Lone Star Woman

by CALLAHAN, SADIE

  Early afternoon found her standing in the Dickersons’ driveway, readying to leave. She could see a deep purple cloud bank, massive and ominous, spanning the width of the western sky. Heavy air pressed down on her shoulders. The storm rolling out of the Rockies had been forecast for several days and was expected to be vicious. She had intended to be back in Willard County with her cargo before bad weather arrived. Hauling three thousand pounds of beef on the hoof through a West Texas thunderstorm would be a challenge she wouldn’t relish. She had a six-hour drive ahead of her.

  Now she realized she should have left Lockett earlier this morning and given herself more time to make the round-trip. Mr. Dickerson had insisted on giving her a tour of his ranch, which had used up an hour and a half. Then he and his wife wanted her to stay for dinner and it would have been too rude to tell them no.

  She merged onto the interstate at three o’clock in the afternoon. On the last day of July, the day should be bright with sunshine, but the sky had already turned to greenish purple and the storm had chased away the light. Just west of Fort Worth, the wind picked up, buffeting her one-ton pickup and the loaded double-axle trailer behind it as if they weighed no more than a compact car.

  In a matter of a few more minutes, the first fat raindrops splattered against the windshield. An instant later, an earth-shaking clap of thunder exploded directly overhead. The heavens opened and great sheets of water poured from the sky, pounding on her pickup roof, beating against the sides in a roar and erasing visibility. Her windshield wipers whipped and thumped, but barely cleared a fan large enough for her to see a foot or two ahead of her. Adrenaline surged, her heart began to race.

  Just then her cell phone broke into the “Aggie War Hymn,” but she didn’t dare try to dig it out of her purse. She leaned forward, gripping the steering wheel with both hands, her eyes plastered to the dim images in front of her. Thunder-claps cracked and boomed overhead like cannons. Jagged streaks of lightning bored into the pastures all around her. The hair rose on her arms as one zigzag struck with a crack near the pickup.

  She could feel Spike and Charlie Brown constantly shifting, rocking the trailer. They were terrified. All she needed was for them to unbalance the trailer and cause her to wreck. She slowed her speed in an effort to combat the swaying.

  Then the sky lightened slightly, the wind relented and the storm diminished to a steady, drenching rain. She was able to relax her white-knuckle grip on the steering wheel. She found a country-music station on the radio and settled in for a long, slow drive. She began to think about all that had happened to her in the past two months.

  No question that Brady Fallon’s presence at the Circle C had changed her life. An interesting part of her day had been eliminated because she no longer felt she could move freely around the veterinary clinic for fear of running into him. For the same reason, she no longer helped Doc Barrett with breeding the mares. Doc had noticed her absence and asked her where she was keeping herself. She had told him she had to prepare for the beginning of school.

  She had stopped joining Daddy for a drink prior to supper. It was Brady who shared cocktail hour with her father. Jude could live without the liquor, but a part of her missed her daily drink with Daddy. In the past, that had too often been the only chance she had to talk to him during the day.

  She felt as if her only ally in the house was Grandpa, and lately, he didn’t feel well. A part of her worried about that.

  When she rode Patch or Sal, she often found Brady with his arms hooked over the fence rail watching her, which made her so uneasy, she usually stopped the workout early. Everything about him affected her—the way his body moved; the way he slouched against a door, his hip cocked, his thumb hooked in his jeans pocket; the way he peered intently at something that interested him; the crinkles at the corners of his eyes when he smiled.

  Maybe what affected her most was knowing he had seen her without her clothes on. And she had seen him. And they had touched each other in the most intimate of ways.

  Then there was his supposed courtship of Joyce Harrison, which needled incessantly. Jude was going to the school daily now, and she heard the stories. One of her peers was Joyce’s cousin, who talked endlessly about what a quiet, gentle man Brady was, how good he was with Joyce’s son, how crazy Joyce was about him, how lucky for Joyce that she had met him. Hearing it was almost more than Jude could stand.

