Imperfect Magic (Dancing Moon Ranch Book 11)

by Patricia Watters

  "Okay, so it was just a giant stage production," Maddy said. "What's your big idea?"

  "To become invisible."

  "You already do that before you materialize on stage," Maddy pointed out.

  "That's not the same as becoming invisible," Dimitri said. "With this illusion I'll walk out on an empty stage, and while I'm telling a story I'll disappear, yet the audience will still hear my voice as I move around the stage. That's only one illusion in the works. I have others far better than making a horse disappear. But once I have my own show, I'll come up with illusions that will have even the big guys scratching their heads."

  Maddy felt a little spurt of excitement. "Could you make a living inventing illusions and selling them to other illusionists?" she asked, thinking Dimitri could be happy doing that while living on the ranch.

  "If you're asking if I'd give up performing for inventing, the answer is no." Dimitri looked to where Adam was pumping water into a galvanized tub for the horses, and said, "Meanwhile, is this pretty much what cattle drives are all about?"

  Maddy figured he changed subjects because she'd hit on the core of the problem between them—she was a ranch girl, he was a Las Vegas showman, and never the twain shall meet. Another dose of reality. "Basically, yes, though on occasion something can startle the herd and even though they don't stampede, they scatter and we have to round them up again."

  "I'm game for that," Dimitri said. "I get a rush every time Tut goes after a cow. I can see why cowboys a century ago picked this life."

  Maddy laughed. "Then the joke's on my family who probably think by now you've had your fill of horses and are ready to stay at the casino hotel."

  "They're that much against me?" Dimitri asked.

  "They're not against you at all," Maddy replied. "They like you and think you're amazing at what you do. It's where you work that's the problem, and they're looking after my best interest, which is keeping me on the ranch where I have land and a plan."

  Dimitri didn't reply and Maddy knew why. Whereas the cattle drive was a new adventure for him, he wasn't a rancher and never would be.

  She looked to where Adam was standing outside the fenced allotment, scanning the herd. Of all of her brothers, he was the quintessential cowboy, someone who'd worked cattle all his life and couldn't imagine doing anything else, pretty much a clone of their dad. They were also the kind of men she'd envisioned marrying. But nowhere in her girlhood fantasies had she imagined falling in love with an illusionist, a conjurer, a man who made his living by fooling people.

  ***

  They arrived at the vast Forest Service holding pen in late afternoon, and shortly before sundown began the process of bedding down the cattle. The animals had been watered and grazed and seemed anxious to lie down, and over the course of a half hour all were settled on a few acres, at which point Wyatt and Tom, who were taking first guard, remained to circle the herd, while the rest of the drovers set up camp.

  Having decided earlier that he'd better keep his distance from Maddy, Dimitri prepared his bed across the campfire from where Maddy was arranging hers. His bedroll included a canvas groundcover, a sleeping bag, and a jacket intended to be thrown over his boots to make a pillow. After the long hours in the saddle, he figured he wouldn't have trouble sleeping. But for the moment, the idea of eating sounded better than anything, so he made a point of helping with the meal, mainly because it was an excuse to be with Maddy, who had taken over the chore of cooking over an open fire.

  When it was time for Wyatt and Tom to switch cattle guard with Adam and Logan, Maddy and Dimitri had a pot of coffee brewed, steaks browning on a grill, cans of beans bubbling on a griddle, and biscuits cooking in a skillet. They all sat on sections of logs arranged in a circle around the campfire and ate off tin plates.

  As soon as Dimitri finished, Jesse, who'd made a point of sitting beside him, said to him, "Can you show me some magic?"

  "I was just getting ready to practice some flourishes." Dimitri said.

  "Are flourishes magic?" Jesse asked.

  "No, they're displays of skill performed with cards, such as fanning and shooting cards from one hand to the other, but they don't do anything magical."

  "Can you show me some?" Jesse asked.

  "Sure." Dimitri reached into a small knapsack he'd brought that contained personal items and retrieved his cards. Slipping them from the box, he fanned them, saying, "I started practicing flourishes when I was about your age, and before long I had every kid in my class following me around trying to figure out how I did one-handed cuts, where you split a deck of cards in half using only one hand." He palmed the deck and deftly split it in two equal parts.

