With the money she had saved from her modeling career, she could manage for another year. With luck, even longer. She could meet the balloon payment on the second mortgage that was due on January fifteenth. She could keep the ranch out of bankruptcy even longer if she took the money she had set aside for drilling a new well and used the funds to meet the ranch’s monthly expenses.
But if she used up the well money, the ranch itself was doomed. The rains simply didn’t come as they had a century ago, fifty years ago, even thirty years ago. Without a new well, a new source of year-round water, the Valley of the Sun would be virtually worthless for ranching.
With hungry eyes Hope looked at the tawny country flexed against the endless fall of sunlight. Big sage lifted its shaggy gray limbs overhead, making graceful, mysterious patterns against the blue bowl of the sky. Shadow creases of ravines outlined the muscular land as it rumpled up to meet the heights of the Perdidas to the east. Plants in subdued shades of green and bronze grew on the broad alluvial fans that swept out from the base of the mountains.
After a good storm, when runoff streams tumbled down into the low basins, there were temporary lakes where migratory birds flocked and wary desert animals left delicate, braided trails along the soft shorelines. In the winter the alluvial fans were green with grass and new growth, and bright with the streams that ran dry during the hot weeks of summer.
But now, too often, those same streams were dry longer each year, until ravines and pools that had once watered range cattle no longer even grew grass. That was when ranches drank deeply from their wells.
That was when wells failed.
The resinous, tangy smell of the high desert poured through the truck’s open window. Hope breathed in deeply, letting the clean scent of the land revive her. The sun coming through the windshield was hot, though not nearly as hot as it had been three months ago.
But even then, even when the ranch baked beneath a brutal sun, Hope loved the land. The searing days only made the brief twilight more silky, and the nights were like drinking dark wine from an immense crystal chalice. There was no other place like the Valley of the Sun for her. Anywhere. She knew it as certainly as she knew her own name.
Hope turned off the ranch road onto a track that was little more than twin ruts. In the rainy season the ruts would soften, run like sticky wax, and then, for a short time, freeze in the cold northern winds. But by then it wouldn’t matter if the road was impassable. In the season of winter rains and ice she wouldn’t have to haul water to the widely scattered troughs.
Behemoth lurched and veered sideways like a hammerheaded horse determined to go back to the barn. Hope yanked the wheel and hung on until the truck was lined up with the road again. The ache in her shoulders told her that it was going to be all she could do to drag down the heavy canvas hose, connect it, and pull it to the dry steel trough through the milling, thrusting, thirsty cattle. Yet it had to be done at least once more today.
It should be done twice.
Hope didn’t let herself think about it. Under her relentless grip the truck bounced over the top of a small rise and toward her namesake well.
Rio was there, waiting.
Four
HOPE BRAKED IN a turmoil of dust and crept toward the empty trough. Scenting Behemoth’s cargo of water, cattle bawled and swarmed around the truck, making it impossible for her to get closer to the trough.
Without a word Rio swung into the saddle and went to work on the cattle, herding them aside. His mare worked neatly, precisely, gracefully, spinning on her haunches, turning cattle away from the truck with a well-trained cow pony’s lack of fuss. Her rider was just as skillful. He rode the swiftly pivoting mare deftly, balancing his weight to ease the mare’s work. The horse’s motion swept through him, repeated in supple movements of his spine.
Thanks to Rio and his quick pony, Hope was able to park the truck right next to the empty circular tank. The trough was big, the size of a backyard swimming pool. Still inside the cab, she peered down into the tank.
It was empty.
She listened for the generator and heard only Behemoth’s engine muttering. Her heart hesitated, then sank. The generator’s cutoff switch must have tripped. That meant there wasn’t enough water moving through the pump. The windmill itself was turning, but all it could bring up was a stream of water barely as wide as her little finger. As soon as the water fell from the cast-iron pipe into the trough, cattle sucked up every bit of moisture.
