Beautiful Dreamer with Bonus Material

by Elizabeth Lowell

  Rio’s smile faded at the thought of Hope climbing up on the big stud and being bucked off into a corral fence. Not that he thought she was a bad rider. He knew she wasn’t. When he had put her up on Dusk, Hope had been as graceful and confident in the saddle as she was on the ground.

  But Storm Walker was big, hard, and had a stallion’s aggressive temperament.

  “Is he a good rough-country horse?” Rio asked.

  “He was born in the foothills east of here and ran free for the first three years of his life.”

  “Like Dusk. She lived wild until two years ago.”

  “Did you catch her?”

  He nodded. “She led me on one hell of a chase, too.” His eyes focused on an inner landscape of memory. “Her mama was a ranch horse gone wild, an Arabquarter horse mix that was tougher than an old boot. Her daddy was part Morgan, part Arab, and ninety percent cougar, near as I could tell.”

  Hope remembered how her father had hated it when the wild horse herds grew beyond the land’s ability to renew itself and still feed the herds. Then the meat hunters would come, chasing the wild horses with airplanes and driving them lathered and terrified into funnel-shaped corrals concealed by brush.

  The hunts had been necessary to cull the herds back from the brink of starvation and to return feral horses to their owners. Necessary, but brutal. The alternative—starvation, disease, and a lingering death—was even more brutal.

  Hope sighed. “How did you catch Dusk? Airplane?”

  “I used the oldest method, the one the Indians invented centuries ago, when the Spanish horses were so new to America that the Cheyenne called them ‘big dogs.’ ”

  She smiled. “What method is that?”

  “I walked Dusk down.”

  Turning, Hope stared at Rio. Mason had told her of men walking down wild horses more than a century ago. They followed the wild herds from water hole to water hole, never allowing them to rest. At first the horses ran at the sight and smell of man. Then they cantered. Then they trotted. Then they walked. Finally they were too tired to move at all.

  It, too, could be a brutal method of capture, but at least it was almost as hard on the men as it was on the horses.

  “It wasn’t that bad,” Rio said, understanding the expression on Hope’s face. “I wore out Dusk’s flight response as much as her feet. I just hung around the fringes of the herd, leaving bits of salt and grain, following the mustangs everywhere until I kind of grew on her. By the time I walked up to her with a rope, she simply wasn’t afraid of me anymore. I was a member of the herd.” He grinned suddenly. “A strange, slow, small, awkward kind of horse, but one of the herd just the same.”

  “How long did it take you?”

  “Eight weeks. Ten. Maybe more. I lost track of time. This country’s good for that.”

  “Losing track of time?”

  Rio nodded absently. His attention was once again on the glossy Appaloosa stallion. “Mind if I ride him today?”

  “Only if you break something,” Hope said wryly.

  “I wouldn’t hurt a hair on his spotted hide.”

  “It wasn’t Storm Walker’s hide I was worried about,” she retorted. “He’s only been ridden a few times in the last year.”

  “He looks it. Just full of himself, isn’t he? Don’t worry, we’ll do fine together.”

  Hope smiled. “Forget I said anything, just like I forgot that you make your living as a horse trainer when you aren’t drilling wells for dirt-poor dreamers.”

  He looked at her, curious about the complex emotions in her voice when she described herself as a dirt-poor dreamer.

  “I’d love for you to ride Storm Walker,” she said. “The longer he goes without work, the harder he’ll be for me to handle. And he never was easy. Not for the first few minutes, anyway.”

  Rio didn’t waste any more time talking about it. He flipped the saddlebags he was carrying over the corral rail and went after Storm Walker. He had the stallion caught, curried, bridled, saddled, and inside the corral before Hope could change her mind.

  Storm Walker knew what was coming. He was dancing and snorting, bristling with energy and eager for some fun.

  “You sure you want to ride him?” she asked Rio. “You don’t have to. I need a well more than I need a well-behaved stud.”

  Rio grinned like a boy. “You’re doing me a favor. I’ve wanted to climb on Storm Walker since the first time I saw his glossy hide across the pasture.”

