Widow Woman (10 page)

As if he knew what awaited him at the end of his journey, the brindled steer had sliced away from the herd and scooted into a dry creekbed. But Marley and Nick stood in his way. Each step the steer took to pass, they moved, as one, to block. And each maneuver turned the steer toward the direction Nick wanted him to go.

Rachel watched the dance of animals and man from a little distance for a full two minutes before she caught the flick of Nick's eyes coming up to her. Had he known all along she was there?

The thought barely had formed when everything seemed to happen at once.

The spotted steer, in a sudden frenzy to escape, ran a dozen yards along the creekbed, with Marley at his flank. Just as the horse passed a high part of the bank, the steer turned and charged.

Horse and rider were caught between the cut bank and the slicing sharp points of a pair of horns backed by an enraged package of muscle, bone and beef.

Even as she spurred Dandy forward and readied her rope, Rachel saw that Nick had his lariat at hand, but didn't have room to swing because of the earthen wall behind him. Nick and Marley both twisted in a seemingly impossible contortion as the steer turned and dipped his head, then jerked it up, as if trying to scoop out flesh from man and beast with the point of its horn.

Rachel swung her rope in the familiar overhand motion without hesitation. It cut through the gusting wind and settled surely over the widespread horns. She snugged the rope, and that jerked the steer's head away from Nick and Marley. Pressure on the reins brought Dandy from full acceleration to a shuddering halt, his hoofs sending up spurts of loose earth.

But the danger wasn't past. Her rope could hold the steer away from Marley, but she had no way to stop him if he charged her and Dandy, who stood crossways in the narrow creekbed. The steer tried to yank free of the rope, turned in the direction of this new frustration and took a lumbering step toward her.

Before he completed a second step, Nick's rope whistled through the air, and looped around the steer's rear hooves.

Nick had put the room her maneuver gained him to good use. The steer was well and truly caught between ropes held taut in opposite directions.

"Back to the herd,” Nick shouted.

They dragged the animal over the loose dirt the short distance to where the last of the drags slowly passed. They released him, then waited a tense moment to see if he would round on them again.

"If you do,” Rachel muttered to the heedless steer, “you'll be tomorrow's dinner."

But the brindled steer saw the community of his brethren moving away and lumbered off to join them, his temporary rebellion forgotten.

A stream of breath escaped Rachel. She felt as if she'd held that breath from the instant she'd seen the horns swing around toward Nick.

By one accord, they moved their horses to the windbreak provided by the cut bank. Nick dismounted immediately, stripped off one glove and ran an assessing hand down his horse's side.

"Did he catch a horn?” Rachel asked, repeating his actions and joining the examination.

"Don't think so."

A few more minutes satisfied them both.

Relieved and feeling the welcome letdown after the tension, Rachel dropped to the sloped ground and, in a most unladylike manner, propped her elbows on her bent knees.

"Good thing that happened away from the herd. Could have started a run,” she said.

Nick grunted agreement from behind her.

A second sound drew her head around to where he was retrieving a canteen from his saddlebags. She caught the tail end of a wince.

"How about you, Nick? Did he catch you?"

When he turned to her, a glint of devilment in his usually impassive eyes surprised Rachel.

"Just now thinking of that?” He sat beside her, his long legs extending farther down the slope than hers. Another grunt indicated a new soreness, perhaps from the twisting move he'd used. “I could have bled to death waiting for you to get around to me."

He'd been her first fear; the image of that horn slicing through his flesh had spurred her as surely as she had spurred Dandy, and had dug a good deal deeper. But that hardly bore thinking about, much less speaking of. Instead, she shot back. “It just now occurred to me that if you'd caught a horn, I'd most likely be the one who had to minister to you, and put blowfly medicine to your wound."

"I can think of worse things."

For the second time in as many sentences, he stunned her. Did he mean to imply he would have liked her to minister to him? Or was she loco?

"Well, I can't,” she blurted out. “It stinks to high heaven. I hate using the stuff."

For the first time in her acquaintance with him Nick Dusaq laughed out loud.

