by BJ James
She’d been riding back and forth between the ranches alone for more than a week. But a niggling worry settled in the back of Tynan’s mind and never left. “You’ll be careful?”
“I would guard Casey with my life.”
Ty had never doubted that. Should something untoward happen, it was the cost to this small, brave woman that he feared. “You’ll keep the rifle loaded and close at hand?”
“Always.”
Ty relaxed, but only by’ a little. She would be safe again at Fini Terre, before he was at ease. Yet no one knew better than he that he couldn’t let his fear for her, when there seemed to be little to fear, keep her prisoner. Careful to keep concern from his tone, he asked, “Then, why should I mind? In any case, I wouldn’t want Casey to be disappointed. What you’ve done for him is a miracle.”
“If I could work miracles, I would have him well and sound now, Ty. Not in the future.”
“Call it what you like, Short Bear. To Carl and Cat and to me, Casey is a miracle in progress. Thanks to you.”
Merrill chose not to argue, settling it succinctly. “Then it remains a matter of opinion.”
Ty agreed. “I suppose it does.”
The cant of the sun was changing. The stable had darkened as it rose higher, its light falling on rooftops instead of windows. “That’s it then?” she didn’t move away from the door, but slipped her hands into the pockets of her jeans to conceal their trembling. “Have I answered all your questions?”
“Have I?” he countered.
His gaze was dark and intense in a craggy, weathered face. His hair had grown long in the weeks since she’d become his unwanted guest. It tumbled over his forehead in loose curls even the Stetson couldn’t subdue. Barely resisting the urge to smooth them back, she looked at him in question.
“You asked if you would be missed when you’re gone.” His thumb traced the curve of her lower lip, a hedonistic reminder of his kiss. “Have I answered for myself?”
Catching his hand in hers, Merrill turned her mouth into his palm. The kiss she left there was her answer.
Ty nodded and stepped away. “I’ll leave you to get ready. You’ve a long ride today.”
“Not so long. I won’t tire Casey too much.”
“It isn’t Casey I worry about.”
Merrill caught back a trembling breath. “I know.”
“You know, too, don’t you, that one day there won’t be anything standing between us. No doubts nor regrets for past sins. No late night rides, no snow. No kind promises to Casey.” He tapped the half door of the stall. “Not one barrier of any kind.”
“I know.” Her admission was just more than a whisper. “I’ve known for a long time.”
Ty stared at her for a great while. The darkness of his gaze reaching into her, seeing all she hadn’t the courage to say. “Just so you understand.”
“I understand,” she said in a tone as hushed. “I have from the first.”
In an abrupt move, Ty bent to pluck his hat from the floor. Crushing it in his hand, he looked at her again. “Take care, Short Bear,” he murmured at last. “If not for yourself, then for me.”
She had no reply. She hadn’t the words for what was in her heart. As he left the barn in his usual long and easy step, she watched him, remembering he had called her by the name given her by her beloved Tall Bear. Not just once, not twice, but three times, Ty had called her Short Bear. A silly name, ome would think. But for Merrill, it was a name synonymous with unconditional respect and unquestioning love.
For reasons of his own, Casey had given the name to the carving he’d made of her. He thought it fit, Cat had said. Because, though she was small in stature, she possessed the courage and strength of the bear.
Merrill understood without being told that it wasn’t physical strength and courage that Casey saw. But strength of heart and mind and soul, the courage of convictions and the will to do what one must.
She’d been that woman once. Perhaps she was almost that woman again.
“Not yet,” she said only to herself. “But soon.”
To Ty’s retreating back, she promised, “Then the last barrier will be gone.”
She watched him step through the door and disappear into the morning before she turned to saddle Tempest.
Their ride was pleasant and meandering, with Casey leading the way through a series of shortcuts Merrill was discovering these Montanans knew and used out of necessity. “Forty miles,” she muttered, recalling the distance Ty had quoted by road from Fini Terre to The Triple C, the nearest ranch. “But not as the crow flies,” she added in what was also one of Carl’s favorite axioms.
