Читать книгу Cowgirl, Unexpectedly - Vicki Tharp - Страница 7

Chapter 2

Jenna wasn’t small, but this horse positively dwarfed her. I followed the two of them into the barn and stayed a safe distance away while she stripped the tack off the horse and turned him out into a small paddock.

While she was gone, I glanced around. Wood pole barn with a metal roof. Eight stalls, concrete aisle with a wide center for saddling. Tack room full of saddles and other horsey stuff. The light grassy scent of the hay in the loft above rained down. Individual runs came off the backside of the stalls and emptied into a large pasture that disappeared over a hill.

Jenna returned, leading a small black and white paint horse. The horse wasn’t in any particular hurry as it ambled down the aisle behind her. The only change to Jenna’s wardrobe since I’d seen her this morning was the addition of a well-worn cowboy hat on top of her head. The brim at the front and rear angled down to give her protection from the sun and the bandanna she’d had in her back pocket now circled her neck.

The horse followed her without a halter and lead rope and when she stopped, the horse stepped forward to the rail and gave a heavy sigh as if bored with the whole ordeal.

Jenna stepped inside the tack room, poked her head out a second later, and said, “Catch,” as she tossed me first one brush and then the other. “Use the curry comb, the round one with the metal teeth, to get the chunks of dirt off and the softer brush to get the loose stuff,” she added before disappearing inside again.

As I loosened the caked-on mud on the horse’s right side, I realized how Jenna had been keen enough to notice I lacked horse experience. She came out with a saddle and other necessary gear and placed them on a foldout rack within easy reach. She took the soft brush from me and followed behind with short, competent strokes.

“Thanks,” I said as I finished brushing the second side.

“What for?”

I jerked my chin toward the front of the barn where Hank and the other men were waiting. “Angel doesn’t have a loose shoe, does he?”

Jenna grinned at me over the top of the horse. “I owed you one for this morning,” she said. “But in Hank’s defense, he wouldn’t have let you climb on. He was just waiting for you to call his bluff.”

“Good to know.” I’d suspected it had been his version of a cowboy initiation, but I still would have swung my leg over that saddle.

“Okay, so horse saddling 101,” Jenna said as she threw the thick saddle pad over the horse’s back. “Saddle pad first, bring it up over the horse’s withers, the pointy part where their back meets their neck, then comes the saddle and the cinch.”

She saddled and cinched then bridled the horse before moving on to cleaning out the hooves. “You’ll want to check the cinch one last time before you get on. Sometimes the horses will hold their breath to expand their chest so by the time you go to get on the cinch is loose again,” she explained.

As we led the horses to where everyone was waiting outside, she said, “The mare’s name is Sierra. She taught me how to ride, and will take good care of you on the trail.”

Jenna positioned the horse for me to mount. The men mounted up and headed toward one of the gates, giving Jenna a chance to give me the Cliffs Notes version of Horseback Riding for Dummies.

There was a lot more to riding than I’d ever imagined, and I only had the most basic information. It made me a cowboy much the same way as knowing the parts of a rifle made you a sniper. Still, it wasn’t like me to back down from a challenge.

The rolling motion of Sierra’s long-striding walk felt foreign, and even though I’d been riding my steel horse for nearly a year straight, the western saddle made my Harley’s seat feel like an overstuffed recliner. Somewhere in the near future was a saddle sore with my name on it.

Link Hardy, the foreman, was waiting on his horse by the gate with one of the other new hands. At the campfire this morning, Link had stood a little bowlegged, as if he’d been born with a horse between his legs. Unlike me, he looked at home astride the animal.

Jenna was a horse length ahead and stopped beside Link. I tried my newfound skills to stop Sierra. I don’t know if she stopped because of anything I did or because she was going to stop anyway. Hopefully, it looked like stopping had been my idea.

“I want you to take Parish and Santos with you,” Link instructed Jenna. “Check the fences on the west side to Harper’s Cave then cut across to the catch pens down by the creek. Repair what you can and mark the rest. I don’t want to lose any head when we round up the calves for branding.”

Jenna’s eyes narrowed and her lips tightened into a thin line. I thought she was about to protest, but Link’s face hardened and Jenna must have decided against it. She turned her horse to the west without a word and Sierra followed without any input from me. Santos fell in behind us.

Jenna blew a sharp whistle. “Come on, Dink,” she hollered out. The cow dog blasted past me out of nowhere and settled into an easy trot beside her.

“Keep your eyes out for trouble,” Link yelled at our backs.

My heart skittered faster for a couple beats before I remembered Dale had said he believed all the ranch’s troubles were behind them. I needed the job. I needed the money. I needed to get the hell back on the road.

I didn’t need any trouble.

