No. The horses wouldn’t care about a possum.
But a coyote…
Maybe she should get up and check.
Then came a low rumble of thunder in the distance. A storm was coming. That must be what the horses sensed.
A shrill whinny startled her.
Then she realized the thunder was still rolling, nonstop, closer, louder. She even imagined she could feel the ground trembling.
It’s not thunder!
Then it came. The hoarse shout. That one word guaranteed to make grown men quake. Guaranteed to put fear in the heart of every cattleman who ever rode the range.
Surely she’d only imagined it. Please, God, she’d only imagined it!
But no. The cry was picked up and echoed by other voices.
She felt her skin crawl and her heart stop. But still the cry rolled on.
“Stampeeeede!”
Chapter Eighteen
Sunny leaped from the bed and grabbed for the old pants she kept in the bottom of the wardrobe. Her hands shook so hard it took three tries to get her foot in the first pant leg.
How could anyone sleep through all the noise? “Katy! Wake up!”
Katy rolled over and mumbled in her sleep.
Sunny crammed her other leg into the pants. “Wake up, Katy!” She stuffed the tail of her nightgown into the pants. “Kathleen Marie!”
Katy finally raised up on one elbow. “What? What’s wrong?”
“Stampede!”
A match scraped then flared. Katy lit the lamp on the table between the two beds. Her eyes were huge. Behind the sleepiness was fear.
“I don’t know where the herd is,” Sunny told her, “but get the girls up and dressed.” Sunny whipped on a pair of socks. She hopped on first one foot then the other, putting her boots on on the way to the door. “Keep your eyes and ears open and be careful. Head for the cellar if the herd turns this way.”
Sunny started out the door.
“Wait!” Katy cried.
“There’s no time.”
“Your hair!” Katy scrambled from the bed. She fumbled in the drawer beneath the lamp. “You can’t go riding into a stampede with loose hair. It’ll blind you.”
In seconds Katy was tying Sunny’s hair back with a ribbon.
“Thanks.” Sunny gave Katy a quick hug, then grabbed a bandanna off the hook beside the door and left. She didn’t wait to see if Katy did as told. Katy was a good girl, and smart. She’d handled herself and the girls well the night the barn burned. She’d do all right tonight.
Outside, Ben, Pecos, and Ash were already mounted and riding south toward the thundering herd.
An eery orange glow lit the horizon. Fire. Fire would explain the stampede, but Sunny couldn’t believe Erik or any of the other men would have been careless enough to let a blaze get out of control.
She remembered the barn, the extra lantern, and shivered. She slapped her saddle on the last cowpony in the corral—her own mare wouldn’t do for this ride—and made sure the cinch was tight. This would be no night for a slipping saddle.
Before her right foot even hit the stirrup, she jabbed her boot heels into her mount.
The others had a considerable head start on her, but she had no trouble spotting the sound and fury, the bawling, the dust of the stampeding cattle.
Thunderation!
The herd wasn’t headed for the house. The cattle would pass right by it. But if they kept on the way they were headed they’d run themselves right off the thirty-foot bluff, into the dry, boulder-strewn gully below. She could lose the whole herd!
And if she lost the herd, she lost the ranch. She lost her home!
She leaned low in the saddle and urged the gelding on, disregarding the mane whipping back, stinging her face like a thousand tiny lashes. With a slight tug on the reins she guided her horse toward the seething mass of terrified cattle. At this angle, she would cut right across their thundering path. She had to turn them!
The wall of stampeding cattle brought with it a wall of churning dust. With one hand Sunny fumbled with the bandanna, finally tugging it up over her mouth and nose. It didn’t help much, but it was all she could do to keep from inhaling solid dirt. Nothing at all would keep the dust from her eyes. Tears were already streaming. She ignored them.
If there had been time to think, she might have tried to recall what she’d heard her father say about slowing, stopping a stampede. Something about turning the herd to the left, because longhorns, for some unknown reason, if given a choice, would turn left rather than right. Something about not screaming or waving your rope or firing your gun, because the cattle were already terrified, and those things would only spur them on. Something about turning them and turning them until they milled in a circle.
