The Renegades: Cole (15 page)

“That it has, Frank,” Aurora said. “I think I’d like some music, too.”

She stood up and started to walk toward the wagon where the piano waited, but when she’d gone as far as the fire, the whole world seemed to explode into a dozen things happening at once. The ominous cracks of several shots rang out, the shocked men ripped out oaths, and something hit her in the back, sending her reeling out of the circle of firelight and into the shadows.

For the barest instant, she thought she’d been shot, but miraculously she felt no pain, and she kept her feet under her. Then, a man was bumping into her, a gun blasted from an arm’s length away, and she was falling, shoved from behind.

“Get
down
,” Cole said, in a stranger’s voice, a voice so dangerous it sent cool goose bumps springing to life all up and down her arms, “and stay in the dark, no matter what happens.”

He fired three rounds so rapidly that it seemed almost like one. Those were from his handgun; she recognized the sound, but she didn’t think of that until his rifle spoke. All of it happened so fast that it was a blur of noise in her ears. She couldn’t see a thing.

Out in the dark, somebody let out a high, sickening scream that made her stomach turn.

Then she could see. Shots split the night with
flame, coming fast, one after the other, and either Cole was everywhere at once or the other Slash As were shooting, too. But they couldn’t be because none of them had been wearing their guns and they hadn’t had time to get to them.

Or had they? Already, this madness had lasted a lifetime.

Another yell of pain echoed against the mountain, an awful, impotent, lonesome sound, and then a hate-filled call.

“Damn you, McCord, I’m hit.”

Even though the voice was shaking from pain, she knew it. Gates. Lloyd Gates himself, not just his flunkies, was following her now.

What an honor. Usually he hired people to do his dirty work, but he had come in person to try to kill her.

Gates hated her that much. She had damaged his pride
that much
by hanging onto the cattle and the horses. He was determined to have his revenge, and Gates was an implacable man. What he had done to her father had proved that.

Fear numbed her whole body, but she dragged herself deeper into the shadows and crunched up at the foot of a juniper tree. Its sweet, tart scent floated past her, but her senses were too full of fear to take it in.

“Don’t you know you’re working for a cattle thief?” he yelled, his voice shrill and trembly. “Whaddya think
that’s
gonna do for your precious
rep, McCord? What’ll all the Texans think about
that?
”

Cole didn’t answer. She could barely see him now, he was in shadow so deep, but he fired again, and the next instant he was two yards away from where he had just stood, lifting his rifle, firing toward the sound of Gates’s voice.

Another agonized yell, but the voice didn’t belong to Gates. At least she didn’t think so.

“Now you’ve hit my best shooter, so we’ll ride,” came Gates’s shout, as much anger as pain in the words this time. “But we’ll be back, and we’ll bring the law next time.
You
Slash A outfit, you! Every man jack of you will hang for a cattle thief!”

Cole took one more shot, but hoofbeats were already pounding away.

“Forget them, boys, and get to the herd,” he called in his new, cool voice of implacable authority. “They may try a stampede.”

Only then did she become aware that some of the Slash A crew were running for the night horses, already saddled and tied to the wheels of the chuck wagon. She should’ve noticed that before and given the order herself.

Yet she couldn’t imagine getting even one sound past her lips.

One of Gates’s men fired again, and Cole answered with his rifle. A muffled yell floated through the dark; he cocked his head and listened to the retreating horses.

“Five of ‘em,” he said briskly. “But there may be more surrounding us. Don’t go anywhere
near the fire, and don’t leave my side.”

He turned and walked straight to her, although she would’ve sworn he hadn’t seen where she had gone to ground.

“I hate it when I miss like that,” he said nonchalantly, reaching to help her to her feet.

Aurora could barely move. The numbness had left her, but she was shaking with fear from finally realizing how close she had come to being killed. She had made the perfect target in front of the fire.

She felt fear instead of relief, fear largely fueled by the horrible noises still ringing in her ears. The pain-filled cries of the men who’d been shot still turned her stomach and made her skin crawl, even if they
had
come from her enemies.

“You
didn’t
miss,” she said, and was appalled at the thin, weak sound that was supposed to be her voice.

