“That sure isn’t what he said.” McNally pulled on his Stetson’s pale rim, steadying the hat against the playful tugs of the wind. Then he touched the side of the black metal trailer. “These cattle are yours, Hope. Every last hair on their shiny hides.”
“I can’t take them. I haven’t done anything to earn them.”
McNally looked at Hope with pale blue eyes that saw through her carefully controlled voice to the unhappy woman beneath. “That’s not what Rio told me. He said you sold your cattle, your horses, your future, everything, because you believed in him. When anyone else would have cut their losses and run, you stuck it out. And you did it knowing full well what the odds against you were.”
She didn’t say anything, just shook her head.
McNally smiled strangely. “That reached Rio down deep, down where nobody ever touched him before. Kind of opened him up and made him bleed. These cattle are yours.”
“I can’t take them.”
“Watch you don’t get trampled, ma’am,” called the driver as he freed the cattle.
Gently Mason and McNally crowded Hope back out of the way of the cattle that were coming out of the truck. She didn’t object anymore. She couldn’t. She had recognized the first of the sleek black cows to walk down the ramp.
“Sweetheart.”
The cow’s head came up at the familiar voice. She ambled down the ramp and nudged Hope with a broad, damp muzzle, looking for grain. Her calves followed her, grown and half-grown, dense black cattle walking down the ramp and drifting over the familiar pasture to pick at the new growth that winter rains had called from the land.
The wind followed them, ruffling their thick, glossy coats.
“I can’t take them,” Hope said again. She clenched her hands so that she wouldn’t rub them down Sweetheart’s solid barrel. “These cows never belonged to Rio. You bought them from me. They’re yours.”
McNally tugged on his hat brim. “Without Rio I wouldn’t have a pot to piss in or a window to throw it out of.”
Hope closed her eyes against the temptation of her Angus just within reach. The future of the Valley of the Sun had come home.
“Rio was only fifteen when he found water for me,” McNally continued. “I gave him three Angus heifers and the use of my best bull. He never came back for them or their calves until this year.”
Hope made a sound of protest.
McNally kept talking. “When it came time to sort out what was Rio’s, we both just kind of decided that these Angus had his name on them. Now, if you don’t agree, you’re just going to have to take it up with him. I sure as hell don’t plan on crossing him.”
Without meaning to, Hope found her hands rubbing through Sweetheart’s warm coat. She opened her eyes and saw her fingers curling into the thick, springy mat of black that covered the cow’s broad barrel.
“These cattle are Rio’s,” she said huskily. “For as long as the water flows.”
“There’s a new one in here,” McNally said, going to the back of his own truck. “I’d recommend the barn for this one, but it’s your choice.”
Hope and Mason followed McNally to his truck. He opened the back and let down a stout ramp.
With ponderous grace, a massive black bull walked out of the truck. Every rippling muscle shouted the animal’s fine breeding. Though the bull could have easily crushed the people standing nearby, he stood at the bottom of the ramp, waiting for McNally’s signal. When McNally spoke softly, the bull watched him with calm, very dark eyes.
“No.” Hope made a choked sound. “That bull is worth more than my whole herd of Angus put together. I can’t take him.”
“You want me to tell Rio that you couldn’t find room in your barn for his bull?” McNally asked blandly.
“Yes. No.” Hope’s voice broke over the despair settling like ice in her, freezing her. “Damn you, Rio,” she cried hoarsely. “I didn’t want you to feel guilty about me!”
She turned and ran into the ranch house. The front door slammed behind her.
Mason and McNally exchanged a long look.
Then they led Rio’s bull to its new home in the Valley of the Sun.
Twenty-eight
BEFORE DAYBREAK THE next morning, Hope lay in bed, her mind a turmoil. Through the open window, wind brought the random scents and sounds of the newly arrived Angus moving through the dawn, snuffling at the hay that had been put out. The scents and sounds of her dream.
Rio’s cattle. Rio’s hay. Rio’s seed.
Rio’s well.
But the dream was hers, dreamed for herself and for the man who had no dreams.