  "Far out!" Jesse said. "Do it again."

  Dimitri repeated the cut. "Or you can thumb cut where you reach across the deck with your thumb and raise the top half, then use your fingers to move the bottom half on top, and you've cut the deck. When you can do that with both hands, you're ready for thumb fans, where you pivot the deck around your thumb." In one quick move he sent the cards fanning into a near-perfect circle around his thumb.

  "Whoa, can you teach me how to do that?" Jesse asked, as he stared at the circle of cards.

  "I can get you started, but you have to put in the hours and years it takes to be good," Dimitri said. "If you keep a deck of cards with you all the time and practice while your buddies are hanging out doing nothing, you'll be way ahead of them."

  "Show me another," Jesse said.

  "Okay, here we have a card twirl which, by combining small motions with a single card, like this, you get the card twirling from finger to finger, and when you combine a larger motion of the wrist, you can get the card spinning like this. Then if you really want to impress your friends, you finish with an anaconda." Dimitri stood, raised his hand with the deck up high, and sent the cards flowing downward in one continuous stream, landing in a neat pack in his lowered hand.

  "No way!" Jesse cried. "Can you show me how to do that?"

  Dimitri laughed. "That one takes hours of practice every day, over a period of years. Are you willing to spend that much time with a pack of cards?"

  Jesse looked at the cards in Dimitri's hand. "Yeah, if I can learn that. Show me how to do it."

  "It's not that simple," Dimitri said. "It involves holding the cards a certain way, building pressure at the corners and along the edges, then releasing that pressure so there's a steady flow of cards going from one hand to the other. You start with the hands close together and eventually you can make an anaconda as long as your arms can spread."

  "Can I have that deck of cards?" Jesse asked.

  "Sure, if your dad says it's okay." Dimitri glanced over at Adam, who seemed uncertain if cards in the hands of his son was a good thing or not.

  When Adam didn't answer right away, Jesse said, "Please dad, can I have the cards? I won't gamble."

  "I'm not worried about you gambling, Jesse, but you're not supposed to ask people for things that belong to them. That's not the way you've been brought up."

  "I have lots of cards," Dimitri said. "Here, they're yours." He offered the cards to Jesse.

  "Awesome!" Jesse cried. "Will you show me how to do something with then?"

  Adam stood, and said to Jesse, "Before you learn anything you need to brush your teeth, water one of those bushes over there, and plan to be in your sleeping bag in a half hour. Logan and I are heading for cattle guard."

  After Jesse did as he was told, Dimitri had barely gotten started teaching him some basic shuffles when Jesse's eyelids became heavy and he started nodding off, and before long he opted out of card lessons and crawled into his sleeping bag. Tom, Wyatt, and Maddy were already sleeping soundly, so Dimitri decided he'd better sleep too, because in two hours, he and Maddy would have cattle watch.

  Sometime later, Dimitri awakened. When he looked to where Maddy had been sleeping, he saw that her sleeping bag lay flat on the ground. Glancing around, he spotted her sitting on a rise some distance away. There was enou
gh moonlight to see that she was staring off at the mountains in the distance. Noting that Tom and Wyatt were still sleeping soundly, verified by the burrs of their snoring, he decided to chance spending enough time with Maddy to be able to wrap his arms around her and kiss her the way he'd been imagining during the course of the day.

  Walking over to where she sat, he said in a hushed voice, "Are you off limits to me?"

  Maddy looked up at him. "No, I was hoping you'd come, but maybe we'd better move around behind that brush over there," she said pointing. "It's pretty bright tonight."

  He nodded, and after they'd settled on a low rise, with the campsite blocked from view, but still able to see a landscape bathed in moonlight, Dimitri put his arm around Maddy and she placed her hand on his thigh and sat cradled against him while looking into the distance.

  All around were night sounds: wind rustling through grasses; the far-off yips of coyotes, the chirps of crickets, and even the vague sounds of Adam and Tom singing to the cattle, whacky as it seemed.

