Renegade Father (10 page)

“Why didn't you go with them?”

Patch spat a wad of chew on the ground. “Annie won't let me ride until next week. She's been talking to the doc again.”

His hip must be bothering him again, Joe realized with a guilty pang. It was the only reason Annie would have made the old cowboy stay behind while they looked for strays.

He should have been paying more attention. Maggie—Colt's physician wife who had a family practice in Ennis—wanted the old cowboy to see a specialist about a hip replacement. But he was being as stubborn as a one-eyed donkey about it.

Joe should have noticed. It was his
job
to notice. Maybe if he hadn't been so damn distracted by that fateful kiss the other day he might have seen something besides his own problems.

“You need to listen to her,” he said now.

“Which one? Annie or the doc?”

“Both of them. You know they're both just trying to look out for you. They both care about you and just want to help.”

Patch spat again. “Let me give you a little advice, son. Don't go gettin' old. And if you do, try not to do it around a couple of busybodies like those two.”

Joe laughed, but before he could answer, Annie's col
lie came trotting around the side of the barn. She gave two short barks in greeting, her tail wagging happily.

“Where have you been?” Joe asked. “Up to more trouble?”

The dog barked again as if agreeing with him and Joe smiled, happy to see her this energetic. Dolly was almost completely recovered from her slug bait ordeal but she still tired easily and spent much of her time indoors.

Now she sidled up to Patch flirtatiously and nuzzled the old cowboy's leg. Patch patted her head absently. “Miz Annie won't let you go along either, will she, girl? We both have to stay here together like a couple of lumps and do nothing all day.”

“You can keep each other company.”

Patch rolled his eyes at that, then gave the dog another pat. “Any news from the sheriff about who might have given her that slug bait?”

Joe shook his head. The day after the poisoning, they found a half-eaten package of doctored hamburger inside the tack room. Given that evidence, Annie had gone to the sheriff but so far John Douglas had no leads. The whole thing scared him to death.

“Fella ought to be strung up,” Patch muttered darkly. “Who'd want to do such a thing?”

“I don't know,” Joe answered. He didn't want to think about it. Between worrying over the dog and stressing over that kiss, he hadn't slept much the last week.

“If you ask me, which nobody ever does, it sounds like just the sort of thing her sumbitch of an ex-husband might have done.”

The old cowboy suddenly flushed crimson above his white handlebar, slow to the realization that Annie's
sumbitch ex-husband just happened to be the foreman's brother. “Sorry.”

Joe sighed. Did Patch really think he cared what anyone had to say about his brother? “You won't find me defending Charlie to you or to anyone else, Patch. You ought to know that by now.”

“I suppose not. Hard to even remember sometimes the two of you are blood.”

Not to him. He remembered it every damn time he looked at Annie and thought about kissing her, touching her. He had no right. Not when he was just another no-good Redhawk.

“Guess I'd better get going. The kids will be home from school soon. Wouldn't like 'em to come back to an empty house.”

Another pang of guilt hit him while he watched the old cowboy carefully hobble toward the house. It was his job to watch out for his men and he had been so preoccupied with his own life that he'd completely missed the signs that Patch's hip was acting up again.

Annie always saw things like that. What she went through with Charlie would have made many women more self-absorbed, more protective of their own feelings. But not Annie. She showed as much compassion and empathy as she always had.

Maybe even more. Even with running a big operation like the Double C, with all the headaches and stress that entailed, she still found time to watch out for those around her.

She'd always been that way, even when she was a little girl. She had always had this sweet, giving spirit that drew people to her.

When he was a kid and things were particularly bad
at home, he used to be lured toward her like she was the only calm port in a world fierce with storms.

Sometimes in the middle of the night whenever Al was on a rampage or he was hurting too bad to sleep, Joe would climb out the window and take off on one of the Broken Spur horses. He wouldn't even bother to saddle it, would just ride the mile and a half between the two ranches, not sure why he was doing it, just knowing he had to.

He would ride as far as the edge of the south pasture, then walk up the rest of the way and sit propped against the tree outside her window, his spirit calmed in some way he couldn't explain just by knowing she was near.

Sometimes he would even sleep there, with the chirp of crickets to lull him and the warm night air surrounding him like a blanket. But he would always awake in time to ride back to the Double C before anyone figured out he was gone.

The memory made him flush. What kind of stupid kid rides out in the middle of the night just to sit and gaze up at a girl's window?

She would have completely freaked out if she'd known. No, he amended the thought. Maybe her dad would have, since he'd made no secret of the fact he disapproved of any friendship between his daughter and a big, dumb Shoshone, but not Annie.

