Wyoming Woman (4 page)

A frantic longing seized her—to be home, to be safe on the Tolliver Ranch, with this miserable after noon blotted from time as if it had never happened. She wanted to forget the buggy accident. She wanted to forget the helpless pain of the injured lamb. Most of all she wanted to forget this gruff, disturbing man who, through no fault of her own, had chosen to hate her on sight.

The dog that had found the sheep hovered close, brushing against Luke with its tail and looking up at Rachel with intelligent golden eyes. “What's the matter, boy?” Rachel murmured. “Are you worried about your little lamb? He'll be all right. We'll fix him up as good as new.”

Luke's stormy gaze flickered toward her, then shifted to the dog. “Go, Mick,” he commanded in a soft voice. “Back to the sheep.”

Tail high, the dog wheeled and bounded back down the slope in the direction of the herd. But it had only gone a few yards when, abruptly, it halted in its tracks, ears up, nose to the wind. Rachel saw the hair rise and bristle along the back of its neck. A nervous growl quivered in its throat.

Luke glanced up from doctoring the lamb, his body tense and wary. Rachel held her breath, holding the
lamb close as she strained to catch the danger the dog had sensed.

Luke's expression darkened. “Get out of sight!” he hissed, shoving her up the slope toward an outcrop of boulders. “Stay behind those rocks and don't make a move until I tell you it's safe!”

Only then did Rachel hear what had alarmed the dog. Faintly at first, but growing rapidly louder, the ominous cadence of galloping hoofbeats rumbled from the far side of the hill. Whoever the riders were, they were moving fast. Seconds from now they would be in sight.

With the lamb still clasped in her arms, she plunged toward the outcrop. If the mounted men proved to be friends, she could always show herself. But until she knew who they were and what they wanted, it made more sense to stay hidden.

By the time she reached the rocks, Luke was in the saddle. He spurred the horse toward the herd. The dog shot ahead of him, a dark blur of motion against the pale green slope.

Ignoring the pain in her shoulder, Rachel pressed herself into a low spot between two jutting boulders. The lamb squirmed against her. Rachel's grip tightened around the warm little body as she edged into a spot where she could look down on what was happening.

Four mounted cowboys appeared over the crest of the hill, riding hard. Just below the ridge they halted for a moment, their attention fixed on the broad, open slope and the slowly moving sheep below. Rachel's
breath caught painfully as she realized that, beneath their broad-brimmed Stetsons, their neckerchiefs were pulled up to cover the lower parts of their faces. Everything was masked except their eyes.

One of the men jerked his pistol out of its holster. “Let's get 'em, boys!” he shouted, firing into the air.

Whooping like savages, the four men charged down the hill toward Luke's herd. All of them had their pistols drawn now, and for a heart-stopping moment Rachel expected them to start firing at the sheep, or even at Luke. But that was clearly not their intent. As they fanned out, shrieking wildly and shooting into the air, she realized they meant to stampede the sheep and drive them over the ledge, as the Indians had once driven buffalo.

Their plan was working all too well. As panic swept through the herd, the frantically bleating sheep began to mill in circles. A ram wheeled and bolted in dumb terror toward the unseen ledge. Others followed, and suddenly the whole herd was plunging blindly through the scrub, headed for certain destruction.

Rachel had lost sight of Luke. Now, suddenly, she saw him, racing his buckskin horse full out along the rim of the ledge. One of the dogs dashed ahead of him. The other was already tearing along the forefront of the herd, lunging at the leaders, snapping and biting as it dodged their butting heads and flying hooves.

A man, a horse and two small dogs. Could they head off three hundred stampeding sheep and scores of lambs in time to save them? Rachel pressed for
ward between the rocks, almost forgetting to breathe as she strained to see what was happening.

The four masked men were keeping to the rear of the herd, aiming their shots well above the sheep. Clearly they had no wish to be recognized, nor to do anything that would force the hand of the law against them. In order to file any complaint, Luke would need proof that the stampede had not been an accident. A bullet in a sheep or dog would provide that proof. But the marauders knew better than to give him that advantage. As things stood, Luke would have nothing but his own word. And Rachel knew that would not be enough.

Not unless he could produce another reliable witness to the crime.

Catching the scent of fear, the lamb in Rachel's arms began to struggle and bleat. Rachel clasped the little creature close, stroking its quivering body and praying that the plaintive racket it made would not give her away. If the riders discovered her presence, any number of things could happen, all of them ugly.

