Wyoming Woman (3 page)

Turning, Luke saw that Rachel had fallen to her knees and was slumped against the dash, one hand massaging her left shoulder. “We'll have to dig the wheels free,” she said between clenched teeth. “Don't you have a shovel?”

Did the woman think he kept a blasted tool chest on the horse? “Hold on, I'll find something,” Luke muttered, sliding out of the saddle. The rain was coming down in torrents and he was getting worried about the sheep. If the skittish animals panicked, even the dogs wouldn't be able to hold them.

The ground had become a sea of spattering mud that concealed any stick or rock that might be used for digging. Luke was twisting at a dead clump of sage, try to break it loose, when he heard a distant rushing sound—so faint at first that it was barely distinguishable from the drone of the rain. Only as it neared and grew did he realize, with blood-chilling certainty, what it was.

“Flood!” he shouted, wheeling back toward the wash. “Get the hell out of there!” He raced for the bank, ready to grab her hands and help her climb the muddy slope.

“No!” she shouted, clinging stubbornly to the frame of the buggy. “Get back to your horse! The water will wash the wheels loose! If we time it right, we can pull the buggy out! It's our only chance!”

“Don't be a fool!
Come on!
” Luke plunged down the bank, seized her left arm and wrenched her toward
him. Rachel yelped in sudden agony. Only then did he realize she was hurt.

With a muttered curse, he scooped her up in his arms and charged for the bank—too late. The flash flood slammed into them like a buffalo stampede. Luke fought to keep his footing as muddy water, thick with silt and debris, swirled chest-deep around them.

Glancing uphill, Luke saw a gnarled tree trunk sweeping downstream at murderous speed, its sharp roots thrusting toward them like tangled daggers. Rachel gasped as he swung her into the protecting lee of the buggy. The tree trunk hurtled past, missing them by inches. But their safety was short-lived. Lifted free by the water, the buggy began to move downstream.

From the bank of the wash, the horse screamed in terror as the moving vehicle's momentum dragged it toward the torrent below. Luke's heart sank as he saw what was happening. “Hang on tight!” he shouted at Rachel.

Her uninjured arm locked around his neck, freeing his hand to yank the hunting knife from the sheath that hung at his belt. With the strength of desperation, Luke hacked at the rope. One by one the tough fibers parted—slowly, too slowly. Weakened by the flood, the rim of the wash was already crumbling beneath the buckskin's rear hooves. The horse squealed as its hindquarters went down. Then, with one last cut, the rope separated and the animal was free. Its forefeet found solid earth, and it wrenched itself upward to safety.

With the last of his strength, Luke shoved Rachel clear of the moving buggy. The buggy washed away from them and went crashing downstream. It wouldn't go far, Luke knew. But by the time the flood passed, the rented vehicle would be nothing but a battered, waterlogged piece of junk.

He wondered if the fool woman knew how lucky she was to be alive.

 

The brunt of the storm had already passed over the mountains. Ebbing now, the floodwater gushed between the banks in a waist-high, taffy-colored stream.

Rachel groaned as Luke Vincente heaved her onto the bank and scrambled for his own foothold on the muddy, crumbling slope. Fifty yards downstream she could see the buggy. It was sharply tilted out of the water as if it had run up on some high object, perhaps a boulder.

“There it is!” she cried, pointing. “We can still get it out! Hurry!”

“No.”

Rachel stared up at him. He had gained the bank, and now he loomed above her, coated with mud from head to toe. His face was an expressionless stone mask.

“No?” she asked incredulously.

“You heard me.” His lip curled in a contemptuous snarl. “Hasn't anybody ever said that word to you before, Miss Rachel Tolliver? If you want the damned buggy back, get it yourself, or send some moonstruck
cowboy from the ranch to fetch it for you. I've got sheep to move.”

Without another word, he turned his back and walked away from her, toward his waiting horse. Rachel glared at his arrogant back, her temper igniting like kerosene spilled on a red-hot stove.

“Come back here!” She ground out the words between clenched teeth. “This was
your
fault! If your blasted sheep hadn't been in the road, I'd be on my way home!”

Luke Vincente did not even glance back at her. He had set out to be a gentleman, but Rachel Tolliver had pushed him beyond his limits. She could wait for her family to come, or she could damned well walk home. Either way, he was washing his hands of her.

“I'm all alone out here!” she stormed. “I have nothing to eat, no shelter, no dry clothes! What's more, my shoulder hurts! You can't just walk away and leave me!”