Dale hadn’t gone into specifics, but how much trouble could there be in the middle of America? I moved to Jenna’s right and spotted the rifle in the scabbard on her saddle.

What the hell have I gotten myself into?

* * * *

I had no clue what had upset Jenna. I didn’t know if she was mad that she had to drag two new hires along with her—one of which barely knew the front end of the horse from the back end—or if she wasn’t happy with the scope of her work. But like a good soldier, she’d kept her mouth shut and followed orders. I admired that about her.

We followed a dirt road wide enough to ride two abroad, so Santos brought his horse level with mine. Jenna and her dog were about fifty yards ahead and gaining ground. I didn’t attempt to catch up because she probably needed a few minutes to settle her temper. Besides, the walk was much more comfortable than a trot.

Luckily, Sierra didn’t fuss when left behind. She plodded along with her head down low, ears flopping to the sides, while Santos’s mount trotted in place beside me like one of those über-dedicated joggers who can’t stand still at a crosswalk waiting for the light to change.

I was a newbie to horses, but the head tossing and the occasional sideways trotting from Santos’s horse told me his horse wanted to catch up to Jenna. Still, Santos stuck with me and rode out his horse’s antics as if he were John Wayne himself.

The sun was rising higher in the sky. I could no longer see the vapor when I exhaled and the other ranch hands had disappeared over a rise. Santos’s horse worked himself into a small lather along his neck before he settled into a walk a couple miles from the barn.

“Taco is learning fast,” Santos said, with a chin bob toward his horse. “Last month he threw me when the other horses went ahead.”

I pegged Santos to be in his early twenties. He wasn’t big, but he wasn’t small either. His hat sat high on his forehead, revealing thick, black brows, dark chocolate eyes, and a large mouth full of straight white teeth. “Jorge Santos,” he said as he extended his hand in introduction.

I leaned over to grasp his hand. The handshake lasted a fraction of a second as his horse bunny-hopped to the side. “Mackenzie Parish. My friends call me Mac.”

Santos scooted his horse back in line with mine. “First time on a horse?”

“I thought I hid it so well.”

His grin flashed Chiclet-white and a dimple popped up on his left cheek. “We’ll have many hours and many days in the saddle. If you don’t quit, you’ll get better.”

It wasn’t a resounding endorsement, but I’d take it. “I’ll settle for not knocking a filling loose or dislodging a kidney every time I trot.”

“You have to relax,” he explained, drawing the word relax out a couple of beats. “Move with the horse.”

He demonstrated both the slow and the fast trot on his horse then slowed again until I caught back up with him. “You try.”

He made it look easy. I was pretty sure it wasn’t.

Jenna was much farther ahead because she’d moved into a steady, ground-covering trot. I practiced both the slow and fast trot, and Santos had tears of laughter rolling down his cheeks as I tried to mimic what he’d shown me.

I didn’t hold it against him. What I lack in skill, I make up in perseverance, and I silently promised Sierra an extra helping of grain when we made it back to the barn, a small thank-you for not dumping me on my ass.

By the time we made it to the west fence, only every third or fourth stride ended with a jarring trot step. I was improving, but we hadn’t been in the saddle long and already my quads hurt and my butter-soft jeans had turned to sixty-grit sandpaper against my inner thighs.

I tried to concentrate on the rolling hills to keep my mind off the nagging discomfort. The brush was short and scraggly in this area, small rocks plentiful, and the view of the craggy, snow-capped mountains ahead of me could have made the centerfold of National Geographic.

I eyeballed the fence for signs of damage, but not particularly hard, because there were three of us watching the same fence line. Not a three-person job, but it gave Santos and me the opportunity to start learning our way around the ranch.

My mind wandered back to this morning and my luck in getting the job. Dale must be desperate for warm bodies to fill the saddles if he’d actually taken the chance and hired me on. Not an auspicious sign.

A sharp, high-pitched yelping jerked me to attention. Adrenaline buzzed, not a surge, but a soft spike that kicked my heart into the next gear and widened my focus. Santos dug his heels into his horse and galloped off. In the distance, Jenna yanked her rifle from its scabbard before disappearing over a rise.

The yipping continued unabated, loud and so intense that even from a distance it threw me back to the streets of Iraq, to the screams of pain, the zing of bullets, and the brain-numbing concussive forces of the explosions.

Sierra skittered sideways, anxious to join the others, and I grabbed onto the horn, gave her her head, and catapulted down the trail like an F-18 Super Hornet off an aircraft carrier. I didn’t know the old girl had that kind of speed. The brush and rocks screamed by in a blur; the speed flushed my cheeks and constricted my lungs and plastered a smile on my face.

