Judith E French (31 page)

Caitlin drew in a long, slow breath. “What if they didn’t go alone?” she ventured. “Can a white woman sell livestock?”

Gabe fixed her with an intense stare. “You?”

Caitlin nodded. “Shane said my riding was coming along. We can do it, Gabe. I know we can. You, me, and Justice. We’ll take McKenna’s livestock to Fort Independence, and we’ll get it there ahead of the other herds.”

“You know what you’re lettin’ yerself in for?” Gabe asked.

“McKenna no like,” Mary said.

“McKenna won’t know, until it’s too late to stop us,” Caitlin answered.

“It will be dangerous,” Gabriel warned.

“You mean you think whoever tried to kill Shane will
try to kill us?” she asked. She hadn’t thought of that. She’d been so worried about Shane that it hadn’t occurred to her that someone might want to kill her as well. “If we leave him, do you think they’ll come after him again?”

“No,” Mary said.

Caitlin looked at her. “Why not?”

Mary’s eyes narrowed to slits. “Gabriel tell Rachel that McKenna is dead.”

Caitlin glanced at Gabe. “You lied to Rachel? Why?”

Mary scoffed. “Nobody kill dead man.”

“So what about us?” Caitlin asked Gabriel. “If we drive these horses, will we be a target for the killer?”

He shrugged.

“But if we stay here at Kilronan,” Caitlin continued, “Shane loses everything he’s worked for. And what’s to say they won’t come after us anyway?”

The wrangler nodded slowly.

“You keep those animals penned up,” Caitlin said with more authority than she felt. “We’ll leave at daybreak tomorrow.”

Gabe nodded again. “All right. We’ll try it, but if we don’t succeed, we won’t have to worry about bein’ broke or about being ambushed by Beau Thompson. McKenna will murder us all.”

Six hours from Kilronan and halfway across the first river, Caitlin realized that she’d made a big mistake. Going on a horse drive when some of the animals were barely broken to saddle was ludicrous—ridiculous. Not only was she going to lose Shane’s entire herd, but she was going to kill herself and his unborn child in the attempt.

Justice had already reached the far side of the river with the lead horse, called the bell mare, a big rangy bay
with streaks of gray around her eyes and a spiky black mane and tail. The bell mare’s name was Nancy, and a small copper bell hung from her halter and tinkled when she moved. The familiar sound told the other animals where she was at all times and comforted them, according to Justice.

“Horses are flighty,” the boy had explained. “Knowing that Nancy is up ahead and in charge keeps them calm.”

Caitlin watched as two paint horses scrambled up the rocky bank on the far side. The bulk of the herd was still in the water, swimming the deep part of the river. Gabriel was downstream keeping the stock away from the swiftest area of current, and she was clinging to a mule upstream, about a third of the way across.

The water was icy cold and fast running, and Caitlin was already soaked to the waist. Her teeth were chattering, and she was concentrating on staying in the saddle when Gabe yelled at her and waved his hand frantically.

She looked over her shoulder to see two mules and a gray gelding turning back toward the southern side.

“Go get them!” Gabe shouted.

“Me?” Caitlin replied in astonishment.

The cowboy’s answer was lost in the sound of the river, which Caitlin thought was probably for the best, considering the expression on his face.

So what if they lost those three? she argued with herself. Gabe had already made the decision to leave the oxen behind at Kilronan because they were so slow. The powerful but gentle beasts were greatly in demand by settlers taking wagon trains west, but Gabe had insisted there was more profit in the horses and mules.

“We’re already late,” he’d said on the morning they’d departed Kilronan. “The Thompson herd started two days ago. If we want to get to Independence in time to
get a good price for the livestock, then we go without the oxen.”

Caitlin looked back at the wayward horse and the two mules, and then at Gabriel. The cowboy obviously had his plate full in dealing with the main herd. Either she retraced her steps and rounded up the runaways, or they’d be lost.

Then she glanced ahead at Justice. It was clear from the way the boy was shouting at her that he expected her to bring the animals back. She and Shane’s son were just beginning to understand each other. If she let him down, would he ever forgive her?

“Damn mules,” she muttered under her breath as she reined her animal around the way she’d come. A branch banged against her leg and scraped against her mount’s hindquarters, and she kicked it away.

