Wyoming Woman

Luke mounted and reached down for her. She passed him the lamb, then seized his free arm and allowed him to swing her up behind him. She was light and strong, like lifting a bird, he thought as she scrambled into place on the horse’s withers. Light and strong and tough. And while she’d been pushy and temperamental and annoying, not once had he heard her whine.

Passing her the lamb, he whistled to the dogs and urged the buckskin to a trot. Overhead the skies darkened and rumbled, showing a thin streak of red above the mountains, like a bed of glowing coals glimpsed through the grate of an iron stove. The sheep were moving fast now, driven by the pressing dogs and by a sense of urgency that seemed to hover in the air around them all. Luke felt it, too, and he pushed the animals harder. He had been away from the ranch too long. There was evil afoot, his instincts shrilled. He needed to get back home before it was too late.

Chapter Five

T he lamb had fallen asleep, its milk-swollen belly as taut as the skin of a drum. Rachel balanced its warm weight between her breasts and the rock-solid expanse of Luke’s back. Her free hand gripped Luke’s belt as the tall buckskin pushed across the open flatland behind the sheep.

“I know this country,” she muttered, bracing her self as the horse lurched up the side of a wash. “The boundary of your ranch can’t be more than a mile from here.”

“We’ve already passed it. You’re on my land now.” There was an edge to Luke’s voice. He had said little since they’d remounted, and Rachel had been too tired to start what would surely turn into another argument. But she’d felt the tension in him. She had sensed the black weight of his thoughts, and she had been torn between the need to understand more and the fervent wish to wake up in her own bed, to the happy discovery that this whole day had been a horrible dream and there was no such person as Luke Vincente.

“You won’t have to hold on much longer.” The strain came through in his voice. “If it’s any comfort to you, there should be a hot meal ready when we get to the ranch house.”

Rachel’s empty stomach growled at the mention of food, but her thoughts had already darted to another matter. Hot food meant there would be someone waiting at the ranch—a wife, most likely, since Luke didn’t strike her as the sort of man who would hire a cook. And if there was a wife, there could be children as well—beautiful children, she imagined, with fierce obsidian eyes like their father’s. No wonder Luke was so protective of his own. No wonder he was so determined to stay and fight off all comers.

Where she gripped his belt, she felt his sinewy body shift against her hand. His aura surrounded her, setting off a shimmer of heat, as if his fingertips had brushed her bare skin. The leathery, masculine aroma, which had lain dormant in her nostrils, suddenly stirred, triggering a jolt of awareness. It had been there all along, she realized, this slumbering sense of his maleness. Why now, of all times, did it have to wake up and kick her like a mule, leaving her warm and damp and tingling?

Was it because she’d just surmised that he was married and therefore forbidden? Ridiculous, Rachel told herself. She had branded Luke Vincente as forbidden from the moment she found out he was a sheep man. It made no difference whether he was married or not. Nothing had happened between them. Nothing would happen. The whole idea was unthinkable.

Laden with the smell of rain, a chilly wind whipped Rachel’s hair across her face. By now the sun was gone. Inky clouds, back-lit by flashes of sheet lightning, rumbled across the twilight sky. The sheep flowed through the hollows like patches of fog, their bells clanging eerily in the darkness. There was little need for the dogs to hurry them now. The urgency to reach home before the storm broke was driving them all.

Luke’s tense silence had begun to gnaw at Rachel’s nerves. “Are these all the sheep you have?” she asked, forcing herself to make conversation.

He sighed, sounding drained. “There are just under a thousand head in all, so you’re only seeing about a third of them. I don’t usually run so many of them together. After what happened today, you won’t have to ask why. But we’re…shorthanded now. There wasn’t much choice.”

The catch in his voice was barely perceptible, but the impact of the emotion behind it struck Rachel like a slap. Whatever was happening here, she sensed, she had barely glimpsed the surface of it. The truth was larger and uglier than she had ever imagined.

“When I was growing up, I loved the open range,” she said, thinking aloud. “Even as a little girl, I could ride for miles, go anywhere I wished, and feel perfectly safe. This was a happy place, Luke Vincente…before the trouble with sheep men started.”

A bolt of lightning flashed across the indigo sky. As thunder cracked behind them, she felt Luke’s muscles harden beneath his damp shirt. “You’re not a little girl anymore, Rachel,” he said. “If you don’t like what’s happened here, you can go back East and make a life for yourself. Marry well. Have a family, and keep that happy place in your memory. As long as you don’t come back here, it will never change.”

The bitterness in his voice stung her. “I don’t intend to go back East,” Rachel answered crisply. “The ranch is part mine. It’s my home, and I’ve returned to stay.”

Luke made a derisive sound under his breath. “What about that fancy eastern schooling you mentioned? Why waste so much expense and trouble if all you want to do is come back here and be a cow-girl?”

