Читать книгу Wyoming Woman - Elizabeth Lane - Страница 9

R achel sat behind the saddle, her legs straddling the buckskin’s slippery rump. Her waterlogged skirts were bunched above her knees, showing mud-streaked silk stockings and soaked, misshapen kidskin boots. Her gabardine suit was stained with floodwater, and her tangled hair hung down her back like a filthy string mop.

But Rachel was long past the point of caring about appearances. What she wanted most right now was a solid meal and a steaming, gardenia-scented bath. And then she wanted the blasted buggy back on the road, loaded with the bags she had so carefully packed for her journey west.

Most of her clothes would be ruined. That in itself was a crying shame, but at least clothes could be replaced. It was her precious supply of paints, brushes and canvases that worried Rachel most. She had persuaded Luke to help her carry the trunk that contained her painting supplies into some rocks above the wash, where people passing on the road would not see it, but everything else remained stacked near the mired buggy, at the mercy of weather and thieves. Rachel could only hope it would be safe until she could send someone to bring everything safely back to the ranch.

Her arms tightened around the sheep man’s ribs as the horse swerved to avoid a badger hole. At the sudden pressure, Luke’s sinewy body went taut with resistance. In the hour they had been riding together, he had scarcely linked one syllable with another. His silence told her in no uncertain terms that he was not pleased to have her along. Well, fine. She wasn’t exactly happy to be here, herself. By rights she should be at home with her family, sitting down to a mouth-watering banquet prepared by Chang, the Tolliver ranch’s aging cook who was a true artist in the kitchen. When she closed her eyes, Rachel could almost taste the garlic-seasoned roast beef, the mashed potatoes dripping with gravy, the carrots drenched in herbed butter and the flakiest buttermilk biscuits this side of heaven. A lusty growl quivered in the pit of her stomach. She willed herself to ignore the unladylike sound. Why should she care whether Luke had heard? His opinion of her was already so low that nothing she did could make him think any worse of her!

Hungry as she was, Rachel knew better than to ask Luke when they were going to stop and eat. The wretched man did not appear to have brought any food with him; and in any case, she was not about to give him the satisfaction of hearing her complain—not about her empty belly or the chill of the spring wind through her wet clothes or the darts of pain that lanced her shoulder with every bounce of the trotting horse. The shoulder did not seem to be broken—if it were, she knew she would be in agony. But it hurt enough to tell her that something was wrong.

Struggling to ignore her discomfort, Rachel gazed across the scrub-dotted foothills, toward the place where the land sloped downward to end in a sheer cliff that dropped sixty feet to the prairie below. Years ago, her father had told her, the Cheyenne and Sioux had used this place, and others like it, for driving buffalo. It had been a brutally efficient means of hunting. The warriors had only to surround a herd, stampede the terrified animals over the cliff and butcher their broken bodies at the bottom. The meat and hides from such a slaughter could supply a band for an entire season.

The buffalo were gone now, and the children of the hunters had long since been pushed onto reservations. But now, as her eyes traced the line of the cliff, Rachel could almost see the hurtling bodies, hear the death shrieks and smell the stench of fear and blood. With a shudder, she turned her gaze away. This was not a good day for such black thoughts. Not when she had problems of her own to deal with.

With the storm rolling eastward across the prairie, the sky above the Big Horns had begun to clear. Fingers of light from the slanting, late-afternoon sun brushed the snowy peaks with a golden radiance, as if heaven itself lay just beyond the thinning veil of clouds, and all a mortal needed to do was reach out and touch it.

Heaven was far beyond her reach today, Rachel mused wryly. With the buggy wrecked, her belongings scattered, her hair and clothes a sodden mess and this dark, brooding sheep man holding her a virtual prisoner, her current predicament seemed more like the place that was heaven’s opposite.

But it was no use crying over spilled milk, that’s what her mother would say. Time was too valuable to waste fretting over what could no longer be helped.

Rachel missed her lively, practical mother. She missed her father’s quiet strength and the high-spirited antics of the twin brothers she adored. She wanted desperately to go home. But the stubborn, irascible stranger who guided the horse had made it clear that his precious sheep came first. She would not be reunited with her family until the miserable creatures were safely in the shearing pens on his own small ranch.

The sheep, about three hundred head of them not counting the lambs, spread over the landscape like a plague of ravenous gray-white caterpillars. Rachel had never cared for the dull-witted creatures. True, the baby lambs were cute and lively, but they soon grew up to be brainless eating machines that stripped the grass from every inch of open range they crossed. Rachel despised the sight of them, the sound of them, the sour, dusty smell of them.