Sierra and I flew over a rise and almost plowed into Santos. My horse slid to a stop in half a stride, and my momentum propelled me out of the saddle. It was only because of my death grip on the saddle horn that my feet flew out of the stirrups first and I was able to crash-land on my feet a nanosecond before my ass and then my side hit the ground with a jaw-jarring thud, my left arm going out to help break my fall. My left shoulder pulled, bringing tears to my eyes and reminding me that maybe I wasn’t as well healed from my previous injuries as I’d fooled myself into believing.

The dog’s howls came in waves, rising to a frantic, glass-shattering pitch before sinking to an eerily quiet before the next rise. My ears rang, muffling my panting. I spat dirt out of my mouth and scooted the remaining few feet to where Jenna sat with her arms wrapped around the dog. She’d pulled him into her lap, hugged his head and neck to her chest, and murmured reassuring words into the dog’s ears.

Santos was using all of his muscle to depress the springs on a leg-hold trap. The rusty metal jaws—the size of which looked big enough and strong enough to hold a bear—bit full force with shark-like teeth onto the dog’s right foreleg. Blood dripped steadily into the thirsty ground. The bone was a chewed, mangled mess.

I added my strength to Santos’s and together we released enough pressure on the jaws for Jenna to pull Dink’s leg out. The yowling immediately quieted to a pitiful whimper as Jenna buried her tear-streaked face into the dog’s fur. Santos sat back on his haunches. Even with his darker complexion, I could see the red anger on his face, his lips flat and tense.

“There’s a handheld radio in my saddlebag,” Jenna said to Santos as she pulled herself together. Dink lay still in her arms, panting fast and heavy, thick ropes of saliva trailing down Jenna’s arm. Her eyes drifted to her rifle a few feet away in the sand and the air caught in her lungs.

I knew what she was contemplating.

“It’s bad,” I said, stating the obvious. “He’s in a lot of pain and he’s lost a lot of blood. I’ve seen worse. Much worse. We’re going to get him home and he’s going to have a long recovery, but he’s strong. He’ll be okay.”

Jenna’s eyes held mine. She nodded once, needing to believe.

I glanced over at Santos, who’d managed to gather all three horses. Luckily, there was a nice patch of tall grass, not twenty yards from where we were, that had captured the horses’ attention. He rummaged in one of the packs for the radio.

“Right,” I said to no one in particular. I stood slowly, stiffness already setting in from the ride and my unscheduled dismount.

We had to stabilize the bone and stop the bleeding. I’ve had more experience with field dressing wounds than I cared to remember. I walked around searching for sticks I could use for a brace. As mangled as the leg was, it would be important to support the leg from front to back as well as side-to-side to prevent as much pain as possible when we moved him, and to protect the delicate tissue from the cutting forces of the jagged bone.

A few minutes later, I had the sticks gathered but I still needed something to bind them to the leg. I was wearing a sports bra, so I didn’t hesitate to strip off my T-shirt and use my four-inch fixed blade boot knife to cut the material into strips.

“This is going to hurt,” I warned Jenna and Dink.

Jenna nodded, her face pale but determined. Dink eyed me through half-slitted lids, his lips drawn back into a submissive grimace.

“Santos, come hold his leg,” I ordered.

He slid to the ground beside me and gently held Dink’s leg on either side of the break. The radio hissed beside him, the volume turned up full bore.

“Were you able to get hold of anybody?” Jenna asked. Her eyes were dry now, but there were dirt streaks on her face where her tears had fallen.

“Not yet.” He used his thumb to hold the strip of the T-shirt in place while I wrapped it around the leg, being careful not to get it too tight and cause more swelling. “When we’re done here, I’ll ride to the ridge and see if I can get a better signal.”

* * * *

We were halfway back to the ranch house by my estimation when Dale’s dilapidated farm truck lurched over the rise, belching black exhaust from a broken tailpipe. Moments later, Sierra’s ears perked up and she called out, shaking me in the saddle like a flesh and bone earthquake. Hoof beats sounded on the distance, then Hank and his horse popped out of a wash about a hundred yards from our position. Jenna sank into her saddle as if all the steel in her spine melted at the sight of help arriving.

Santos and I dismounted and he pitched his horse’s reins to me and lifted Dink from the front of Jenna’s saddle. Dale alighted from the truck and Hank stepped out of his stirrups before his horse had completely stopped. I held out my hand to take Hank’s reins, but though his nostrils flared and his ribs heaved with every breath, his horse dropped his head and cocked a hind leg as if his rider had arrived at the saloon after a month-long cattle drive.

Hank slid Jenna from the saddle, wrapped her in his arms, and held her to his chest. “You all right?”

I looked away, feeling inexplicably as if I was witnessing something private. I turned my attention to Santos and Dale as they settled Dink onto the threadbare fabric of the truck’s front bench seat. The remnants of adrenaline popping through me made my veins itch and my stomach collapse on itself.

The situation was surreal.