The sheep were no more than a stone's throw from the precipice and still running full out. Rachel's heart crept into her throat as she watched Luke's frantic efforts to turn them aside. He was leaning forward, almost standing in the stirrups as his horse thundered along the top of the ledge. As he rode, he shouted and flailed the air with his hat. The dogs, saved only by their lightning quickness, darted like thrusting rapiers into the herd, snarling, nipping, retreating to attack another charging animal.

Despite her feelings about sheep and their owners, Rachel caught herself praying aloud. “Please, God…don't let them go over. Let them turn…let them turn…”

On the brink of the ledge, Luke was running out of maneuvering room. With nowhere to go, he was pressing his mount into the forefront of the stampeding herd, risking horse and sheep and man. The terrified buckskin snorted, trying to rear above the milling herd while Luke fought to keep the animal under control. If the horse lost its footing, he would be swept over the precipice with the sheep. Even now, Rachel realized, his only chance of escape lay in plowing straight back through his own herd. But that would mean abandoning the sheep to their own destruction—something, she sensed, Luke would never do. She was watching a man fight for his dream. He would defend that dream with his life.

The dogs tore in and out among the sheep, snarling and biting in a frantic effort to head the leaders away from the precipice. Rachel swallowed a scream as the buckskin reared and staggered backward. The big gelding shrieked as one rear hoof slipped over the crumbling ledge. For a breathless instant, horse and rider teetered between life and death. Then, with a desperate lunge, they regained solid ground.

Spooked, perhaps, by the rearing horse, the sheep began to turn. The leaders swung hard to the right, and the rest followed, allowing the dogs to drive them away from the edge of the cliff. Like a woolly gray-
white river, they flowed down the long slope of the hill toward the plain below.

Luke had paused to rest his gasping horse. His eyes glared across the distance as the four cowboys hung back, watching. For a moment Rachel feared they would fire at Luke or try to stampede the herd again, but it seemed they'd had their fill of mischief for the day.

“We'll be back, sheep man!” the leader crowed at Luke. “Next time you won't be so lucky!”

Luke kept his proud silence, refusing to give them the satisfaction of a reply. Rachel studied the defiant set of his shoulders, wondering how many times men like these had hurt and humiliated him. No wonder he hated cattlemen. No wonder he hated
her.

Swearing and hooting with laughter, the cowboys holstered their guns, wheeled their mounts and cantered back up the hill. Only then did Rachel realize her own danger. The four riders were headed in a direction that would take them right past the rocks where she was hiding.

By now the lamb in her arms had begun to miss its mother. It squirmed and bleated in Rachel's arms, butting its head against her breasts with a force that was so painful it made her wince. Rachel's heart sank as she realized the little creature was hungry and looking for a place to nurse. The noise it was making had been lost amid the clamor of the stampede, but now that things had quieted down, its bleating was loud enough to lead the cowhands right to her.

She should let the miserable little creature go, she
thought. But the herd was too far down the slope for the lamb to catch up easily. More than likely, the poor thing would be grabbed by one of the cowhands and end the day with its carcass roasting on a spit. Much as she disliked sheep, she could not wish such a cruel fate on this trusting, innocent baby.

But neither could she let the lamb give away her hiding place. By now, she had seen far too much for her own good; and even if the four cowhands recognized her and did her no harm, she had no wish to explain why Morgan Tolliver's daughter was hiding out with a sheep man.

In desperation, Rachel thrust her finger into the lamb's warm, wet mouth. The lamb smacked down eagerly and began to suck, its eyes closed, its tail switching like a metronome gone berserk.

Rachel allowed herself a long exhalation. All quiet for now. But the riders were galloping closer; and at any moment now, the lamb would discover there was no milk coming from her finger. Even a lamb should be smart enough to figure that out. When it did, it would start complaining again.

Wriggling deeper behind the rocks, she clutched the troublesome little creature against her chest, held her breath and waited.

The riders were coming up the hill, approaching fast. Rachel could hear the deep, chesty breathing of horses and the jingle of bridles. When she craned her neck at the right angle, she could see the men through a narrow opening between the rocks. Their faces were still hidden by their neckerchiefs, but all four of them
were lithe and slender, and they sat their horses with the careless ease of youth. Had harassing the sheep man been their own idea, she wondered, or had they been set on this errand by someone with more age and power and more to gain?

