Daisies in the Canyon (15 page)

“I bet there’s fifty head out there and best I can see, they’ve all got the Lucky Seven brand.”

“What happened?” Shiloh asked.

Bonnie took a deep breath. “Scared me, I’ll admit it. I don’t know for sure, but my guess would be that a streak of lightning spooked the shit out of them and caused a stampede. They’re not our cows, girls. They belong to the Lucky Seven, which means there’s a busted barbed-wire fence between our property and Cooper’s. So much for staying in the house. We’ve got to round them up and get them back on his side of the fence.”

“Shit! Shit! Shit! My coat isn’t near dry and Abby’s is still soppin’ wet,” Shiloh said.

“That must’ve scared you.” Abby finally smiled. “I haven’t heard you cuss like that before.”

“Yes, it scared me, and it’s days like this I want to pack my bags and head back to Arkansas,” she said.

Bonnie started for her room. “I guess these dogs will get to show us how good they are. Thank God I know how to mend a barbed-wire fence. I’ll get the things from the tack room and we’ll herd cattle with the truck and the dogs.”

“And Rusty’s four-wheelers,” Abby said.

“He didn’t say we couldn’t use them. Keys are on the rack,” Bonnie said.

“I have no idea how to drive a four-wheeler,” Shiloh said.

“Then you can drive the truck,” Abby told her. “We can get this done in a couple of hours and still have the afternoon to rest.”

The dogs did a fine job of herding the cows back through the broken fence, but then the cattle decided to veer off seven ways to Sunday. Shiloh kept the biggest part of the herd moving across the pasture toward the fence a mile away with the help of Martha on one side and the other two dogs on the other.

Bonnie rode one of the four-wheelers on the west side of the main herd, cussing loud enough to blister the hides of any heifers that strayed.

Abby manned her post on the east side and the area behind the truck with enough swearing to earn her a thumbs-up from Bonnie a couple of times. Using the torn-up ground as a guide to drive them toward where she hoped they’d find the broken fence, Shiloh drove with the window down, screaming at the cows as loud as both her sisters.

They were making progress until the truck got stuck in the mud about halfway across the pasture. Shiloh turned off the engine, motioned toward her sisters to keep moving, and started herding cows on foot.

“Where in the hell is a burst of thunder when we need it?” Abby yelled over her shoulder at her sister.

Shiloh, bless her heart, looked miserable with her hair hanging in her face. Abby was glad she couldn’t see herself, because she probably looked even worse.

As if answering her prayers, lightning sliced through the rain, hit a mesquite tree dead-on and set it on fire. The blaze didn’t last long, but the crack of the hit echoed through the canyon like a kid yelling down into a deep well. Then the thunder rolled right over their heads. The lead bull rolled his eyes and doubled his speed, the cows following right behind him. At the fence line, he tried to turn and go back the other way, but Martha nipped his heels and made him keep going.

“Good dog,” Abby said.

That’s when the front tire of the four-wheeler hit a gopher hole. The engine stalled out and Abby went flying over the handlebars to land in a nice mushy pile of cow shit. Instinctively, she tried to get rid of it by wiping her hand on the leg of her pants but all that did was smear it. Shiloh ran over to make sure she was all right, only to slip in the mud and go sliding a good five feet on her belly before coming to rest at the four-wheeler’s back tire. When Abby extended her clean hand to help her up, she took it, but the ground was so greasy that Abby lost her footing again. One minute she was looking at her sister, trying her damnedest to keep from laughing; the next she was staring up at gray skies with rain beating down on her face and a black cow the size of a barn running toward them.

At the last minute, Martha got between them and the cow and steered her off in the opposite direction. Abby’s heart pounded so hard she could feel it in her ears. Her pulse throbbed behind her eyes and the cows were breaking from the herd faster than Bonnie could take care of it on her own.

“Help me get this damn thing pushed out of the hole and you can ride on the back with me. You’re not doing a bit of good out there on foot anyway,” Abby said.

“If y’all are through horsin’ around, I could use some help,” Bonnie yelled.

Abby couldn’t believe her eyes when Shiloh flipped her off.