Bessie laid back her ears and fought the bit as the last of the horses swimming the other way passed her. “Get up!” Caitlin urged. When the animal balked, Caitlin slapped her neck with the reins.

The mule found her footing on a sandbank and lunged forward, throwing Caitlin sideways in the saddle. Caitlin regained her balance and dug her heels into Bessie’s sides.

A few more yards, and they regained solid ground. One of the mules that Caitlin had come back to catch brayed a greeting, and Bessie nickered in return. “Get on,” Caitlin yelled. “Get!”

She urged Bessie in a circle around the stragglers and tried to drive them back toward the river. By the time she got the horse to the water’s edge, one of the stray mules had gone left, the other one right. Both were eating grass and showed no sign that they felt like going for another swim. And as soon as she left the horse to chase a mule, the horse wandered away from the riverbank.

Gabe had the rest of the herd on the far side. He and Justice were bunching them up to drive them north. Would they leave her alone on the wrong side of the river?

Gabriel had sent her back to get three runaway animals, and she barely had control of the one she was riding. She was freezing to death, and her bottom and legs were so cold that she could hardly feel whether or not she was in the saddle.

“Stupid, senseless beasts!” she cried. “Stay here. Get eaten by wolves. See if I care!” She urged Bessie up alongside the horse and smacked it on the rump with the ends of Bessie’s reins.

The horse leaped off the bank into the river, and Caitlin’s mule plunged after. The water hadn’t gotten any warmer.

Bessie slipped and fell sideways, then struggled up and began swimming. The gelding kept pace with the mule until they reached the middle, where the current was the most dangerous.

Caitlin held the reins in a death grip. Her fingers were laced into the mule’s stiff mane, and her knees gripped the animal’s sides with all her strength. She was a good swimmer, but if she fell off, the weight of her riding skirt, petticoat, and Gabe’s breeches that she wore underneath her own garments would pull her down.

Desperately, Caitlin started praying for Bessie’s safety.

After what seemed hours, the water grew shallower, and the gray swam ahead and waded ashore. Bessie was two lengths behind him when the carcass of a dead deer came tumbling down the river. The mule took one look, laid back her ears, and began to buck.

Caitlin never felt herself leave the saddle. The next thing she knew, the river was closing over her head. She touched something cold and stiff and furry, screamed, and
swallowed a mouthful of water. Then she surfaced and screamed again as the stench of dead buck engulfed her.

“Help me!” she cried.

Bessie’s rump and hindquarters flew up over the riverbank. The other two mules that she’d thought she’d left behind splashed past, nearly scaring Caitlin to death and knocking her under again. “Help!” she shouted. “I’m drowning!”

And then she touched bottom. When she stood up, the water barely came to her chest. Weeping tears of anger and frustration, saying words no lady should ever admit knowing, she clawed her way up the bank. “Gabriel!” she shouted, shivering so hard that she could barely speak. “Get me a rifle! I’m going to shoot that mule!”

Justice trotted over on his pinto pony. “Good work,” he said. “I didn’t think you’d get them mules.”

“Get off that pony and build a fire,” she ordered.

“But we’ve got three more hours of daylight,” he protested.

“I’m wet.”

He grinned, looking amazingly like his father. “You are wet.”

“Justice.”

The smile faded. Justice hadn’t survived as long as he had without knowing real danger when he saw it.

“A fire.”

Reluctantly the boy swung down off his pony. “All right, if you say so. But we’re never gonna get to Fort Independence if you’re goin’ to act like a girl.”

“Not another word.” She dropped onto the deep grass and began to tug at a wet boot.

“Well, you did get the stock,” Justice admitted. “That’s something.”

Gabe rode up. He studied her from head to toe, but he made no mention of her soaked condition, and he never
cracked a smile. “I take it we’re campin’ here for the night?”

“Yes, we are,” Caitlin said with as much dignity as she could muster. “And as soon as I shoot Bessie, and Justice builds a fire, you can grill us some delicious mule steaks for supper while I’m drying off.”

All that first day Mary had kept Shane drugged with a medicated tea, so it wasn’t until the following morning that he realized that Caitlin was gone. “Where is she?” he’d roared. “And where’s Gabe? And Justice?”

“Take horses to fort,” Mary answered. She held out another cup of her special brew. “Sell stock,” she added, as if Shane couldn’t figure the rest out for himself.

“The hell they have!”

