Wyoming Woman

“Your call, Miss Rachel Tolliver,” he growled, making no further move to touch her. “You can ask for my help, or I can ride off and leave you here alone with your spilled baggage. Either way, it’s up to you. I don’t give a damn what you decide.”

He glanced down at the dog, which had moved to stand protectively at his side. At a slight motion of its master’s hand and a spoken command that was no more than a whisper, the animal wheeled and raced up the side of the wash in the direction of the sheep.

Rachel flinched as the first raindrop splashed against the end of her nose. With a clatter that began like pearls falling from a broken string and grew to a solid rush of pelting rain, the storm swept down from the mountains to engulf everything in its path. Rain peppered the sand in the wash and blasted the dust from the buggy’s shiny black body. Rachel felt its weight soaking her hair, its wet chill penetrating layers of clothing to reach her skin.

“Well, which will it be?” Water streamed off the sheep man’s hair and beaded on his eyebrows, but he had not moved from where he stood. “Make up your mind, Miss Tolliver. I haven’t got all day.”

“All right. Yes, I need your help!” Rachel had lived too long in this country not to know what would happen to anything that remained in the wash. “Please! Hurry! The important things—my paints and canvases—are in the back! And we really need to get the buggy out. Otherwise my father will have to pay Finnegan’s Livery for the loss of it.”

“There’s a rope on my saddle. I’ll get the horse.” He turned away and strode up the side of the wash, his boots leaving muddy gouges that swiftly filled with water and crumbled away. Rachel watched his tall figure disappear through the gray curtain of rain. Then, with no more time to spare, she turned and raced to gather her scattered, soaking possessions.

Luke left her scrambling for her things and strode back through the brush to get the horse. Morgan Tolliver’s daughter. He cursed under his breath. For two cents he would ride away and leave the little hellcat to the storm. He owed no favors to cattle ranchers and their kin, nor did he expect any in return. All he really wanted was to be left alone.

The buckskin was waiting beside the cedar bush. It nickered and shook its rain-soaked hide as he freed its bridle from the dead branch. A quick glance up the slope confirmed that Mick and Shep, the two collies, were doing their job, herding the sheep into a tight circle where the lambs would be protected from the worst of the storm. The precious animals would be safe enough until he could pull the buggy out of the wash and, he hoped to heaven, get the snooty Miss Tolliver on her way. She was a wild beauty, with those sea-colored eyes, that untamed mop of red-gold curls and a figure that would tempt the devil himself. But a cattleman’s daughter… Luke shook his head and swore as he led the horse toward the wash. Her kind of trouble was the last thing he needed.

The Tolliver Ranch was the biggest spread in the county, and likely one of the biggest in the state of Wyoming. A remote corner of it butted onto Luke’s modest parcel of land at the foot of the Big Horn Mountains. Luke had only a passing acquaintance with the ranch’s owner. But a cattleman was a cattleman, and if there was anything the cattle ranchers hated more than sheep it was the men who allowed them to graze on public land.

Had Morgan Tolliver and his twin sons been among the raiders that had nearly burned poor old Miguel alive in his wagon and then beat him sense less? Had a Tolliver gun shot the three purebred ewes that were the best of Luke’s herd—the herd he had labored for five miserable, backbreaking years in the Rock Springs coal mines to buy?

The answer to those questions made no difference. Luke had nothing that would stand as proof against the Tollivers and their kind. Even if he were to find such proof, there’d be nothing he could do except sell out and run for his life. And he would die, Luke swore, before he let the bastards drive him off his land.

Through the pelting rain, he could see the edge of the wash and the water-soaked heap that Morgan Tolliver’s daughter had made of her rescued baggage. Hauling the buggy out of the wash would be a tough job. And even if they could salvage it, how was she going to get home with no mule to pull it? He would be stuck with her.

For the space of a breath, Luke hesitated. Why should he be helping the woman at all? Rachel Tolliver had held a gun on him, accused him of thievery and, in general, behaved like the spoiled brat she was. It would serve her right, maybe even teach her a lesson, if he rode off and left her on her own. Surely she would not be alone for long. Her family was bound to miss her and come looking for her.

But no—the image of Rachel shivering in the rain like a lost puppy was more than his conscience could bear. It had been a long time since he’d considered himself a gentleman, but he had not sunk so far that he would ride away and leave a woman in a dangerous situation.

He found her hunkered beside the buggy, digging around one mired wheel with a twisted sage root. Her hair hung around her face in dripping, curly strings, and her once-elegant blue suit was soaked with muddy water. She looked up in ill-disguised relief as Luke slogged his way down the bank with a coil of rope.

“I thought you’d turned tail and left,” she said, raising her voice to be heard above the rain.

Ignoring the taunt, Luke found the middle of the rope and looped it around the rear axle of the buggy to make a tight slipknot.

Still kneeling, she glared up at him. Her eyes flashed like a tiger’s through the dripping tendrils of her hair. “No lectures, sheep man. Just get the buggy out of the wash. I’ll see that you’re paid for your time.”

Rankled, Luke shot her a contemptuous glance. “My name is Luke Vincente. And I don’t want your money—or your father’s.”

She scrambled to her feet, her wet jacket outlining her small, high breasts and cold-puckered nipples. “I think you’re too proud for your own good,” she said, a scowl deepening the cleft in her determined chin. “But then, since the accident was mostly your fault, I shouldn’t expect to pay you for helping me.”

“My fault?” He glared at her.

“Well the problem with the brake wasn’t your fault. I suppose Mr. Finnegan at the livery should take the blame for that, since he should have fixed it. But as for the rest—”

“The brake?” He stared at her. “You mean you were ripping down that hill with no way to stop?”

She flashed him a withering look. “I would have been fine. Everything was under control, and I was planning to coast to a stop at the bottom. Unfortunately, your stupid sheep—” Her muddy fists clenched into knots. “Don’t think you’re doing me any favors, Luke Vincente. This mess is your fault, not mine. You owe me—”

“Then let’s get this over with,” he snapped, playing out the rope as he moved up the bank to the waiting horse. “The job’s going to take both of us. You can guide the horse, or you can stay in the wash and try to free the wheels. It’s up to you.”

She gazed up at the buckskin, her eyes slitted against the driving rain. “He’s your horse. You’ll get more out of him than I will. I’ll stay with the buggy.”

“Suit yourself.” Luke had hoped she would leave him to free the wheels, but he was in no mood to argue. Not with the rain coming down harder by the minute. As he mounted the bank of the wash, he saw that she had found her digging stick and was scraping away the sand that trapped the left front wheel. A cattleman’s spoiled brat she might be. But Rachel Tolliver had grit. He would credit her that much.

Tying the rope to the saddle horn, he swung onto the buckskin. Lightning snaked across the sky. “Get to the front,” he shouted. “When I say push, give it everything you’ve got.”

The only reply was a shattering crack of thunder. The horse danced nervously, tossing its head.

“Rachel?” He held his breath. An eternity seemed to pass before he heard her speak.

“I’m ready when you are.” Her voice sounded thin and distant.

“Then…push!” He jabbed the horse with his knees. The buckskin was a powerful animal and the buggy wasn’t heavy. One good, hard pull should be enough to break it loose, he calculated as the doubled rope strained tight.

But Luke hadn’t counted on the sucking grip of the sand on the front wheels. He was just beginning to feel some give when he heard Rachel scream, “Stop!”

Only then did he realize what was happening. The front wheels were so firmly stuck that the pull of the horse was threatening to rip them loose from the axle.

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.”

Chapter Three

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?”