Lightning took out another mesquite tree and the rain came down even harder. It slowed the herd down, but kept them together better than before. The dogs were able to keep the rest of them headed toward Cooper’s fence and the four-wheelers on each side deterred any straying.

They marched right through the busted fence and huddled up not far into the Lucky Seven property like a bunch of football players on Friday night. Bonnie pulled out a roll of barbed wire, a pair of cutters, and a stretcher from the saddlebag on the back of the four-wheeler and headed for the fence.

She barked orders and Abby and Shiloh followed them without arguing. “Y’all keep the cows from coming back through or any of ours from going over into Cooper’s pasture while I get the first strand up. Then y’all can help me with the last two strands.”

Abby was sure glad that Bonnie knew something about everything because she didn’t know jack shit about how to fix a barbed-wire fence. She could probably blow one up, but putting one back together was a whole different ball game.

At the end of the repair job, Abby had a barbed-wire scratch on her wrist, her camo jacket was torn, and she was standing ankle-deep in water. Bonnie had a scratch across her cheek where the barbed wire had popped back and bit her and Abby’s loaned jacket had a long slit down one arm. Shiloh’s jeans had a tear in the thigh with a red bloodstain outlining it and the tennis shoes she wore were completely covered in cold water.

“If we don’t have pneumonia or gangrene tomorrow morning, it will be a miracle . . . oh, no! No! No! No!” Abby stomped, sending a splash all the way to Bonnie’s eyes.

Bonnie wiped at her eyes and pushed limp strands of soaking-wet hair behind her ears. “What the hell? If there is another damn Lucky Seven cow on Malloy land, Cooper can take care of it later.”

“Look. I’m counting at least four head of Malloy cows over there and we’ve already fixed the fence.” Abby pointed.

“So much for Rusty and Cooper not knowing that we had trouble.” Shiloh brushed fresh blood from her leg and wiped her hand on the seat of her jeans.

“I’m not cutting this fence. Cooper and Rusty can take a cattle trailer over there later and get them,” Bonnie said.

“Let’s go get that truck unstuck and go home,” Abby said.

“Let’s just go home and forget the truck,” Shiloh said.

“And let Rusty think we can’t function without him on the place?” Bonnie asked.

“Okay, okay, we’re already wet anyway,” Shiloh groaned.

“And the lightning hasn’t struck us yet, so that makes us lucky,” Abby said.

Shiloh pointed a long slender finger at Abby. “You can shut up. You said this wouldn’t take long and it’s already past dinnertime. I’m tired. I’m wet. I’m hungry and I’m cold. And besides that my leg is cut open, so don’t you say anything or else lightning is liable to flash out of the sky and set my hair on fire.”

“Fate is a hormonal bitch on steroids. And honey, it was me that said it wouldn’t take long, not Abby.” Bonnie laughed.

“Bonnie is a prophet with that saying about fate. Get her one of them gold chest plates and a fez with a tassel on it,” Shiloh said.

“You did a good job, Bonnie. I wouldn’t have had any idea how to fix that fence. Does Rusty carry tools in the four-wheeler all the time?” Abby asked.

“I doubt it, but most ranchers keep tools in their truck. When Shiloh got stuck, I grabbed the tools and shoved them into the four-wheeler’s saddlebag,” Bonnie answered. “We’re standing here in the rain, ladies, when we could be talkin’ in front of a nice fire. Mount up and let’s go.”

Abby threw a leg over the four-wheeler and Shiloh climbed on behind her. Bonnie led the way back to the truck and looked at the situation. She might have experience with fixing a fence but Abby had gotten more trucks out of sandpits than she could count. Surely getting one up out of a mud puddle couldn’t be a bit more difficult; however, she wasn’t saying a word. Shiloh looked like she was about to cry or throw a hissy, and she was the mildest-tempered one of the three. Abby had learned long ago that the quiet ones were deadly when they’d had enough.

“Bonnie, can you go back to the house and either get some chain or one of those boards the cows broke on the fence?” she asked.

