The Wild One (7 page)

Jake wheeled Witch away from the other riders, away from Sam. That was a good thing, too, Sam
thought as Witch carried Jake splashing away into the gray morning. She still had an empty mug in her hand and she could barely suppress the urge to fling it at Jake's head.

 

Stop. Go. Stop. Go. All morning they followed the cautious cattle through the rain, never pushing, just watching.

Dallas hadn't asked her to ride drag today. He assigned her to ride on the right side of the herd. She knew better than to ask why.

Thunder rumbled overhead and a cold wind blew.

Sam hunched her shoulders inside her slicker and pulled her brown Stetson lower on her brow. Her cheeks were cold, but rubbing them with her gloved hand didn't help.

“Hey dudette, how's it goin'?” Pepper called from the other side of the herd. He sounded good-natured, but Sam didn't answer.

Whether it was Pepper's shout, the thunder, or her bovine imagination, a big brindle cow wearing Slocum's brand spooked. She bolted away from the herd, just yards in front of Ace.

Ace tensed to follow, to gallop after the cow and return her to the herd. Sam clapped her heels to the gelding's sides and let him fly off in pursuit.

Dudette, am I?
Sam stayed loose in the saddle, as Jake had told her to do when riding a cutting horse. But the brindle cow didn't want to go back.

“Hey!” Sam shouted. No way was this cow going to slip past her. Holding her reins in one hand, Sam snatched off her hat and flapped it at the cow, trying to scare her back toward the herd.

Rolling her eyes white, the cow bowled past Ace with a bellow.

Humiliation made Sam glance back to see if any of the cowboys had noticed her failure.

What she saw made her sick.

F
RIGHTENED BY THE BRINDLE
cow's bellows, the rest of the herd split off in all directions. Some trotted with their heads held high, ears swivelling in confusion. Others galloped, eyes rolled white. Big red bodies slammed each other as the cattle ignored everything but fear. Though the cowboys kept their horses at a walk, trying to regather cattle without scaring them even more, Sam knew what had happened. She'd caused a stampede.

Once she returned the brindle cow to what remained of the herd, Sam rode at the edge of the restless bunch. She surveyed the
playa
, hoping she'd see no animals sunk in quicksand.

What she did see was Jake, shepherding about thirty head her way.

Sam braced herself, but Jake didn't yell, didn't accuse, didn't even give her a hard look. He kept his eyes on the herd.

Somehow, that was worse.

“Jake, I was stupid,” she said. “I was trying to show off, to prove I knew what I was doing, and I did just the opposite. I moved too fast. I didn't think—”

Jake's mouth was set in a hard line as he nodded. Agreeing. He sent Witch off at a gentle jog after two cows with calves.

It took the experienced cowboys about twenty minutes to regather the herd, but to Sam it felt like hours.

Stupid, stupid, stupid.
So the cowboys had joked with her. So they'd called her names. Big deal. Now her inexperienced look-at-me action had ruined everything. She had acted just like a dude.

The men riding around her, even Dad, would forget she'd ridden out Ace's bucking fits. They'd forget she'd risen from her warm sleeping bag to nighthawk at midnight. They'd forget she'd helped take the horses to water, even when she was bone tired.

Rain pounded down, bouncing up like popcorn from the cows' backs. When she glanced away at a squishing sound, Sam saw Dad riding toward her on Banjo.

As he stopped beside her, Sam drew Ace to a halt.

“What happened?” Dad asked.

Sam took a breath. She couldn't deny the stampede had been her fault, but she could keep herself from crying. She cleared her throat and leaned
forward, pretending to straighten the headstall behind Ace's ears.

“A cow spooked and broke from the herd. I let Ace go after her.” Sam bit her lower lip, then corrected herself. “I made him go after her.”

Dad put Banjo into a walk and shook his head.

“That wouldn't do it. It must have been something else.” He gave her a sympathetic smile. “It wasn't your fault.”

It would be easy to accept his mistake, but it wouldn't be right.

“I'm pretty sure it was me,” she said. “I yelled at the cow and flapped my hat in her face.”

Dad gave an astonished laugh, which did not sound amused. “That'd do it, all right.”

As they rode, Sam waited for Dad to say something else. Up ahead, Ross tucked his bandanna inside his slicker, as if the sight of its ends blowing in the wind could spook the cattle. Sam did the same.

“No harm done, this time.” Dad's sober look said there'd better not be a next time. “No legs broken or calves lost, far as I can tell.”

“I'll stop being so sensitive,” Sam said.

Dad nodded. “Good. They don't joke with folks they don't like. They just ignore them.”

Sam wondered if Dad was referring to Slocum, whose own cowboys rarely spoke to him.