“No danger,” Mary said. “Gabriel tell Thompson woman you dead.”

“No danger?” Shane repeated. “Two hundred miles of open country. Renegades, crazy mountain men, army deserters, and horse thieves. One wrangler, an Irish lady, and a boy? Just how do you figure they’re in no danger?”

Derry hid behind Mary’s skirt and peeked out with big eyes. “ ’Kenna mad at Mama?” she asked.

“No, darlin’,” he managed between clenched teeth. He fixed Mary with a cold stare. “Why did you go along with this? You’ve got more sense than the three of them put together.”

Mary shrugged. “This place Justice home. He keep, he need fight, maybe.”

“Saddle me a horse, if they’ve left me one.”

Mary stuck her pipe between her teeth. “McKenna too
sick ride,” she mumbled. “McKenna sleep. Eat. Ride tomorrow.”

He sat up and immediately sank back onto the pillow. His shoulder was as stiff as a block of wood, and it burned as if it were on fire. His gorge rose, and he was afraid he’d disgrace himself by vomiting all over the bedcovers.

“Bring me my clothes,” he said.

“Too sick—”

“Now, Mary!” He pushed himself to a sitting position and stayed up by sheer willpower. The room was spinning, and his stomach was trying to turn itself inside out.

“Pants!” he insisted. “And get that baby out of here. I’m stark naked under this sheet.”

Mary shoved some clothing at him and shooed Derry from the room. Sweat broke out on Shane’s forehead as he set about dressing himself. He thought he’d been in pain when the bull had stomped him, but that was nothing compared to this. “Pack food and make a bedroll for me!” he shouted through the closed door. “I’m goin’ after them.”

Mary didn’t answer.

Gabe drove the herd hard all the next day and harder still the day after that. Caitlin’s back ached, and her face and hands were sunburned. Every bone and muscle in her body felt as if it had been pounded with a blacksmith’s hammer and then stretched like Christmas taffy.

They ate on horseback during the daylight hours, and supper was whatever Gabe or Justice shot during the day. The third night out, Caitlin ate rattlesnake roasted over an open fire and was too hungry to even protest.

“If we’d brought the wagon with us, we could have had coffee and corn cakes and beans,” Justice said. “But the wagon and team would slow us down. The Thompsons
travel with two wagons. We can go over the rough spots that would snap a wagon wheel like tinder.”

No wagon also meant no extra blankets and few changes of clothing. A single blanket roll and two saddlebags contained all Caitlin’s belongings for the trip. As she left the house, she’d snatched Shane’s hat off a peg for a good-luck charm, and she thanked God for it. Her fair skin blistered and peeled in the warm Missouri sunshine, but the hat kept down the glare and shielded part of her face. The broad brim also helped to keep some of the rain out of her eyes.

They crossed streams and rocky valleys and threaded through thick forests that had grown there for thousands of years. They rode through foggy mornings and bright afternoons. Gabe started the horse herd moving when the last stars were just vanishing in the eastern sky and kept them walking at a fast pace until twilight faded into dusk.

Caitlin saw deer and bear, foxes and coyotes. She watched eagles wheel across the sky and great vees of ducks and geese winging overhead. Her head was filled with images of bright-colored birds, wild creatures, ancient trees, and swirling sunsets. But ever constant were the horses and mules that made up the Kilronan herd.

Gabe and Justice knew every animal by name and personality. And many of them Caitlin came to recognize as well. Nancy, the bell mare, was short-tempered and would kick if you came up on her left side, but nothing startled her. The black mule named Trot hated water and had to be driven across any creek, and Babe, a stocky gelding, would wander off if someone didn’t keep him in the center of the herd.

Caitlin was riding Jack, a big-headed paint, on the left flank of the herd when they reached a dead end of a narrow valley. On two sides the ground rose sharply in a tangle of rocks and scrub trees. The remaining route,
westerly, seemed scarcely better. The steep incline was stepped upward in sections scattered with loose gravel.

“We’ve got to turn around and go back,” Caitlin called to Gabe. The bell mare, Nancy, had already circled inside of the natural corral and was headed out.

Gabe pointed. “Nope, we’re headin’ up there.”

Caitlin was sure that her expression must have revealed her doubt, because the cowboy grinned. “These animals can do it. We’ll take half a day off our trip by cutting over this ridge.”