  Even when Brady Fallon wasn’t in her sight around the Circle C or being discussed at school, he was in her head, especially at night. She revisited that one conversation in his pickup at least once every night.

  I’m not necessarily looking for a, uh, boyfriend. . . . I’ve never even dated one of the ranch hands.

  And every time she thought of those words, she wished she had never said them.

  All at once, thunder rumbled across the sky like a wagonload of rocks, bringing her thoughts back to the present. The rain bulleted down on her, and she could feel the lug of Spike and Charlie Brown shifting in the trailer again. The farther west she traveled, the worse the storm grew. Thunder became a rumble so constant, it echoed in her very body. Sheet lightning lit the air like camera flashes. The radio had become useless white noise. It didn’t matter, anyway. She dared not divert her attention from driving long enough to search for a broadcast. Night was coming on. She began to look for a service station to pull into, but visibility was so poor, she could scarcely read the freeway signs or see exits until she was upon them and it was too late to turn.

  She slowed her speed to a crawl and stuck with the far-right lane. Semis passed her, the force of their massive moving weight rocking her, their giant tires spewing rooster tails of water onto her windshield and into the trailer. The trailer had a roof, but the sides were open steel rails, so the bulls were being deluged by every passing truck. She gripped the steering wheel tighter and prayed to be able to stay on the paved surface. She had no idea what might await her if she veered off the highway onto the shoulder.

  An hour and a half later, she had driven deeper into the mouth of the beast and conditions had only worsened. Rain continued to pour without letup. A tight knot had formed between her shoulder blades. Soon she recognized signs that she was nearing Abilene. By a miracle, and because she was moving at a snail’s pace, she spotted the exit that would take her to Lockett and the Circle C. A hundred more miles and she would be home. “Yes,” she cried out. She made the turn onto the state highway.

  Now that she was heading northwest, the west wind blasts blew full force against the sides of the pickup and trailer. Keeping the pickup on the road took all of her strength. She couldn’t clearly see familiar territory, but she sensed it and her heartbeat slowed. She passed through Lockett and felt her shoulders and neck relax a little for the first time in hours.

  Only a few more miles before she reached the Circle C’s gate. Suddenly a monstrous gust blasted the side of the trailer and pickup. She felt herself moving to the right, toward a deep barrow ditch she knew ran alongside the highway. Frantically she yanked the steering wheel to the left, but to no avail. She could hear nothing but the roar of the rain and wind, but she felt the road’s soft shoulder grab her tires and pull her even farther right. The pickup’s forward motion stopped with a ka-whump! The rig tipped to the right, and her body slammed against her seat belt. Then everything stopped but the engine, the headlights and the rain. Like a million silver needles, rain drove horizontally through the headlights’ blaze. She couldn’t see the horizon, but she knew the pickup was lying on its side in the ditch.

  And so was the trailer.

  The bulls!

  She grabbed the door latch and pushed against the door, but the wind defied her strength. She waited for a lull between gusts and pushed again, succeeded in opening the door only partway. She was trapped. She buzzed down the window and looked out. Cold rain pricked her face. As nearly as she could tell, the pickup lay at a forty-five-degree angle against the side of the ditch, and she was five feet off the ground. She kille
d the headlights and switched off the engine, then squirmed in the driver’s bucket seat until she had the window to her back. She climbed out, one leg at a time, hanging on to the windowsill and sliding down the wet door until her feet hit the ground.

  Now, even above the roar of the wind and rain, she could hear the anxious bawls of both bulls, could hear their bodies thumping and bumping inside the trailer. With the trailer laid on its right side, she couldn’t see into it from where she stood, so she forced her way against the gale to the trailer’s back. She peered through the double gate, but in the pitch blackness of the stormy night and blinding rain, she couldn’t see the bulls. She could only smell them and hear them. She had to get them out. Their feet and legs could be caught in the trailer’s side rails. They could be injured. Or if not, they could injure themselves in their fear.

  She needed help. Spike and Charlie Brown needed help. She remembered that her cell phone was inside the cab, but no way would she ever be able to get to it.

