Adrienne deWolfe - [Wild Texas Nights 03] (51 page)

She just hoped Zack was safe.

Her throat constricted as she recalled how he'd ridden off without so much as a backward glance. Since he'd packed his saddlebags and bedroll, she figured he'd intended either one of two things: to avenge her thousand-dollar loss, as she'd asked, or to leave her and the ranch for good.

She would have liked to think he was hunting One Toe, that he wasn't so bullheaded that he'd call an end to their affair just because she'd stood her ground, demanding the freedom and respect that were her due. After all, she wasn't asking any more of him than he would have asked of her. No man wanted a master. Why, then, would a man presume a woman wanted one?

She sighed as Pokey charged ahead, scrambling so recklessly over the loose rocks that he started skidding on his haunches down the creek bank.

"Pokey, heel."

She might as well have shouted an order at the clouds.

A particularly loud
boom
rattled the earth. Sassy snorted, her ears swiveling forward, and pranced skittishly. For some reason, she refused to descend the slope to the creek bed.

Bailey struggled with her recalcitrant mare as Pokey dashed off on another wild-goose chase. After struggling across the sucking mud—which was all that was left of one of Bailey's finer watering holes—he halted abruptly on the other side and started sniffing in circles around the trunk of a shin oak.

Suddenly he loosed an adolescent baying and headed straight up the other slope toward a dense growth of scrub.

This time, he wasn't so lucky. He lost his footing on the limestone gravel and started yiking, tumbling end over end in the midst of a tiny avalanche. Landing with a whimper and a thud, he thrashed around, his panic growing more pronounced when he couldn't heave himself out of the pile of rocks and mud that had buried him up to his shoulders. Bailey rolled her eyes to the heavens.

"Stupid cowpoke's dog."

Dismounting, she tethered Sassy, gave her nervous mare a pat, and picked her way across some strategically placed stones to get to Pokey's potential grave.

"You know, Pokey, if I were Zack, I would have given you away too."

Big, anxious eyes rolled toward the sound of her voice, and the puppy whined, struggling even more frantically than before.

"All right, all right, shh." She squatted, grabbing the fur at the nape of his neck with one hand and pushing away stones with the other. Within moments, he popped free. He whined, trying to lick her face. When that failed, he planted his paws and shook off a spray of sludge.

Bailey coughed, wiping splotches of mud from her cheek. "Thanks a lot, Pokey."

He twisted artfully, trying to free himself.

"Oh, no, you don't. This time, you're coming with me."

She hauled him up onto her rock, goopy paws and all, and yanked off her bandanna, thinking to rub off the worst of the mud before she carried him back to Sassy.

That's when she felt the hair on the back of her neck rise. Every nerve in her body jolted in warning, and she froze instinctively, her senses straining to pinpoint the cause of her unease.

Pokey bristled, his lips curling back from baby fangs. Bailey swallowed to see his reaction. She turned to stare in the direction of his twitching nose.

A large male cougar was stalking them.

A dried patch of blood stained the cat's shoulder. The wound, little more than a powder burn, looked fresh enough to have been inflicted the night before.

One Toe. Great God in heaven.

Pokey began barking like a mad wolf, and One Toe loosed an answering growl. Judging by the tracks he'd made so silently in the mud, he'd come down the creek bank from the growth of scrub that Pokey had been flushing. No doubt the cat had been dozing away the heat of the day, as was the cougar custom, until the puppy had blundered along to sacrifice itself as a snack.

Bailey's gut clenched. One glance at her horse, rearing and thrashing against her tether about fifty yards away, told her there was no way she'd be able to race back across the muddy creek bottom and grab her rifle from its saddle boot before the cat ran her down.

She was vulnerable. All but defenseless. Her worst fears had risen from their grave.

She reached a shaking hand for her Peacemaker. With its range limited to fifty paces, the Colt didn't leave much room for error when a cougar was making a forty-foot leap for one's throat. The Winchester would have been the better choice, since it was accurate up to two hundred yards. Why, oh, why hadn't she chased after Pokey with her rifle?

Because one doesn't need rifles to rescue puppies from the mud
, her logical side answered.

She clung desperately to that thought, to that logic, as the cat prowled ever nearer. She wanted to scream and run; she fought fear back with all the tenacity her twenty-two years of training could muster. How many times had she told Zack and Mac, Hank and Nick, even her daddy, that she could fend for herself? That she didn't need anyone else, that she could stand alone? Only last night, she'd driven Zack out of her bed and her house with her protestations.

Dear God, what she wouldn't give for his helping hand now.

Sixty yards, fifty-five yards, the cat slinked closer, its ears back, its throat rumbling. Bailey tried to dredge up facts to occupy her frantic mind. Pumas hunted alone. They were rarely seen by day. Their diets consisted of deer, some porcupine, rabbits. Sheep, goats, cattle, man—these were not preferred prey. But some cats grew accustomed to the taste.

She swallowed bile, easing back her gun hammer with a little prayer. Slowly, carefully, she straightened, and One Toe halted, his tail twitching. He was close enough now for her to glimpse the silver whiskers on his muzzle. He was a mature cat, an elder to be reckoned with. To her frightened eyes, his taut, quivering body appeared much longer than the average fifty inches. With a full belly, he shouldn't have the desire to attack her. But he was wounded. Angry. And he'd learned to kill for sport.

As if she were somebody else watching from afar, she saw the lightning flicker around him. Thunder mingled with his throaty growls as he drew in his legs, preparing for the pounce.

Then Pokey shattered her trancelike state.