By now the riders were so near that she could have hit them with the toss of a pebble. The tallest and huskiest of the four was cursing their failure to drive the sheep over the ledge. “Told you we shoulda shot those damned dogs,” he growled. “That, or snuck in and poisoned the buggers first. That woulda fixed that sheep man's wagon!”

The others, still masked, were silent. Their shadows, cast long by the low western sun, fell across the rocks where Rachel crouched with the lamb's head cradled below her breasts. She remained perfectly, agonizingly motionless, scarcely daring to breathe as they reached the rocks, then turned their mounts aside to head up the hill.

The last rider to pass her hiding place was small and wiry, younger, perhaps, than the others. As he came into Rachel's full view, one mahogany brown hand tugged at his bandana, pulling it down to reveal a lean, dark, familiar face.

Rachel stifled a cry as she realized she was looking up at one of her own brothers.

B
y the time the riders crested the ridge, the lamb had given up on sucking Rachel's finger and burst into ravenous bleating. Its piercing baby cries echoed across the rain-soaked hillside, but if the four young men had heard, they paid no attention.

Numb with shock, Rachel stared after the defiant figure of her younger brother. Had it been Jacob or Josh? In their growing-up years, she'd never had any trouble telling the twins apart—Jacob had a cowlick in his ebony hair, and Josh had a dimple in his left cheek. This time she had felt no surge of recognition. But the boys would have grown older since her last sight of them, she reminded herself. And the glimpse of that youthful, unmasked face beneath the Stetson had been so brief, the expression on the sharp young features so hardened that the shock of it had left her breathless.

The lamb struggled free and scampered away, unheeded, as Rachel watched the riders vanish over the top of the hill. Only one of her brothers had been
with them, she surmised. None of the other three had matched his wiry build. But she was hard put to imagine either of the gentle, lively boys she remembered taking part in something as brutal as the driving of three hundred sheep to their deaths.

Things had clearly changed in the time she had been away from the ranch. People, it seemed, had changed, too. It was as if she had suddenly awakened in a war zone, with land mines hidden all around her.

And right now, she was clearly on the wrong side.

“Rachel? Are you there?” Luke's voice, coming from below the rocks, startled her. Straining forward, she saw him striding toward her through the grass with the lamb clutched in his arms. The horse stood behind him, its sleek buff coat flecked with foam.

Legs quivering, Rachel rose to her feet. Relief flickered like passing sunlight across his leathery features; then his expression soured. “I thought maybe you'd taken off with your cowboy friends,” he said.

“They're not my friends!” Rachel was not about to make matters worse by telling him that one of the marauders had been her brother. “But I must say I'm surprised to see you back here,” she said, deliberately changing the subject. “I thought you might just ride off with your precious sheep and leave me to walk home by myself.”

Luke's eyes narrowed. “I had to come back for the lamb,” he said brusquely. “If you're coming with me, get down here and let's get moving. I have to get the sheep home before anything else goes wrong.”

He turned away and strode to his horse without a
backward glance, leaving Rachel to scramble down the rocks alone. By the time she reached the horse, he was already in the saddle, cradling the lamb across his lap. Without a word, he reached down, caught her arm and swung her none too gently up behind him. Rachel clambered across the buckskin's rump, feeling damp and sticky and cross. She had barely regained her seat when he kneed the horse to a brisk trot. The sudden motion flung her off balance, throwing her to one side, so that she had to grab his waist to keep from sliding to the ground.

“Blast it, this isn't my fault!” she muttered, her face pressed against his sweat-soaked shirt. “Stop treating me as if I were to blame for your troubles!”

His body was like stone to the touch, his muscles tense, his spine rigid. His skin smelled of sage and leather and salty male perspiration. The odor teased at her senses, triggering an odd tingle where her knees pressed the backs of his legs. The sensation crept upward to pool at the joining of her thighs. Rachel stared past Luke's shoulder, struggling to fix her thoughts elsewhere.

“You're one of them,” he said. “You told me as much the first time you opened that pretty mouth of yours. I didn't invite you to be here, Rachel Tolliver, and as far as I'm concerned, the sooner I'm rid of you the better.”

“Well, at least we agree on something,” she said tartly. “How often do you get social calls like the one you had this afternoon?”