This time he paused and looked back at her. His dark eyes glinted like chips of granite. “I can and I will,” he said. “Unless, of course, you want to come with me.”

“Come where?” Rachel struggled to her feet. “Take me home, and I'll see that my father rewards you.”

“I told you, I don't want your father's money,” he said coldly. “I've got sheep to get back to my ranch for shearing. Once we're safely there, if you want to hang around, we'll see about getting you warmed up and fed. Then we'll talk about taking you home.
That's the best I can offer you, Rachel Tolliver. Take it or leave it.”

Torn, she watched him walk away. Pride demanded that she let him go. But once he left her, she would be stranded. Her family was not expecting her at the ranch for another week. No one would miss her. No one would come looking for her.

“Luke!” Her voice stopped him. It was the first time she had called him by name. Slowly he turned around.

“I'll take it,” she said. “Your offer, I mean. After all, I can hardly stay out here alone.”

His expression did not even flicker. “Climb aboard then,” he said, indicating the horse with a nod of his head. “We've got sheep to move.”

R
achel sat behind the saddle, her legs straddling the buckskin's slippery rump. Her waterlogged skirts were bunched above her knees, showing mud-streaked silk stockings and soaked, misshapen kidskin boots. Her gabardine suit was stained with floodwater, and her tangled hair hung down her back like a filthy string mop.

But Rachel was long past the point of caring about appearances. What she wanted most right now was a solid meal and a steaming, gardenia-scented bath. And then she wanted the blasted buggy back on the road, loaded with the bags she had so carefully packed for her journey west.

Most of her clothes would be ruined. That in itself was a crying shame, but at least clothes could be replaced. It was her precious supply of paints, brushes and canvases that worried Rachel most. She had persuaded Luke to help her carry the trunk that contained her painting supplies into some rocks above the wash, where people passing on the road would not see it,
but everything else remained stacked near the mired buggy, at the mercy of weather and thieves. Rachel could only hope it would be safe until she could send someone to bring everything safely back to the ranch.

Her arms tightened around the sheep man's ribs as the horse swerved to avoid a badger hole. At the sudden pressure, Luke's sinewy body went taut with resistance. In the hour they had been riding together, he had scarcely linked one syllable with another. His silence told her in no uncertain terms that he was not pleased to have her along. Well, fine. She wasn't exactly happy to be here, herself. By rights she should be at home with her family, sitting down to a mouth-watering banquet prepared by Chang, the Tolliver ranch's aging cook who was a true artist in the kitchen. When she closed her eyes, Rachel could almost taste the garlic-seasoned roast beef, the mashed potatoes dripping with gravy, the carrots drenched in herbed butter and the flakiest buttermilk biscuits this side of heaven. A lusty growl quivered in the pit of her stomach. She willed herself to ignore the unladylike sound. Why should she care whether Luke had heard? His opinion of her was already so low that nothing she did could make him think any worse of her!

Hungry as she was, Rachel knew better than to ask Luke when they were going to stop and eat. The wretched man did not appear to have brought any food with him; and in any case, she was not about to give him the satisfaction of hearing her complain—not about her empty belly or the chill of the spring
wind through her wet clothes or the darts of pain that lanced her shoulder with every bounce of the trotting horse. The shoulder did not seem to be broken—if it were, she knew she would be in agony. But it hurt enough to tell her that something was wrong.

Struggling to ignore her discomfort, Rachel gazed across the scrub-dotted foothills, toward the place where the land sloped downward to end in a sheer cliff that dropped sixty feet to the prairie below. Years ago, her father had told her, the Cheyenne and Sioux had used this place, and others like it, for driving buffalo. It had been a brutally efficient means of hunting. The warriors had only to surround a herd, stampede the terrified animals over the cliff and butcher their broken bodies at the bottom. The meat and hides from such a slaughter could supply a band for an entire season.

The buffalo were gone now, and the children of the hunters had long since been pushed onto reservations. But now, as her eyes traced the line of the cliff, Rachel could almost see the hurtling bodies, hear the death shrieks and smell the stench of fear and blood. With a shudder, she turned her gaze away. This was not a good day for such black thoughts. Not when she had problems of her own to deal with.

With the storm rolling eastward across the prairie, the sky above the Big Horns had begun to clear. Fingers of light from the slanting, late-afternoon sun brushed the snowy peaks with a golden radiance, as if heaven itself lay just beyond the thinning veil of
clouds, and all a mortal needed to do was reach out and touch it.