The dogs, however, were a different matter.

She watched in fascination as the two border collies darted among the sheep, nipping at the flanks of the stragglers, keeping the whole herd moving along together. Sometimes Luke spoke to them in a low voice or commanded them with simple hand gestures. For the most part, however, the dogs seemed to know exactly what they were doing and needed no direction. Rachel had always liked dogs, and these two alert, intelligent animals were as fine a pair as she had ever seen.

“Your dogs are magnificent,” she said, watching the darker of the two chase a straying lamb back toward its mother. “Did you train them yourself?”

“Shep and Mick came with the sheep when I bought them,” Luke said tersely. “I was the one who had to be trained.”

It was a civil enough answer, but there was a dark undertone in Luke’s voice, a hidden tension in his muscular body, as if something were lurking below the surface of everything he said and did. She had held a gun on him, Rachel reminded herself. She had treated Luke Vincente with as much contempt as he had treated her. But there was more at work here, she sensed, than simple animosity. There were things she didn’t know, things she needed to understand for her own safety.

Rachel held her tongue for a time, hoping Luke would volunteer more. But when he did not speak again, her impatience got the better of her.

“I’ve been at school in Philadelphia for the past three years,” she said. “You and your sheep certainly weren’t around before I left.”

He sighed, as if resigning himself to a conversation he did not want to have. “I came here two years ago. My property butts onto the northwest corner of your family’s ranch, where those reddish foothills jut out onto the prairie.”

“In that case, I’m surprised my father hasn’t tried to buy you out,” Rachel said. “At a fair price, of course.”

Luke shrugged. “He has. Not in person, but through that little weasel of a land agent who comes sniffing around my place every few months.”

“Mr. Connell is a good man,” Rachel said. “My father has been dealing with him for years, and he’s never cheated us out of a penny…even though he does look a bit like a weasel.” She suppressed an impish smile. “What did you tell him when he made an offer on your land?”

“That I wouldn’t sell. Not even for a fair price.”

The edge in his reply was not lost on Rachel. “But why not?” she demanded. “You could run sheep in Nevada, or Colorado, or New Mexico, and nobody would care a fig! Why set up a sheep ranch smack in the middle of cattle country, where three-quarters of the people you meet are going to hate you?”

“Maybe because there’s no law that says I can’t.” He spoke in a flat voice that defied her to argue with him. “Do you play poker, Miss Rachel Tolliver?”

“Some.”

“I won my land in a poker game while you were probably still in pigtails,” he said. “Some rough years came and went before I was able to live on it. But it was my own piece of the earth. Whatever happened to me, it was always there, like a beacon to get me through the bad times.”

Rachel wondered about those bad times, but she knew better than to ask too many personal questions. Luke Vincente, she sensed, was a very private man who would not show his scars to unsympathetic eyes.

How old was he? she found herself wondering. He had the flat-bellied, lean-hipped body of a man in his early thirties and his hair carried only a light touch of silver. But his creased, windburned face had a hard set to it, as if his eyes had seen more than his mind wanted to remember.

“I understand how you must feel about the land,” she said.

“Do you?” he asked, clearly implying that Rachel would not know what it was like to get anything the hard way. She bridled, then willed herself to ignore the barb.

“But why raise sheep, for heaven’s sake?” she continued as if he hadn’t spoken. “Why not cattle, like the rest of us? Why make enemies of your neighbors?”

Luke’s gaze traced the spiraling flight of a red-tailed hawk against the sky. “You’ve never had to set up a cattle operation,” he said. “It takes big money these days, usually from some rich investor. And you need a whole crew of cowboys to take care of your herd—cowboys who have to be fed and housed and paid. And even if you get your cattle through the season and to the railhead in good shape, you can still lose your shirt if the market’s bad.”

Rachel gazed past his shoulder at the flowing mass of sheep and the darting figures of the two dogs. Everything Luke had said was true. Cattle raising was an expensive business. The old days, when a man could buy a cheap piece of land, drive a herd of longhorns north from Mexico and have himself a working ranch were long gone.

“Sheep, even purebreds like these, are cheaper to buy than cattle,” Luke said. “Sheep tend to multiply faster than cattle, and they can survive in country where cows would starve. With well-trained dogs, one or two men can handle a good-sized herd. Wool is easy to store, haul and ship, and the wool market is a hell of a lot more stable than the beef market. Does that answer your question?”