Just as the sun rose over Eagle Peak and spilled down into her bedroom, several pickup trucks rattled into the yard. The slam of a truck door and a man’s voice hailing the house brought Hope upright in bed, her heart hammering with a sudden wild hope.
Rio?
She pulled on her clothes, kicked into her boots, and raced down the stairs. The yard in front of the barn was alive with pickup trucks hauling horse trailers. Three, four, five trucks, each pulling a four- or six-horse trailer.
Drivers climbed out, stretched, and called back and forth between the trucks with the rough voices of men who had been up all night drinking coffee and smoking cigarettes.
“Mornin’, ma’am. You be Hope?” the closest driver asked when he saw her. The man was tall and thin, with a Tennessee accent running like a warm river through his speech.
“Yes.”
“Pleasure, ma’am,” he said, touching the brim of his hat. He turned his head, whistled shrilly through his teeth, and called, “Yo! Jake! This here is Rio’s woman!”
Jake trotted over, shook Hope’s hand, and asked, “Where do you want us to put our gear?”
“What?”
“Our gear, ma’am. Rio said you needed help.”
“I can’t afford to pay you,” she said bluntly.
Jake’s smile was as gentle as his teeth were crooked. “Makes no never mind, ma’am. We couldn’t pay Rio, neither. Didn’t stop him none. Won’t stop us.”
“But—”
“Ma’am,” Jake interrupted softly, “I sure do hope you’re not going to put us crosswise of Rio. He’s got his heart set on us being here.”
In the end Mason led everyone to the second bunkhouse, where they all pitched in and started cleaning. Other than Jake and the tall man from Tennessee, the rest of the “men” were hardly more than boys.
But they had handled cattle and horses all their lives, and it showed. Horses began flowing out of the trailers in a calm, multicolored stream. They were sturdy, seasoned ponies that didn’t have to be told which end of a cow bit and which kicked.
Hope watched and told herself that she would sort it out later, when she was awake. Right now it was enough just to hear the familiar, rhythmic music of shod hooves in the ranch yard again.
“Ma’am?” Jake called.
“Yes?”
“This one’s yours.” He led Dusk out of a trailer. “Rio said how you liked to ride at night, and he was worried about you getting on a spooky pony.”
Hope didn’t know what to say. She hadn’t ridden since she sold her mares. She had been afraid to risk her pregnancy on one of Storm Walker’s friendly bucking sessions.
“Rio,” she whispered to the wind. “How can I forget you when you keep sending me what is yours?”
Cool wind rushed over her face, her throat, her burning eyes.
But she wouldn’t cry. She hadn’t cried when Rio left. She refused to start now.
Rio stood alone on a high ridge, looking over land that had once been green with forests. The trees had long since turned to stone. The land had been rich with water, water that had sunk down into the earth, water that now was far older than mankind.
The wind moaned around him, tugging at him.
Well, brother, Rio thought wearily, you’ve blown me all over the West. Now what? What undiscovered country do you have left? What secrets haven’t you showed me?
>
Currents of air as solid as hands buffeted him, forcing him to turn his back, close his eyes, and hang on to his hat. Abruptly the wind dropped to a whisper, and that whisper was a name.
Rio got back in his truck and started driving.
Fleeing.
But wherever he went, the wind was always there ahead of him, waiting.
Whispering.
In the days and weeks that followed, by twos and fives and tens, beef and breeding cattle from every state west of the Rockies arrived at the Valley of the Sun. Hope gave up objecting to the men who drove the trucks. Despite differences in age and wealth, the men all were alike in one way: they weren’t going to disappoint the man called Rio.
As Hope’s fifth month without Rio began, she thought she had accepted it all: the loss of Rio and the gain of the well, the loss of Rio and the gain of the cattle, the loss of Rio and the gain of his child. She thought she was strong enough to see him in every sunrise, hear his name in every wind, taste him in every silver drop of water from his well, remember him with every breath she took; she could take all of that without destroying herself in endless longing for him.
