Читать книгу Montana Mistletoe - Roxanne Rustand - Страница 16
ОглавлениеThe house was dark and still when Jess got up at 5:00 a.m. and looked out the back door.
No snow yet. But the weather app on his cell phone promised sleet, then ten to twelve inches of snow followed by forty-mile-an-hour winds gusting to fifty and temps plunging into the minus-teens.
Just what he needed right now.
Blizzards could drive the cattle to seek a windbreak. They could end up crowded into a tight mass in a corner of the fence, tails to the wind, unable to move any farther. A lot of them might die from the extreme weather and crowding.
It had happened several years ago, and his livestock losses had been heavy.
He walked to the mudroom and started pulling on his down parka. At a sound behind him, he turned in surprise to find Abby behind him with a big grin on her face.
Suddenly, the years fell away and it felt as if they’ve never been apart. Except back then, he would have pulled her into an embrace. Dropped kisses on her cheeks and the tip of her freckled nose. And the teasing and laughter would have been nonstop.
“I was just going outside to saddle up.”
“Good. Did you talk to Betty last night about caring for the girls?” she asked as she reached for her own heavy down jacket.
He nodded as he pulled on his insulated boots, jammed heavy gloves into his pockets and donned his black Resistol. “I also texted Fred and said to check with me before he came over. I told him we were getting an earlier start, but if things didn’t go well, I might still need him later.”
“Blizzard coming. Two hundred cattle. What could possibly go wrong?” A brief, mischievous twinkle lit her eyes.
He’d discouraged Abby from helping him move the cattle this morning, but now he was relieved that she was this willing and ready to go.
“I didn’t think you’d actually want to do this,” he said ruefully. “It’s not what you signed up for.”
She swiftly pulled on her boots and gathered her gloves, scarf and hat. “This isn’t my first blizzard, you know. And just think. If you’d hired some city-girl housekeeper, you’d have to do this all on your own.”
She lifted a small, insulated duffel bag from a hook by the coats and grabbed two thermoses plus a stack of sandwiches in plastic bags from the counter behind her.
Surprised, he lifted a brow.
“Hot coffee and something to eat,” she said as she placed the food in the duffle. “Just in case we run into trouble. Now, if you’re ready, we’d better move. I have a feeling that weather is coming faster than we thought.”
They were going out in bad weather after a large and possibly unpredictable herd of cattle. Under any other circumstances it would have been the antithesis of fun. Yet he couldn’t help but love her take-charge attitude. Catch her sense of adventure. This was Abby, after all—the girl who had never backed down from a challenge and who had always been ready to try anything new.
For years, he had missed her. She’d carved such an empty place from his heart when she left. How was he ever going to keep from falling in love with her all over again—since he already knew she was going to leave?
* * *
The first faint blush of dawn had yet to edge above the eastern horizon as Jess and Abby jogged their horses through the knee-deep snow in one of the pastures behind the barns.
There was a heavy dampness in the air indicating that snow was heading their way, and his mare, Lucy, seemed to sense it, restlessly tossing her head and repeatedly breaking into an impatient sideways jog. Twice she tried to spin back toward the barn, but he corrected her and kept pushing on.
He’d put Abby on Bart, a solid cattle horse with years of experience, but the dropping barometer and bite in the air had Bart unsettled as well, and he’d thrown in a few feisty crowhops when they first left the barn.
He realized again just how much he’d missed her when Abby laughed and sat her bucking horse like he was an old easy chair, proof of her life growing up on a ranch.
She glanced over at him, her cheeks rosy, then nudged Bart into a slow lope, his hooves kicking up clouds of light snow, and Jess followed suit.
When the terrain grew more uneven and the pasture gate appeared up ahead, she slowed back to a jog. Twisting in her saddle, she braced a hand on the top of Bart’s rump and grinned. “It has been way too long since I’ve been on a horse. Thanks, Jess.”
He laughed. “Don’t be thanking me just yet. We’ve got a long, long ways to go.”
* * *
The wind started to pick up and light sleet was falling as they left the pasture and started down a mile of country road. Yesterday, the wind had sculpted monster snow drifts here, making it impossible to bring more hay out to the cattle.
Now the drifts had been blown about again, leveling off the highest mounds and leaving knee-high snow for the horses to trudge through. What this would be like once a heavy sheet of ice crusted the landscape and heavy snow followed on top of that, he could well imagine. If they didn’t succeed at bringing the cattle back today, he’d have to arrange for a helicopter to drop hay to them—an expensive proposition that might not even be possible if the winds stayed high.
“You doing all right?” he called out to Abby.
Her face muffled by a long woolen scarf wrapped around her neck, she nodded and gave him a thumbs-up.
She had to be getting cold. He was getting cold, with sleet coating his jeans and slithering down the collar of his parka. But the horses were laboring enough as it was to break through the snow. He wouldn’t push them to go faster.
Cloud-filtered daylight finally seeped across the landscape, turning the world into endless, blinding white, and he almost missed seeing the gate leading into the hayfield.
Abby rode up close to Lucy. “How far now?”
“About an hour to where the cattle are.” He lifted a hand to brush away the slushy sleet on her jacket. “I’m hoping they’re by the gate, waiting for their next hay delivery.”
Abby patted the saddlebags tied behind the cantle of her saddle, where she’d stowed the duffel. “Hungry? Thirsty?”