If she had known about his midnight visits, she would have welcomed him inside, would have held him close and wept silent tears for him. And she would have tried her damnedest to do everything she could think of to make him feel better.

But he hadn't let her. He couldn't let her.

He gave a mental shake to push away the memory. He had work to do, work that wasn't getting done while
he stood here rehashing a past that couldn't be changed. He turned to go back into the barn when the low growl of an engine sounded in the clear, cold air.

He glanced toward the sound and thought he saw a flash of silver in the trees about a quarter-mile up the mountain, just at the mouth of the High Lonesome trail.

Damn snowmobilers. He frowned. The mystery of the wandering cattle suddenly became not so curious at all. They spent half the winter replacing fences knocked down by snowmobilers who wandered off national forest land onto the Double C.

Most of them were responsible and truly didn't realize they were on private property, but a small percentage ignored No Trespassing signs, determined to go anywhere they felt they had a right to go and plenty of places they didn't.

Someone who wanted to cause trouble on the Double C could easily access the house by snowmobile.

The thought set him back on his heels. Why hadn't he thought of that before? One of the most puzzling things about Dolly's poisoning was how someone had accessed the ranch without anybody seeing a strange vehicle from the road.

But if somebody rode a snowmobile in and left it on the other side of the creek to hide the telltale engine sounds, he could have walked the rest of the way to the barn, done whatever mischief he set his mind to, then rode away without anybody being the wiser.

Even if somebody saw the tracks in the snow, they wouldn't be suspicious, would just assume the tracks were made by one of the Double C snowmobiles.

That mysterious snowmobiler was probably just somebody out for a pleasure ride. But he didn't like the
fact that it was heading toward the same area where Annie and the boy were hunting strays.

He would just check it out. If nothing else, he could help the two of them bring down the stray cattle and make sure Luke Mitchell didn't fall off the mountainside in the process.

“T
hat's it. That's it. Almost there. Darn!”

As the loop of the lariat landed with a splash in the icy water yet again, Annie blew out a frustrated breath. At the end of her patience, she held a hand out for the rope Luke was ineptly trying to swing. “Why don't you let me have a go at it?”

Luke held tight to the rope, exactly like C.J. used to do when she was trying to help him tie his shoes. “I can do it,” he muttered. “I just need a minute.”

While you're here monkeying around, the cow is going to drown or freeze to death out there.
She clamped her teeth against the words, knowing they wouldn't accomplish anything but hurt a young man's pride.

A low, frightened cry bounced off the snow-covered pine trees as the Hereford struggling to keep her head above water in the frigid, ice-choked depths of tiny Butterfly Lake. Her calf—the same one Annie had deliv
ered the month before, if she wasn't mistaken—bawled piteously in answer from the shoreline.

Poor little cow. They'd come upon her five minutes ago, already weak and terrified as she tried to escape her grim, icy fate.

She must have wandered out onto the frozen lake after making her escape through the broken fence, Annie guessed, although for the life of her she couldn't figure out what might have compelled the stupid animal to do such a thing, especially considering there wasn't a single thing edible for a mile in either direction.

Annie had no idea how long the cow had been out there but she could see the animal's efforts to escape becoming more frantic with every passing second. If they didn't hurry, they would lose her.

With agonizingly slow movements, Luke twirled the rope above his head again. She waited, breath held and nerves twitching, while he let the loop out bigger and bigger, then finally threw it.

It hooked one of the cow's horns this time and she thought it might go all the way over her head. But at the last moment it slipped free, taking the rest of Annie's patience with it.

She held out her hand again. “Okay. My turn.”

“I can do it,” Luke said testily.

“Give me the damn rope,” she growled, past caring about his pride.

Luke set his jaw obstinately and she was afraid for a minute she would have to wrestle it away from him, but he finally surrendered it.

She gripped the lariat in her gloved hand. Now what was she supposed to do? She didn't know if she was any better than Luke with a rope, but she refused to
stand here twiddling her thumbs while she watched an animal of hers die.

She had a fierce wish that Joe and Colt were there to help. Joe had an uncanny knack for calming even the most fractious of animals and Colt could rope anything that moved. Between the two of them, they would have had the cow out in moments.

But they weren't there. She was. She owned the Double C and she was responsible for everything on it. She couldn't go on using them as her crutch anymore, especially not with Joe leaving.

If she could do this, could achieve what seemed like the impossible, she could do anything. The seductive thought whispered into her mind and she straightened. She could finally prove to herself she was capable of even the most challenging of tasks.

