we can keep in touch with you,” Boomer said. “I’ve got an encrypted set Mac and I can use so your guys won’t pick up our chatter.”

  “We all set then?” Dale asked as he glanced from me to Boomer and then to Hank.

  I nodded.

  Hank jumped down from the counter. “All set.”

  “Ooh-rah,” Boomer said.

  Dale tossed the unopened water bottle to Hank. “I’ll go make that call.”

  After Dale had left, Hank and I loaded the rest of the Beretta magazines and several magazines for each of the two Remington 700 rifles Boomer had laid out on the table. They were essentially the civilian version of the military sniper rifle with a wood stock instead of composite. Boomer didn’t have any night vision goggles, but the scopes on the rifles were top of the line and had low light visibility capabilities so I wasn’t too disappointed.

  Boomer grabbed up one of the three Berettas with a holster and two full magazines and handed them to Hank. “Just in case,” he said.

  * * * *

  The next morning, dawn arrived slowly, dragging a heavy bank of dark, angry clouds with it. I could smell the dampness in the air. No rain yet, but the occasional gust of wind was cold and jagged, cutting right through me. Horse-with-no-name greeted me with a deep-throated chuff, big brown eyes, and a belly that was expanding with her foal faster than a hot air balloon in a heat wave.

  She nosed her empty hay bag and bobbed her head at me in horsey speak for “hurry your ass up” I imagined. I climbed into the pen and Boomer handed me hay flakes through the rails. It took me twice as long as it should have because she couldn’t keep her nose out of it.

  “Reminds me of Major Ford,” Boomer said.

  “How’s that?” I gently pushed her face away as I retied the bag onto the rail.

  “Always impatient for you to finish but can’t butt out long enough for you to get your job done.”

  “She’s a mare, not a gelding.”

  “Well, Ford always seemed a little effeminate to me,” Boomer deadpanned.

  I barked out a short laugh. Major Ford. Yeah, the name suited her. I left her with a quick scratch on the withers and then Boomer and I headed over to start stringing the last of the fence wire.

  An hour or so later, Hank trotted over to me and swung out of his saddle. He’d stuffed his saddlebags full and tied a bedroll to the back of his saddle, his rifle sheathed in its scabbard on the right side of his horse.

  “We’re heading out. Dale decided to leave Alby here for Lottie and Jenna in case there’s a problem.”

  “Pistol?” I asked.

  He tapped a hand to the small of his back where his coat covered the weapon. He stepped into my personal space. When he spoke, his voice wafted over me like aged whiskey, all warmth and texture and hints of the forbidden. “Worried about me, Army?”

  Boomer vanished out of my peripheral vision like a ghost. Dread paced in my belly and his booted footfalls stirred the acid as if he were trying to tell me there was something I was missing. I was going to laugh Hank off, toss back a joking rejoinder, but instead, what fell out was a whispered, honest, “Yeah.”

  He closed the gap and pulled me into his chest. His heart beat strong, steady, reassuring. “Don’t worry about me. I have two of the Marine’s finest watching my back.”

  “No pressure. Thanks for that.”

  He pushed me a step away and lifted my chin with his forefinger. “That’s not pressure. That’s confidence.”

  Then he bent his head and brushed his lips against mine as if he wanted me to taste his sincerity. He traced my bottom lip with his tongue, but before he could take the kiss deeper, Dale’s whistle pierced our ears. “I guess that’s my cue to leave,” he said with a rueful smile. Then the expression slid from his face and his eyes hardened, serious. “Be careful, Army. I’m not near done with you yet.”

  He dove in for a last quick kiss then stepped back and mounted his horse. When he and his horse were several paces away, he turned back, a cocky smile on his lips, “Just so you know, last night, those three questions Jenna asked me? The answers are yes, no, and no.”

  * * * *

  Yes, no, and no. Hank’s words rattled around in my brain that late afternoon as Boomer and I hiked the last mile into position. I couldn’t remember the questions the answers went to. They were important, otherwise, why would Hank have brought them up?

  About two miles up from the road where the cattle had been stolen was the box canyon where the horses were corralled. We’d stashed Hank’s truck off the road behind a stand of trees. The top of the box canyon would give us the tactical advantage as we watched over everybody during the night.

  We laid down on the rim of the canyon as the sun set behind the mountain. Then evening shifted into night like someone had drawn the string on the window blinds. A faint mist started to fall, nothing hard enough to penetrate our clothes, but enough to make the rocky ground slippery and blur our view of the camp below like an old lady with early stage cataracts. The wind picked up, going from gusts to a steady blow.