“I studied painting and sculpture,” she said, ignoring his sardonic undertone. “Three of my paintings are already in a gallery, and the owner is interested in doing a show based on images of life in the West. With luck and hard work, I can have a successful career right here in Wyoming.”

Luke was silent for a long moment. Then he shook his head. “Images of the West!” he snorted. “I can just picture that. The chuck wagon at sunset! Buckaroos around the old corral!”

“Stop insulting me, Luke,” Rachel said quietly. “I’m not the naive little fool you think I am.”

“You want images, Rachel Tolliver?” he said, his vehemence swelling. “I could show you images that would burn themselves into your mind for the rest of your life! Animals shot, trapped, crippled, or lying dead around a poisoned water hole. And more—more than a fine lady like you would even want to think about.”

Rachel flinched against the leaden impact of every word he spoke. Another image flashed through her mind—a hand tugging down a crimson neckerchief to reveal a dark young face. A face she loved.

She had heard enough of Luke’s bitter words to make her stomach churn. But far worse was the idea of what he had left unsaid. He had intimated, with a cutting scorn, that she was too gently reared to deal with the full truth of what was happening. But Luke didn’t know the half of it. He had no idea of what she’d seen, or how the sight of her darling brother’s face had left her gasping for breath like a fish flung out of its element.

She had to know. She had to know everything, even if it broke her heart to hear it.

“Tell me,” she demanded, her fingers tightening around the worn leather strap of his belt. “I want to hear the worst.”

“Why trouble your pretty head with such an ugly story?” Luke’s defiant question infuriated her. Only the lamb, so warm and peaceful between their bodies, kept her from shouting at him.

“This country is my home and my family’s home,” Rachel said in a level voice. “Whatever’s going on here, I need to understand it.”

Thunder filled the silence as she waited for Luke to answer. When he outlasted her patience she pressed him again.

“We’ve had a few sheep in these parts since I was in pigtails,” she said. “I can’t say there was ever any love lost between sheep men and ranchers. But what I saw today—there was never anything like that before! What in heaven’s name happened? Was it something you did?”

He laughed at that, a deep, bitter release that quivered through his taut body, so that she felt it more than heard it. “I’d pay good money for the answer to that question, lady. All I’ve ever asked of my neighbors was that they leave me alone. As long as I kept my sheep off their land, most of them, including your father, did just that—until about three months ago. That was when the raids started.”

A vision of the masked riders flashed through Rachel’s mind. Had it been Jacob or Josh she had seen with them? Was it possible that both of them were involved in this mess? And what about her father? Morgan Tolliver was a peaceful man, but if pushed far enough he was capable of anger. Was he capable of violence as well?

Rachel’s fingers tightened around Luke’s belt. She felt dizzy, as if she were spinning in space with nothing solid to support her. For months she had dreamed of coming back to the safe, secure place she called home. But the home she remembered was gone, to be replaced by a nightmare world of danger, doubt and uncertainty.

“Do you have any idea who’s behind the trouble?” she forced herself to ask. “Have you recognized anyone—any of the raiders?”

He shook his head, and she felt an unexpected surge of relief. “Most of the time I don’t see them. But when they do show themselves, they always have their faces masked. The fact that they care that much about being recognized makes me think they’re locals—and there’s a bunch of them, more than just the ones you saw today.” He whistled to direct a dog toward a straying ewe. The wind swept his raven hair back from his face.

“When I saw them up close, they struck me as very young,” Rachel said, filling the pause. “Just boys, I’d guess, out to stir up some mischief.”

Luke’s body stiffened. “They may be young, but they’re too well organized to be just boys. Somebody’s behind them. Somebody with enough money to pay them or enough influence to stir them up.”

Like my father, Rachel thought. She knew better than to speak the words aloud, but even the idea was terrible enough to create a dark, hollow feeling in her chest.

“As for the so-called mischief—” Luke cleared his throat, but when he spoke again, his voice was still low and gritty. “I have three herders working for me, a father and two sons. They’re from Spain by way of Mexico, good men. Fine men.” Luke swallowed hard. Rachel felt the strain in him, the scream of raw nerves, and she sensed that, whatever he had been holding back from her, she was about to hear it.

“Three nights ago, the old man, Miguel, was out on the range with part of the herd. He’d bedded down for the night in his sheep wagon when he heard riders coming over the hill. They were making enough noise to rouse the devil, he told us later. Probably drunk, or making a good show of it. Miguel ordered his dogs—the two you see here—to move the sheep out fast. He was going to get his horse and follow them, but he realized the riders were too close, so he ran back to the sheep wagon and barricaded himself inside.”

“Dear heaven,” Rachel whispered, bracing her emotions for what she was about to hear.

“There were five of them, all masked,” Luke said. “Five against one old man. When Miguel wouldn’t come out of the sheep wagon, they lit a dry branch from the campfire and threw it on the roof.”