by Janet Dailey
“No, we won’t. We’ve done it before and got away with it. We’ll do it again,” he promised.
“Oh, Culley.” He was trying to reassure her, but it wasn’t the kind of reassurance she needed. Maggie turned her head to the side to bring him within her vision. “It’s crazy. You know that.”
“You only think it is because Chase Calder has your head turned. You aren’t looking at it right, or you’d be able to see that we’re giving the Calders the grief they deserve.”
“You don’t know Chase.” She couldn’t accept this all-encompassing condemnation of the Calders. “He treats me nice, Culley. He picks me flowers. Sometimes we just talk about different things and he holds me. He makes me feel good, Culley.” She tried to make him understand. “Like I’m somebody special.”
“Nothing is ever going to come of it, Maggie. Can’t you see that?” Culley argued. “He’s just using you right now, so, sure, he treats you nice. But what about later? What’s going to happen if you get pregnant?”
“He’s careful.” She glanced away.
“And if that’s not good enough, who is going to suffer the shame? You can bet it won’t be him. He won’t even claim to know you.” Culley could see he wasn’t getting through to her and sighed heavily. “Look, does he ever take you anywhere? Have you ever had a real date with him? No,” he answered the questions himself. “Because he doesn’t want to be seen with you. So he arranges to meet you, takes what he wants, and sends you home. You say he’s nice to you, but is that the way he would treat a girl who he thinks is respectable and good?”
His questions stung already-sensitive emotions. Before she realized what she was doing, her hand arced to slap his face. The contact turned his head, and Culley was slow to turn it back. Maggie stared in dismay at the white mark on his cheek that was gradually turning red. She bit at her lip, unable to apologize.
So Culley did. “I’m sorry. I didn’t mean to upset you.” He regarded her with sad green eyes. “You’d better get some sleep.”
Her eyes smarted with tears she wouldn’t shed as he turned and left the room. In angry gestures, she brushed them from her lashes and began jerking off her clothes to go to bed. She knew worry would keep her from sleeping. She wouldn’t have a restful minute until Culley and her father came back from their night’s escapade—if they came back.
It was pitch-black. Shapes were only distinguishable by varying degrees of darkness. A cloud-covered sky hid the stars. If there was a moon, Culley hadn’t seen it. All his senses were honed to razor-edge sharpness, magnifying the combined thud of hooves of trotting horses and cattle to a loud drumbeat. The jangle of bits and spurs and moaning saddle leather competed with the grunting breathing of moving horses and the lowing protests of the cattle. Culley glanced to the side, trying to make out the shape of his father against the night-darkened landscape. He was a shadowy, indistinct form, outlined briefly, then melting into the background.
Some distance ahead of them, a diesel motor idled impatiently where the semi-truck waited to load up the cattle they were driving. He had heard it arrive and maneuver into position not ten minutes before, its roar shattering the night’s quiet. Culley was certain they were making enough noise to wake up the whole state.
It seemed they had been here forever, but Culley knew the apparently slow passage of time was another exaggeration of his nerves. When they had arrived, they had fanned out swiftly, flushing whatever cattle they found toward the center until they had gathered this bunch. It was the nervousness of guilt that had tied the sickening knot he felt in his stomach. There wasn’t any fear as such, although he could hear the hammering beat of his heart pumping adrenaline through his system.
His constantly roaming gaze saw the black rectangular shape of the semi outlined by the lighter darkness of the road. They were almost there. Relief wavered through him that this ordeal was almost over. He let his guard down for an instant. His horse stumbled, throwing his relaxed body against the saddle horn before he could right himself. His heart catapulted into his throat and stayed there even after his horse regained its stride.
A pair of bright lights bounced into his peripheral vision. An alarm sounded in his head as his gaze jerked around to identify the source of the lights. A cold finger of fear ran down his spine.
“Pa, there’s a pickup coming down the road!” His voice rang out strong and clear.
