Scotsman Wore Spurs (8 page)

Pepper barely acknowledged her return. He was packing supplies in the chuck wagon. The fire had been cleared of everything but the coffeepot. “Put that wood in the hoodlum wagon,” he said.

When she had dumped her load, she returned. “What can I do?”

He glanced at her. “Storm's coming. Damn bad one. I can feel it. You keep out of the way.”

Gabrielle looked at the sky, then at the bedrolls scattered around, abandoned by the cowboys. She started rolling them up and putting them under cover in the hoodlum wagon. Pepper looked up at her once, nodded in approval of her actions, then went back to closing the various shelves and buttoning up the canvas.

By the time she had completed her task, rain had started falling. She saw that Pepper had rigged a canvas flap over the fire, but the wind was fanning it too close to the wagon for safety. With obvious reluctance, he lowered the canvas, and in minutes the fire went out. The night was as black as any Gabe ever had seen. What was more, the temperature had taken another sudden drop.

“Get in yer wagon,” Pepper ordered gruffly. “It's gonna hail. I've seen them stones big enough to kill a horse.”

As he spoke, she heard the cattle moving restlessly, the plaintive bellowing growing stronger. And the horses, closer yet to the campsite, were whinnying nervously. Among them, the voices of at least two cowhands could be heard, shouting to each other.

When she saw Pepper hurrying toward the horses, Gabrielle ignored his order and followed him closely, using the shape of his shadow for guidance. She arrived at the remuda to find Jake, the wrangler, and Shorty moving the horses from their makeshift corral. They were tying the horses individually onto several picket lines that had been strung tight between a half dozen cottonwoods. Squinting in the darkness, she and Pepper silently joined them.

One by one, they moved the remaining horses, and the task was made infinitely more difficult when, all at once, the rain turned into large pieces of ice, pelting the earth, pelting the shying horses, pelting Gabrielle with amazing force. Some were as large as quail eggs, and she wanted to do as Pepper had ordered, but both the wrangler and Pepper were staying in the open, trying to secure and soothe the horses. She couldn't do less. She moved among the animals, her actions becoming automatic as she carefully tied the nervous animals.

Though she began actually to fear for her life, the nearly panicked horses seemed even more afraid. Steeling herself against the pounding of hail, she stuck with the task at hand, and finally, after what seemed hours, the four of them—Jake, Shorty, Pepper and her—had over a hundred fifty horses and mules tied securely.

Giving a sigh of relief, she longed for the relative comfort and safety of the wagon, but the men were remaining, moving up and down the lines of tied horses, trying to soothe them. She joined them, calming them with a touch, a whisper. All the while, the hailstones came faster, harder, and larger. Her hat and clothing protected most of her, but she felt the blows and knew she would have even more bruises the next day.

One horse, apparently hit hard in the face, tried to rear and became frantic when he couldn't. She moved over to the animal, whispering, even began humming the Scotsman's lullaby that was still running through her mind. Slowly, the horse relaxed.

Lightning streaked through the heavens, providing brief illumination before the sky went black again. Gabrielle stood still, then became aware of a deep rumbling, a trembling of earth underneath her.

“Stampede,” Pepper yelled. “Get behind a tree.”

The rumbling grew stronger, and the earth shook. Cattle were suddenly everywhere, running blindly, veering as they saw the trees. Terrified horses reared and fought the ropes. Another bolt of lightning shot across the heavens, and balls of ice rattled through the trees, beating out a metallic rhythm. It was a symphony of violence, and Gabrielle had never been more frightened in her life.

She clung to the slender trunk of a tree, terror clawing through her as the huge herd of panicked cattle parted, like a river, around rocks, to either side of the island of trees where she and the men and the spooked horses huddled. She prayed, as she had not prayed since her father had died. She prayed for herself. She prayed for Drew Cameron. She prayed for every man out there in the storm.

“Please, God, make it stop … please make it stop. Don't let any of them get hurt. Please …” she prayed. And if her prayers for safe passage were focused more on one man in particular, one with a quick smile and a seductive voice, she refused to acknowledge it even to herself.