It was a startling sound. Low and a little rusty, especially when it was interrupted by a cough. When he coughed a second time, she took the canteen, uncorked it and held it to his mouth.

His hands came up to cup hers as he drank.

The sight of his hands—one gloved in worn rawhide, the other showing marks of rough usage on the bare, dark skin—covering hers; one also gloved in worn rawhide, the other unpampered, but so much paler and more delicate than his—mingled with the sensation of his enveloping touch, as if the two senses had tangled together like bits of ribbon in a heap. She saw, she felt. And which sense recorded which sensation she didn't know. The heat of his flesh, the faint coolness of the canteen under her palm, the line of his long fingers, the rub of rawhide over the back of her hand, the flex of his palm against the covering of her gloved hand.

She jerked her gaze away, but that gave no escape. Her eyes fastened on the workings of his throat, the slide and rise of his Adam's apple as he swallowed the liquid.

Then the canteen lowered, his hands guiding hers in the movement. A sheen of moisture remained on his lips, blending with the dust at one corner to form a streak of mud that tempted her to rub it away with a finger. And she looked up to find his black eyes searing into her.

Still with his eyes on her, he wiped the back of his hand across his mouth, catching the streak, though not all the moisture. One-handed, he untied his bandanna and used the corner to wipe the rim of the canteen. She watched as he set it back in her unresisting hands. He wrapped her fingers around it, and raised it to her lips, her eyes following the motion until they rose to meet his.

Her throat abruptly felt drought-dry, and she squeezed her eyes shut as she took a quick swallow of water. Almost too quick, as she had to take a sharp indrawn breath to keep from coughing.

Only when she lowered the canteen did she realize his hands still cupped hers. She tried to read his eyes. But he was looking down, with his face an unrevealing pattern of angles and lines.

She followed the direction of his gaze, to where his hands enfolded hers. His ungloved fingers slid inside the flared cuff of her glove, across her inner wrist, returned as lightly, then repeated the caress. A movement of his thumb turned down the cuff, and his fingers delved inside, tracing shivering lines of sensation along her palm.

Lassitude spread over Rachel, a longing to close her eyes and drift on this current of sensation. Such a small touch to make her feel so alive and tingling. Such a gentle touch. So different from the harsh hold that had bruised this same wrist not many weeks before. So different, too, from the way she had touched him to break his hold on Harris. So very different...

A faint, shrill warning broke through her pleasure.

Her eyelids, drifting lower, shot up, and she saw the intense, taut cast of his face with a clutch of alarm. His gaze rested on her lips, as if they could quench a thirst the water had not. He slowly raised his eyes to meet hers, the sleepy eyelids not hiding a burn of emotions in his black eyes that was far from gentle.

She would have held her ground against a rattler, stilling her instincts because she knew she had to in order to survive. But she couldn't with this man. She scrambled up, overturning the canteen.

Only when she was standing, no longer touching or being touched, did she pause to draw in a deep breath, and cover her escape as best she could.

"I have to, uh, get to camp.” She hurriedly brushed off her seat and pressed her hat more firmly on her head. “See everything's set for night watch and all."

He rose slowly, recorked the canteen and shook out his bandanna. She mounted Dandy.

"Thanks for coming to my aid, Mrs. Terhune.” Only a quarter of his face was visible as he nearly turned his back on her, but she heard him clearly.

His tone made her stomach clench. “No thanks needed. It's nothing I wouldn't—"

"I know.” His hard words cut her off, and she stared as he mounted Marley then turned to face her. His eyes were polished, black marble that no emotion could penetrate. “I know,” he repeated, quieter, but with the same sharp edge. “It's nothing you wouldn't have done for anyone else."

An irrational fury tempted her. She wanted to chip at that marble in his eyes and his soul, to break it apart and crumble it in her fingers.

"That's true,” she said before spurring Dandy, her back as ramrod straight as her mother could ever have wished. “But I was going to say that it was nothing I wouldn't have expected you to do for me if circumstances were reversed."

The drive continued as smoothly as Shag had predicted.

The third night they'd camped near Chelico. Nick rode into town to complete his business with Armstrong and returned in time for midnight watch, with the deed to the old Wallace place in his bags. If anyone noticed he'd been gone, nobody commented to him.