There wasn’t time to panic, only to react. His warning had barely been issued when a whistle and a yell came from the direction where Culley believed his father to be. It started the cattle into a run, and his horse leaped into a gallop to follow their headlong flight. They had been less than thirty yards from the semi when the discovery had thrown the operation into wild confusion, and abandoned their plans.
The ground vibrated with the thunder of stampeding hooves and the air was filled with shouts and the bellowing of frightened cattle. Overhead, the sky exploded with light and Culley saw the black opening of the trailer yawn before them. Then his ears were deafened with the resounding report of rifle fire. He whipped his horse with the ends of the reins, his mind void of any conscious thought, operating now on pure instinct. The artificially lighted sky permitted Culley to see his father racing with him across the long stretch of open ground.
“Get the horse trailer out of here!” his father shouted to Tucker and the semi driver. “We’ll ride in the truck!”
Culley realized there wasn’t time to load the horses if they hoped to get away. He had a glimpse of Tucker’s massive form running for their pickup and horse trailer parked on the road, the jackknifed semi hiding it from view. Red bursts of light punctuated the rifle fire being exchanged between the pickup and the semi. One of the pickup’s headlights was already out, the other beam illuminating the slatted sides of the long stock trailer.
A few of the cattle veered away from the black opening of the trailer and the downed gate that formed a ramp to it. The rest stampeded into it, cloved hooves clattering on the trailer’s floor. His father’s horse lunged up the ramp ahead of Culley. He waved him to follow him inside, but the steer running beside Culley balked at the ramp and spun into his horse. It knocked his mount sideways, its flank hitting a fence post, but his wild-eyed horse kept its balance. Culley ignored the scrape of the saddle against the post as he urged his horse after his father’s and plunged into the black bedlam inside the trailer.
The cattle were spilling back toward the opening, bawling in panic, the clatter of hooves mixing with the frightened whinny of the horses. Charging animals turned Culley’s horse sideways, effectively blocking the way out and turning the cows back. He was conscious of the whine of bullets and rifle shots, but his attention was focused on controlling his plunging and half-rearing mount as it danced in place. Somewhere in the darkness of the trailer, he heard his father cursing. Part of him knew that if either one of them went down, they would be trampled to death.
“Cover me!” a voice shouted beside the opening Culley blocked.
He glanced down as a stranger tossed him a rifle, the metal barrel gleaming briefly in the headlight. Lightning reflex allowed him to make a one-handed grab on the gun. The man left the protection of the trailer side to raise the tailgate they had used for a ramp, thus exposing himself to the rifle fire from the pickup.
Kicking and pulling, Culley forced his horse to swing around broadside to the trailer wall. Spooked animals battered his legs and he banged a knee painfully against the side of the trailer. Hemmed against the side by the cattle, Culley pushed the rifle muzzle through the openings between the slats and aimed it at the bright headlamp of the pickup. After the first bruising recoil of the rifle butt against his shoulder, he was numb to the pain as he sprayed the hood of the truck with bullets. He could have been shooting at a coyote for all the thought he gave to what he was doing. Self-preservation dictated his actions.
The revving of the diesel engine was followed by a shifting of gears that jerked the trailer. His horse crouched low and Culley had
to grab for the saddle horn as the horse shifted frantically beneath him to keep its balance in the moving vehicle. The splat of a bullet ruptured a wood board near his head. Another shot and something collapsed on the truck floor with a heavy thud. Fear raced through his veins. It might have been his father who had fallen.
“Pa?”
“I’m all right.” His father’s reply contained only a thin echo of its former confidence. “They shot one of their own cows.”
The semi was moving swiftly down the road and there weren’t any more sounds of gunfire. Culley strained his eyes, but he couldn’t see any vehicle pursuing them. They were going to get away, after all. For a while there, he had thought that Maggie was going to be right. Until this minute, he hadn’t been sure they would succeed in their escape. The same thought seemed to occur to his father as he laughed.
“We made it, Culley!” Angus declared triumphantly. “They tried to spring a surprise on us with that patrol, but we outsmarted them and got away clean!”