“I'm sending a couple riders forward to the chuck wagon to help your grandmother set up camp,” Dad
continued. “In this wind, the tents will be more than one person can handle. We'll need to trench around them, too, so rain doesn't flood us out of our beds. Do you want to go?”

Dad was offering her a chance to escape. Unlike the cowboys, Gram wouldn't fix her with eyes that accused her of causing extra work. On the other hand, riding away seemed a lot like surrender.

“Not unless you need me to go,” Sam said. “I'll probably be living this down 'til I'm fifty years old, right?”

“Possible,” Dad said. “But there's always a chance they'll forget. You might save Flick when he's treed by a grizzly.”

Sam savored the image a minute, then cocked her head to see her father's face under his hat's broad brim. “There aren't any grizzlies around here,” Sam said.

“You're learning.” He laughed, then squinted toward a rider coming up from behind the herd.

As he drew close, Sam saw Pepper's dun horse was black with exertion.

“Boss,” Pepper said, a little breathless himself, “we got some trouble.”

 

Dad sent the herd on with the other hands, but Jake accompanied Sam and Dad as Pepper led them to the trouble.

A tiny calf was trapped in a mire of quicksand.
His bleating had turned gruff, as if he had a sore throat from calling his mother.

“Where's your mama, little guy?” Dad's voice was gentle, but he kept his distance. “Sam, stay back.” Dad held out his arm as if stopping traffic. “This crust is thin.”

Lunging to escape the quicksand, the calf had cleared an area big as a bathtub. If his struggles had done that, the desert floor certainly wouldn't hold a horse.

Dad's rope whirred through the air and settled. The lariat looked huge around the calf's neck.

“Better make this quick,” Dad said, then spurred Banjo into a jump forward.

Instead of letting himself be dragged free, the calf tried to swim. His flailing forelegs broke through the crust again and again.

Dad backed Banjo and let the rope go slack.

“If I could get a loop past his front legs, around his whole front end, he'd slide right out,” Dad said.

But that wasn't going to happen. They could all see that.

Weak with fatigue, the calf gave a cranky bawl, then pillowed his head on the quicksand, sinking until his neck and the rope were submerged.

Jake rode a wide circle around the calf. “It's not like a mom to walk away, unless she thought he was—” Jake shrugged.

Dead.
Sam gazed at the calf's closed eyelids and
white eyelashes. The little animal was helpless.

Both Jake and Dad looked as if they'd given up hope. She knew orphan calves required lots of time and trouble. Sam also knew the whole summer stretched ahead of her. She could help.

“If we can get him out, I'll bottle-feed him,” Sam offered.

Dad gave her a sad smile. “Even then, he couldn't keep up with the herd.”

“I'll carry him across my saddle.”

“Honey, sometimes you lose one. It's hard, but you'll come to grips with it, living out here.”

Looking thoughtful, but a little hesitant to offer advice to his boss, Pepper said, “I know what we'd do if he'd fallen through the ice.”

Sam's pulse pounded fast. Years of cold had made Pepper leave northern Idaho. She'd bet he knew all about ice rescues.

“Go ahead,” Dad encouraged him.

“The lightest one of us goes flat on the ice, or the crust, I guess, and kind of wiggles toward the opening. The idea is to keep the weight distributed over as broad an area as possible. You can't do that on a horse, or walking, but spread-eagled on your belly, it works.” Pepper looked away from the calf to Sam. “We'd probably want a rope around her waist, just in case.”

Her
waist. Sam waited for Dad to protest that the scheme was too dangerous. When he didn't, she felt a little dizzy.

“Then,” Pepper continued, “she'd get a good grip on the calf and we'd pull 'em out.”

Dusk and rain clouds grayed the desert all around. The quicksand looked thick and clammy. A coyote called, trying to gather friends to go hunting. Sam shivered at the lonely sound.

“Let's do it,” Sam said.

Trying to look confident, she dismounted and tossed Ace's reins toward Jake.

He caught them, but flashed a questioning look at her dad. “Wyatt?”

It was the first time she'd heard Jake address Dad by his first name. Some man-to-man protectiveness in Jake's tone irritated Sam.

“It's up to Sam,” Dad said.

Sam liked being her own boss. For the last year, she'd argued with Aunt Sue over whether she was mature enough to make her own decisions. Right this minute, though, she wished Dad had taken charge.

“Shoot, he's half-dead already.” Jake sounded disgusted, but he looked troubled. And paler than she'd ever seen him. “There's no branded mama around. Why, there's no telling if he's even a River Bend calf. He could be Slocum's.”

“Of course, I'll do it.” Sam warmed her palms against the front of her jeans. Jake's worry actually made her feel stronger.