Four more nights and they were within a day's ride of their destination.

This morning, Rachel Terhune had gone ahead with Fred's camp wagon. The herd was trail-hardened, so her absence was hardly noticeable, Nick told himself. When they got to evening camp, not far outside the burgeoning town of Hammer Butte where they would ship out the cattle, she wasn't there.

"Thought Mrs. Terhune came with you,” Joe-Max said to Fred.

Nick didn't move from his spot turning a rib of beef over the fire, but his attention was sharp enough to hear Fred's breath as he prepared to answer.

"Went to town. Staying at a
ho
-tel tonight so she can gussy-up for meeting the buyer first thing, and get us our wages."

"Seems odd not having her around, don't it,” Davis ventured.

Tommy agreed, and a mood of nostalgia settled over the dozen men, with the talk recalling incidents of the season not quite passed like cherished memories of childhood.

Nick shifted on the hard ground. You'd think these men considered one another real friends instead of a group of strange cowhands paid a wage to do a job.

"If you like the work and the trail so much,” Nick drawled in his first contribution, “guess you'll stay in camp instead of celebrating in town."

"Hell, no,” said Joe-Max, affronted. That drew laughs all around, and the talk turned to what delights the town held in store for them.

"Gonna get me some of that licorice I got last year.” Fred smacked his lips.

"Or something sweeter,” Tommy said with a grin.

Hammer Butte wasn't near as big as some Kansas cattle towns Nick had seen on drives from Texas, but it was bigger than Chelico and the railroad brought in such wondrous items as a piano for the best saloon, ready-made clothes and fancy materials for sale at the dry goods store and a tiny gentleman from somewhere called Belgium who made fine boots and saddles. All in all, it offered more by way of civilization than these hands saw in a month of Sundays.

And mention of it got their talk off the Circle T.

Nick wished he was as successful with his thoughts while he rode night guard. He would set his mind on planning what he'd do now that he owned a spread, and it would circle right around on him to the Circle T and its owner.

Relieved by the next watch, he and Davis and Joe-Max found Shag saddling up in the dark when they rode in.

"Well, boys, last night for night-herding for a while, huh?” he greeted them as they began unsaddling their night horses.

"Fine with me. I'm so tired, I could sleep at a full gallop,” said Joe-Max, though he'd been one of the leaders in the earlier talk. A dose of watch could certainly rub the glow off a man.

"Aw, hell, you can sleep all winter,” Shag chided. “For that matter you'll sleep away your old age. Enjoy this while you can. Don't last forever, you know."

"You're sounding downright sentimental. You taking a final watch, Shag, just to say farewell?” asked Joe-Max.

"I'm not that almighty fond of those critters,” the foreman grumbled, resettling his hat over hair that glinted silver in the faint moonlight. The others’ quiet chuckles didn't stir the sleeping men, though one sharp word would have had them out of their rolls and heading to the horses. “No, I'm going into town to meet Mrs. Terhune and find out the arrangements. Start moving them in around sunup, and I'll meet up with you at the pens."

Nick nodded as the foreman mounted and rode southeast toward town. On his way to meeting Rachel Terhune at the hotel. Where she likely slept this moment between soft, clean white sheets, her honey hair loose on the pillow.

A deep sigh from beside him jerked Nick's thoughts from that dangerous path as he settled into his less than soft, less than clean bedroll.

"You got an ache, Andresson?"

"Just thinkin'.” Another sigh. “It's almost over."

"What?"

"The season. The year. Being a hand."

Davis's voice held a confiding tone. Perhaps he'd noticed that they were isolated, with the only other bedrolls this side of the fire deserted by hands gone on watch.

"Shag'll sign you on again come spring. Or catch on with another outfit if you've a mind to."

"Not if I go home to Iowa this winter. If I go back, I don't think I'll ever get free again."

"Just leave."

Another sigh stirred the night. “You don't know my pa. He wouldn't stand for me leaving again."

"Then don't go back,” Nick said more sharply than he'd intended.

"What'll I do for the winter?"