“I should’ve killed ‘em all,” he said flatly.

He
would
have killed them, too, without the faintest glimmer of remorse. That certain truth showed in every line of his stance, every nuance of his voice.

She hadn’t known this about him. She had known he’d been a Texas Ranger with a rare talent for using a gun, she had known he’d been given many a perilous job during the few months he’d grown famous in Colorado for giving bad men no quarter, but, in spite of all that, she hadn’t known he could wish he had killed
someone with no more emotion than he might wish it would rain.

She shivered uncontrollably as he lifted her to her feet.

What kind of man was this who held her life in his hands?

“Cole,” she said, when he had led her to the shadows in front of the chuck wagon and seated her on the bucket. “Stay here for a while.”

She had to know, had to find out as much as she could about him tonight, had to see whether she could still see into his heart from time to time. Hadn’t he himself told her he was bad? No good for Mary, the girl he had once loved. Maybe if she tried, she could see a badness in him that would make her stop thinking about him and remembering his kiss.

But was it bad to defend himself … and her?

“I’m not going anywhere,” he said, taking a cup from the tailgate of the wagon. “Gates may have more men around here someplace. I’d bet no on it, though.”

That brought her up short, reminding her of her job, and she stood up.

“If there
are
some more, they
may
be waiting to stampede the herd,” she said, starting for the remuda, since the men had taken all the saddled horses. “Come on, we need to help.”

When he didn’t answer, she stopped and turned. He was calmly pouring coffee—he wasn’t even looking at her. And he wasn’t even shaken by the battle they’d just been through.

She watched him, as if looking at him long enough could actually let her see into his mind. He had told her, that night in the saloon, that she didn’t know whether he had honor or not. Did he?

“The crew can handle the herd,” he said. “You don’t hear any ruckus, now, do you?”

She listened. Somebody was starting to sing a slow, sad song. Bits jingled, and hoofbeats, moving at a walk, made a steady rhythm against the earth as their sound floated to her through the night. There were a few men’s voices, too, low and calm, so as not to spook the herd, but with an edge of excitement, still.

“No,” she said.

“They’d already be yelling and popping slickers at your cattle if Gates had left anybody for that. They wouldn’t want to get left too far behind their buddies, in case we mounted a pursuit.”

Slowly, she walked toward him, her nerves relaxing a little as she realized they probably wouldn’t be dealing with another attack. But tension still strummed along her spine.

She blurted out a question before she even knew she was going to speak.

“Why were the Federales chasing you? I thought you used to be a lawman, not an outlaw.”

He turned and walked toward her, handed her the cup.

“Sometimes along the border, there’s not a dime’s worth of difference.”

The careless way he said it brought the danger in him to all her senses again. She saw the shifting of shadows in his eyes. What all had he done? What
would
he do?

The cool breeze freshened. She shivered. Hard.

He reached for her hands, wrapped them around the hot cup. His rough palms felt hotter.

“Drink it,” he said.

She didn’t care if he
was
a cold-blooded killer. All she wanted was for him never to take his hands away.

“I … I don’t know what’s the matter with me.

“You’re shaken up because you’ve just been shot at.”

“And you’re calm because you’re used to it.”

He shrugged.

“You might say that.”

He dropped his hands, turned away, and went to get another cup.

“Cole,” she said, “I can’t
be
like this—all upset in a crisis. I have to be able to protect myself and my new ranch.”

“You will be.” He poured his coffee, then walked toward her with that panther’s stride of his.

“You, on the other hand,” she continued, “were as cool then as you are right now.”

He kicked the short log into the shadows and sat down astraddle of it, facing her.

“Think of it as having to grow up fast one more time,” he said. “You did what you had to
do then, you can do what you have to do now.”

She stared at him.

“Yeah. But then I wasn’t making anybody scream with pain or killing anyone.”

“Get over that,” he said. “If it wasn’t them screaming and dying, it’d be us.”

“I guess so.”

“I
know
so.”

She took another drink of the bracing coffee and didn’t answer.

He looked at her for a long time with a hard, keen stare.

“Aurora,” he said, “you need me until we can take care of Gates and you can learn to shoot. After that, you’ll make up your mind whether you want to keep your cattle and your ranch or give them away to the first sidewinder that might scream or die if you shoot him.”