One she easily understood as Casey’s horse skirted patches of snow, then threaded through a passage so confining a pregnant mare would have difficulty traversing it. While she followed where he led, they rode ever deeper and farther where no vehicle could go. The sheer face of the trail towered far above them blocking the sun. Yet as the temperature dropped it was never unpleasant. Even here in a place that rarely felt the heat of its rays, water ran in rivulets down walls of stone, and dripped in icy puddles along the trail in a rare thaw.
In the midst of this doldrumlike siege of peculiarly mild temperatures, Cat had jokingly laid the cause on Merrill’s presence, declaring she had enchanted all of Montana, even its weather. Carl had only grinned and shook his head, predicting Mother Nature was only saving up for a helluva Thanksgiving or Christmas present
“Okay, Charley, we’re almost through.” Urging his suddenly balking mount through a narrowing turn with a firm hand, Casey laughed. “The only horse in the world with claustrophobia, and he’s mine.”
Tempest picked up some of the big sorrel’s jittery mindset, but settled reasonably with a squeeze of Merrill’s knees. “Have you ever thought he might just be getting back at you for his name.”
“Charley Horse is a perfectly good name.”
“Sure it is.”
“Lord knows, he’s given me enough of them,” the boy declared in his own defense.
“Can’t say that I blame him.” Merrill was smiling at the broad, straight back as she followed. She was just beginning to see Casey as he’d been before the accident. The wicked sense of humor, the quick wit Every day he came closer to being that unique person again. More and more, as just now, his sentences fell in perfect order with less and less hesitant effort. Words like claustrophobia came quicker, tripped off his tongue naturally. One could only think that in all the long months he would say nothing, the deep-seated injury healed, his synapses busily repairing themselves. So much so, that when he ventured to speak at last, his recovery was amazing, with phenomenal speed.
“Just living up to his name, you think?” Casey surmised over his shoulder as the path grew tighter and the horse more nervous.
“Could be.”
“Then I should have called him Aladdin.”
“For a ride like a flying carpet?”
“Exactly.”
The last crowding turn opened into a meadow still covered with thick tatters of snow. The land rolled gently beneath an unclouded sky. Nothing could have been more open or unconfining, but Charley was still agitated, fighting the reins and rolling his eyes.
“Maybe I should just call him Glue.” Casey was only half teasing this time as the gelding’s antic grew contagious sending Tempest into a little hopping dance. “Remind me to ride another horse when we come back in the Spring. Or maybe we should just climb over like Shadow has. A rock climb or the trail, however we come, you’re in for a treat. The whole field will be carpeted with wild flowers. In fact, mom calls this Wildflower Canyon.”
“I’d like to see that, but I won’t be here in...”
Merrill’s regret was never finished and would never be.
With a terrified scream, Charley reared and pawed, nearly tearing Casey’s arms from their sockets. Mad with panic, the sorrel wheeled and squealed in an insane frenzy, bumping Tempest and triggering a like mood in her.
&n
bsp; Watching in horror, even as she struggled to keep her own seat, Merrill cried out as a mighty lunge sent Casey tumbling head over boot heels into a bank of snow. And towering over him stood a mountain of glaring, roaring, silver tipped menace.
Grizzly!
With only half of a right front paw.
The terrifying recognition registered in unconscious vignettes as Tempest gave one last mighty buck and Merrill landed flat on her back on a muddy scrap of bare, soaked earth. Rolling, turning, scrabbling to all fours while sucking oxygen into lungs sealed by the impact of her fall, she saw that the snarling, quivering creature, as confused and startled as she, seemed to be more aware of the horses.
“Stay down, Casey. Don’t move,” she called in the icy calm settling over her. Either the boy heard and obeyed with a will of iron, or he was unconscious. Whatever the case, it wouldn’t be long before the bear would recognize there was easier, closer prey for the taking.
A quick look revealed a small cul-de-sac bordered by walls as stark and barren as the passage in. The thrashing, milling horses had gathered against a far wall, with the grizzly blocking both the way in and the way out.