She hugged a tree, straining to see in the dark, hearing sudden splashing, which meant the cattle were heading across the creek. Loud male voices, shouting above the storm, punctuated the sound of hooves as they moved away. Yet even after the splashing stopped and she knew the cattle were all on the other side of the water, the earth still vibrated under her feet.

For several long minutes, Gabrielle continued to hug the tree. Her insides were quivering, her body shaking from head to toe.

“Two-Bits?”

Pepper's voice had the slightest quake to it.

“I—I'm all right,” she said. Peeling her arms from the tree trunk, she took one shaky step, then another, away from the cottonwood. The horses continued to stomp nervously, neighing and pulling at their ropes. She heard Jake's voice, crooning to them.

Still, hail continued to fall, thicker than ever, and she shivered in her misery. But her thoughts were out on the plain, traveling with the cowboys attempting to stop the stampede. She understood the dangers.

“Please God, let them be safe,” she whispered again.

“We'd better see to the wagon,” Pepper said. “You can bet there'll be somebody hurt.”

“Are you sure?” Gabrielle asked, straining to see the cook through the cloak of hail-filled darkness.

“Hell,” he swore, “we'll be lucky if a third of 'em ain't hurt or worse after this!”

Gabrielle's stomach lurched. Pepper was not a man to scare easily. She followed his shadow, a dark blob in a freezing black nightmare.

The chuck wagon had been turned over, knocked that way by frantic cattle. Pepper called for Shorty, leaving Jake with the horses, and the three of them tried to right it. But it was no use. The packed wagon was simply too heavy.

“We'll have to wait for help,” Pepper said with disgust. He found a lantern, rigged a covering to keep the rain from dousing the flame, and placed it like a beacon in front of the wagon. Then the three of them—Pepper, Shorty and her—huddled against its bottom, seeking shelter from the hail, listening for hoofbeats and a yell to announce an arrival.

The trembling of earth eased. Gabrielle heard something like distant thunder but she didn't know whether it was cattle or actual thunder.

She shivered. She couldn't remember when she'd been so cold, and she realized it wasn't strictly because of the temperature or the icy winds. In the days she'd been on the drive, she'd come to know all the hands by name. Some she liked, some she didn't. But she didn't want any of them to die. Not like this.

A century passed. No one spoke. Eventually, the hail lessened, then ended, but rain continued, falling in heavy sheets until she felt like a saturated sponge.

“Pepper? Pepper, damn it, where are you?”

The voice reached out from the darkness, disembodied but urgent. Gabrielle's heart leaped to her throat. It was Kingsley. She was sure of it.

“Yo,” Pepper yelled.

A dark figure appeared on horseback from the other side of the overturned wagon.

“Everything all right here?” Gabrielle recognized Kingsley's voice.

“Wagon turned,” Pepper said, “but no one was hurt. The herd?”

“We stopped them about three miles across the river.” Kingsley's voice was businesslike. “I have one man dead, two others hurt.”

Dead. The word resounded in Gabrielle's mind, and before the echoes faded, a half-formed, spontaneous plea took its place.
Please
…
please, don't let it be him. Please
…

Pepper, who was sitting beside her, rose stiffly from the ground to stand. “They coming in?”

“The injured are. The rest will stay out there with the cattle. I don't want to move them now.”

“How bad are they?” Pepper asked.

Kingsley was silent for a moment before he replied. “One's pretty bad.”

“I need help getting this wagon upright,” Pepper said, his voice matter-of-fact.

“The kid all right?” Kirby asked.

“He's here. Did fine,” Pepper said gruffly. “Didn't go losin' his head.”

Stunned at the praise, Gabrielle's pride warred with anxiety as she shifted from the ground to her feet. Who was hurt?
Who?
How badly? She wanted to ask but couldn't force the words out.

Shouting for Jake to come help them, Kingsley dismounted, then tied one end of his lariat to two bows of the wagon. The other end he tied to his saddle horn. Gabrielle jumped in shock when he thrust the reins of his horse into her hands.

“You lead the horse away from the wagon while we push it upright,' he ordered. “And for God's sake, stop when I tell you.”