“Yeah.” He was hesitant at first in his agreement, then gained confidence with a building sense of victory. “Yeah, we sure did!” He let out a shout that started the cattle milling again.
The elation didn’t last long as reaction set in and he began to shake uncontrollably. It was a combination of the closeness of their brush with danger and his own action that aided their escape. What if he had shot somebody? True, he hadn’t been aiming at a human target, but a bullet could have ricocheted. It was a very real possibility.
He sat on his horse in a state of shock, barely conscious of the truck’s grinding gears and the whooshing of air brakes as it began to slow down. It came to a stop, the diesel motor idling while a cab door slammed. There was a pounding on the tailgate.
“Are you all right in there?” It was Tucker’s voice that called to them.
“We’re okay!” his father replied, but Culley felt badly shaken.
“Hold on. We’re going to get you out of there.”
The cattle stirred as his father worked his horse slowly toward the rear of the truck. His own horse pricked its ears and snorted at the noise of the gate being lowered. Bob Tucker’s big hulk was in the opening to shoo aside the cows. While his father filed out, Culley waited, then nudged his horse to follow him. He wasn’t aware that his hand had retained a death grip on the rifle until the truck driver reached for it.
“I’ll take my rifle back now. You did a good job of keeping him pinned down, kid.” The man’s face was in the shadows, but he glimpsed the white of his teeth when he smiled and took the rifle from his stiff fingers.
“I didn’t hit him, did I?” Culley asked hoarsely.
“No.” He shook his head, quite definite about that. “He was lying in the ditch beside the road, but you put his pickup out of commission.”
“Any damage to the rig?” Tucker questioned the driver.
“He put a hole in two tires, but I can make it,” he said and gave the big man a hand in fastening the truck gate.
They had stopped at a fork in the back road, the semi pointed down one and the pickup truck and horse trailer headed down the other. Culley dismounted to help his father load the horses. They finished as the semi pulled away, heading down its road with a night’s drive yet to be made. Their job was done and they took the other road that led home.
Unable to sleep, Maggie finally gave up trying. She got up and dressed, went to the kitchen to put on a pot of coffee, even though she didn’t need the stimulant to keep her awake during the long vigil.
The pot was almost empty when she heard the rattle of the pickup and horse trailer drive into the ranch yard. A shudder of relief went through her that they had made it back safely. She pushed open the front door and walked outside. She didn’t immediately see her father in the darkness of the yard, but Culley was backing the horses out of the trailer.
“Are you all right?” she asked.
“No thanks to you.” Her father came around the far side of the trailer to take the reins of the horse. “Why didn’t you tell us Calder had put out patrols?”
“Oh, no.” It wasn’t any comfort to realize she’d had cause to worry. “I didn’t know about them.” Chase hadn’t mentioned it. If he had, she would have tried harder to keep them from going. “What happened?”
“They damned near caught us—that’s what happened!” her father retorted.
“Did they see you? Did they recognize you?” Her questions were like more rifle fire as she fell in step with her father and brother as they went to unsaddle the horses and turn them loose in the corral. Her glance kept skittering to Culley, who had not made a single comment, but she couldn’t read what was in his shadowed expression.
“No. They never got close enough to us to get a good look, not with all the shooting going on.” It was her father again who answered.
“Shooting? Was anybody hurt?” She thought immediately of Chase.
“No. Nobody got a scratch,” her father boasted. “They tried to surprise us, but it didn’t work. We got away—and with the cattle. Two minutes, if we’d just had two minutes, we could have been loaded up and gone without them even knowing we’d been there. We could have been, too, if you’d come along, Maggie. If anything would have happened to us tonight, it would have been your fault for not coming with us and giving us that edge of having a third rider.”
He had already found a justification for the narrowness of their escape. He was blaming Maggie. She resisted the guilt he tried to place on her, recognizing the attempt for what it was—another one of his excuses for failure—but it wasn’t easy.