“My rifle.” She was muttering now to herself, and hardly aware that she spoke aloud in the chaotic din of screams and snarls. “Hold tight, Casey. Stay as you are.”
The last was a prayer as she rose to her feet The bear was between Merrill and the horses. Between her and the rifle. She hadn’t a doubt he would charge when she moved. But she had no other choice.
“Stay Casey. Dear God, please stay.” The litany had become a prayer as she edged along the canyon wall. A little more to the right and in a mad dash, maybe she could skirt a copse of fallen stone, keeping it as shield from this maddened creature.
“Maybe,” she muttered and cursed softly as a stone dislodged under her moccasined foot and rolled with a deafening clatter down a small incline. “Maybe not.”
The bear had turned toward her, its nose lifted to test the air. She saw then that the giant omnivore was thin to the point of starvation, and likely awake and crazed by the pain of it. Casey chose that time to turn and flail in the snow, giving an already derange beast one more target for his ire.
“No!” Merrill cried and began to run. For one turbulent second the grizzly’s great head swung toward her. And Casey moved again, coming to a crouch. “No,” she screamed again, knowing the boy had never been unconscious and was deliberately drawing the bear to him. As the broad snout bent to sniff, realizing that here there was truly easier prey, Merrill ran with tears on her face, sickness lurching in her throat, denial on her tongue. “No.”
The last was a whisper, lost in a whirling furor as a savage, snarling Shadow launched like a black missile from a stone ledge. Merrill heard the cries, and Shadow’s yelp of pain. The swat of a huge paw sent the wolf flying as if he were no more than an irritating insect. She heard the frenzied howl as Shadow scrambled again to the fray, but she didn’t slacken her pace, nor turn from her goal.
Wild with terror, Tempest reared and dodged, but a lucky catch and a vicious yank at the reins drew her down. Without pause, Merrill stripped the rifle from its case, screaming as she spun about. “Get down, Casey.”
Trusting the coolheaded boy would obey and not wasting the time to aim, as she called on her training with The Black Watch, she fired from the hip, advancing with each shot. With a last, mighty slash at Shadow, the grizzly turned to this newest front of attack. Merrill fired and advanced. The maddened creature kept coming. The rank scent of bear and blood and her own fear filling her lungs, she fired. The grizzly faltered, stumbled. She fired again, and again. The maimed, starving beast fell at her feet.
With only the sound of her fierce, laboring breath in her ears, she prodded the brute once with the barrel of her rifle. With a low moan and the weak flailing of a mutilated paw, the last echo of a life ended.
Then the canyon was quiet.
“Ouch!” Dropping the hoof he was inspecting, and scrubbing his hand over his backside, Tynan straightened to face Bogart. “Why did you do that?” The horse didn’t react by so much as a flicker of an eyelash, but he would have sworn he saw laughter in the dark, glittering eyes. “How would you like it if I bit you every time I was out of sorts?”
The harangue was not so unusual, for like his brothers and his sister Valentina, Tynan talked to animals. And any who saw and heard would swear the creatures understood.
“That’s what it is, isn’t it? You’re out of sorts because Tempest and Shadow had a day out and you didn’t. You miss them, don’t you? Well, to tell you the truth, so do I.
“But it shouldn’t be too long now.” Moving to the other side, he lifted another hoof, this time keeping any likely targets well out of reach. Satisfied the slight limp Bogart had developed was only a stone bruise and temporary, he set the hoof down. Glancing toward the horizon and the hill marked by the well worn trail leading to The Triple C, he smiled. “In fact, it won’t be long at all. Shadow isn’t with them, but I see the ladies. I wonder what kept them so long? Must have been some handsome scalawag who...”
His bantering mood vanished. Shielding his eyes from the fiery reflection of the first of sunset falling over random drifts of snow, he stared hard. “What the devil? She’s walking. Why would she be...”
Blood drained from his face. His heart was leaden, and his tongue lay like burned wood against his lips. “No!” The words were harsh and fearful. A prayer and a plea. “Dear God, no!”