“You're not going to let me drown,” she explained
to Jake. “And the calf's not going to hurt me. I'm going to hold onto that baby so tight that even if you have to drag me to San Francisco, he won't get loose.”

Jake looked away, fed up with her.

Within five minutes, Dad's rope was tight around her waist and Sam lay on the surprisingly warm desert floor. She inched her way toward the calf. He was wide awake, now, and bucking out of her reach.

“It's okay little guy. I won't hurt you.”

Sam was dimly aware of the men barking advice, but her world had narrowed to the calf bawling and bucking in front of her.

“How about some nice warm milk,” she crooned.

The calf's ears fluttered her way. Then she pounced.

Now.
She hunched her shoulders forward. Keeping her legs still, Sam plunged her arms through the quicksand. It felt like cold oatmeal. She caught the calf in a bear hug.

Maaaaa, maaaaa.

She could swear the calf called for his mother, but Sam held tight. His front legs tap-danced against her chest. The rope jerked her middle up, then they began to slide backward. Fast.

And then she stopped.

“You can let go. Sam, let go!” Jake squatted beside her, prying loose the arms she'd locked around the calf.

By the time Sam wriggled free of Dad's rope, she noticed Jake had a smear of blood on his cheek.

“What happened?” she asked.

“Your little buddy butted him in the nose,” Dad said. He gathered his rope in, fastening it in a loop on his saddle.

Sam felt happy. She felt shaky. And when Pepper helped her balance the calf across her saddle to ride back into camp, she felt proud.

 

That night, Sam shrugged off the cowboys' jokes about the stampede. She was too busy trying to save the calf's life.

For a while the calf remained limp, then thrashed and fought as Sam introduced the bottle Gram had fixed.

“Come on, little guy,” Sam grunted.

She knew Pepper had stopped to watch her, but she didn't look up, even when he said, “Maybe she's mad 'cause you're calling her a guy. That little critter's a female.”

Sam didn't care. She only knew that for an animal no bigger than a dog, the calf was incredibly strong. The red rope-burn around Sam's waist stung as she tried to drip milk past the calf's tightly shut pink lips. By the time the calf figured out she wanted the milk, Sam's arm muscles had stretched like rubber bands and her hands trembled.

Once the calf fell asleep beside her, Sam slurped down the soup Gram made her eat. She sighed, feeling better, and looked around. The campfire crackled orange and bright against the darkness. Except for Gram, she was alone.

“Time for bed.” Gram untied her apron and yawned.

“I can't leave her,” Sam said. “Can I sleep out here?”

“It's not good for either one of you, but your dad already said you could.” Gram tsked her tongue. “You'll probably get sick, but we're almost home. You'll be sleeping in your own bed tomorrow night.”

Gram was doing a good job of talking herself into it, so Sam didn't say a word except “thank you” when Gram brought out her sleeping bag.

The calf lay beside Sam, exhausted. Her thin eyelids twitched. What did calves dream of?

Sam knew that if she dozed, she'd dream of the Phantom.

Today she'd had a rope around her middle. Through her clothes, it had sawed a sore abrasion, even though Dad had been quick and gentle. She thought of the Phantom, caught by a rope and that barrel of cement. There'd been no worry over his suffering and pain.

Now Slocum was after him again.

Sam stroked the calf's fur and tried to think of
something else. The little animal had grown used to her touch so quickly, she didn't even wake.

Sam stared into the satiny orange flames of the campfire. She thought back to how Pepper had suggested her for a dangerous job and Dad had let her make up her own mind. Sam looked down at her hands and wondered if she'd ever get the dirt out from under her fingernails.

She hadn't seen Jake since they'd returned to camp. She remembered his gentle firmness, removing her arms from the calf's neck. There'd been a smear of blood on Jake's cheek.

What was it Dad had said? Oh yeah,
Your little buddy butted him in the nose.

Sam petted the calf some more. “How about if I name you Buddy? I don't see why it couldn't be a girl's name, do you?”

Since the calf made no protest, Sam settled down to rest. The tendons holding her head up relaxed.

She was almost asleep when she heard a disturbance at the corral. Hooves churned and horses nickered in greeting.

At the edge of the firelight, a rider appeared.

Slocum slumped on the brown Thoroughbred, looking around. Sam was pretty sure he didn't see her, there in the shadow of the chuck wagon. Sam didn't move, didn't say a word.

Slocum had returned empty-handed.

Sam felt a quick surge of pleasure, until Slocum
hauled on his reins, turning the Thoroughbred. In the firelight, Sam saw dried foam around the horse's bit. Behind his cinch, long bloody gouges had been raked by Slocum's spurs.