  She looked around, seeking her bearings, looking through the blinding rain for any sign of a landmark. When she figured out where she was, she realized she was no more than a mile from Brady Fallon’s house.

  22

  Brady had been sleeping so soundly, he thought the knocking on his front door was a dream. When it continued even after he was awake, he opened his eyes. Then he realized the noise wasn’t merely knocking; it was pounding, and a hellacious storm was raging outside. He roused himself, pulled on jeans, padded barefoot to the front door and switched on the porch light.

  “Jude!” She was soaked to the skin and shaking like a cold dog. Her arms were folded over her chest, and she clutched her elbows. He pulled her into the house. “Jesus, you’re freezing.”

  “I n-need h-help,” she said through chattering teeth.

  Water poured off her as if she had just stepped out of a pool. Her hair hung in dripping clumps. He knew she had gone east to pick up bulls. He couldn’t imagine how she got from that to this.

  “Come on.” Still gripping her arm, he dragged her to the bathroom and grabbed a handful of bath towels out of the cabinet over the toilet. He handed them to her, then took one himself and began roughly scrubbing her bare arms dry. “What the hell happened?”

  “I t-turned over,” she said, her voice weak and broken, her whole body quaking. She looked up at him wild-eyed and bedraggled. Dark smears of eye makeup circled her eyes. “I’ve g-got the bulls. I’ve g-got to g-get them out. Ph-phone.”

  “Where are they?”

  “In the t-trailer. In the d-ditch.”

  A sick fear surged in Brady’s gut. “Are they hurt?”

  “I d-don’t know. I c-can’t tell.”

  Even if they weren’t hurt, they must be trapped. They had to be freed ASAP. “Let me get some clothes on.”

  Still shaking and babbling about leaving too late and her pickup sliding off the road, she followed him into the bedroom as if she had been in it a dozen times, her wet boots and jeans leaving a trail of water behind her. Only half listening, he dug toward the back of his closet and came up with the only bathrobe he owned, a thick thing that looked like a horse blanket. “Get those wet clothes off,” he said, handing her the robe. “Hell, woman, you’ll end up with hypothermia. Or pneumonia.”

  He pawed through his dresser drawers and came up with socks and a sweatshirt, then dropped to the edge of the mattress and quickly pulled on the socks and his boots.

  “What’re y-you g-going to do?”

  “Saddle Tuffy and get ’em out of there.”

  Managing two massive, half-wild bulls already panicked by a wreck and a roaring thunderstorm would be impossible on foot. It could end with a sorry result even from horseback. He shrugged into the sweatshirt. “You stay here and warm up.”

  “No. It’s too hard for one p-person. I’ll go help.”

  “You’re freezing. Do what I tell you. Get those wet clothes off.”

  “No. You don’t know where the truck is. I’m going.” She left the room, her boots squishing. He sighed and shook his head. If the past two months had taught him anything, it was that Jude was not a woman easily thwarted. He turned back to the dresser and found another sweatshirt.

  Before leaving the bedroom, he dug in the back of his closet again where he kept a gun safe and brought out his holstered .45 pistol and fastened it on his belt. Worst-case scenario, those bulls would have to be put down.

  He caught up with her in the kitchen. “At least put on a dry shirt,” he said, offering her the fleece garment.

  Her gaze zeroed in on the pistol. She looked up at him, her brow tented with anguish. “Just in case,” he said quietly. Her chin dropped to her chest. She was a rancher’s daughter. She knew what he knew.

  She tried to unbutton her shirt, but her hands were shaking so, she couldn’t. He unbuttoned it for her and helped her peel it and her wet bra off. Hardly noticing her nakedness, he pulled the sweatshirt over her head, then plucked his hat off the coatrack by the back door and crammed it over her wet hair. “Okay, let’s go.”

  Wind whipped and rain pelted as they dashed to the barn. In a matter of minutes they had the two geldings saddled. Jude had to be in misery, but she voiced not a word of complaint. He said nothing, either. He had already made the point and didn’t intend to belabor it in the middle of the night with two of the Circle C’s bulls in trouble.