Hope watched a cow’s big pink tongue lick at the damp metal. Ice settled in her stomach. The well her ranch depended on was all but dry.
The exhaustion she had been keeping at bay closed over her. She shut her eyes for a few seconds and fought against numbing fear. She couldn’t lose the ranch.
Determination rose in her, pushing away fear and despair. The cab door rattled and slammed as she leaped down to the ground on the side away from the empty tank. She avoided the milling cattle easily. They wanted water, not her.
She glanced over the herd as she moved, automatically checking their condition with an experienced eye. The Herefords were lean and hard. Too lean. Too hard. They should have been sleek and placid, like Turner’s cattle. But her range cattle had to search several miles beyond the well for their food and then walk back to the tank for water. Each day they had to go a bit farther to satisfy their hunger, and then a bit farther back to satisfy their thirst.
There was nothing she could do about the lack of natural feed except pray for rain. That, and make sure that her cattle had water to come back to. She knelt under Behemoth’s metal belly and went to work, swearing silently as she fought to connect the slightly warped, definitely corroded coupling to the valve. Her arms shook and her shoulders cramped, warning her that she was close to the end of her strength.
There was a slight movement behind her, a brush of fabric along her thigh, and then Rio was beside her, lifting the hose from her straining hands. Gratefully she dropped her arms and watched him wrestle with the stubborn coupling.
“One of the threads is bent,” she said as he tried to find a way to screw the hose on. “There’s a trick to threading it. If you’ll hold the hose up for me, I’ll do the rest.”
Before she finished talking, he moved the hose so that its brass coupling was just short of the valve’s dark mouth. She reached through his arms to make the threads of valve and hose match. Without the weight of the wet hose dragging the end down, it was much easier. After a few false starts she succeeded in screwing the hose on enough so that she didn’t have to hold the brass together with one hand and turn with the other.
Unconsciously she took a deep breath, bracing herself for the job of tightening the mulish coupling so that it wouldn’t blow apart at the first pressure of water rushing through.
Rio felt Hope’s deep breath in the stir of her breasts against his arm. When he glanced at her, he realized that she wasn’t aware of the intimacy. She was focused on the stubborn coupling with the kind of intensity that came only from a combination of exhaustion and fear.
For the first time he noticed the marks that sweat had made on her face, the dusting of grit and the flush of heat, and her tempting, fine-grained skin. Strands of hair licked down from her hat and swayed across her face like dark flames. Her hazel eyes showed almost none of the green that had been visible in the pouring sun by Turner’s well. Now her eyes were dark, too dark, just as her lips were too pale against her flushed cheeks.
Rio wondered how many times she had made the trip from Turner’s well to her own dry land and thirsty livestock. She must be exhausted. Gently he covered her hands with his. Easing her fingers aside, he went to work tightening the coupling.
He was surprised at how difficult it was to keep the threads turning delicately and at the same time prevent the weight of the hose from jamming the two pieces of brass together at the wrong angle. The thought of Hope trying and failing and trying again and again to make the coupling work brought a hard line to Rio’s mouth.
Where the hell is Mason? he asked himself silently. This is no job for a woman’s arms. How long has Hope been making these water runs by herself?
“Thanks, that should do it,” she said, pulling herself out from under the truck. “I’ll get the wrench.”
She came back very quickly. In her hand was a plumber’s wrench as long as her arm and a lot heavier. Rio took the wrench from her, lifting it with an ease that she envied and that he took for granted. She watched his faded blue shirt strain rhythmically across his shoulders and biceps. He tightened the coupling with smooth, powerful motions of his arms. She waited, judging her moment, then began to tug at the hose, straightening it for the rush of water that would come soon.
“Stay put,” he said. “I’ll take care of it.”
Her arms decided before her mind did. They dropped to her sides. She sighed and sat down, resting the back of her head against Behemoth’s curved metal belly. Quietly she watched the desert-tanned man who was crouched so close to her that the faded jeans and shirts they both wore were almost impossible to tell apart. As he worked, she enjoyed the complex play of human muscle and tendon in the same way she had enjoyed watching his gray mare handle the impatient cows.