  On our bellies, we crawled to the top to keep from being silhouetted against what little light remained. Below us, the horses milled in the canyon. A few nickers and nays, but mostly they grazed quietly. There were five of our men below visible in the firelight. Dale, Hank, Link, Santos, and Quinn. From the aroma wafting up, they were in the process of making beans and cornbread. Snippets of conversation drifted up with the smoke, but not loud enough to hear what they were saying.

  My stomach grumbled, but shot the occasional salvo of acid up the back of my throat. If I tried to eat anything from my small pack, it would probably come back up too.

  “I’m gonna slip around the other side of the canyon and take up a position there,” Boomer informed me.

  He wore a full set of night camo—a digitalized print of blacks and varying shades of gray, his human foot prosthetic, and a well-worn pair of combat boots. On our hike up, he’d made it almost all the way to the canyon rim before I noticed the hitch in his gait become a little more pronounced. It had been a difficult climb, and he’d only been using the prosthetic for less than a year. It had to be
getting a little sore.

  I said, “I’ll go.”

  It must have been bothering him more than he let on, because he said, “Okay.” Then he pointed his rifle toward an outcropping of rock on the other side. “There should be good.”

  “Roger that.”

  At that point, we turned on our encrypted radios complete with ear buds and throat mics. The mics picked up the vibrations from our vocal cords and not actual sounds, which made them invaluable if you had to keep your voice down. Also, because they didn’t pick up sound, you didn’t have to worry about it amplifying ambient noises or wind. We did a quick comm check and I slipped down from the rim and started picking my way to the other side.

  The mist thickened and moisture dripped from the ends of my eyelashes. Fog formed and sunk into the low-lying areas muffling the chirp of the crickets.

  Yes, no, and no. Hank’s words were haunting me. I tried to think back to his and Jenna’s argument. Then Jenna’s words popped into my mind as if someone had held up a cue card.

  What about my mother. Did you love her?

  My foot slipped on a rock, twisted when I came down hard. “Shit, fuck.”

  “All right?”

  “Rock,” I grumbled.

  The tendon on the outside of my ankle burned, but not enough to slow me down. The closer I got to the other side, the more squirrelly the hairs on the back of my neck became until they were all but humming show tunes. “I think we’re missing something.”

  “What’s that?” With the mic, it came through my earpiece sounding more like “whuzzat.”

  “If Dink and the cattle and the barn fire are all related, I don’t understand the motive behind them. I don’t think it’s money.”

  “Beef prices are on the way up.”

  I was traversing a narrow area between two bluffs and the wind chugged through, pushing me along. “Yeah, but they dumped the cattle way below market value. And where’s the profit in hurting Dink or setting the fire?”

  Boomer didn’t answer for a bit. With the earbud obstructing my ear canal, I could hear the blood pulse past my eardrum on that side. My breath came in long puffs and the body heat I generated kept me warm.

  Finally, he said, “Sounds personal, then.”

  “Which makes them more dangerous.” I slipped into position at the base of the outcropping of rock Boomer had picked out. On a straight, dirt trail, it wasn’t really that far, but there was no trail, just a field of rocks I’d picked my way through so it took me almost thirty minutes to get there. “In position.”

  “Roger.”

  I folded out the front bipod on my rifle—an A-frame set of legs that helps to keep the barrel steady—and tugged off the end caps of the scope. I peered through the lens; my whole world had gone green. The kid in me imagined this is how things would look on Mars. I spotted Boomer across the canyon, little more than a smudge on the ridge with the interference from the fog. I scanned the area behind him. “Your six is clear.”

  “Roger. You’re clear.”

  I pointed the scope toward camp, avoiding the fire so it wouldn’t whiteout my vision. All was quiet, but an army of hairs still stood at attention on the back of my neck. I dug out the other radio so I could talk to Hank. Hank and Dale would still have their radios on, but since everyone was together, the rest of them should have theirs off to save battery life. I was still careful what I said.

  “Finished the fence,” I said, meaning we were in place, guarding their position.

  “Good. We’ll have the first group of horses ready to load by eight.” Translation: everything was going as expected. If he’d said seven, it would have meant there was a problem.

  “See you in the morning.” I turned down that radio as far as I could and still hear his voice and placed it on the ground near the ear without the earbud.

  Despite the moisture in the air, my eyes were gritty and dry from the whipping wind and the lack of sleep. I reached into my pocket and found the two caffeine pills I’d stashed there and popped them dry into my mouth and almost choked on the little ball of pocket lint that went down with them.

  Maybe Dread would use it as a pillow and get some damn sleep.

  Now that I wasn’t moving around, the damp earth leeched the heat from my body. The tips of my nose and ears were growing cold and I tightened my hood. I wedged closer to the outcrop of rock, which protected my back. I hunkered down out of the wind and absorbed every bit of warmth radiating from the rocks while it lasted.