Rachel studied the dark diamond of perspiration that had soaked through the back of Luke’s faded chambray work shirt, outlining the taut muscles beneath the fabric. “I suppose it does answer my question,” she said slowly, although, in truth, it did not. She had set out to uncover the reasons behind his blazing hostility. Instead, his answers had revealed a man of burning ambitions, fierce loyalties and buried secrets. The things he had told her only served to deepen the puzzle that was Luke Vincente.

Rachel cleared her throat. “I still don’t—”

“Ssh!” She felt his body go rigid beneath her hands. “Listen!”

For the space of a breath, Rachel heard nothing but the rhythmic thud of the horse’s hooves against the damp earth. Then the sound reached her ears from beyond the next rise—the plaintive, terrified cry of a small animal in pain.

One of the dogs began to bark as Luke urged the horse to a canter. They came over the top of the rise to see a lamb, so small and white that it couldn’t have been more than a few days old, caught beneath a big clump of sagebrush. The little creature was dangling pitifully from one hind leg. It jerked and twisted, its eyes wild with terror. The dog hovered nearby, whining anxiously.

Luke swore as he halted the horse. Behind him, Rachel jumped to the ground, allowing him to swing out of the saddle. Reaching the lamb ahead of him, she gathered the squalling baby into her arms. That was when she saw the thin wire snare that had twisted around its hind leg. The lamb’s struggles had worked the wire into its tender flesh.

“There…you’re all right.” Rachel felt the unexpected sting of tears as she stroked the small, velvety head. She had no love for sheep, but this one was so tiny and helpless that its pain tore at her heart.

“Hold him still.” Luke had brought a pair of wire cutters. His eyes glittered with fury as he cut the lamb loose and, with gentle hands, untwisted the wire from its bleeding leg. “Damn the bastards,” he muttered under his breath. “Damn them all to hell!”

Rachel’s lips parted as she stared at him. Until now she’d assumed that the lamb had stumbled into a trap meant for rabbits or coyotes. But Luke’s face told her another story—a story that chilled the blood in her veins.

“Does this happen often?” She choked out the words.

Luke’s mouth tightened in a grim line. “This lamb was lucky. Most of them we find dead, or so far gone they have to be put out of their misery. The coyotes and eagles usually get to them before we do. I’ve lost more than two dozen animals to these hellish wire snares.”

Rachel gripped the struggling lamb as Luke cleaned its wounds. His big, weathered hands were callused and nicked with a myriad of scars—the kind of hands that had worked, fought, loved, maybe even killed. Where had those hands been, Rachel found herself wondering. What stories would those fingers tell if they could speak?

His knuckle brushed her breast through the damp fabric of her jacket. The accidental touch triggered a freshet of sensation that puckered her nipple and sent a jolt of liquid heat shimmering downward through her body. Rachel stifled a gasp, then forced herself to speak.

“You’re saying someone’s setting these snares just to catch your sheep?” she asked.

Luke had opened a pocket-sized tin of salve. His fingers rubbed the greasy mixture into the deep wire cuts in the lamb’s leg. He did not speak, but his grim silence was enough to answer Rachel’s question.

“But that’s monstrous!” she burst out. “Who would do such a thing?”

His eyes flickered toward her. Rachel felt their cold hatred as if shards of ice had penetrated her flesh. Her lips parted, but no words emerged from her dry mouth. The questions in her mind would remain un-asked. She did not want to hear Luke’s answers.

A frantic longing seized her—to be home, to be safe on the Tolliver Ranch, with this miserable after noon blotted from time as if it had never happened. She wanted to forget the buggy accident. She wanted to forget the helpless pain of the injured lamb. Most of all she wanted to forget this gruff, disturbing man who, through no fault of her own, had chosen to hate her on sight.

The dog that had found the sheep hovered close, brushing against Luke with its tail and looking up at Rachel with intelligent golden eyes. “What’s the matter, boy?” Rachel murmured. “Are you worried about your little lamb? He’ll be all right. We’ll fix him up as good as new.”

Luke’s stormy gaze flickered toward her, then shifted to the dog. “Go, Mick,” he commanded in a soft voice. “Back to the sheep.”