For the first time since the attack, she laughed a little.

He smiled, too, but his eyes didn’t.

“If you think you can or you think you can’t, either way you’ll be right,” he said. “It’s up to you to choose.”

I
choose that you stay with me. I choose you don’t leave when we find my ranch, no matter what kind of man you are
.

And that thought held the most terror of all.

T
he next afternoon when they headed north to find Cookie and send the chuck wagon on to make camp, the wind rose in a sudden, whistling gale. It made the horses dance sideways and Aurora grab her hat to tighten its strings beneath her chin before it finally, gradually lowered to the boisterous force it had been all day, blowing steadily against every step they made. Scattered drops of rain slapped their faces.

“That’s all we need—a downpour for camp tonight,” Aurora said wearily.

“Ah, now, what’s a little rain? I’d think you’d like that better than a gunfight.”

“I would. I’d get more sleep, even in a flood, than I did last night,” she said.

“Nobody’s fault but your own,” he said. “I was on guard right outside your wagon.”

“It wasn’t that,” she said. “I wasn’t scared. I was just …”

Thinking about you. Remembering your kiss. Wishing for the feel of your hands …

“Just what?”

“Thinking about the advice you gave me. Remembering I can do anything I think I can.”

But he wasn’t listening to her, wasn’t even looking at her anymore.

“That storm’s coming on fast,” he said, raising his voice as the wind picked up again.

She followed his gaze to the west, to the tops of the mountains forming that side of the Raton Pass.

“Welcome to New Mexico Territory,” she said wryly.

The scudding clouds were mixing and gathering, their gray and dark blue mixing with the purple and red rays of the lowering sun. Lightning flashed low, not far above the green pines.

“This could be a wild one,” he said thoughtfully.

“Maybe we should hold the herd north of the pass,” she said, although he was already lifting his horse into a lope, and she knew he’d had the same thought.

“Yeah. Out here they’ve got too much room to run.”

The wind rose again in a shrieking rush and howled a warning into her ear. A small, cold knot she’d discovered newly formed in her stomach grew larger.

They pushed the horses faster.

“Thank God we changed horses this afternoon,” she called to him, and Cole nodded, pulling his hat down harder on his head.

So he felt it, too. Tired as the cattle were, this
storm was going to be bad enough to make them run.

They picked up the pace, but they were too late. Border Crossing pointed his nose at the sky and whinnied long and loud to the remuda, coming out of the pass at that very moment right behind Cookie’s wagon, then Nate’s.

Aurora and Cole moved as one person, going into a long lope at the same moment, looking constantly west at the rising storm. But there was no time.

The whole southwestern sky went black while they looked at it, the lightning cracked faster and faster, breaking like gunshots through the noise of the wind. They were closer now, within a half mile, maybe, coming closer to the end of the pass, but then Brindle and Lead Steer burst into view at a quick, hard trot, leading the whole herd south as if their very lives depended on getting out into the wide-open spaces.

Lightning flashed again, blindingly bright, trying to grab them out of the valley and singeing its way along the mountaintops all at once. Almost instantly, thunder broke the ground in two and echoed endlessly against the rocks.

The point rider on this side of the herd was Frank; she recognized the stocky gray gelding that was the best in his mount. He saw the space spreading out before him, started to wave his hat and try to turn the herd, then realized, as Aurora just had, that if too many of them were trapped in the pass they’d trample each
other to death. They had to let the herd through and try to hold them out here.

Cole slowed his horse and started turning south again. He had figured it out, too.

Lightning flashed again, and the wind went crazy. The last clear look that Aurora had at the herd before the driving rain began was a sight to strike terror into the toughest trail boss’s heart. Long, wicked fingers of lightning reached for the cattle, found a place to play along their horns, hit them sizzling, quick licks and then ran and danced in eerie blue balls of fire that jumped from the Lead Steer to Old Brindle, to the cow behind her and then the next, sending the poor beasts into a state of pure terror.

She saw all that, somehow, in one thin, miraculous sliver of time, and she saw the leaders turn at the slightest angle toward the southwest and commence to run. But more than seeing it, she sensed it, that great mass of living, breathing animals armed with horns and hooves, gathering in greater and greater numbers to run straight at her and Cole.