With a fearless puppy cry, he launched himself off the rock, racing in a circle, feinting to the left.

"Pokey, no!"

Horrified, she watched the age-old battle between canine and feline. One Toe snarled. He swiped with four deadly claws, but Pokey dodged, dancing backward, barking shrilly. One Toe rose from his crouch, his attention focused on the annoying little morsel that had dared to provoke him. Pokey backed farther away from Bailey's rock.

The stupid dog. The stupid cowpoke's dog is trying to save me!

She scooped up a stone and threw it with all her might. It glanced off the cat's ribs. One Toe yowled, his head swinging her way.

"Over here, you coward! Leave the baby alone!"

Pokey charged back to her defense, and the cougar swiped again.

Bailey bit her lip. As much as she feared for Pokey, there was nothing she could do short of getting herself killed to stop his idiotic bravery. Their only chance was the Winchester.

She jumped back over the rocks, her boots precariously slippery from Pokey's mud. She scrambled and cursed, thrown off balance, flailing wildly with her gun hand. She managed to reach the next rock, the last rock, but her foot slid, and she went down hard. The stone gouged her gut, knocking the wind from her lungs. Her .45 discharged. It slipped from her fingers, and panic seized her as she watched the mud swallow her Colt whole.

Mother of mercy, help! Send lightning, send Zack. Please, please, send help!

The cat was bounding after her now. Maybe it was bored with Pokey. Or maybe the gunshot had reminded it of its shoulder and the wound it wanted to avenge. Bailey churned frantically, trying to regain her footing, trying to find her Colt in the mire.

"Bailey!"

"Zack?" she half sobbed, trying to dash the mud from her eyes. She heard three rifle blasts, and she cringed, cowering, waiting for death.

It never came. A raspy wheeze trailed into silence somewhere behind her. Peeking between her fingers, she saw One Toe had fallen no more than five feet from her boot.

As the rifle reports rolled back from the hills, harmonizing with the thunder, she dared to look up the creek bank. Her savior was silhouetted on a jet-black steed against the purple sky. Electrical currents hissed and sizzled behind them, chasing stark light patterns across man and mount in an almost otherworldly effect. Never in her life had she seen anything so magnificent. She wanted to cry.

"Bailey."

She blinked, and he was beside her, dismounting in the mud. Strong fingers closed over her arms lifting her to her feet. She choked on the lump of words that had lodged in her throat.

"Are you hurt?" he asked.

She shook her head, gazing gratefully at him—her love, her man—and tried to work up the courage to speak.

"I've been tracking all day. I heard the gunshot."

She nodded.

"I saw dog prints and horse tracks," he added hoarsely. "I figured it had to be you."

She opened her mouth to speak, but something guarded entered his eyes, belying the strain on his features and the tremor of his hands. She hesitated.

He released her.

Her opportunity was lost.

Deflated, she watched as Pokey trotted up to his dead foe. With a snort that could have been a sigh, he sniffed the carcass. Zack knelt beside him. He patted the dog's head before pushing the cougar over. His movements were so stilted, so unnatural, that uneasiness slithered back into Bailey's chest. Her limbs still quaked from her ordeal, and her heart was racing so fast, she felt dizzy.

She wanted to ask him to hold her, but she didn't feel comfortable asking for something that until last night, he used to give so freely. Strangely, she didn't feel comfortable with him at all.

"One Toe must have had a little fox in him," he said. "I finally figured out he was backtracking to throw me off his trail." He shook his head and rose. "He hopped a couple of fence posts too."

Their eyes met.

He was the first to look away. "Reckon the contest is over. Between the sheepherders and the cattlemen, anyway."

Her bottom lip trembled. Of all the things she wanted to hear from him at that minute, after everything they'd been through in the past sixteen hours, the cougar-bagging contest wasn't even on her list.

"I—I'm sorry, Zack. About shutting you out last night. Thank you for coming back for me. I guess..." She swallowed. "I guess I'm not good at protecting myself, after all."

His throat worked for a moment. He looked angry—no, hurt. She couldn't tell. She reached a shaking hand to touch him, to steal some small degree of comfort, when suddenly his head snapped back around, and he was facing her again. She flinched, retreating a step before the raw emotion etched into his features.

Then her attention was snatched away by a thick, gray-black plume that was spiraling into the southeastern sky beyond his shoulder.

Dread coiled like a sickness in her gut. Whatever he would have said in that instant was lost.

"Dear God," she breathed.

He frowned, and she pointed a quaking finger.

"Zack, look. Smoke! It's coming from the direction of the house!"

Chapter 22

The look on Bailey's face was almost too much for Zack to bear. As hurt as he was over her rejection the night before, he knew Bailey was suffering even more to see her ranch besieged by wildfire.

Running beside her to the horses, he shoved down his own pain and resurrected his anger—mostly at himself. Somehow, circumstances had conspired against him again. Her home,
their
home, was in danger. With that heart-wrenching realization came the knowledge that there was nothing, absolutely nothing, he could do to spare her from the agony of watching her world turn to ashes.

They spurred their horses to a dead run beneath the lash and rumble of the threatening storm. Even so, nearly twenty minutes passed before they reached the belching bowels of hell that had once been a pastoral canyon. Zack choked back a curse. From their vantage point on the cliff, he could see the flaming walls of her barn, its silo, and the towering inferno that had been a windmill. Lightning must have struck its blades, because they still showered sparks. Rings of fire devoured the dry grasses, pinning her livestock in their pens. He shuddered to hear the terrified bleating of the goats. The sheep huddled in macabre silence.