  After a while, Maddy drew in a long breath and sighed, as if burdened with something, and said, "I love it here. I love every season. In winter the mountains are covered with snow and you can walk on top of it with snowshoes and go places you could never go without them. It's unbelievably quiet, except for the sound of a creek trickling by. Then comes springtime, which means calving, and after branding the calves we move the herd to the spring range. Summer brings cattle drives and pack trips in the mountains, and with fall comes the smell of cut hay and grapes fermenting in the winery. I missed all of this when I was away at college."

  "Las Vegas has mountains," Dimitri said.

  "Mountains like these?" Maddy asked, looking up at him.

  "Not so much like these because it's dry, but Mt. Charleston is almost 9,000 feet high. There's skiing in winter, and about twenty miles from Vegas is Red Rock Canyon, where bands of wild horses roam."

  "Does Annie know about them?" Maddy asked.

  "Sure. Last time I was visiting the Kincaid she gave me a stack of anti-BLM flyers to post around Vegas."

  "Did you?" Maddy asked.

  "I had to. I promised Annie." Dimitri looked at her. "I told you lying doesn't carry over into my private life."

  "I know, but I wasn't convinced when you told me."

  "Are you convinced now?"

  Maddy tipped her head up. "Yes."

  "Meanwhile, your brother's out-of-tune singing is coming closer so I'd better get back to my post, but before I go I need a kiss to hold me while we circle and sing to the cows for the next two hours." Dimitri pulled Maddy down with him and she curved her arms around his neck and entangled her legs with his and kissed him long and hard.

  As the kiss held, Dimitri envisioned having Maddy in his arms, every night of his life, as his assistant and his wife. But there seemed no way to make that scenario a reality unless he extended his contract at the Coyote. It was a recent offer, which he'd put on hold because it was short term and fell far short of what he'd been offered on the strip, but with a couple more weeks, he was certain he could convince Maddy to leave the ranch and go with him, though he knew if he took her to Las Vegas he could never offer her there what she has now at the Dancing Moon Ranch. The same old dilemma.

  CHAPTER 14

  The following morning the horses were waiting near the gate as the cattle started stirring. Day began just before dawn, when Adam threw some sticks of wood on the embers, and soon, a fire was blazing, a pot of coffee was steaming, and Adam was in the process of frying eggs, bacon, and flapjacks.

  Dimitri was surprised he felt rested after having spent most of the night on a bedroll on hard, lumpy ground, but it wasn't the lumps that kept him awake. It was trying to sleep under a canopy of trillions of stars while watching for another shooting star or one last satellite moving across the sky, the way Maddy described, and those moments had been interspersed with thoughts of having Maddy stretched out alongside him.

  What was yet more surprising about the almost sleepless night was that he actually enjoyed singing to the cattle, although cowboy songs were out, mainly because he didn't know any, so when Maddy suggested Christmas carols, he was okay with that. Maddy started them off with 'Silent Night' and although he felt a little self-conscious at first, when the lowing of the cattle settled down, he found himself feeling a kind of kinship with the herd, and by the time they'd run the gamut from 'O Come All Ye Faithful,' to 'O Little Town of Bethlehem,' singing to cows didn't seem whacky at all.

  Right after breakfast they broke camp and began moving the cattle out of the holding pasture, and as they drove them across the rangeland, it came to Dimitri, as he gazed across the unspoiled country, that sunrise, with all its shades of golds and reds, had never looked so spectacular as from the back of a horse. The simple fact was, he seldom saw sunrise at all when he was in Vegas because his hours were shifted. Day rarely started before ten, and bedtime usually hit around two the following morning.

  It also came to him that the simple pleasures of trailing along with cows, and having cookouts around a campfire, and sleeping under a night sky filled with stars, put the focus on the family who were moving the cattle. The Hansens were involved in each other's lives, but in a good way. Even Maddy's parents and brothers had a reason to be concerned about her now because they saw a man who was doing his best to take her away from them, so he didn't fault them for what they were doing. He just wished it didn't have to be that way, but that was the reality, and it wasn't likely to change.