And then one more afternoon came, one more stock truck drove into the yard, and one more man asked her, “Where do you want them?”
In unnatural silence Hope watched him lead horses down the ramp and into the corral. They were magnificent, long-legged mares with clear eyes and powerful haunches and life running through them like leashed lightning. Mares cakewalking across the yard, their heads raised high, nostrils flared to drink the scent of the wind sweeping down from the Perdidas. Wind ruffled silky manes and tails, whispered to pricked ears the secrets of the land, and then sped on.
Hope stood motionless, enthralled by the mares’ beauty. A dream swirled within her, a vision of the future when Storm Walker’s foals would grow sleek and strong, running through fields where grass never failed and water always flowed.
Rio’s stock and her land and their child, and the artesian fountain he had found hidden deep within rock, ancient water flowing, an endless promise of life.
The Valley of the Sun was truly alive again.
Tears flowed silently, helplessly, down Hope’s cheeks. She hadn’t cried when Rio left or in all the long hours since then. But she couldn’t stop crying now. To see her family’s dream come true, her father’s dream, her own dream, and yet to be alone within that dream . . .
Blindly she turned and made her way to the barn.
Jake and Mason saw her coming, then saw her tears and her fumbling fingers as she grabbed a familiar bridle. Gently Jake took the bridle from her hands.
“Going for a ride?” Mason asked.
Unable to speak, she nodded.
“Then you’ll want Dusk,” Jake said.
She nodded again.
The two men went off and quickly returned with Dusk. Though it was a very mild day, Jake took off his big denim jacket and wrapped it around Hope.
“It gets right cool in some of those canyons,” he said.
She didn’t say anything.
Mason handed her the reins, and both men watched her ride out of the yard.
“She going to be all right?” Jake asked in a low voice.
“She better be,” Mason growled, “or I’m gonna skin that thickheaded son of a bitch and use his hide to wipe my boots.”
Jake smiled a bit grimly. “Holler if you need help. Me and the boys, well,” he said, shrugging, “we owe Rio, but that’s one damned fine woman eating her heart out over him.”
Mason and Jake went back to their barn chores. They had stalls to muck out, grain to pour, hay and straw to bring, horses to groom, shoes to check: all the small, endless tasks that went into owning horses. After that there were fences to ride, pipelines to check, machinery to repair. The list was as long as it was necessary.
Just as the men finished up in the barn, a pickup truck pulled into the front yard. A tall, broad-shouldered man climbed out and looked around slowly.
As one, Mason and Jake headed for him.
“Howdy, Rio,” Mason said. “Come to check on your stock?”
Reluctantly Rio turned away from the ranch house. He still didn’t know why he was here. He only knew that the wind had made it impossible for him to stay away.
“Hello, Mason, Jake,” Rio said, shaking hands with each man. “How is . . .” His voice died, but he couldn’t keep from watching the door to the house.
“The livestock are fine,” Mason said, but it was the house Rio was looking at, his eyes shaded by the brim of his hat. Mason smiled thinly. “Come and take a look at all the changes.”
“Not yet.”
“Got something else in mind?” Mason prodded.
“Where’s Hope?” Rio asked bluntly.
“Riding,” Jake said, his voice neutral and his eyes burning.
“Where.” It was a demand, not a question.
Jake waved his hand casually. “Out there. She’s been real edgy. Spends a lot of time out on the range.”
“She should be happy,” Rio said in a rough voice. “She has her dream.”
Jake shrugged. “She ain’t.”
“She cried for you,” Mason said. “Don’t ever hurt her like that again.”
Rio hissed a word though his teeth and knew that he should go. He stared at the house with dark, narrowed eyes.
“Where is she, Mason? And don’t give me any crap about ‘out there.’ She knows better than to ride off alone without telling anyone where she’s going. You know better than to let her.”
“Who said she was alone?” Mason retorted. “Lots of prime young bucks have come sniffing around since you left.”
For an instant something terrible flickered in Rio’s eyes. Then he remembered the truth that he had discovered about Hope. She was a one-man woman. He was her man.