Clutching at a palmful of mane, in a leap he swung fiercely to the wide, bare back of the gelding. Sensing the change and the urgency in his master, no other signal was needed. The instant Tynan’s weight settled securely, Bogart launched himself across the corral, taking the fence as if it weren’t there. The path they took should have been treacherous now, with the runoff of melting snow just beginning to refreeze as the day lost the warmth of the sun.
Tynan wasn’t concerned about treacherous paths, for if Tempest was the most surefooted horse on ice and snow, Bogart was second. But first or second, third, or last, even then it wouldn’t have mattered. For all that concerned and frightened him was Merrill, why she was afoot, and why, in the rapidly plummeting temperature, she wore only jeans and a shirt.
Something was wrong. He sensed it, felt it, knew it, as he rode like a demon to her.
Merrill plodded, her shoulders drooping in the aftermath of crushing fatigue. Head down, she watched her feet, putting one in front of the other, then repeating the pattern all over again. She didn’t feel the cold, she didn’t smell the blood. With one hand clinging to Tempest’s reins like a lifeline and the other lying on the precious burden the mare earned, she simply took each step. And each step brought her one step closer to Tynan.
“Merrill?”
Her name came from far away, barely penetrating her single-minded determination. Certain she was only dreaming, she took one more step.
“Merrill!”
Then Tynan’s arms were around her, his palm cupping her cheek, lifting her face to his blazing gaze. “Sweetheart, what is it?” His piercing, probing inspection found no blatant wound, but he held her gently in fear. “Are you injured? Where? How?”
“Not me,” she managed and let her body lean into his. “Shadow.”
Ty’s head lifted. His hard stare found the beloved burden Tempest carried. The wounds and the blood of the wolf seeping into the coat Merrill should have worn told the story. “The grizzly.”
Merrill only shuddered. “Dead.”
“Where?”
“Wildflower Canyon.” Her lips moved woodenly, her words were a stilted recitation, as if it were something she’d gone over and over again in her mind. Something to keep her going, when a man or woman twice as strong, twice as big, would have collapsed. “Shadow.” She turned her face to Tempest, to the limp shape beneath her crimson soaked jacket. “He saved us.”
Tynan only had eyes for Merrill. Now that he knew the blood wasn’t hers, much as he loved S
hadow, his next consideration must be the boy. “Casey? Where is he?” When she seemed not to hear, he said again, each word measured, commanding her attention. “Where is Casey, Merrill? Did he go with you to the canyon?”
“Yes.” She nodded and her eyes were glazed and unfocused.
“Tell me where he is.”
“He helped get Shadow on Tempest. Then went for Carl on Charley. On Charley, for Carl. For Shadow.” She was talking in circles but didn’t know.
With Casey gone, she’d walked alone, heaven only knew how many miles and how many hours. Without a coat, with a shirt wet with Shadow’s blood freezing to her. Worn and torn moccasins soaking her feet.
“You can let go, now.” Ty took Tempest’s reins from her resisting grip. “I’ll take care of him.”
Bogart was skittish at first with the lingering scent of bear mingling with coppery taint of blood. But he settled with a stern word and stood while Ty lifted Merrill onto his back. Mounting behind her, holding her in his arms as she slumped against him, leading Tempest, he rode grimly toward the ranch.
Carl was there, just arriving with Cat and Casey. From the look of the Jeep, he’d driven cross-country, where no such vehicle should have been able to go. The older man moved to Bogart’s side, his arms upraised. “Give me your woman. I’ll see to her.”
“No!” Ty’s voice was harsh and ringing, then softened. “Take care of Shadow, I’ll look after her.”
While Carl and Casey took Shadow from Tempest, Ty dismounted. When he would have taken the somnolent Merrill, from Bogart, Cat was there to help. A strong silent woman, lending her strength, for the woman Carl called his.
Once inside his house and the bedroom that had become hers, his thoughts as frozen by fear as Merrill’s had been by horror and cold and exhaustion, Ty hardly knew what to do. Or where to begin.
It was Cat who took charge. “Put her there on the bed,” she directed. “Then go help Carl and Casey with Shadow. Leave Merrill to me.”
“But she might need me or want me,” he protested.