  Down below, one of the men banked the fire. Three settled into their bedrolls, two headed off in opposite directions to take their turn on watch. The hours ticked by. I kept my head on a swivel scanning the area behind Boomer, then down to the camp and beyond, and then back again. Boomer and I checked in with each other every hour. Somewhere around midnight, I reached an equilibrium where my occasional shivering kept up with the cold. I cupped my gloved hand and blew out hot air to warm my nose.

  Through the scope, I saw the blob of white where the fire smoldered and teased me. A pack of coyotes yipped in the distance. The wind shifted and howled through the canyon. The herd shifted until their butts were once again facing the brunt of the wind. The two men on watch returned and were replaced by two others. All was quiet.

  Yes, no, and no. I’m gonna kill Hank. I swallowed my groan of frustration.

  At least, I’d thought I had, but Boomer’s voice echoed in my head. “Whuzzup with you and the cowboy?”

  “Can it, Boom.”

  His rumble of laughter was loud in my ear, but I doubt if anyone would have heard it even if they’d been standing right behind him. “That serious, huh?”

  Yes, no, and no. Then Jenna’s anger pitched words, “Did you love every one of them or any of them?” echoed in my head. The women he’d slept with on the circuit. My mouth was dry and my voice was rough and weak. With the throat mics, Boomer would hear me clearly. “I don’t know.”

  I expected a smart-ass remark. What came through my earpiece was, “Two tangos, six o’clock low.”

  Two tangos. Two bad guys. Finally. All that waiting and freezing my ass off was for shit. “Roger.” I quietly swiveled around until I found the two forms hiking our way.

  They were still a good two hundred yards out, but at that distance with the cloud cover limiting moon and starlight, plus the pockets of fog and mist, they were little more than blobs. Blobs that had no business being where they were.

  Unless they’d ridden in and stashed their horses somewhere, there was no way they could move the herd on foot. Which meant they probably weren’t here to steal them.

  Picking up the radio I shared with Hank, I clicked the mic two times. My signal to him he had two incoming. I didn’t want to break radio silence because if Link was involved, I didn’t want him to know Boomer and I were there unless or until it became necessary. Hank could easily tell the others he’d heard something without giving Boomer and me away.

  The three forms sleeping around the fire scrambled out of their bedrolls, grabbed their rifles, and fanned out into the darkness. The farther out they went, the detail diminished. I was pretty sure I knew which one was Hank, but at this point, I couldn’t be 100 percent certain. I scanned farther out where the two men on watch had positioned themselves, but I could only find one of them. Crap.

  “Any more?” I asked Boomer.

  “Negative.”

  “There’s gotta be more.”

  “Affirmative.”

  Our relative positions across from each other gave us a near three hundred and sixty-degree view, but the Achilles heel in our position was the way the canyon rim fell away from the edge. Great when we’d wanted to remain unseen as we sneaked up to the rim, but that also meant others could do the same.

  The two incoming were still a hundred and fifty yards out. Boomer’s voice rumbled in my ear as the patter of light rain
splitched off the rocks around me. “Keep your eyes on those two. I’m going to check the backside of the rim.”

  “I can go.”

  “I got it. If they need help down there, you’re in the better position.”

  “Roger.”

  Because of the rain, now only three of our guys were visible and I had no idea which one was Hank. I checked behind me then checked the men down below. I checked the area behind Boomer’s previous location and the end of the rim where he headed. Back to the incoming. It was a lot of ground to watch and easy to miss something through the limited view of the scope. I had no wide view, no peripheral vision. It was like trying to drive a car while peering through a straw.

  Reconnaissance is important. I got that. That didn’t keep me from getting antsy, laying there doing nothing more than observing, watching the two tangos edge closer and closer and closer. I kept my finger indexed on the side of the rifle. I had no intention of shooting unless someone’s life depended on it. I didn’t want anyone else’s blood on my hands, because it never seemed to wash off completely.

  Our objective was to catch these guys.

  It wasn’t to kill them.

  A shot rang out. Sharp at first, and then duller as it echoed through the canyon and out the other side. I scanned the incoming people. They were still advancing. One of our guys hit the ground, but then he scrambled behind a boulder so I didn’t think he was hit. The other two found cover as well. “You have eyes on the shooter?”

  “Negative. Came from the somewhere along the rim, though,” Boomer said.

  The horses became agitated. A few trotted around the edge of the herd, but mostly they were quiet.

  Another shot rang out and then another, the two muzzle flashes lit along the rim, approximately fifty yards apart. A horse screamed and called out. Even from as high up as we were, I could hear the clattering of hooves on rocks as the horses scrambled.

  “Two on the ridge. Eight and ten o’clock,” I told Boomer, indicating the approximate positions of the shooters in reference to hands on a clock. Boomer had already dubbed me as the six o’clock position when he’d identified the first two men.