  “Okay, but don’t say I didn’t warn you.” With one hand wrapped around the bridle just above the bit, she held the stallion still for Rio to mount. “Tell me when you’re ready.”

  Rio gathered the reins tightly and sprang into the saddle with catlike ease. His feet settled into the stirrups as Storm Walker’s body bunched into a hard knot of protest.

  “Turn him loose,” Rio said softly.

  Expecting Storm Walker to explode, Hope let go of the bridle and climbed the corral fence in two seconds flat.

  Rio didn’t allow the stallion to buck. He held the horse’s head up and let him fight a useless battle with the bit. The stud’s powerful hindquarters rippled as he alternately lashed out with his heels and spun on his hocks. Sudden spins and jerks were the only way he could try to unload his rider, short of scraping Rio off on the fence or rolling over on him. Storm Walker was basically too good-tempered a horse to resort to those tactics.

  Bucking, on the other hand, was just good clean fun.

  Smiling slightly, Hope watched the man and the horse test each other, probing for weaknesses. Storm Walker backed up constantly, as though to say if he couldn’t buck, he wasn’t going to go forward, either. Rio’s long, powerful legs closed around the stud’s black barrel, urging him forward with relentless pressure. Rio could have used the small, blunt spurs he always wore on his boots, but he didn’t.

  After a few backward circuits of the corral, Storm Walker stood still and chewed the bit resentfully.

  “Round one to you,” Hope said.

  Rio glanced sideways and said dryly, “Something tells me I can either let this son buck here or I can let him buck out there when my mind is on something else.”

  “You’ve got it. Storm Walker just won’t settle down until he’s had his fun.”

  “Yeah, I was afraid of that. Had a horse like him once.”

  “What happened to it?”

  “I swapped it for a dog and shot the dog,” Rio drawled. “Course, it was a gelding and ugly as sin.”

  She laughed, not believing a word of it.

  With a sigh Rio tugged his hat down hard, eased his grip on the reins, and touched Storm Walker lightly with his spurs. The stud’s head shot down, his heels shot up, and for the next few minutes he did his best to turn inside out. Rio rode the whirlwind with a skill that made it look easy.

  Hope wasn’t fooled. She had ridden that same whirlwind more than once. She knew there was nothing easy about Storm Walker working off a head of steam.

  After the first few moments she let out her breath, confident that neither horse nor man would be hurt. She relaxed on the top railing, hooked her feet around the next railing down, and simply enjoyed the man and the stallion as they tore up the corral, two healthy animals perfectly matched, enjoying the test of power against skill.

  Without warning, Storm Walker’s head came up. He snorted deeply, then pricked his ears and looked over his shoulder at the man who hadn’t come unstuck.

  “Finished?” Rio drawled.

  Storm Walker rubbed his nose on Rio’s boot and then stood as placidly as a cow, waiting for instructions from his rider.

  “That’s it,” Hope said, jumping down from the fence. “He won’t buck again this ride.”

  “Thank God for small favors.”

  Rio stretched his back and shoulders, feeling the stallion’s unleashed power in every muscle of his body. Then he looked at Hope’s slender form and wondered how she had managed to stay on top of Storm Walker. It wasn’t raw strength, that was
for sure.

  “My hat’s off to you,” Rio said simply. “You must be one hell of a rider.”

  Hope grinned. “I’ve eaten my share of dirt. And that spotted stud fed me most of it.”

  He chuckled and shook his head, enjoying her matter-of-fact acceptance of getting thrown. At the same time he quietly promised himself that if Storm Walker unloaded anyone for a while, it would be him. There was just a whole lot of power in that stud’s spotted body. He could hurt a rider and never mean to.

  “Want to ride Dusk,” Rio asked, “or does one of your mares need work?”

  “I’ll ride Aces. She’s Storm Walker’s favorite. He’ll be less anxious to get home if she’s along.”

  Rio moved to dismount, then stopped and looked dubiously at Storm Walker.

  Hope hid her smile. “Don’t worry. You’re okay as long as you don’t take off the saddle. That’s how Storm Walker knows a ride is finished—when the saddle comes off.”

