The Cedar Tree (Love Is Not Enough) (7 page)

"Hey," he said, finally, "who's the good lookin' Indian girl with the kid at church?"

Dave eyed him, his clear hazel eyes suddenly wary. "Annie?"

"What's the deal with her?"

Color rose in Dave's face, but he shrugged. "She's kind of friends with Katie…much as she can be friends with anybody, I guess. Lives with her grandma on the old Meyers place a few miles from us."

"She married?"

"No. She was…er…lookin' for Jonas when she came to live with her grandma."

He grinned, amused at Dave's virginal hesitation to say the word pregnant. "Did she find him?"

"Yeah." Dave grinned sheepishly. He lifted his grey hat and ran his fingers through honey colored hair. "Annie's different. Special."

He eyed the younger man. Did Dave know Annie was special to his older brother, too?

Dave replaced his hat, avoiding his gaze. "I don't think you'll have much luck with her."

"Hey. Not me. I always stay away from kids," he said, pulling a face. "If you date a girl with a kid, you always come second. I like your sister though."

Dave stared at him then gave a shout of laughter. He glanced over his shoulder at Katie. "Yeah, well, good luck with that."

He looked back at her, too, and grinned…he felt lucky.

The road continued to climb. The cattle settled into a slow pace, the edge of exuberance from earlier in the morning gone, leaving the riders with little to do except trail along with them. He scanned the fields on his left, giving way to slopes of cedar and oak brush, and then to the vast expanses of quaking aspens and pines of the high country. Bare peaks formed the north boundary of the valley, some showing traces of snow and standing out of the skirt of forest like jags of broken teeth.

"Man, I love this," he said almost to himself. "I don't ever wanna do anything else."

His gaze on the peaks, Dave didn't smile. He breathed deeply, his wiry body tense with fierce satisfaction. "Yeah, me, too." He didn't need to say anything else.

Seven miles up the mountain, not quite the halfway point, they penned the cattle in a roadside corral built for resting the herds trailing to summer pasture. He dismounted and loosened Lucky's cinches then slipped off the bridle, hanging it over the saddle horn. Haltering the big horse in the shade of a cedar tree, he glanced around for Katie.

She strained to lift an ice chest from the back of her father's pickup.

He wiped the wad of chew from his lip and headed for her. "Let me get that."

"I've got it." With a final heave of her slight body, she lifted the heavy chest over the edge of the pickup bed and staggered away toward a cedar tree.

He stepped in front of her, reaching for the handles. "You're a stubborn little thing." 

She frowned at him. "You're a thick-headed thing."

Her hands under his provoked the same sense of complete awareness and slight bewilderment they had a few days before.

"We should be pretty near even, then," he said. "Let go."

A deep flush began at the neck of her tee shirt and then burned her cheeks. "I told you I've already got a boyfriend," she snapped.

He raised his brows in mock surprise. "What's that got to do with me carryin' this ice chest for you?"

"You know what." 

"No, I don't. Let go."

She glared for a moment. Then, suddenly and completely, she released her hold. The heavy chest fell on his feet, spilling out its contents—cans of soda, sandwiches, and a container of cookies—on his boots.

"There you go," she said over her shoulder as she walked away. "You can put it under that tree."

***

After the noon stop, the cattle moved higher up the mountain on the road winding through oak brush covered hills above the eight thousand foot elevation. The sun burned hot. Tired and thirsty, the cattle continuously sought to break for the grass and shade under the brush, or for the creek, now a raging torrent at the bottom of a steep gorge.

The leisurely ride of earlier had turned into work. Gil and the others labored to keep the cattle moving on the road. Yelling and whistling, they raced after cows and calves breaking from the herd, dodging an occasional charge from one of the snorting, cold-eyed bulls.

As he worked, he puzzled over Katie's continued hostility toward him. Was it just because he'd killed her dog? She couldn't really be serious about the skinny guy at church. But maybe she was. No other girl had ever been so resistant to his efforts, let alone dumping an ice chest on his two-hundred dollar boots.

Two miles beneath the big reservoir that supplied irrigation water to the ranches in the valley, a shout reached him. He turned. Katie's red tee shirt made a splash of color as she pushed through the cattle toward him on foot, her eyes wide with panic. He urged Lucky toward her.