Heaven was far beyond her reach today, Rachel mused wryly. With the buggy wrecked, her belongings scattered, her hair and clothes a sodden mess and this dark, brooding sheep man holding her a virtual prisoner, her current predicament seemed more like the place that was heaven's opposite.

But it was no use crying over spilled milk, that's what her mother would say. Time was too valuable to waste fretting over what could no longer be helped.

Rachel missed her lively, practical mother. She missed her father's quiet strength and the high-spirited antics of the twin brothers she adored. She wanted desperately to go home. But the stubborn, irascible stranger who guided the horse had made it clear that his precious sheep came first. She would not be reunited with her family until the miserable creatures were safely in the shearing pens on his own small ranch.

The sheep, about three hundred head of them not counting the lambs, spread over the landscape like a plague of ravenous gray-white caterpillars. Rachel had never cared for the dull-witted creatures. True, the baby lambs were cute and lively, but they soon grew up to be brainless eating machines that stripped the grass from every inch of open range they crossed. Rachel despised the sight of them, the sound of them, the sour, dusty smell of them.

The dogs, however, were a different matter.

She watched in fascination as the two border collies
darted among the sheep, nipping at the flanks of the stragglers, keeping the whole herd moving along together. Sometimes Luke spoke to them in a low voice or commanded them with simple hand gestures. For the most part, however, the dogs seemed to know exactly what they were doing and needed no direction. Rachel had always liked dogs, and these two alert, intelligent animals were as fine a pair as she had ever seen.

“Your dogs are magnificent,” she said, watching the darker of the two chase a straying lamb back toward its mother. “Did you train them yourself?”

“Shep and Mick came with the sheep when I bought them,” Luke said tersely. “
I
was the one who had to be trained.”

It was a civil enough answer, but there was a dark undertone in Luke's voice, a hidden tension in his muscular body, as if something were lurking below the surface of everything he said and did. She had held a gun on him, Rachel reminded herself. She had treated Luke Vincente with as much contempt as he had treated her. But there was more at work here, she sensed, than simple animosity. There were things she didn't know, things she needed to understand for her own safety.

Rachel held her tongue for a time, hoping Luke would volunteer more. But when he did not speak again, her impatience got the better of her.

“I've been at school in Philadelphia for the past three years,” she said. “You and your sheep certainly weren't around before I left.”

He sighed, as if resigning himself to a conversation he did not want to have. “I came here two years ago. My property butts onto the northwest corner of your family's ranch, where those reddish foothills jut out onto the prairie.”

“In that case, I'm surprised my father hasn't tried to buy you out,” Rachel said. “At a fair price, of course.”

Luke shrugged. “He has. Not in person, but through that little weasel of a land agent who comes sniffing around my place every few months.”

“Mr. Connell is a good man,” Rachel said. “My father has been dealing with him for years, and he's never cheated us out of a penny…even though he does look a bit like a weasel.” She suppressed an impish smile. “What did you tell him when he made an offer on your land?”

“That I wouldn't sell. Not even for a fair price.”

The edge in his reply was not lost on Rachel. “But why not?” she demanded. “You could run sheep in Nevada, or Colorado, or New Mexico, and nobody would care a fig! Why set up a sheep ranch smack in the middle of cattle country, where three-quarters of the people you meet are going to hate you?”

“Maybe because there's no law that says I can't.” He spoke in a flat voice that defied her to argue with him. “Do you play poker, Miss Rachel Tolliver?”

“Some.”

“I won my land in a poker game while you were probably still in pigtails,” he said. “Some rough years came and went before I was able to live on it.
But it was my own piece of the earth. Whatever happened to me, it was always there, like a beacon to get me through the bad times.”

Rachel wondered about those bad times, but she knew better than to ask too many personal questions. Luke Vincente, she sensed, was a very private man who would not show his scars to unsympathetic eyes.

How old was he? she found herself wondering. He had the flat-bellied, lean-hipped body of a man in his early thirties and his hair carried only a light touch of silver. But his creased, windburned face had a hard set to it, as if his eyes had seen more than his mind wanted to remember.

“I understand how you must feel about the land,” she said.

“Do you?” he asked, clearly implying that Rachel would not know what it was like to get anything the hard way. She bridled, then willed herself to ignore the barb.

“But why raise sheep, for heaven's sake?” she continued as if he hadn't spoken. “Why not cattle, like the rest of us? Why make enemies of your neighbors?”