Then, in the space of one heartbeat, the sheet of rain became a wall she couldn’t see through.

She couldn’t hear, except for a raw, raging roar. She made one mighty effort, but she couldn’t think, either. Only one word: Cole. He had to stay safe.

Her instincts did work, though, flooding her arms and legs with the strength to hold on, her body with enough calm to settle deep into the saddle and Shy Boy’s rhythm. She was strong
and vigorous, there was hardly a glimmer of memory that she might be tired. This was a stampede, this was life and death, and there was no such word as tired.

This was survival for her horse and herself and her cattle, and, by the God who had brought them alive out of Colorado, they were all going to survive. With a primal knowledge that streamed into her body on the breath she snatched from the wind, she knew that Cole rode behind her. The two of them were the only riders who had a chance to turn the herd. Frank could help, but the leaders had got past him.

She only hoped the speeding Border Crossing would sense her and Shy Boy before he ran over them—there was no way Cole could see them before they would collide. There was no way she could see him and know if his horse was still on his feet.

The wind sucked her breath. She bent over Shy Boy’s neck until the saddle horn bruised her stomach and she rode with no air in her, with all of it outside her and her horse swirling away, stolen away into the ruthless arms of the storm. The sky lashed her with rain like a madman with a buggy whip in his hands. But the herd would turn.

They would, by God, turn. She and Cole would
make
them turn.

Somehow, by some miracle, she loosened the ties behind her cantle and pulled her slicker free. At first, she had no power to lift it against the wind, but she managed to wrestle it forward
to rest against her leg. Then she lifted it—she couldn’t flap it, but she did drag it across some hairy, wild-eyed face. Then she slapped it against a shoulder, caught it on a horn that could impale Shy Boy—or her—like a sword.

The horn cut a long slit and tore her weapon into two parts with one long, dark stroke. The wind died for a second, and she heard shots. Cole or one of the men trying to frighten the cattle into a turn.

They would, by all the strength in her body,
turn
, damn their rotten hides! She had not defied Lloyd Gates and risked dying by Virgil Whoever’s shotgun blast to let these creatures scatter from here to kingdom come.

“You’re going to
Texas
, damn you!”

She shrieked it into the whipping wind and it was lost in that instant, way before it ever reached a cow’s ears, but it made her feel more powerful somehow. At least she had snatched back enough breath to speak.

That meant she would live through this. That meant that she would win.

Oh, please God, keep Cole safe, too
.

She found enough leeway against the wind to lift the shreds of the slicker, to move them at the one cow … she slitted her eyes against the rain, for her hat was long since off her head and streaming out behind her with the stampede strings cutting into her neck until they choked her … Old Brindle!

There had been a miracle, and she had reached Old Brindle. She flapped the slicker as
best she could into the mottled face, over the wild and rolling bloodshot eyes and prayed to keep her seat in the saddle and her feet in the stirrups.

And for Shy Boy to keep his feet under him and his speed up until it was safe to slow down.

She did. He did. And finally, after what seemed another whole lifetime, Old Brindle began to turn. Shots sounded from several directions, the cow turned more, shaking her horns angrily back and forth, but doing what Aurora wanted. The lead steers followed, yielding to pressure that had to be from Cole, although she couldn’t see him yet.

Aurora stayed with them, giving no quarter, feeling Cole behind her, somewhere near in the lessening storm. But when she threw a quick look back over her shoulder, she couldn’t see him. He was there. Surely he was.

A subterranean panic welled up in her, surging toward her heart. Border Crossing, good as he was, was a mortal horse. Any stumble, any fall, and Cole would’ve been trampled.

She twisted in the saddle and searched again. The rain still stabbed at her face, but it was thinner now; she could see a little. The wind whipped her hair around her face instead of trying to rip it from her scalp. She faced front again, looking at the cattle, looking for other riders.

And she resorted to patience and faith. If she waited to look again while she counted to
twenty, Cole would be there when she turned around.