The floundering cow suddenly took on much more significance. Rescuing her suddenly seemed to represent everything about ranch life she found so difficult.

She gazed out at the thrashing cow, beginning to tire now amid the huge chunks of ice all around. She could get her out. She
would,
even if it killed her.

Just a figure of speech,
she assured herself.
Nobody needs to get hurt here.
Not if she was careful.

She would have a better chance of roping the cow if she were closer to her. Thinking quickly, she raced to Rio and pulled the big gelding over to the shoreline, then tied one end of the rope to the horse's saddle horn before heading back toward the shore.

“What are you doing?” Luke asked, his voice shocked, when she didn't stop at the edge of the ice.

She was too busy testing the strength of the ice to pay him any attention. “I'm going out there. I'll have a better chance of roping her if I'm not so far away.”

“No way!”

At his panicked vehemence, she glanced at him and saw that he seemed to have paled several shades. He looked completely aghast at the idea and she felt a moment's misgiving, but she quickly squelched it.

“Just stay here with Rio. When I say the word, he can pull the cow far enough for her to find purchase.”

“No! Absolutely not.” He came and stood in front of her, blocking her access to the water. “It's just a damn heifer. Not worth your life.”

“Yeah, but it's
my
damn heifer. And besides, nothing's going to happen to me.”

“If
she
can fall through the ice,
you
can fall through the ice.”

“She weighs a few pounds more than I do,” Annie pointed out dryly. “The ice didn't hold her but that doesn't mean it won't hold me. Anyway, I have to try. Now get out of my way.”

He didn't budge. “No. You'll have to get by me first.”

He sounded like a character in one of those bad spaghetti westerns her dad used to watch. She sighed, hating the idea of pulling rank on him. But she'd rather do that than stand here helplessly while an animal suffered and died in front her.

“If you want a job tomorrow,” she finally said quietly, “you'll get out of my way now.”

He paused, his hands clenched tightly and his breathing huffing as hard as if he'd just run a marathon, then he stepped away, impotent fury in his gaze. “Fine. Don't blame me if you die out there.”

She bit her lip, fighting a sudden, hysterical urge to laugh. “I won't, I swear. If I die, you'll be the last one I blame.”

In an effort to distribute her weight, she dropped to her stomach on the ice, feeling the cold seep through her heavy layers of clothing. With the rope tightly in her hand, she slowly, carefully, commando-crawled the twenty feet toward where the cow had crashed into the water, praying all the way that the ice would hold.

She had to be crazy. Luke was right, it was just one cow. She had hundreds more.

But she had given up too many times before. After the first few years of her marriage, she had grown so tired of fighting that she had eventually just quietly surrendered. Her will, her self-respect, her spirit.

She wouldn't do it again.

With fresh determination, she inched the final few feet to the cow, her heart pounding thick and fast in her chest and her senses heightened by adrenaline.

Pitching and thrashing, the animal bawled in terror and rolled her eyes back in her head.

“Easy now,” Annie crooned softly. “That's the way. Take it easy, sweetheart.”

She studied the situation and the best way to reach her objective. She couldn't throw the rope from down here on her stomach but she hesitated to stand and put her weight all in one spot.

She decided she could risk being on her knees. It was awkward looping the lariat from down here but she tried to remember everything Colt and Joe had ever taught her about using a rope.

Her first throw missed the cow completely but she forced herself to patiently coil the rope again and start all over. This time her meticulous efforts were rewarded. This second attempt was textbook perfect, sailing square over the Hereford's horns, and she pulled the rope taut.

“Yes!” Luke yelled from the shore, his huff apparently forgotten, and Annie grinned at him over her shoulder. She wanted to jump up and perform a little victory dance but decided it probably wouldn't be the wisest thing in the world when she was literally on thin ice.

“Should I back him up now?” Luke called from Rio's side.

“Not yet. Wait until I'm out of the way.”

She dropped to her stomach again and started to crawl back the way she had come, feeling inordinately proud of herself. She had done it. She had actually done it!

But when she was still only halfway to shore, that pride turned to alarm. She heard a huge crash behind her and whipped her head around just in time to see the cow lunge through the ice, using the extra leverage afforded her by the rope in her panic to be free of the water.

Annie tried to slide out of the way but she wasn't fast enough. She felt the ice shudder, heard an ominous crack, and the next thing she knew, she was in the water.

Cold.

Breath-stealing, mind-numbing cold.