  “One bucking session per saddling, huh?”

  “That’s it.”

  “Makes a man consider the joys of sleeping in the saddle,” he said dryly.

  Hope stopped trying to hide her amusement. She leaned against Storm Walker and let laughter bubble up like pure spring water. It had been a long time since she had simply given herself to any emotion except determination. When the last laughter finally rippled into silence, she took a deep breath and looked up at Rio.

  “You’re good for me,” she said, her lips still curving in a deep smile.

  “Keep you from breaking your neck?” he guessed.

  “No. You teach me to laugh again. I’d almost forgotten how.”

  Her words sank into Rio like water into thirsty land, renewing him. Without stopping to think, he smiled gently and touched her cheek with his fingertips.

  “It’s you who teach me,” he said, his voice warm and deep.

  “What?” she whispered.

  “Beautiful dreamer,” he said softly. “You don’t know, do you? You don’t know what your dreams do to me. And your laughter.”

  Abruptly he closed his eyes, shutting out the vision of Hope watching him, eyes luminous with dreams, deep with promises that shouldn’t be made and couldn’t be kept. The fingers that had touched her so gently retreated and clenched into a fist on his thigh.

  “I wish to Christ I was a different kind of man,” he said bitterly.

  “I don’t.” She trembled from his brief touch and from the savage emotions that had made his voice harsh. “I wouldn’t change you any more than I would trade the Valley of the Sun for the green Perdidas. I was made for this land, Rio.”

  And I’m afraid I was made for you, too.

  She didn’t say the words aloud. She didn’t have to. He heard them clearly in his own mind, as clearly as though he had spoken them himself.

  And then he was afraid that he had.

  Twelve

  SITTING ASTRIDE STORM Walker, Rio didn’t open his eyes again until he sensed Hope moving away. Brooding, he watched her go to the horse pasture. A clear whistle floated through the air. One of the horses whickered and trotted over to her. Like Storm Walker, the mare’s stride was leggy and elegant.

  A minute later, using nothing more than her fingers twisted lightly into the slate-colored mane, Hope led the dark gray mare into the corral where Storm Walker and Rio waited. The mare was big, clean-limbed, and powerful. She moved with the calm assurance of a domestic animal that had never been mistreated.

  Hope shut the corral gate behind Aces and went into the barn. She returned almost immediately with a saddle, blanket, bridle, and a bucket of grooming tools.

  Rio dismounted as smoothly as he had gone into the saddle in the first place. One-handed, he took Aces’ saddle from Hope and flipped it expertly over the top rail of the corral. The blanket followed.

  Together, working in silence, they groomed the mare. Before Hope could, Rio checked the mare’s steel shoes carefully, knowing they would be going over some rugged, stony land. He checked the saddle cinch with equal care, looking for any weakness that could make the strap give way at the very instant it was most needed. A fall in rough country could easily be fatal.

  While Hope watched, bemused at having the familiar tasks taken from her hands, Rio saddled Aces with the same automatic ease that he had done everything else. He had spent his life around horses. It showed in every smooth motion he made.

  When Aces was ready, Rio pulled his oversized saddlebags off the corral rail and tied them in place behind Storm Walker’s saddle. Not quite trusting the stallion to behave, he mounted in a single catlike motion. If the stud bucked, Rio would be ready.

  As though the thought of bucking had never crossed his well-bred mind, the stallion turned eagerly toward the corral gate. With a wry smile at his own expense, Rio opened the wooden gate, let the horses out, and then refastened the gate without getting out of the saddle.

  “How did the last hydrologist get around?” he asked.

  “Truck,” Hope said succinctly,

  Beneath the shield of hat brim and eyelashes, she glanced aside at Rio. The harsh lines on his face had relaxed and his voice was calm, neutral, wholly controlled. It was as though he had never touched her, never regretted the kind of man he was, never heard her response, never shut her out so finally behind his closed eyes.

  But he had done all of those things.

  Hope turned Aces onto a dirt ranch road that went a short way into the foothills.

  Rio followed. “Just a truck? He must have missed a lot of your land.”

  “He had a fistful of survey maps.”