“I just want to get this done and get home before the weather gets any worse. You?”
“Agree.”
Jess moved his horse into a jog and then into a lope, and Abby followed in the trail he’d broken through the snow until they were through the hayfield and the terrain began to change, the land interrupted by stands of timber, with fallen trees to navigate and snow-mounded boulders strewn along the base of the rising hills.
Here the horses were cautious, heads low as they picked their way through the hazards.
Jess pulled to a stop and waited for Abby to come alongside him. “Still doing okay?”
“Fine.” She leaned forward to scrape some of the icy slush from Bart’s mane. “I’m just glad the temperature hasn’t started dropping yet. We should be fine.”
“The herd up here has been brought home for several spring calving seasons. Unless the changing weather has them nervous, they shouldn’t be much of a challenge for you.”
“Challenge? How quickly you forget,” she said dryly. “I’ve been moving cattle since grade school. Let’s get moving.”
He hadn’t forgotten. He’d just wanted to tease her and see if she’d smile.
Their similar backgrounds had attracted them to each other from the first day they’d met.
She’d started riding ponies bareback when she was three, and moved up to team penning and reining horses by the time she hit high school.
He’d once thought she was his perfect match. But how wrong he’d been.
By the time they neared the final gate, the wet, sloppy sleet was changing over to a thick blanket of snow and the temperature was dropping.
With the worsening weather and over six hundred acres of rough terrain to search, trying to round all the cows up would be nearly impossible if they were scattered.
God hadn’t ever listened to his own prayers much, but he sure hoped Abby had been saying some prayers about finding those cattle.
“Do you see anything?” Abby shouted into the rising wind.
Just then, a curtain of snow swirled and lifted, and a huddle of cattle blanketed in white came into view. Bawling at the appearance of the horses, they pushed forward against the metal pipe gate, agitated, impatient and hungry for the hay they expected—but wouldn’t get until they reached home.
Jess rode along the fence line in one direction and then the other, standing in his stirrups as he counted. “I’m guessing at least a hundred are here—but I can’t see beyond the rise. I’ll get a better count as they come through the gate.”
Abby nodded. “I’ll keep them together out here till you know for sure.”
The cattle milled around and jostled each other as they poured through the gate.
According to Jess’s count, three were missing. And those three could be anywhere. The chance of finding them was growing more slim by the minute.
With a sinking feeling in his stomach, Jess rode into the pasture and made ever widening loops as he hunted for the stragglers.
Nothing. Just snow and pine trees and absolute silence except for the wind keening through the branches overhead. Please, Lord... Help me out, here. They could easily die in the coming blizzard.
He needed to move the ones he already had down to safety. That made sense. The dollar value of a few, weighed against the value of the entire herd, wasn’t nearly enough reason to delay, given the worsening storm. And yet, like the parable of the lost sheep, he just couldn’t leave the last three out here to die if the blizzard grew worse and he couldn’t get hay to them.
He pivoted Lucy back toward the gate.
“I’m going to look one last time,” he called out to Abby.
She stood in her stirrups to look over his shoulder, then pointed. “Look.”
Sure enough, a haphazard line of three head of cattle were just coming into view, trudging slowly toward the gate.
Agitated by the changing weather, the herd needed no encouragement to head toward home, where trees and the walls of the valley provided some protection. There, too, they’d find long loafing sheds angled to protect them from the prevailing winter winds and large round bales of hay waiting in the circular feeders.
After driving the cattle through the final gate, they rode to the main horse barn, dismounted and led the horses inside and down the wide cement aisle. The warmth of the barn and the bright overhead lights felt like a warm and welcome embrace.
“I’m glad to be back,” he muttered. “How about you?”
“I’m just glad I got to go along. Thanks!”
Jess’s jacket was weatherproof, but his jeans were frozen stiff and his feet were numb.
Abby, however, pulled off her stocking cap and strode merrily down the aisle ahead of him with Bart, her ponytail swinging against the back of her red jacket as if she were still seventeen and ready for another adventure.
Just watching her made him feel like he’d stepped into the past.
She stopped in front of the tack-room door and looked over her shoulder. “Can I cross tie Bart here?”
“Yep.” He stopped his mare at the previous set of cross ties. “The halters are just inside the door.”
Except for where their saddles covered their backs, the horses were blanketed in snow, and their manes and tails were clumped with ice. Steam began rising from their thick winter coats in the warmth of the barn.
Abby slipped off Bart’s bridle, put on his halter and hooked the two ropes hanging at either side of the aisle to it, then brought Jess a halter with a hopeful smile. “I can stick around for chores.”
“Just go on to the house. But thanks. I couldn’t have done it alone.”
“No problem.” Her expression crestfallen, she turned away. “Any time I can help with chores, I’d be glad to.”
She disappeared through the door, leaving him feeling oddly unsettled.
Which made no sense.
Riding up into the hills with her today, facing the worsening elements, had reminded him of things he hadn’t thought about for many years. The camaraderie that he’d never felt with anyone else. Their shared sense of adventure and determination.
And this morning, he’d felt that little thrill of anticipation that he’d always felt when he knew he’d be seeing her again soon.
It would have been far better to wait for Fred’s help rather than to have awakened old emotions he had no business exploring, he realized with chagrin.
He’d have to be more careful in the future.