Nodding—a useless gesture in the dark, she realized—she coaxed the horse, feeling him strain against the load. They'd gone a couple of yards when the lines slackened just as she heard Kingsley's shout. “Hold there!”

A few seconds later, he appeared in front of her to take back the reins. “Good job,” he said.

Then Pepper called to her. “Two-Bits! Come help me get out my doctorin' things. Can't see my own hand in front of my face.”

As she ran through the rain to help, the litany continued to run through her mind:
Please, God, please … don't let him be dead. Please.

Drew held his arm stiffly as his exhausted horse walked slowly toward the chuck wagon. Failure, strong and bitter, rode with him.

Two other men guided their mounts alongside his, one man carrying a limp body, the other barely holding on to the saddle horn. The body was Juan's; he'd been caught under the hooves of the cattle when they'd made a sudden turn and run straight into his horse. The horse was dead, too.

Ace had almost died, as well. Drew shuddered, his insides still sick from the events of the past hour. Ace had also lost his horse, but Drew had reached him before the main herd had trampled him, swooping down and hanging half out of his own saddle to lift the black man across his horse's shoulders. The man's leg was crushed, but with any luck he would live.

Still, Drew felt as if he'd failed. If he'd been more experienced, if he'd anticipated the direction the herd would take, perhaps he could have swung the cattle back, away from Juan.

Bloody hell, he'd never wanted responsibility for the lives of others. He had, in fact, tried to avoid such obligations all his life. What a fool he'd been, a naïve fool, ever to think of a cattle drive as a lark. A great adventure.

Well, so now he'd learned—the hard way, as usual—that it was impossible. Over the past few days he'd seen that a trail drive depended on teamwork. And tonight, he'd seen very clearly the full extent of that burden: Everyone on the drive was responsible for every other man. Quite simply, they had each other's lives in their hands.

And he wasn't at all sure he was up to the task. He remembered his father's mocking laughter when he suggested the possibility of purchasing a commission.
I
wouldn't trust you with a dog. You're weak. Worthless. Get out of my sight.
How many times had he been told that?

Until he'd believed it.

Shifting in the saddle, Drew tried to hold the reins and his arm at the same time. He'd done something to the arm when he'd picked up Ace, and he hoped it was a bad sprain and not a break.

A light flickered in the darkness ahead, and he narrowed his eyes, trying to determine how far away it was. At least they were moving in the right direction. The heavens were so bloody dark, only the sound of the herd behind him had given him a reference point. The lightning was gone too, but the cold, freezing rain continued to pummel the earth and everything upon it. His horse reached the creek, and he realized instantly it was higher than it had been just an hour ago. As he crossed, he felt the pull of it against the horse's legs.

By the time they reached the chuck wagon, Ace, who had been suspiciously silent through the ride, was swearing. Kirby was standing at the back of the wagon. A small slight figure stood silently with him.

“You'd better get the wagon and horses across,” Drew said. “That creek's rising fast.”

“As soon as we get you two patched up,” Kingsley said. “Jake and Shorty are already moving the horses.”

“We gonna talk all night?” The cook's voice materialized out of nowhere.

“Ace's leg is pretty well smashed,” Drew said.

The slight figure next to Kirby, whom Drew identified as Gabe, seemed to stiffen but remained silent.

Pepper's voice broke in. “What about you, Scotty?”

“It's not serious. Take Ace first.”

Pepper and Kirby helped Ace down from the horse, then lowered him on an oilcloth that had already been spread.

“Bring the lantern here, Two-Bits,” Pepper commanded, and Drew watched the lad move quickly forward and shine the light down on the injured man.

“Dangnabit,” Pepper exclaimed as he cut away the trouser leg and saw the mangled leg. “I can't do much. Needs a doctor. I can give him some whiskey for pain, bandage it, but he needs more help than I can give him …” The cook's voice trailed off just as Ace moaned.

“I can't afford the time or the men,” Kingsley said in an emotionless voice. “Can't you stitch him up until we reach the next town?”

“Oh, I could stitch him up all right, but all the jiggling and jostling would kill him for sure.”

Kingsley swore.