  In their final descent to the river, which was a gradual decline with cows moving eight to ten abreast, Dimitri looked ahead and saw Adam and Wyatt riding their horses back and forth along the riverbank while gesturing to each other in a way that told him there was trouble ahead.

  As the herd drew closer and the cattle began to spread out along the river, Adam turned his horse around and rode up to where the rest of them were waiting, and said, "The heavy rain caused a rockslide that dammed the river downstream with rocks and debris, and the river's backed up to a depth that will mean swimming the cattle for about forty feet."

  Maddy eyed Adam in concern. "Can't we bust up the dam?"

  Adam shook his head. "Some sizeable boulders came with the slide and there are logs and debris caught up with them, so it would take a stick of dynamite to blow out an opening. The water's calm so there shouldn't be a problem."

  "Why not move the cattle upstream a ways?" Maddy asked.

  "Can't do that either," Adam replied. "The river bed's loaded with large slippery rocks from a slide a few years back and the cattle would lose their footing, so it's either swim them across here, or move them to another grazing area."

  "I suppose I'm game to swim them," Maddy said.

  Adam looked at Dimitri, who shrugged. "No problem."

  "And you, Tom?" Adam asked.

  "As long as my horse can swim, I'm okay."

  "He can," Adam said. "So, Wyatt, Logan, Maddy and I will take the cattle across, and Jesse," he said, looking at his son, "you stay here with Tom and Dimitri. The three of you keep the herd together, and after we get the cattle across, you three can come." He turned his horse and headed back to the river.

  Before joining Adam, Maddy said to Dimitri, "Tut's crossed here dozens of times but never when it's deep like this, so if for some reason he rolls on his side and refuses to swim, splash water on his head and that usually gets a horse going straight and swimming again."

  "How often does that happen?" Dimitri asked.

  "It's never happened during any drive I've been on, but it did once with Adam," Maddy said. "Don't worry about it. Just remember what to do if it happens."

  Dimitri looked to where Adam and Wyatt were moving among the herd instead of heading them toward the river. "What are they doing out there?" he asked.

  "Cutting a smaller group to send across first. Moses will lead them and the others will follow, then Logan and I will keep the rest of the herd moving so they don't turn back. Think of it
as an opportunity to get half a bath and wash your jeans at the same time."

  "What about saddles and boots?" Dimitri asked.

  "They'll be a little squishy for a while," Maddy replied, "and I admit, riding in squishy gear tops the list of the most aggravating conditions on a drive." Looking to where a cow had turned from the herd and was starting up the path they'd just traversed, she said, "Uh oh. Got to go. Good luck."

  A short distance from the river's edge, Adam moved Moses in front of the cows they'd cut from the herd and gave him a command, and Moses headed for the river. The group behind him followed close, and with cattle crowding in their rear, there was no alternative but for the ones in front to swim, while alongside the animals, Adam and Wyatt shouted to keep them moving. On reaching the opposite bank, Adam yelled across to Logan and Maddy, "Keep them moving."

  As the animals reached the far bank, Adam and Wyatt urged them out of the way of the ones Maddy and Logan were driving toward the water, and the four of them kept a steady stream of cattle moving into the river and out the opposite bank.

  After the herd was safely across, Adam called to Dimitri, Tom and Jesse, "We'll let the animals settle down, and when everything's calm, you three can come across and we'll move the herd on up the hill."

  While they waited, Dimitri figured he must be running on adrenaline because he didn't yet feel the effects of the almost sleepless night. Instead, he felt oddly invigorated. It had been two long active days, though not in a negative way. He'd had a chance to watch Maddy from a distance and what he saw was a woman who'd been born and raised on a ranch and knew every facet of ranching, who could herd cattle as competently as any seasoned cowboy, yet she was prepared to devote her life to helping kids with disabilities have a better life. Women he'd been involved with until now didn't come close.

  The fact was, Maddy was a remarkable woman in every way, and he was a little in awe of her. She was also the woman he loved, and somewhere along the way he might have to make a tough choice between having Maddy or having a career he'd worked a lifetime to achieve.