“Thanks,” she said, rubbing her tired arms. “I owe you one.”
Rio shook his head slowly. He was remembering Hope’s beauty when she arched against the sky and her hands sprayed liquid diamonds over her beautifully curved body. It was an image he couldn’t get out of his mind. She had been as vivid and unexpected as a rainbow in the desert.
And like a rainbow, she had given pleasure and asked nothing in return.
“No,” he said quietly, “you don’t owe me a thing.”
She turned her head toward him, but he didn’t look back at her. All his attention was for the stubborn coupling. When he finally finished, he slid out from beneath the truck and propped the wrench against a tire. Without a word he began dragging the heavy, stiff hose off its rack and into the trough.
Cattle bawled and shoved and crowded around the water tank. Though they kept trying, they couldn’t quite wedge themselves between the truck and the trough. Rio and Hope wouldn’t be trampled as long as they kept to Behemoth’s bulky shelter.
He pitched his voice to carry over the noise of the cattle. “Ready.”
When Hope didn’t answer, and the hose remained slack, he glanced over his shoulder. She was propped against the dusty truck, eyes closed, soaking in every instant of rest like dry sand absorbing water. Contrasted with the truck’s bulk, she looked very small, almost fragile.
“Hope?”
She opened her eyes and smiled up at him. With a grace that belied the exhausted shadows beneath her eyes, she picked up the heavy wrench, fastened it to the valve, and put her whole body into giving it a good solid turn.
Water swelled the hose and rushed over the lip of the tank, thundering hard and fast into the empty trough. Cattle bawled and crowded closer, jostling even the sturdy truck. When Rio was certain that the hose wouldn’t leap up out of the trough and spray water everywhere, he slipped back under the ancient army vehicle and sat next to Hope.
“Eager little devils,” he said, watching the forest of dusty legs milling beyond the truck’s shelter.
“Beautiful little devils.” Hope was smiling and her eyes were alight with pride in her cattle.
After a time the animals that had been first at the water tank allowed themselves to be pushed aside by their thirsty friends. The cattle that had shoved in for a drink earlier in the day, during Behemoth’s first water run, waited on the fringes of the herd or grazed invisibly among the big sage and scattered piñon that grew over the gently folded land. The grazing cattle were the same ones that would be most eager tomorrow, up in the front of the crowd, shoving and bawling for their first taste of water in a day.
Hope didn’t waste energy trying to talk over the noise of her cows. With a half-apologetic smile to Rio, she lay on her back in the dust, her head on her hat, her eyes closed. She felt light-headed with the pleasure of stretching muscles that were cramped from the day’s demands.
This was one of the moments she waited for, when the hardest part of water hauling had been done and all that remained was uncoupling the hose, racking it, and driving Behemoth back to the ranch house. Sometimes before she left for home she would take off her clothes and slide over the lip of the huge tank. She would paddle quietly for a time before she rested her arms along the rim and floated, watching while glittering stars bloomed in the navy-blue depths of evening.
With an odd smile Rio watched Hope as she lay unself-consciously near him. He didn’t know whether she was too tired for the usual flirtations or forthright advances of the women he had known in the past, or whether she simply didn’t see him as a man because he wasn’t all white.
Then he remembered the times he had turned and found her watching him, female approval clear in her expression. She was exhausted, not bigoted.
He was tempted to stretch out next to her, sharing the truck’s bluntly curving shelter and resting his body at the same time. His day had begun well before dawn, when he had caught Dusk, saddled her, and rounded up some of Turner’s skittish Thoroughbreds. The horses were as elegant as ballerinas, and about as much use for working cattle.
It was Turner’s quarter horses that Rio truly enjoyed. They were muscular, cow-savvy, and quick, perfectly suited to use with cattle. By the time he was done, John Turner would have some of the best cow horses in Nevada.