The water wasn't deep here, probably only about six feet, but it was still over her head.

The layers of heavy clothing that had seemed so comforting earlier in the day now acted as an anchor, pulling her down, down, and for one panicked second she couldn't move, tangled amid her coat and sweater and shirt. Then, with a mighty heave, she fought her way back to the surface.

She came up gasping and choking, conscious only of
the cold freezing her muscles and snatching away any air she could force into her lungs.

She was going to die here, in this frigid water. She was going to lose everything important to her—C.J. and Leah, the ranch, Joe—because of one stupid cow.

Not if she could help it. She gripped the edge of the ice so she wouldn't go down again and hung on with all her might.

“Annie?” Luke called. “Can you hear me?”

She tried to answer him but couldn't draw enough air in to her tortured lungs to make her vocal cords work so she just nodded her head, hoping he could see her.

“I've got the rope here. I took it off the cow and now I'm gonna try to toss it to you. Can you catch it?”

She nodded again, then waited while he looped it over his head and tossed it. This time, he did what he hadn't been able to do in a dozen tries with the cow and managed to throw where he was aiming, just inches away from her.

She reached for it and tried to twist her hands around it but her fingers were numb, unwieldy, and she couldn't hang on.

Tears of frustration welled up in her eyes when the rope slipped out of her hands.

“Come on, Miz Annie.” Luke called, sounding on the verge of tears himself. “Come on. You can do it.”

She tried. She really tried. Through three more tosses of the lariat she would catch hold of the rope but couldn't keep her fingers around it enough for Luke to pull her out of the water.

She had probably been in the water only a few moments but it felt like hours. Days. By the fifth throw, her muscles had gone rigid, uncooperative, and she felt her vision dim around the edges.

Just when she was beginning to think it wouldn't be so terrible to just slide into the icy depths, a miracle burst through the trees.

 

He loved it up here in the winter.

This corner of Montana was beautiful throughout every season but Joe had always found a special peace and solitude up here in wintertime, when the mountain slept and the only sounds came from the wind mourning through the pines and the high cry of a hawk soaring the air currents along the high ridgeline.

Quixote picked his way carefully through the snow, following the trail forged by a snowmobile—maybe even the very one he'd seen from the ranch. Joe could also see that two horses had come this way sometime after the snowmobiler, judging by the way the tread pattern had been disturbed by horse hooves.

Not that he was a tracking expert. That was just a stereotype. Folks tended to think just because he had Native American blood he automatically possessed some magical, mystical gift that allowed him to read trail sign. The funny thing was, everything he knew about nature and his place in it he'd picked up from Bill McKendrick, Colt's father.

He laughed to himself at the irony just as he breached the top of the mountain. Through the trees, he could see the snow-covered Butterfly Lake, nestled in a bowl-shaped cirque on the mountain exactly halfway between the Double C and the Broken Spur.

Most of his best memories were connected to this place somehow. He and Colt and Annie had considered it their own private domain, although technically it was part of the surrounding national forest. The three of them spent hours up here, fishing, cooking foil-wrapped
hobo dinners over a fire, and camping—minus Annie, usually, since her dad wouldn't allow it.

He remembered she had defied her father and come with them only once, the summer she was eleven. She had snuck away from the Double C and spent the whole evening jittery and anxious, watching the trail for any sign of her father. Probably hadn't enjoyed a minute of it.

He asked her the next day how hard her whipping had been. To his astonishment, she shook her head and said she hadn't gotten a whipping. Her father had only told her he was disappointed in her.

At the time, Joe couldn't believe any father could be so lenient. He thought she must be the luckiest kid in the world. If it had been Albert Redhawk doling out the punishments, she wouldn't have been able to sit down for at least a couple of weeks.

But now he could see that Samuel Calhoun's brand of punishment left just as many scars. He had
always
been disappointed in Annie and she had spent her whole life trying to change that.

Qui started down the other side of the steep trail. Joe was careful to keep the horse to the inside of the trail, as far as he could get from the steep drop-off. He knew that the slightest misstep could send both horse and rider hurtling over the edge.

He was so busy watching the snowy trail that he didn't see the drama unfolding below him until he was almost halfway down. Through a break in the trees, he scanned the little valley and saw a heifer floundering to break free of the ice.

Annie and Luke were on the shore of the lake, and from here they appeared to be arguing about something.

He saw her toss her red head—and had just a moment
to wonder where her blasted hat was—then he saw her grab something from Luke. He sat forward in the saddle trying to get a better look just as Annie pushed her way past the ranch hand and headed toward the ice.