That wouldn’t change in five months or five years or five hundred.
And he wouldn’t change either. Brother-to-the-wind. Nothing had changed except the pain. It was worse every day, every hour, every breath.
“Where is she?” he asked bleakly.
“If you hurt her again—” Mason began.
Then Rio turned away from the house and Mason saw his eyes. However much Hope hurt, she wasn’t alone.
“Well, hell,” Mason muttered.
“Yes,” Rio said, turning away again. “Hell.”
“If you were hurting, where would you go?” Mason asked.
“The only place I haven’t been yet—Wind Canyon.”
“Nice place,” Jake said blandly.
“One of Hope’s favorites,” Mason added.
“Is she there?”
The men simply watched Rio with eyes that held both sympathy and anger.
Abruptly Rio turned around and went back to his truck.
Dusk knew where to go without being told. Hope often rode her there. The mare took to the dirt road eagerly, remembering that the grass in Wind Canyon had grown lush and sweet around the new pond.
Hope rode without thinking about it, still lost in the moment when she had realized that she wasn’t as strong as she had assumed she was. She was afraid she wasn’t strong enough to live on the Valley of the Sun alone within her dream and not destroy herself.
But she couldn’t let that happen. She owed it to Rio, to herself, and most of all to the child she carried.
So she rode blindly, tears welling over her cheeks faster than the wind could dry them. She would go to the miracle of Rio’s well. Somehow she would find strength again as she had in the past. There was no other choice.
The mare stopped just beyond the rim of the artesian pond, where grass grew in a startling swath of emerald. Wanting freedom to graze, Dusk tugged at the reins.
Hope dismounted, leaving the horse in the patch of grass and finding another for herself. She sat without moving, remembering how it had been to be fully alive within her dream and Rio’s arms. With memories came tears the color of artesian water streaming down her face.
Sunlight thickened into the rich orange and molten gold of late afternoon. The wind lifted, keening over the land. She didn’t see the sun or hear the wind. She was lost in her memories and her broken dream, groping for the strength she needed to go on.
“Hope?”
His voice was from the broken dream, deep and warm, a richness that was like a caress. A gentle hand smoothed over her hair, calling her from her memories. She blinked.
And saw Rio through her tears.
For a moment her eyes blazed with returning life, a dream made whole again. But even as emotion swept through her, she understood that she was seeing just half of a dream. The wind had blown, bringing him back to her.
And it would blow again, taking him away.
The life that had blazed in Hope faded, taking the dreams from her eyes.
Rio called her name in a raw voice and knelt beside her.
She took his hand and cradled it against her cheek, wondering why half a dream took more strength to survive than a dream that was utterly broken.
He gathered her against his body as though she was more fragile than the dreams that had faded from her eyes.
“I’m sorry, I never meant to hurt you,” he whispered. “Hope, please believe me.”
He rocked slowly, stroking the cool silk of her hair, repeating his words over and over, hoping if he said them often enough, they would take away her tears and replace them with the incandescent dreams that had once been there.
She put her arms around Rio and let herself drift within half a dream, too emotionally spent to do more than fill her senses with his presence. He eased her down into the grass, cradling her against his warmth, talking to her softly, trying to explain the wind. His husky words wept over her like tears.
“I’ve spent my life like the wind, roaming the land, looking for . . . something,” he said. “Like the wind, I never found it. Then I came to the Valley of the Sun and saw you fighting for your dream. I wanted to help you the way I had helped other dreamers.”
She lay quietly against him and her tears kept falling.
“Then I began to dream, too,” he said. He brushed his lips over her soft hair. “I dreamed of a woman who loved the land more than she loved anything, yet she risked everything she loved on a drifter’s belief that he could find water where none had ever been found before. I dreamed of a woman strong enough to stand against drought and soft enough to set my body on fire. I dreamed of a woman who offered me herself and asked nothing in return. I dreamed of a woman who looked at a half-breed and saw a man, and loved what she saw.”
Beautiful Dreamer with Bonus Material Page 28