“Depends on what you call a social call.” His
voice was flat, guarded. “This is the first time they've tried to run the sheep over a cliff. But having animals trapped, shot, even poisoned—that's just business as usual.”

Rachel waited, expecting him to go on. Instead he gathered up the lamb, twisted in the saddle and thrust the squirming baby into her arms. “We're wasting time,” he muttered, spurring the horse to a canter. “Hang on.”

At once the lamb, which had lain quietly across Luke's knees, began to struggle and bleat. Rachel locked one arm around the wretched little creature, bracing it against her chest. Her other arm gripped Luke's waist as she struggled to keep from bouncing off the horse's slick rump. If she made it home safely, she vowed, she would never again have anything to do with these cursed sheep or with their sullen, arrogant, mule-headed owner. If Luke Vincente wanted to pit himself against the whole civilized world, that was his problem. She'd be damned if she was about to make it hers.

The sheep milled at the foot of the slope, under the brow of the ledge where they'd come so near to their death plunge. The tireless dogs darted along the fringes of the herd, lunging and yipping to keep their charges in line.

Sensing its kind, the lamb renewed its struggles, digging its sharp hooves into Rachel's ribs and bleating like a miniature steam calliope. A fly settled on Rachel's matted hair. She shook it away, her temper growing shorter by the second.

Luke had slowed the horse to a trot as they neared the herd, but Rachel was still bouncing behind the saddle, her buttocks miserably sore and her bladder threatening to burst. When the lamb's hoof jabbed her breast hard enough to bruise, her last thread of patience snapped. “Enough!” she yelped. “Either we stop right here and let this little monster find its mother, or I start screaming loud enough to be heard across three counties!”

“Anything to please a lady.” Luke's voice dripped sarcasm as he reined the horse to a halt. Shoving the wretched animal toward him, she slid off the back of the horse and dropped wearily to the ground. For a moment she glared up at him, scrambling for a comeback that would put him in his place. But nothing came to mind except the awareness that she was sore and miserable and badly in need of a bush.

“Wait right here, and keep your back turned.” Rachel spun away from the horse and, with as much dignity as she could muster, stalked off toward a clump of tall sage that grew at the foot of the slope. She had spent enough time on the range that going to the bushes in the open was nothing new. But something about this disturbing man's presence made her burn with self-consciousness.

“Watch out for rattlesnakes,” he said. “They're bad in these parts.”

Rachel ignored the remark, but her face blazed with heat as she ducked behind the sage. Growing up alongside brothers and cowboys had given her a natural ease with the male sex. At school, the boys had
flocked around her, and she'd never wanted for escorts or dancing partners. In the past year alone, she'd rejected three proposals of marriage. Once she had fancied herself in love, but even for that brief time she had kept a cautious rein on her heart so that when the infatuation passed she was able to walk away without regret.

Always, in her relationships with men, Rachel had insisted on being the one in control. So why now, of all times, did she find herself hot and flustered and blushing like a schoolgirl? Luke Vincente was not one of her conquests. He was too old, too proud, with too many shadows lurking about his tall, dark person. Worse, he was a sheep man, with a hatred for her kind that ran bone-deep in both directions.

Why in heaven's name hadn't she called out to her brother as he rode past her hiding place? Surely she could have smoothed over the awkwardness, perhaps even lessened the tension by explaining how Luke had rescued her after the accident with the buggy.

If she had played her cards more sensibly, she might be headed for the ranch right now on the back of her brother's horse. Luke would be rid of her; she would be rid of him; everybody would be happier. So why hadn't she spoken?

But Rachel knew why. The horror she had witnessed, coupled with the shock of recognizing her adored brother, had left her mute.

As she gazed back toward the hilltop where the four riders had disappeared, a sense of pervading blackness crept over her. For months she had looked
forward to home—to the grand sweep of mountain peaks and prairie sky and the smell of coffee on the crisp morning air; to friends and family, to sunny days filled with hard work and laughter and love. But home had changed, Rachel realized. And something told her it would never again be the carefree place she remembered.

 

Luke lowered the lamb to the ground, then stood back to watch as it tottered toward its anxious mother. A ghost of a smile tugged at his lips as it butted for her teat, clamped on and lost itself in the bliss of nursing. This one, at least, would be all right for now. But how many others would be maimed by those bloody snares? How many precious animals would he lose before the summer was over? This range war was not of his making. But each day of it was chipping away at his livelihood and slowly draining his spirit. He had never asked for anything except to be left alone. Even that simple wish, it appeared, was not to be granted.