Beyond that, she knew nothing. She only knew she couldn’t sit back and let her herd plunge off that bluff. Not without trying to stop them.
So she gigged her horse harder, leaned lower. With a mouth tasting like the copper of fear and the dust of the herd, she prayed for all she was worth. Prayed she and her men could turn the herd. Prayed there were no prairie dog holes or gopher holes for a horse or steer to fall in. Prayed for tight cinches and brave horses and careful men.
She was getting closer now. So close! Those long, sharp horns that could rip a horse from throat to tail, and likewise a person, sent out sparks and a tremendous clacking noise as they whacked against each other.
At the speed the herd was running, Sunny knew it would be mere minutes before they plunged to their deaths.
She realized she couldn’t cut straight across their path. Several thousand pounds of solid beef would simply roll right over her. She whimpered. She’d heard tales—grisly tales—of what was left of a man caught in a stampede. And what was left wasn’t much, and was never recognizable as having once been human.
Three hundred maddened steers. Six hundred long, deadly horns. Twelve hundred slashing, churning hooves.
She turned her horse slightly to run alongside the front of the herd. The dust was thicker. Solid. Then to her left she thought she saw another horse, running between her and the herd. Too close to the churning mass. Heaven above, it was Ash!
She wanted to scream at him to pull away to a safer distance. She didn’t have the breath. Or the strength. Already her legs and arms and hands, not to mention her back, were cramped and aching. What must Ash, not yet used to riding again, be feeling?
He motioned for her to get back.
This was no time to argue, but she wouldn’t leave. She could help. Somewhere behind her rode the other men. Together they would turn the herd. They had to!
She slackened only enough to let Ash get ahead of her, then she moved in behind him. She was so close to the frenzied cattle she could feel the heat from their mass. She prayed some more.
She blinked and coughed and prayed.
Ash was easing into the herd. If she’d had any breath at all, she’d have held it.
But she knew what he was doing was right. They had to ease them to the left, and there was no time to waste. She followed his lead. Her father had always said the men on the Cottonwood Ranch were good men, men to be counted on. She knew they were behind her.
She only hoped the cattle let themselves be turned. The other possibility was they’d simply shuffle around and absorb the riders into their mass, going around them, through them, over them, rather than turning with them.
But it seemed—did she dare hope?—they were turning! Only slightly, but turning. The riders behind her would keep up the pressure. She and Ash eased left across the front of the herd then rode like hell, circling wide to come up on the right again.
Yes! They were turning! The lead was catching up with the drag. Soon they’d be milling. That was a touchy stage. It usually preceded a stampede. They’d have to break up the herd slowly, carefully, to calm the terrified cattle. But first they had to slow them down. And it was working!
Thank God, thank God, thank God!
It was n
early sunup before the milling, bawling mass of beef even came close to settling down. They were less agitated, less terrified, now that they’d been broken up into smaller groups.
It was an eerie scene. The sky turning a pale gray over the vast prairie, slightly lighter along the hills to the east, the cattle still snorting and bawling, and the men singing, each one a different song, to calm the poor beasts.
She couldn’t hear the words most of the men sang, but she could pick out Ash’s voice. He didn’t use a song like the others. He simply crooned over and over, “Easy, babies, eeeasy now.”
One man—Larry, she thought—sang a lullaby.
From across the herd she caught Tom’s plaintive words. “Last night as I lay on the prairie, and looked at the stars in the sky…”
She picked up the familiar words herself and sang along. “I wondered if ever a cowboy would drift to that sweet by and by. Roll on, roll on…”
One steer shot out of its group and headed for the brush. Sunny’s well-trained cowpony was on him in seconds and blocked the escape. When she returned the steer to the fold Ash was headed her way.
“What the hell do you think you’re doing?” Ash demanded.