Tail high, the dog wheeled and bounded back down the slope in the direction of the herd. But it had only gone a few yards when, abruptly, it halted in its tracks, ears up, nose to the wind. Rachel saw the hair rise and bristle along the back of its neck. A nervous growl quivered in its throat.

Luke glanced up from doctoring the lamb, his body tense and wary. Rachel held her breath, holding the lamb close as she strained to catch the danger the dog had sensed.

Luke’s expression darkened. “Get out of sight!” he hissed, shoving her up the slope toward an outcrop of boulders. “Stay behind those rocks and don’t make a move until I tell you it’s safe!”

Only then did Rachel hear what had alarmed the dog. Faintly at first, but growing rapidly louder, the ominous cadence of galloping hoofbeats rumbled from the far side of the hill. Whoever the riders were, they were moving fast. Seconds from now they would be in sight.

With the lamb still clasped in her arms, she plunged toward the outcrop. If the mounted men proved to be friends, she could always show herself. But until she knew who they were and what they wanted, it made more sense to stay hidden.

By the time she reached the rocks, Luke was in the saddle. He spurred the horse toward the herd. The dog shot ahead of him, a dark blur of motion against the pale green slope.

Ignoring the pain in her shoulder, Rachel pressed herself into a low spot between two jutting boulders. The lamb squirmed against her. Rachel’s grip tightened around the warm little body as she edged into a spot where she could look down on what was happening.

Four mounted cowboys appeared over the crest of the hill, riding hard. Just below the ridge they halted for a moment, their attention fixed on the broad, open slope and the slowly moving sheep below. Rachel’s breath caught painfully as she realized that, beneath their broad-brimmed Stetsons, their neckerchiefs were pulled up to cover the lower parts of their faces. Everything was masked except their eyes.

One of the men jerked his pistol out of its holster. “Let’s get ’em, boys!” he shouted, firing into the air.

Whooping like savages, the four men charged down the hill toward Luke’s herd. All of them had their pistols drawn now, and for a heart-stopping moment Rachel expected them to start firing at the sheep, or even at Luke. But that was clearly not their intent. As they fanned out, shrieking wildly and shooting into the air, she realized they meant to stampede the sheep and drive them over the ledge, as the Indians had once driven buffalo.

Their plan was working all too well. As panic swept through the herd, the frantically bleating sheep began to mill in circles. A ram wheeled and bolted in dumb terror toward the unseen ledge. Others followed, and suddenly the whole herd was plunging blindly through the scrub, headed for certain destruction.

Rachel had lost sight of Luke. Now, suddenly, she saw him, racing his buckskin horse full out along the rim of the ledge. One of the dogs dashed ahead of him. The other was already tearing along the forefront of the herd, lunging at the leaders, snapping and biting as it dodged their butting heads and flying hooves.

A man, a horse and two small dogs. Could they head off three hundred stampeding sheep and scores of lambs in time to save them? Rachel pressed forward between the rocks, almost forgetting to breathe as she strained to see what was happening.

The four masked men were keeping to the rear of the herd, aiming their shots well above the sheep. Clearly they had no wish to be recognized, nor to do anything that would force the hand of the law against them. In order to file any complaint, Luke would need proof that the stampede had not been an accident. A bullet in a sheep or dog would provide that proof. But the marauders knew better than to give him that advantage. As things stood, Luke would have nothing but his own word. And Rachel knew that would not be enough.

Not unless he could produce another reliable witness to the crime.

Catching the scent of fear, the lamb in Rachel’s arms began to struggle and bleat. Rachel clasped the little creature close, stroking its quivering body and praying that the plaintive racket it made would not give her away. If the riders discovered her presence, any number of things could happen, all of them ugly.

The sheep were no more than a stone’s throw from the precipice and still running full out. Rachel’s heart crept into her throat as she watched Luke’s frantic efforts to turn them aside. He was leaning forward, almost standing in the stirrups as his horse thundered along the top of the ledge. As he rode, he shouted and flailed the air with his hat. The dogs, saved only by their lightning quickness, darted like thrusting rapiers into the herd, snarling, nipping, retreating to attack another charging animal.

Despite her feelings about sheep and their owners, Rachel caught herself praying aloud. “Please, God…don’t let them go over. Let them turn…let them turn…”

On the brink of the ledge, Luke was running out of maneuvering room. With nowhere to go, he was pressing his mount into the forefront of the stampeding herd, risking horse and sheep and man. The terrified buckskin snorted, trying to rear above the milling herd while Luke fought to keep the animal under control. If the horse lost its footing, he would be swept over the precipice with the sheep. Even now, Rachel realized, his only chance of escape lay in plowing straight back through his own herd. But that would mean abandoning the sheep to their own destruction—something, she sensed, Luke would never do. She was watching a man fight for his dream. He would defend that dream with his life.