“Sure thing,” Bonnie said. “Hey, Shiloh, crawl up here behind me. You can go on and get cleaned up. This only takes two people, anyway.”

Shiloh did not argue. She moved from one vehicle to the other and they left Abby standing in the rain. She quickly crawled inside the truck and slammed the door.

Abby pushed her blonde hair from her face and envied Shiloh that warm dry robe. In minutes she heard the roar of the four-wheeler coming back and thought about the fact they would have three vehicles and two drivers when they got the truck back on the road.

“Shit fire!” She shook her fist at the sky when she was out of the truck.

“What now?” Bonnie asked.

“Two drivers. Three vehicles.”

“We can’t get no wetter. Shiloh looked like she was about to blow a gasket, though, so I thought she’d best go on to the house.”

“Who died and made you boss?” Abby asked.

“Ezra died and right now we are all three the bosses. You got a problem with that?” Bonnie asked.

Abby smiled and then chuckled. That turned into laughter that floated out across the canyon through the driving rain. “This is what that old fart wanted.”

“Have you gone crazy? Did lightning strike you while I was gone?” Bonnie asked.

“No, can’t you see it? Ezra wanted us to get into a situation where we disagreed and fought so we’d leave one by one and Rusty could have the ranch.”

“Bullshit! This is my ranch,” Bonnie said.

“It’s
our
ranch right now. We needed Shiloh, but if you thought she’d wimp out and leave, then you did the right thing. We can manage and Ezra loses.”

A smile covered Bonnie’s face. “Then let’s get to it and go home while he turns over again in his grave.”

“We’ll have to drive the truck and one four-wheeler back to the barn and both ride back through the muddy fields.”

“We’re tough.” Bonnie smiled.

A length of fence, ragged on both ends, stretched out across on the handlebars in front of Bonnie. Abby grabbed the board.

Bonnie yelled over noise of the storm. “Got another problem in the yard. A Lucky Seven bull has parked his fat ass on the porch. He’s lying there like he owns the house and all that’s in it. Reminds me of those fancy places that has a big concrete lion out by the fence.”

“Well, dammit!” Abby said. “We’ll have to keep him penned up to be sure he doesn’t breed any of our cows.”

“How are we going to do that? All three of us together can’t budge him off the porch. It’s like he’s found a refuge, I tell you.”

“I’ve got an idea if we can get this truck to moving. We’ll use the truck to block the part of the yard fence where the cattle broke the wood down and came through. It doesn’t have to fill all the hole, just enough that the bull can’t get out.”

“The dogs are having a fit, but he’s ignoring them,” Bonnie reported. “Shiloh let them in the house. She’s going to wipe them down and get them warmed up by the fire.”

Abby nodded. “Okay, you get in the truck. When I give you the signal, back it out slowly.”

Bonnie nodded.

Abby shoved the board into the wet earth and gave Bonnie the thumbs-up sign. The tire spun a couple of times and then it caught and jerked backward with so much force that the board went flying. Abby fell backward again and more mud splattered all over her.

Bonnie applied the brakes and Abby waved at her to take the truck on to the ranch and block the hole in the fence with it. She didn’t even try to wipe her face clean but climbed on the four-wheeler and followed Bonnie, who must be pretty damned good at parallel parking because she maneuvered that truck right into the hole. Abby would bet there was less than six inches of space on either end.

When she finished, Bonnie trotted out and settled in behind Abby. In twenty minutes both four-wheelers were parked back in the barn. They looked like shit, but then they’d been run through mud and manure and dodged lightning bolts. If Rusty didn’t like it, he could damn sure wash them down all by himself.

They jogged through the cold rain to the house and the minute they were inside they started undressing, throwing coats and socks in a pile together. Shiloh had put another log on the fire so they were greeted with a toasty-warm and, more importantly, dry house.

“Does the leg need stitches?” Bonnie asked Shiloh.

“I’m accident-prone, so I carry a first-aid kit with me. I just cleaned it and bandaged it,” Shiloh answered. She’d put her cute little pajama top back on, but now she wore plaid boxer shorts with it and the scratch on her leg had been covered with gauze and tape.