Tears mingled with the raindrops running down her face. Cole had to be all right. Everyone had to be all right. The whole Slash A outfit, on whatever side of the herd they’d been riding when it started to run, had to be all right or she’d never forgive herself. Those men risked their lives for her sake every day, and they had to be in their saddles and unhurt when the storm passed.

It was moving away already, thunder crashing, but less loud, lightning out of sight. The cold rain lessened even more, although it still drummed down on her bare head.

The cattle were slowing for sure, starting to mill. Shy Boy was slowing with them. He was blowing some, but he was all right, she could tell by the feel of him beneath her.

“Aurora!”

She took in a great lungful of air, as if she hadn’t drawn breath for an age, and wheeled the startled Shy Boy around, rushing toward the sound of Cole’s voice. He was headed to her at a long, fast trot, bareheaded, his smile flashing white, sitting his horse as easily as if they’d been on a pleasure ride through a flower-strewn meadow. He was soaking wet, however, and scraps of yellow slicker hung from his saddle.

Without a word, without breaking the look, they rode to meet, standing in their stirrups too soon to reach for each other, unable to truly believe
what they saw until they touched. He caught her up with a need so fierce it took her breath away, pulled her into his saddle with him, into his arms, into the hot haven of his mouth.

His kiss struck flame in the center of her being, banished the cold from her body from the inside out. It lifted her high above the earth, where she would never again have a need for solid ground.

His mouth was her sun, her heat, her light. Her world. She clung to him with hands that trembled, he caressed her throat, her breasts, gathered her up so close against him again that their wet clothes glued them together against even the air.

Every place that his body touched hers its heat consumed the chill in her skin, it flamed in her blood and penetrated her flesh all the way to the bone. He drew back, broke the kiss so he could look at her.

“I never was so scared in all my life,” he said, his eyes blazing with the same passion as his kiss. “I’m not tough enough to see you hurt, Aurora.”

His gaze devoured her as if trying to burn her image into his memory.

“I wasn’t worried for a minute about you,” she lied. “I figured that after the Federales a few thousand head of longhorns wouldn’t even put you and your running horse into a high lope.”

He started untangling her stampede strings
with one hand, but he kept the other nestled firmly at the small of her back.

“Can’t keep from reminding me of my old sins, can you?” he drawled. “Reckon I’m gonna have to commit some new ones just to give you a change of subject.”

His fingertips touching her throat here and there, hot and tantalizing as they were, couldn’t break the unguarded look shimmering between them.

“Any ideas to suggest?”

Yes. Right now. Except it would be so right it wouldn’t be a sin
.

“I … I …” she whispered, her lips aching so with the desire to kiss him again that she could barely speak, let alone think.

“Hey!” someone shouted, off in what seemed to be another world. Then again, closer, “Hey, Monte!”

She reached to help Cole with the strings to her hat.

“The … the men,” she managed to say, although her tongue was already demanding to taste his again, “the men and the herd. Cole …”

They both looked around them, at the milling, bawling herd and the rain-slashed land, as if they’d never seen any of it before.

“I need my horse,” she said, but made no move to get down from his.

Her gaze went right back to Cole’s mouth, which she needed even more.

“He’s right there,” Cole said, but he didn’t even glance in Shy Boy’s direction.

“We make a pair, don’t we darlin’?” he drawled. “You and me, we turned a stampede.”

Her whole body thrilled at the endearment. At the tone of his low voice. At the look in his dark, dark eyes.

We make a pair. Yes, we do
.

“We only did it because you’re so stubborn,” he said, his dark eyes twinkling with mischief. “I was gonna let ‘em scatter from Santa Fe to El Paso, but I was ashamed to quit if you wouldn’t.”

She laughed.

“That’s the reason I kept hanging on,” she said. “I hated for you to disgrace yourself in front of the whole Slash A outfit.”

The circling herd was growing as more cattle poured in from the pass; it was shifting closer now, bawling and clacking horns. The cowboys rode tighter circles around the edges, pushed the cattle in on themselves even more.

“Miss Aurora, you all right?” Monte called.

Aurora began to pull herself back together, quickly finished untangling her hat and put it back onto her head.

“I’m fine,” she called back, realizing how she must look up on Cole’s horse with him. “My hat strings were about to strangle me, is all.”