The dogs tore in and out among the sheep, snarling and biting in a frantic effort to head the leaders away from the precipice. Rachel swallowed a scream as the buckskin reared and staggered backward. The big gelding shrieked as one rear hoof slipped over the crumbling ledge. For a breathless instant, horse and rider teetered between life and death. Then, with a desperate lunge, they regained solid ground.

Spooked, perhaps, by the rearing horse, the sheep began to turn. The leaders swung hard to the right, and the rest followed, allowing the dogs to drive them away from the edge of the cliff. Like a woolly gray-white river, they flowed down the long slope of the hill toward the plain below.

Luke had paused to rest his gasping horse. His eyes glared across the distance as the four cowboys hung back, watching. For a moment Rachel feared they would fire at Luke or try to stampede the herd again, but it seemed they’d had their fill of mischief for the day.

“We’ll be back, sheep man!” the leader crowed at Luke. “Next time you won’t be so lucky!”

Luke kept his proud silence, refusing to give them the satisfaction of a reply. Rachel studied the defiant set of his shoulders, wondering how many times men like these had hurt and humiliated him. No wonder he hated cattlemen. No wonder he hated her.

Swearing and hooting with laughter, the cowboys holstered their guns, wheeled their mounts and cantered back up the hill. Only then did Rachel realize her own danger. The four riders were headed in a direction that would take them right past the rocks where she was hiding.

By now the lamb in her arms had begun to miss its mother. It squirmed and bleated in Rachel’s arms, butting its head against her breasts with a force that was so painful it made her wince. Rachel’s heart sank as she realized the little creature was hungry and looking for a place to nurse. The noise it was making had been lost amid the clamor of the stampede, but now that things had quieted down, its bleating was loud enough to lead the cowhands right to her.

She should let the miserable little creature go, she thought. But the herd was too far down the slope for the lamb to catch up easily. More than likely, the poor thing would be grabbed by one of the cowhands and end the day with its carcass roasting on a spit. Much as she disliked sheep, she could not wish such a cruel fate on this trusting, innocent baby.

But neither could she let the lamb give away her hiding place. By now, she had seen far too much for her own good; and even if the four cowhands recognized her and did her no harm, she had no wish to explain why Morgan Tolliver’s daughter was hiding out with a sheep man.

In desperation, Rachel thrust her finger into the lamb’s warm, wet mouth. The lamb smacked down eagerly and began to suck, its eyes closed, its tail switching like a metronome gone berserk.

Rachel allowed herself a long exhalation. All quiet for now. But the riders were galloping closer; and at any moment now, the lamb would discover there was no milk coming from her finger. Even a lamb should be smart enough to figure that out. When it did, it would start complaining again.

Wriggling deeper behind the rocks, she clutched the troublesome little creature against her chest, held her breath and waited.

The riders were coming up the hill, approaching fast. Rachel could hear the deep, chesty breathing of horses and the jingle of bridles. When she craned her neck at the right angle, she could see the men through a narrow opening between the rocks. Their faces were still hidden by their neckerchiefs, but all four of them were lithe and slender, and they sat their horses with the careless ease of youth. Had harassing the sheep man been their own idea, she wondered, or had they been set on this errand by someone with more age and power and more to gain?

By now the riders were so near that she could have hit them with the toss of a pebble. The tallest and huskiest of the four was cursing their failure to drive the sheep over the ledge. “Told you we shoulda shot those damned dogs,” he growled. “That, or snuck in and poisoned the buggers first. That woulda fixed that sheep man’s wagon!”

The others, still masked, were silent. Their shadows, cast long by the low western sun, fell across the rocks where Rachel crouched with the lamb’s head cradled below her breasts. She remained perfectly, agonizingly motionless, scarcely daring to breathe as they reached the rocks, then turned their mounts aside to head up the hill.

The last rider to pass her hiding place was small and wiry, younger, perhaps, than the others. As he came into Rachel’s full view, one mahogany brown hand tugged at his bandana, pulling it down to reveal a lean, dark, familiar face.

Rachel stifled a cry as she realized she was looking up at one of her own brothers.