She tugged the bandanna from her face and left it hanging around her neck. “I’m—”
“Goddammit!” Ash grabbed her by one arm and pulled her from the saddle and onto his lap. “Are you crazy? You could have been killed!”
She forgot the herd, the stampede, the ranch. She disregarded the nearly painful grip on her arm. She didn’t even pay much attention to the rage and fear plainly visible in Ash’s eyes. All she knew was that she hadn’t been this close to him in days. Not since the night they’d made love. And he was going to kiss her. Right here and now. Even if it meant she had to kiss him.
With her heart pounding, her breath rasping, she jerked the bandanna from his face. “Ash?”
The grip on her arm tightened. “Damn you,” he muttered, his voice still hard and brittle. Then his lips took hers in the fiercest, most desperate, demanding kiss she could possibly have imagined. Fire shot from his lips to hers and raced clear down to her toes. When he wrapped his arms around her and pulled her flush against his chest she felt like weeping with the sheer rightness of it. Her own arms snaked around his neck and held on tight.
He kissed with his lips, his tongue, his whole mouth. And she responded in kind. The whimper she heard she knew was hers, set loose by the fierce emotions he stirred within her.
But at the sound of it, Ash tore his mouth free and pushed her away. His chest heaved. His eyes shot sparks.
“Ash—”
“Damn.” He picked her up and dropped her back onto her saddle. “Tom’s coming. We’ll talk about this later.”
“You all right, Miss Sunny?” Tom asked. “What’re you doin’ out here?”
“That’s what I’d like to know,” Ash said, glaring at her.
It was nerves, she decided, that made her take offense at the tone in both their voices. The residual fear of nearly losing her herd. Why else would both men sound to her ears as if they had a right to question her? “I’m helping, that’s what I’m doing. Either one of you have a problem with that?”
Neither man answered, just looked at her. Then Ash turned to Tom. “What happened? What spooked them?”
“I don’t know. I was just coming down from the hills to the west when it started.”
“I thought I saw a fire about where the canyon sits,” Sunny said. “Where’s Erik?” She could account for every one of her men—even Toppy and his chuck wagon were in sight. Everyone but the one man who was supposed to have been with the cattle in the box canyon. “Where’s Erik?”
“I thought he was supposed to be keeping an eye on the herd.” Ash said to Tom.
“He was,” Tom searched the area, looking from man to man. “One thing’s for sure—he wouldn’t leave that canyon. Not on his own.”
“And he wouldn’t have let a fire get started,” Sunny said.
The three looked at each other a moment, each wondering what had happened. Sunny whirled her tired mount and dashed off toward the canyon, where the stampede had, for whatever reason, started.
“Damn,” she heard behind her.
Then Tom and Ash were beside her, riding hell-bent across the flat land toward the canyon in the hills.
Blackened grass studded the entrance to the box canyon where the cattle had been held, but the fire had been stopped at the mouth by the creek and a wide stretch of bare yellow clay where nothing grew. Wisps of smoke still rose from within the canyon.
Sunny shuddered to think of the raging prairie fire that would have swept across the ranch and destroyed everything in its path had the fire made it out of the canyon and onto the open range.
They found Erik slumped against a rock wall just outside the canyon entrance. He looked like he’d been dragged through a knothole backwards, and he was cussing a blue streak. When he realized one of the riders was Sunny, he nearly swallowed his tongue.
“What happened?” Tom demanded.
“The dirty, no-good—they got me from behind!”
Sunny dismounted and dashed to Erik’s side. “Who? What are you talking about?”
“I don’t know who, Miss Sunny. I didn’t see ‘em.”
“You mean someone hit you?”
He rubbed the back of his head and winced. “Yes ma’am.”
Ash and Tom joined them. “You didn’t get a look at him?” Ash demanded.
“No. But I think there was two of ‘em.”
“Why?”
“I was up there.” Erik pointed to the top of the ledge, fifteen feet above his head. “I thought I saw somebody sneakin’ around down here. Then I smelled smoke. That’s when I got clobbered from behind.”