  A well-used slicker hung in the tack room. He grabbed it and tossed it to her. “If you’ve just got to go, put this on.”

  “But what about you? What’ll you wear?”

  He shrugged into his old barn coat and crushed his old felt barn hat onto his head. “I haven’t been out in the weather yet.”

  He picked up a flashlight, lifted two extra lariats off a wall peg and hooked them over his saddle horn. “Let’s go.” He shoved his boot into a stirrup and swung into the saddle. “Lead the way.”

  Together they left the comfort of the dry barn. Brady stopped at the cowboy gate that opened into the pasture beside the cattle guard, the easiest place to try to pen the bulls—that is, if they got far enough to need penning. He dismounted, unhooked the wire latch and laid the wire gate back, leaving a ten-foot opening. Then he loped behind Jude through the slop of the 6-0’s quarter-mile caliche driveway to the highway. The gale from the west drove the chilling rain like needles against his cheeks.

  They crossed the slick highway in a walk, then slipped and slid on the rain-slicked grassy side of the ditch, but neither Tuffy nor Poncho balked. Water ran like a fast stream through the narrow ditch bottom. They trotted through it, and soon, Brady saw the vague outline of the trailer through the rain’s haze. They were approaching it from the back. Thank God, he thought, because if the truck and trailer had been facing the opposite direction, he didn’t know how he would have gotten around them in the deep ditch with its muddy, slick sides.

  At the trailer gate, he dismounted and shone the flashlight beam into it. A wind gust pushed him off balance, but he was able to see that the bulls were penned by a partition inside the trailer. They were soaked and pissed off, but both were on their feet, a good sign. They glared into the light and bellowed long and loud. Then he saw the problem. On the side of the trailer that lay against the ditch bank, their feet were thrust through the trailer’s open side rails. Trying to force them out could cause a broken leg. Or two. In which case, he would have to put them down. “Aw, shit,” he mumbled.

  He went back to where Jude sat astride Poncho, covered neck to ankle by his yellow slicker, water sluicing off the brim of her hat. He yelled to be heard above the roaring wind and rain. “I’ll get loops on them, then open the gate. When they see the opening, with a little urging, I think they’ll come out on their own. But don’t force them. If they don’t come, if they blow up, at least we’ll have some control.” Maybe. Cattle functioned more from instinct than intelligence, but sometimes they surprised him.

  He lifted one of the ropes off his saddle horn and unlatched the divided st
eel trailer gate. The first bull backed up and swung his wet, woolly head left and right. Brady shook out a small loop, tossed it over the behemoth’s horns and snugged it tight. He carried the other end of the lariat back to Jude and handed it up to her. “Keep the tension on your rope,” he yelled. “Don’t let’em fight it.” He made a circular motion with his fist. She nodded that she understood, stayed Poncho and dallyed the end of the rope.

  He grabbed the second lariat and tramped back into the trailer. He looped the second bull’s horns, then dropped the partition. The first bull bellowed, then stood motionless as if assessing the new situation. The bulls were large and in their prime. Brady could see that if this plan didn’t work, things could turn ugly in a hurry. He backed out of the trailer, mounted up and tightened his own rope, but Jude’s rope was the one tied to the first bull’s horns. “Just give him a little tug,” he yelled to her, confident she knew how to use her horse’s strength. “No more than that. See if he’ll find his way out.” Mentally Brady had his fingers crossed. If the first bull came out on his own, the second would follow if his legs weren’t caught.

  He watched, holding his breath, as the rain beat them without mercy. After a few seconds, like a woman in high heels, and as if he didn’t weigh fifteen hundred pounds, the first bull slowly and delicately stepped through the trailer’s steel side rails to freedom, and the second one came behind him. Brady felt the fear leave his chest. Before this minute, he hadn’t even noticed it was there. He dallyed his own rope, and then positioned himself beside Jude, their stirrups touching.

  She was grinning. “I can’t believe they did that so easy,” she yelled.