"What's wrong?" he asked sharply.

"Dave went over the edge," she gasped, her face flushed and sweating. "Where's your gramps?"

"He's at the front."

She started to push past him.

He reached down, loosening his boot from the stirrup. "Get up behind me."

She hesitated for only an instant then reached for his hand. Stepping on his boot, she swung up behind him on Lucky.

"Hang on."

She held his belt then grabbed for his middle as he spurred the big horse, scattering the cattle in front of him. They encountered Karl first.

"Dave went over the edge," Katie yelled at him. "Dad needs some help."

Instant comprehension drained the color from Karl's sunburned face and he wheeled his horse, spurring him to a run.

He pushed Lucky through the cattle then rounded a bend in the road behind his grandfather. "Dave's gone over the edge back there," he bellowed over the constant bawling of the cattle. "Jon needs some help."

An expression of dread passed across the old man's face and he turned Shorty and headed down the road at a stiff legged trot.

Tim shoved through the livestock toward them. "What's wrong?" he yelled.

"Dave's gone over the edge back there." He twisted toward Katie. "Do I need to go back, too?"

Her hands on his belt trembled. Fear strained her face. "Dad said we need to take the cows on up there."

He glanced around. The cows were leaving the road at a run, dispersing into the oak brush on the hill above them.

He turned to Tim. "You go back to the tail and I'll try to get 'em gathered up and headed the right way again."

Tim nodded and urged his horse into a lope down the almost empty road.

"Tim," Katie shouted, "let me on behind you." 

Tim didn't stop. She gave a frustrated exclamation.

"You're all right where you're at," he said, shoving his hat farther onto his head. "Hang on tight." He spurred Lucky up the hill and into the brush.

An hour of hard riding later, he had the cattle gathered again and headed around the reservoir nestling in an open depression among pine and aspen covered hills. In that hour, he and Katie had barely spoken, but she had clung to his belt with a silent tenacity that surprised him. At times she held around his middle, taking shelter from lashing branches behind his back. Awareness of her slender body pressing against him filled him with exhilaration in spite of the gravity of the situation.

The cattle finally settled into a plodding walk around the lake. Panting and sweating from the effort of the past hour, he rode Lucky down to water's edge to drink. While the horse drank, he loosened his canteen and shifted in the saddle to offer it to her. She gave it a longing glance, but then shook her head and turned away.

His throat was so dry he had to swallow before he could speak. "Why are you so stubborn all the time? Take it."

She reluctantly took the canteen. Her slender throat moved as she gulped the water then she handed it back to him.

He drank deeply then wiped his mouth on the sleeve of his shirt. "Did you see what happened to Dave?"

Worry filled her eyes. "A bull got after him on the edge of the road there where the shoulder's so narrow. He yelled and popped him with his rope, but the bull wouldn't back off. The shoulder of the road must've crumbled. All I could see was Studmuffin's legs thrashing around before he disappeared."

He winced, picturing the steep, rock and brush covered drop at the edge of the road. Dave probably hadn't survived. "You don't know if it's…er…bad?"

"If you mean is he dead, I don't know," she said sharply. "Dad was there as soon as I was and he sent me for help."

He drank then offered the canteen to her again. She shook her head.

He twisted on the lid. "How much farther is it to the line shack?"

They were making for the cabin inside the boundaries of the grazing allotments where a rider hired by the ranchers to tend their livestock lived through the summer with his horses and dogs.

"Five miles or so." She turned her head to search behind them, but the dust cloud from the cattle obscured the road. "I wish Karl would catch up."

"If he hasn't by now, he's probably not comin'."

Her shoulders drooped. "Take me back to Tim and I'll get up behind him."

"Lucky's bigger than his horse. You're fine where you're at." He nudged Lucky into a walk down the dusty road. "Am I botherin' you?"

She shifted on the horse behind him and gasped. "I told you I'm indifferent to you," she gritted through her teeth.

He turned, frowning. "What's the matter?"

"Nothing. Just go. We've still got a long way to go and the back of this saddle isn't all that comfortable."