“Are you hurt anywhere besides your head?” Sunny asked, worried about his pallor.
“No ma’am. Just my head. And my leg.”
“What’s the matter with your leg?”
“It’s broke.”
Tom rode back to the herd to get Toppy and the chuck wagon. Toppy was the ranch’s make-do doctor. Sunny knew that if he couldn’t set Erik’s leg, he’d say so and send for Doctor Sneed.
She and Ash waited, not wanting to leave Erik alone. Erik asked about the herd, and Ash pumped him for any clue Erik might have missed as to the identity of the men who’d attacked him, set fire to the canyon, and started the stampede.
Erik repeated his story, then Ash rode into the canyon to have a look around. Sunny could feel the tension mounting in him. He was a storm ready to burst. She knew what he was thinking—that Ian Baxter was responsible.
He had reason to think that, she admitted. Especially after what had happened to his father.
But he had to be wrong this time. Ian Baxter wouldn’t have her herd stampeded. It had to have been an accident. Maybe Erik fell from the bluff and just didn’t remember it, due to the blow on his head.
Yes. That made sense.
Then, somehow, a fire broke out and spooked the cattle, and they broke through the brush and log barrier and stampeded.
She searched the canyon’s entrance. Along the creek bank the yellow clay was gooey and messy, a mass of churned up hoof prints.
But the brush and logs—where were they?
When she spotted them, a shiver ran down her spine.
The brush and logs had been neatly dragged aside and left in a pile. She might not know much about cattle, but she knew they did not drag logs and brush to one side before stampeding.
Ash came galloping out of the canyon just as Tom returned with Toppy. The look on Ash’s face was black with rage. “You’re going to have to find someplace else to keep the herd ‘til you head them north.”
“Why?” Sunny and Tom asked together.
“The whole canyon burned up. All those fine haystacks you have stored up the creek there,” he said, nodding toward the canyon, “are nothing but piles of ashes.”
“Sonofabitch!”
<
br /> “Are you sure?” Sunny asked, ignoring Tom’s outburst.
Ash glared at her. “Damn sure.”
“Need a hand over here,” Toppy called. He was bent over Erik’s leg.
Sunny, Ash, and Tom answered the old man’s summons at once.
It was a clean break, according to Toppy. He had the others hold Erik still while he set the bone. Sunny nearly bit a hole in her lip during the process, but Erik didn’t even whimper.
Toppy wrapped a bandage tightly around Erik’s leg from just above the knee, clear to the ankle.
“My knee ain’t broke, old man, just my shinbone.”
“Quit your whining, pup.” Toppy pulled Erik’s slit pant leg back down, then proceeded to splint the leg with boards he had dug out of the chuck wagon.
“You don’t need boards that long,” Erik complained. “I told you my knee ain’t broke.”
“You got a hot date tonight in town? What do you care how high up it goes? You ain’t goin’ nowhere but to bed ‘til I say different.”
“Ah, come on, Top, it’s just a busted leg.”
Sunny shuddered…just a busted leg.
They’d been lucky. Only one broken leg. Things could have been much worse. Someone could have been killed! She could have lost her herd, and soon after, her home.
She had to do something. She had to find a way to stop this madness. She had to keep her men and her herd safe, and still come up with the money to pay off Baxter.
She watched the men lift a cursing Erik onto the wagon seat. She put her foot in her stirrup and felt her knees tremble.
What was she supposed to do? She wasn’t cut out for this. All she’d ever wanted from life was to take care of her family. But since her father’s death, taking care of her family took on a whole new meaning and made entirely new demands on her. She didn’t know if she could do it. She didn’t know how to do it anymore.
She swung into the saddle.
She didn’t have a choice. There was no one but her to make decisions.
Toppy urged his team of mules to step out. The chuck wagon rattled and groaned onto the trail toward home. Sunny, Ash and Tom rode to one side.
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