Then Turner would ruin his quarter horses trying to win flashy buckles in rodeos. The man had no more sense of how to treat a horse than he did of how to treat hired hands, women, or the land itself. He took, but didn’t give back. He didn’t even suspect that he should.
Slouching farther down, Rio propped his head against a dusty tire and drew his feet out of the way of the eager cattle. He could have slept, but didn’t. Instead he savored the peace of the moment, the cattle’s thirst being slaked, the woman resting only inches from his thigh, the tactile memory of her breasts brushing against his arm.
With a silent curse he told himself what kind of fool he was even to look at Hope. She’s not a woman for bed today and good-bye tomorrow. So stop thinking about the way she looked outlined against the sky with her blouse shaping her the way I’d like to.
Even if she came to me, asking for me, I’d only hurt her. Is that what I want? Do I want to give her a hand when she’s down and needs me and then drag her off to bed like she’s just one more Saturday night?
Hell, I outgrew that kind of screwing before I was old enough to drink.
Grimly Rio listened to his internal lecture. He approved each point with his intelligence and at the same time fought against them with every one of his fully alive senses. But despite his prowling masculine hunger, he made no move toward Hope.
Not a word. Not a gesture. Not even a hungry look.
Instinctively he knew beyond doubt or argument that she wouldn’t give herself casually to any man. He also knew just as deeply that he didn’t give himself at all to any woman, not really, not in any way that mattered. In the last thirty-three years he had learned many things about himself. One of them was that Brother-to-the-wind was more than his Indian name. It was his fate, and he had finally accepted it.
He had spent his life searching for something that was more powerful, more enduring, more beautiful, more compelling, than the endless sweep of the western lands. He had found no place, no person, capable of holding him when his brother the wind called to him, whispering of secret springs and shaded canyons where men never walked.
The other thing that Rio had learned about himself on the way to growing up was that while he was born white, raised white until he was twelve, and educated white after sixteen, white women didn’t want him. Not all of him. They didn’t want his silences or his uncanny insights into life and the land.
Most of all, white women didn’t want to have a child that was less white than they were.
He didn’t really blame them. After what he had been through, he could write a book about being not white, not being Indian, not being anything to anyone but a pain in the butt.
Rio pulled his hat down over his eyes, shutting out the sight of Hope’s vulnerable body within reach of his hungry hands. He subdued his desire with the same steel discipline that had kept his raging temper under control when he was growing up and blonde kids had baited him, calling him breed and blankethead. He had fought his tormentors with icy ferocity, but he hadn’t killed any of them.
And he could have, even then.
When he was grown, most of the men who backed him into a corner depended on numbers or various weapons to make them strong. Rio had learned never to depend on anyone or anything but himself. It gave him an advantage in sheer ruthlessness that at first surprised and then overwhelmed his opponents.
It also made him very much a man alone. He had accepted that, too. Brother-to-the-wind.
Cattle milled and pushed, raising a dust that made the air a shimmering brass color. Water rushed out of Behemoth, thundering into the stock tank with a cool sound. The smells of cattle, water, and dust merged with those of sunlight, piñon, and sage.
The mixture of odors was soothing to Hope, familiar, reassuring. She sighed and relaxed even more. Exhaustion washed over her in waves, making her dizzy. She realized that she was on the edge of falling asleep miles from home while a big stranger half-lay nearby, so close to her that she could sense each stirring of his body as he breathed.
Yet she wasn’t worried. Since her eighteenth birthday she had learned quite a bit about people in general and men in particular. Rio didn’t give out the signals of a man who would leap on the first woman he found alone and unprotected. He had looked at her with veiled male appreciation, but he hadn’t crowded her in any way.
Even if she hadn’t been sure of her own instincts, she trusted those of Mason Graves. Any man he would be proud to claim for a son wouldn’t be the kind of man to take advantage of people weaker than he was.
Beautiful Dreamer with Bonus Material Page 4