"I'll trade places with you."

"Just go."

They pushed the cows around the lake to the east where dusk fell in the aspens. Katie had been silent, but now she gave an occasional sharp intake of breath, quickly cut off.

He finally stopped and shifted around so he could view her face. "What's wrong with you?"

She hesitated. "A cow kicked me."

He frowned. "Where'd she get you?"

"On my shin."

He leaned over—a spot of blood as big as an orange stuck the denim of her jeans to her leg, just beneath the knee.

"Just go," she said impatiently. "I can't do anything about it here and we've still got a ways to go. If I get down now, I won't be able to get back up."

He gave her a long look then raised his gaze to the sky behind them, aware for some time of a change in the air. A thunderhead in the western sky billowed upward in pure white cotton-like puffs from a bottom of deep purple blackness.

He turned back in his saddle, urging Lucky to a trot. Yelling, he popped his rope end loudly against his chaps, pressing the wearied cattle to a trot also.

Ten minutes later, he glanced over his shoulder at the sky. "How much farther, now?"

She twisted, too. "Two or three miles probably," she said tightly.

"Is there any place closer?"

"Not that I know of."

He considered the angry stain filling the horizon and extending rapidly toward them in spite of a sudden ominous calm in the trees around them. Unpredictable changes in high country weather posed a threat at any time, but at over nine-thousand feet altitude and unprepared…?

He swore under his breath. Why had he forgotten his slicker that morning? "It'll be bad here in a minute. We're gonna have to make a run for it."

She sagged, her forehead lightly touching his back.

He turned sharply. "What's wrong?"

"My leg feels pretty swelled. I don't think I can hang on."

He loosened his right boot from the stirrup. Gritting his teeth against the pain in his bad knee, he slid his leg across the saddle between them.

"Get in the saddle. I'll shorten the stirrups. It'll ease your leg some."

"What about you?"

He jumped down, eyeing the sky behind them. "Don't argue. We've gotta move."

"What about Tim?" Her gaze held deep worry.

"He'll be okay."

She hesitated then heaved herself over the cantle of the saddle and onto the seat. He shortened the stirrups as much as they'd go, casting a quick glance over the herd. They'd just have to fend for themselves.

Grasping the reins and saddle horn in his left hand, he vaulted onto Lucky, circled Katie with his arms, and kicked the horse into a gallop, all in one motion.

She grabbed for the saddle horn with a startled shriek. "You'll fall off."

"Would you care?" he shouted in her ear.

"Yes, you idiot," she exclaimed. "You'd make me fall, too."

"I ain't gonna let you fall. Just hang on."

The first drops of rain rattled the aspen leaves. Then a sudden blast of wind roared through the trees like a freight train, whirling his hat away. Lucky staggered against its force. A wall of pine needles, dust, and aspen limbs obscured the way, followed by an icy torrent of rain that instantly soaked his shirt.

An ear-splitting explosion of lightning rocked the world directly in front of them. Katie screamed. Lucky planted his hooves and reared, squealing and pawing.

Blinded and with his ears roaring, he clawed for some hold on the saddle around the screaming girl in front of him. He strained every muscle, desperately trying to grip the horse's rain slick hide, but he slid relentlessly backward.

"God," he yelled in unconscious prayer. "Katie, lean forward. Get him down."

She lunged forward in the saddle and brought her fist down between the horse's ears. Lucky came down, but in mid-drop—like a too tightly wound spring exploding—the gelding gave a terrific bound forward.

He hauled on the reins. "God," he yelled again.

Adrenaline laced desperation—or something else—found him a viselike grip with his legs. He shoved forward to regain his seat behind the saddle. A groan of effort welled from his belly and ground between his teeth as he dragged Lucky's head inch by inch to the right, forcing the horse to wheel in a tight circle.

Another searing bolt of lightning and instantaneous thunder detonated in the darkness.

Katie screamed again, cowering into him with her arms over her head.

"Hang on, I said," he yelled.

She blindly grabbed at the saddle horn. He gave up controlling Lucky—terrified beyond reason, now—and brought the rein ends lashing down on the gelding's haunches. The horse vaulted forward into a driving, out of control gallop, and he let him go.