Glancing over his shoulder, he saw that Rachel had emerged from the sagebrush and was making her way down the slope toward him. Water and mud had plastered her clothes against her skin, outlining every delicious curve and hollow of her voluptuous little body. Her wind-tangled hair blazed like fire in the fading light. Filthy, disheveled and undoubtedly sore, Rachel Tolliver still walked as if the whole world were gathered at her feet, awaiting her pleasure.

For a long moment, Luke allowed his eyes to feast
on her proud beauty. Then, still reluctant, he tore his gaze away. She was a cattleman's daughter. Worse, she was a
rich
cattleman's daughter, as strong-willed and demanding as she was beautiful. He would wager that the proper Miss Tolliver believed the sun, the moon and the stars revolved around her pretty little head, and that anything she wanted could be had by batting those lush golden eyelashes at the right man.

Luke knew about such women. He knew far more than he wanted to remember. Some things, in fact, he would give almost anything to forget.

The memory of Cynthia's luscious face and lying words came back to haunt him now, just as they had haunted him for the four years he had spent in the hellhole of the Louisiana State Penitentiary.

…I'm so frightened, Luke. The way he looks at me, the way he brushes against me…my own father! He's come after me before, and he'll do it again. You have to help me, Luke. Somehow you have to stop him… Then we can be together for the rest of our lives….

Lord, what a gullible fool he had been!

“Oh, will you look at that!” Rachel had come up alongside him. Her muddy hands clasped in delight as she watched the frantically nursing lamb. She had an infectious smile that crinkled her eyes at the corners, deepened the dimples in her cheeks and showed her small, pearl-like teeth. A smile like that could get a woman anything she wanted, he thought. Anything.

“Look at his tail go!” she exclaimed, laughing. “It's whipping around like a little windmill! How on earth did you manage to find his mother?”

“They found each other. I just hung on to the lamb and followed my ears.” Luke kept his voice flat, resisting the temptation to return her smile. She was one of the enemy, he reminded himself. Worse, she was everything he had grown to despise in a woman. Even for this brief time, he could not let himself warm to her.

“Will he be able to walk the rest of the way with his mother?” she asked, still watching the lamb.

“He's too weak for that. We'll need to take him on the horse again. Sorry.” The last word came out sounding more like a barb than an apology. The truth was, the thought of pampered Rachel holding the muddy, squirming lamb in her arms gave him an odd feeling of pleasure.

“As long as you let him finish eating, that's fine. Since he figured out that fingers don't give milk, he's been impossible!”

She arched like a languorous cat, reaching backward to massage her weary spine. The motion strained the buttons of her form-fitting jacket, pulling the fabric tightly against her breasts, outlining her taut nipples.

Luke stifled a groan and averted his eyes. The little minx knew exactly what she was doing, he told himself. To such a woman, seductive behavior would be an instinct, as natural as breathing. No matter that the only man in sight was one she would spit on under most circumstances—a man so far below her in class as to be unworthy of notice. She would enjoy arousing him, making him want her, then walking away
with a toss of her fiery little head and leaving him with the devil's own fire between his legs.

Well, let her do her worst, he thought. He would not give Miss Rachel Tolliver the satisfaction of knowing the effect she had on him. Soon their journey would be finished. He would give her a quick bite to eat, then send her off on old Henry, a horse that would return home as soon as she let it go. With luck, they would never cross paths again.

“How much longer?” She ended her stretch with a light shake of her shoulders. “I don't like the look of those clouds.”

Luke followed her gaze to the west, where a bank of slate-colored clouds was spilling in over the Big Horns. He sighed, biting back a curse. He'd assumed the weather would stay clear. The last thing he'd counted on was a second storm moving in before nightfall. Anxious as he was to get rid of Rachel, he could hardly send her home in a downpour.

A scowl passed across his face as another thought struck him—one that suddenly made everything worse.

“What is it?” She was studying him, her expression so open and earnest that it caught Luke off guard.

“Your family,” he said. “What will they do if you don't show up? They're bound to be out looking for you.” He did not add that, from what he'd heard, any man caught trifling with Morgan Tolliver's precious daughter would do well to make his peace with heaven.