On the one hand, I fought the urge to check the tightness of the chinstrap on my combat helmet. On the other hand, it was freeing to watch the evacuation of the wounded and not worry if the vehicle will make it back without running into an IED or the business end of an RPG.

I stood there unseeing, lost in my thoughts, and unaware of my surroundings. Sierra nudged my back as if telling me to get on with it. Nothing rude, just a gentle reminder there were things she’d rather do than stand in the middle of a dirt road all day. It hadn’t even registered that Santos had retrieved his horse from me until the truck and Santos’s horse disappeared over the hill.

Past its zenith, the sun was warm on the side of my face. Then it dove behind a gray cloud dousing the heat like carbon dioxide on a gas fire. I glanced up into Hank’s arctic-blue eyes and caught his assessing gaze.

“Cold?” he asked with a nod toward my exposed midriff.

I’d completely forgotten my state of undress. Not that I was embarrassed. Except for the size of my goose bumps, Hank didn’t seem the least bit interested in my present condition. After all, we were both adults, and the average bikini top showed more skin than my sports bra.

“I’m fine.” My answer was as automatic as an enlistee’s quick salute and had nothing to do with a thorough assessment of my body’s current temperature.

Silently, he unbuttoned his shirt, hooked it on one finger by the collar, and held it out to me. I accepted his offer and slipped my right arm through the sleeve. I came up short as I reached back for the other armhole. Pain radiated down to my hip and up across my left shoulder and I sucked in a choppy breath.

“What’s wrong?” Hank grabbed the free end of his shirt to assess the damage hidden beneath.

I stood stock-still and closed my eyes, awaiting the inevitable questions about the tangled web of pink scar tissue surrounding the divot in my shoulder where the bullet had ripped and chewed its way through me. A stab of heat burned my skin as his laser focus touched it. To my surprise, he didn’t comment. Then his fingers brushed against my side.

“Ouch!” I yelped and jerked away, raising my left arm slowly to examine my side. There was an angry black bruise at the bottom of my ribcage about the size of my fist where I must have landed on a rock. A long, wide strawberry radiated down my side and dipped beneath the band of my jeans like the tail of a comet. Serum had oozed from the edges of the shredded skin, gluing dust to my side like a dirt bandage.

“Jesus, Parish.”

“Could be worse,” I commented.

Hank repositioned the armhole for easy entry and I slipped my arm in as he gently lifted the fabric over my shoulders. A light breeze billowed the tail of the shirt behind me and I caught the scent of him on the fabric—a potent mix of clean sweat and ground-in dirt. It reminded me of desert sand and a hundred and twenty degrees in the shade half a world away.

I buttoned up the shirt, the fabric a little stiff with dried sweat at the shoulders, but the heat his body had left behind warmed me.

I turned back to my horse and mounted up. Hank was already in the saddle with a lead rope attached to Jenna’s horse. Jenna’s horse rubbed her face on Hank’s horse’s rump then gave it a light nip. Hank’s horse didn’t move, but it flipped an ear backward with an expression I could only describe as a sneer.

We rode back in silence. I knew Hank must have questions, about what happened to the dog, about what happened to my shoulder, but he kept them to himself. I wasn’t particularly in the mood to talk anyway. My shoulder throbbed, my open wound rubbed against my jeans, and my inner thighs were aflame with friction burns.

Still better than my best day in Iraq.

* * * *

An hour later, I was back at the barn. After stripping Jenna’s horse of its tack, Hank turned the mare out in the big grassy paddock with the other horses, grabbed a new shirt from the cabin, then pointed his horse back out on the range to catch up with the other men from this morning. There were still fences to check.

Since Santos and I didn’t know our way around the ranch, we stayed behind to clean stalls, and I was up to my elbows in urine-soaked shavings and horse manure. Despite the coolness of the barn, sweat rolled between my breasts and down my back, dampening my clothes. My shoulder muscles ached and my side stung but it gave me something to focus on besides Dink’s mangled leg.

“It’s not right,” Santos complained.

“What’s that?” We had been mucking the stalls for about forty minutes and my mind was lost in the thunk and scrape of the manure forks as we dumped the heavy scoops into the wheelbarrow. We had gone so long without speaking I didn’t know if he had a problem with the work we were doing or if something else was bothering him.

“The dog,” he said.

I stopped mid-shovel. “What about him?”

“The trap. Never shoulda been there. Jenna says they don’t use any on the ranch for that reason. So someone set it there.”

“Who would do a thing like that?” It was rhetorical. Santos hadn’t worked here any longer than I had so I didn’t expect him to know the answer. “Besides, Dale said their trouble was behind them. “Maybe it was set a while ago and they only came across it now.”

“Maybe,” Santos said, as he shoved his rake into a thick clump of manure. “Maybe not.”