  “Good thing, maps. Save a man a lot of saddle and boot leather. Not worth much for finding wells, though.”

  She let out a long breath. “That’s what I hoped. I just don’t see how he could spread out a piece of paper on the kitchen table and then tell me that if there was any artesian water on my ranch, it was three miles down and hotter than hell.”

  Rio’s mouth turned in a sardonic curve that was a long way from his earlier smiles. “He was half-right. Three miles down it is hotter than hell.”

  With a light touch of spurs, he lifted Storm Walker into a lope on the dirt road. He held that pace until the horses began to breathe deeply and their coats took on a satin sheen that was just short of sweat. Then he alternated between a trot and a lope, eating up the miles without wearing down the horses.

  When he reined Storm Walker back down to a walk, Aces was still alongside, her gunmetal legs easily keeping pace with the more powerful stallion. Rio nodded approvingly.

  “Good animal,” he said.

  Hope smiled. “Thanks. I picked her out when she was two days old.”

  “You have a good eye.”

  “Right now I’d rather have a good well.”

  “If it’s here to find, you’ll get it. According to my map, the road ends two miles up from here. Is there a trail to the ranch boundary?”

  “The road ends a mile up,” she corrected. “Landslide.”

  He smiled slightly. “That’s the problem with maps. The land keeps changing.”

  “There’s a trail to Piñon Camp. Dad used to hunt deer there. That’s only a few hundred yards from the ranch boundary, I think.” She shrugged. “Close enough. It’s hard to tell without an expensive, full-blown formal survey.”

  “It’s hard to tell with one,” Rio said wryly. “Sometimes it seems like each new surveyor has a new opinion. Besides, a surprising amount of the Basin and Range country has never been surveyed. Hell, it’s hardly even been settled. Two or three cities and a whole lot of sagebrush and mountains in between.”

  “That’s why I love it. Plenty of room to just . . . be.”

  “Yes,” he said. “A lot of people don’t understand that.”

  “Good. Leaves more room for the rest of us.”

  Smiling, Rio looked down at the road. There hadn’t been enough rain to wipe out the tracks of the last vehicle to pass over the gritty surface. In places
that were protected from the wind, tire marks still showed clearly. He noted that the tread patterns weren’t those of either ranch truck.

  “Hunters?” he asked, gesturing toward the tire tracks.

  “The hydrologist. He came up here to get an overview of the whole ranch.”

  “Well, at least he wasn’t entirely a fool. That’s one of the things we’re going to do.”

  The hydrologist’s tire tracks went up to the landslide, stopped, crossed over themselves, and headed back down the mountain. Rio guided Storm Walker carefully around the tracks, looking for boot marks or any other sign that the hydrologist had gotten out of his truck and walked around.

  There weren’t any tracks.

  Rio turned in the saddle and looked back over the trail. The road had climbed steeply in the last mile. There was a clear view of the tiny ranch buildings, the low desert basin beyond, and the next mountain range beyond that.

  “This is as far as he went,” Hope said. “I told him that Piñon Camp had a better view. He said he could see more than enough from here.”

  She looked beyond the landslide to the Perdidas rising darkly above the dry foothills. Then she turned as Rio had, toward the west.

  The ranch boundaries sprawled invisibly along the rugged foothills like a carelessly thrown blanket. The basin between the Perdidas and the next mountain range fifteen miles to the west was low desert, a place of alkali flats in the summer and temporary, brackish lakes during the season of winter rain and mountain runoff.

  The foothills were rugged, but not as steep as the east-facing foothills of the Perdidas. Small valleys thick with grass lay in the creases of the hills, guarded by rocky ridges where big sage and piñon and mahogany grew nearly twenty feet tall. They were shrubs rather than true trees, but so tall they were often called pygmy forests.

  The endless changes of elevation fascinated Hope, basins alternating with mountain ranges that looked like tawny velvet waves frozen forever in the moment of breaking. A thin silver haze of heat shimmered above the basins, blending invisibly into the blue-white haze of extreme distance. There was nothing to stop the eye but range after range of mountains falling away to the far curve of the earth.