Luke's gaze traced the spiraling flight of a red-tailed hawk against the sky. “You've never had to set up a cattle operation,” he said. “It takes big money these days, usually from some rich investor. And you need a whole crew of cowboys to take care of your herd—cowboys who have to be fed and housed and paid. And even if you get your cattle
through the season and to the railhead in good shape, you can still lose your shirt if the market's bad.”

Rachel gazed past his shoulder at the flowing mass of sheep and the darting figures of the two dogs. Everything Luke had said was true. Cattle raising was an expensive business. The old days, when a man could buy a cheap piece of land, drive a herd of longhorns north from Mexico and have himself a working ranch were long gone.

“Sheep, even purebreds like these, are cheaper to buy than cattle,” Luke said. “Sheep tend to multiply faster than cattle, and they can survive in country where cows would starve. With well-trained dogs, one or two men can handle a good-sized herd. Wool is easy to store, haul and ship, and the wool market is a hell of a lot more stable than the beef market. Does that answer your question?”

Rachel studied the dark diamond of perspiration that had soaked through the back of Luke's faded chambray work shirt, outlining the taut muscles beneath the fabric. “I suppose it does answer my question,” she said slowly, although, in truth, it did not. She had set out to uncover the reasons behind his blazing hostility. Instead, his answers had revealed a man of burning ambitions, fierce loyalties and buried secrets. The things he had told her only served to deepen the puzzle that was Luke Vincente.

Rachel cleared her throat. “I still don't—”

“Ssh!” She felt his body go rigid beneath her hands. “Listen!”

For the space of a breath, Rachel heard nothing but
the rhythmic thud of the horse's hooves against the damp earth. Then the sound reached her ears from beyond the next rise—the plaintive, terrified cry of a small animal in pain.

One of the dogs began to bark as Luke urged the horse to a canter. They came over the top of the rise to see a lamb, so small and white that it couldn't have been more than a few days old, caught beneath a big clump of sagebrush. The little creature was dangling pitifully from one hind leg. It jerked and twisted, its eyes wild with terror. The dog hovered nearby, whining anxiously.

Luke swore as he halted the horse. Behind him, Rachel jumped to the ground, allowing him to swing out of the saddle. Reaching the lamb ahead of him, she gathered the squalling baby into her arms. That was when she saw the thin wire snare that had twisted around its hind leg. The lamb's struggles had worked the wire into its tender flesh.

“There…you're all right.” Rachel felt the unexpected sting of tears as she stroked the small, velvety head. She had no love for sheep, but this one was so tiny and helpless that its pain tore at her heart.

“Hold him still.” Luke had brought a pair of wire cutters. His eyes glittered with fury as he cut the lamb loose and, with gentle hands, untwisted the wire from its bleeding leg. “Damn the bastards,” he muttered under his breath. “Damn them all to hell!”

Rachel's lips parted as she stared at him. Until now she'd assumed that the lamb had stumbled into a trap meant for rabbits or coyotes. But Luke's face told her
another story—a story that chilled the blood in her veins.

“Does this happen often?” She choked out the words.

Luke's mouth tightened in a grim line. “This lamb was lucky. Most of them we find dead, or so far gone they have to be put out of their misery. The coyotes and eagles usually get to them before we do. I've lost more than two dozen animals to these hellish wire snares.”

Rachel gripped the struggling lamb as Luke cleaned its wounds. His big, weathered hands were callused and nicked with a myriad of scars—the kind of hands that had worked, fought, loved, maybe even killed. Where had those hands been, Rachel found herself wondering. What stories would those fingers tell if they could speak?

His knuckle brushed her breast through the damp fabric of her jacket. The accidental touch triggered a freshet of sensation that puckered her nipple and sent a jolt of liquid heat shimmering downward through her body. Rachel stifled a gasp, then forced herself to speak.

“You're saying someone's setting these snares just to catch your sheep?” she asked.

Luke had opened a pocket-sized tin of salve. His fingers rubbed the greasy mixture into the deep wire cuts in the lamb's leg. He did not speak, but his grim silence was enough to answer Rachel's question.

“But that's monstrous!” she burst out. “Who would do such a thing?”

His eyes flickered toward her. Rachel felt their cold hatred as if shards of ice had penetrated her flesh. Her lips parted, but no words emerged from her dry mouth. The questions in her mind would remain un-asked. She did not want to hear Luke's answers.