When they reached the corral, Angus handed Maggie the reins to his horse. “Unsaddle him for me,” he ordered. “I’m going to unhitch the trailer.”
She didn’t argue. As her father walked away, she glanced at Culley, who was quietly unsaddling his horse.
“What happens now, Culley?” Maggie deliberately hadn’t asked her father that question. Coming from her, he would have regarded it as a challenge. “Is he finally going to call it quits?”
“We’ll lie low for a while—until the heat’s off.”
“You were lucky tonight,” she reminded him. “Next time you might be recognized.”
“Then, again, maybe we won’t.” Culley shrugged and lifted the saddle off his horse to set it on the ground.
Once the horses were turned loose in the corral, they carried the saddles and gear into the barn. Maggie was adjusting her father’s saddle on the wooden saddle rest when she noticed Culley staring at his saddle.
“What’s wrong?” She moved over to see what he was looking at.
“A rosette’s missing.” He pointed to the round patch of unweathered leather where the ornamental tie had been. “It must have gotten ripped off when my horse scraped up against the fence post. What if they find it, Maggie?”
She knew what he was thinking. It was evidence that he’d been on the scene. “I’ll get it for you,” she promised.
The road in front of the gate to the Broken Butte was crowded with parked vehicles the next morning. All of them belonged to the Triple C, except for the sheriff’s car. Out in the fenced range, riders were rounding up the remaining herd to make a tally of the loss. Elsewhere, a chain was being attached to the truck that had been shot up the night before so it could be towed to the ranch garage for repairs. Sheriff Potter, a harried-looking man in a crisply starched uniform, was off to one side talking to Slim Bevins, the man who had surprised the rustlers. The grim trio standing in the shade of one of the horse trailers was made up of Webb Calder, Nate Moore, and Virg Haskell.
“We nearly had them,” Virg grumbled. “If Slim could only have held them another fifteen minutes, your plan would have worked.”
“Close doesn’t count, Virg,” Webb replied.
“Whoever these rustlers are, they know this country,” Nate observed. “They either did some damned thorough scouting, or they’re local. This road isn’t on any maps. And it doesn’t look like any more
than a pair of ruts where it joins the other.”
“They’re smart,” Virg declared.
“They can’t be too smart,” Webb denied, “or they would have figured out we were patroling the roads and had someone on lookout.” He glanced at Nate. “But you are right about one thing, Nate. Only someone who has been on this road before would know it isn’t an abandoned one. It’s entirely possible we have someone local working with this band. The problem is—who?”
None of the three would speculate. The discussion wasn’t continued as Webb noticed Sheriff Potter crossing the road toward him. The short, wide-hipped man walked with small, jerky steps, as if his feet were hurting him. He wasn’t a man to exert himself, firmly believing that things had a way of working themselves out if left alone. He was neither incompetent nor dishonest, but somewhere in the shadows of laziness.
“I talked to your man, Webb,” he stated as he came to a mincing stop to complete the circle partially formed by the three men. “I can’t see where we have any more to go on than we did before. The ground is too churned up to leave any tire tracks that might do us some good. The bullets we got out of the truck are unlikely to tell us anything. They’re an ordinary thirty-thirty slug. Every man in the state of Montana has a hunting rifle. With no license number, no description that would do us any good, I’d say we’re still on square one. But”—the sheriff brightened, or as much as his tired expression would allow—“I think you scared them good, surprising them like that. I’m sure they won’t be back.”
“I hope you’re right, Potter. Thanks for coming out personally.” Webb shook the man’s limp hand.
“It’s my job, Webb.” He shrugged and toddled toward his car.
“And what happens if they do come back?” Nate grumbled to the sheriff’s back.
There was a flicker of amusement in Webb’s dark eyes before they turned to the tired and drawn face of Slim Bevins, who hadn’t yet had any sleep. With the sheriff gone, he wandered across the road to join them. His expression was still apologetic, unable to shake the feeling that he had let his boss down.
