Texas Tender (17 page)

That was something Idalou couldn't understand. The women she could understand, but what excuse did the men have? Okay, he'd apparently handled Van and Newt, but what else had he done?
Be realistic
, she told herself. If he can handle those two, he doesn't need to do anything else. And he'd brought Jordan around. The trouble was, she hadn't
seen
any of this.

“I'm not going to
make up
to anybody,” Idalou told her brother.

“You don't have to,” Carl said with a grin she'd like to wipe off his face. “I think the sheriff is sweet
on you. All you have to do is stop scratching him every time he puts a hand in your direction.”

“It's not what you're thinking,” Idalou snapped.

A cow not too far away lifted her head to watch them pass, the ends of the grass she was chewing sticking out of both sides of her mouth. She was one of Jordan's longhorn cows, but her calf obviously had been fathered by their bull. It seemed no matter where she looked, something reminded her of all that had gone wrong.

“If you could do anything you wanted,” Carl asked his sister, “what would you do?”

“First, I'd forget that I ever knew anything about our ranch or that bull. Then I'd get married and move as far away from here as I could.”

The words were out of her mouth before she even thought them. But once spoken, she knew they were the truth. Only there was no chance it would ever happen.

“Riding out in the heat of the day?” the hostler at the livery stable asked Will.

“It can't be helped,” Will replied. “I have something I need to do, but I have to be back in town for supper.”

The hostler laughed. “You sure got every woman in Dunmore flapping her wings over you. I never saw such a fuss.”

Will waited patiently while the old man saddled his horse. He'd have been happier to do it himself— no one back at the Broken Circle ever offered to do it for him—but it was clear the old man considered it a privilege. Whether Will liked to admit it or not, he was something of a celebrity in Dunmore. It was easier to keep from hurting people's feelings if he just went along with them.

“I won't be here long,” Will said. “Then everything will go back to normal.”

“There's lots of people hoping you'll stay.” The man checked the cinch to make sure it was tight, then stepped back to hold the horse while Will mounted. “Nobody's ever seen Newt quiet for so long.”

Considering that Newt had assaulted Mara and had attacked one of Idalou's cowhands in little more than a week, Will didn't want to know what he was normally like. Will gathered the reins and swung into the saddle. “I'm sure they'll find someone who will do a much better job than I have. I don't know when I'll be back, so don't wait around for me.”

“I'll be here,” the hostler said. “I don't have no place else to go.”

That had been Will for the last several years—all grown up and no place to go. And try as he might, he really couldn't blame his predicament on anyone but himself.

Rather than ride down the main street of Dunmore and have to stop and talk to nearly every person he passed, Will rode down the alley. Junie Mae came out of her aunt's store to throw something into a trash barrel. She didn't look happy.

“How's it going?” Will asked.

“My aunt is getting suspicious.” Junie Mae looked like a hunted animal. “I don't know what I'm going to do when she figures it out.”

“Come to me. We'll think of something.”

“I don't know how I can thank you for what you've done.”

“I haven't done anything yet. Now smile. When you do, you look so pretty nobody can think of anything else.”

Junie Mae smiled, but it was obviously an effort.
“I'll try,” she said before turning around and going back into the store.

Will would have liked to force Van to face up to his responsibilities, but Junie Mae wanted Van to have nothing to do with her baby. That was probably best for the baby, but it would be hard on Junie Mae. For the moment, everything hinged on the response of her aunt and uncle.

But another woman monopolized Will's thoughts. He was headed out to Idalou's ranch to talk to her even though he wasn't sure what he wanted to say.

Despite being warned, he'd been attracted to Idalou from the moment he'd first seen her. He could still remember her standing in the doorway, staring at him as if he were an apparition. He'd prepared himself to deal with another woman who couldn't see anything beyond his looks, but it wasn't long before she was treating him like anybody else. It was such a pleasant surprise, he hadn't been really upset when she got angry that he wouldn't go with her to confront Jordan. She had proved she was an intelligent woman, so he was certain she'd feel differently after she had time to recover from her disappointment.

But things hadn't worked out as he'd expected. No matter what he did, she found a way to see it in a different light, one that didn't flatter him. What he didn't understand was that this only made her more attractive to him. He'd gone through most of his life working hard at just one thing—keeping out of trouble. So why should he be attracted to one of the most troublesome females he'd ever met?

It was Isabelle's fault. She loved her husband and children with a fierceness that was almost scary, but that didn't stop her from arguing with them or delivering devastating criticisms of their characters, their
actions, or anything else that fell short of her expectations. She did that because she wanted them to be their best and wouldn't accept anything less. She was the most difficult female he'd ever known, yet he adored her. After living under her benevolent dictatorship for twenty years, he'd sworn he wanted a wife who was exactly the opposite. Yet no easygoing woman had ever held his interest. Instead, he was intrigued by Idalou, who was blind to his looks but not to his perceived faults and shortcomings.

Was that why he'd paid off the loan in full rather than simply making the next payment? He had no idea how he was going to explain his action to Jake and Isabelle especially since he couldn't really explain it to himself. Idalou and Carl might never find that bull. Then he'd be stuck with a ranch he didn't want, and without the cash to buy another bull.

He scanned the land on all sides and found nothing to appeal to him. It was as flat as the top of a table, with no trees to break the monotony. Approaching a prairie dog town, he couldn't help grinning when the little animals sat up straight at the sound of an approaching horseman. All but one scurried to their mounds, ready to dive into their burrows at the slightest threat of danger. Seeing a hawk circling overhead, he decided they were probably more afraid of it than of him. As far as he knew, people didn't eat prairie dogs.

There must have been fifty little animals in this colony. Thinking of it as the prairie dog equivalent of Dunmore, he laughed aloud. That stubborn little critter that hadn't run for cover made him think of Idalou, undaunted by danger, determined to protect what was hers. The prairie dog chattered at Will as he rode past, as though remonstrating with him for needlessly upsetting their little community.

“At least I kept the hawk from attacking you,” Will said, then laughed at himself for talking to a prairie dog. He was beginning to act a little weird. And it was all Idalou's fault.

As the miles rolled by—and the uninteresting prairie passed largely unnoticed—Will tried to figure out the nature of his feelings for Idalou. He didn't think it was simple curiosity. He certainly hoped he didn't just feel challenged because she was immune to his looks.

He finally came to the conclusion that Idalou had awakened emotions or feelings he'd never experienced, which explained why he didn't know exactly what they were. This was exciting, but he didn't like uncertainty. He'd had more than enough of both in the years between his parents' deaths and being adopted by Jake and Isabelle. He liked things to be well organized, his plans well thought out, his—

His horse threw up its head and stopped abruptly. The creek, which had been a trickle no more than a foot deep, had turned into a tumultuous watercourse that spilled out of its banks and carried debris from trees and bushes ripped up from its banks. There could be only one explanation. Idalou's dam had burst.

Idalou clung to the corral post, wondering if she could hold on until all the water had drained from the dam. Or if the post would be uprooted and carried along with the other debris that swirled past her. Or if the branches of an uprooted tree would tear her loose and plunge her into the floodwaters.

Several minutes earlier an explosion that sounded like a distant clap of thunder had been the first indication something was wrong. Almost immediately the chickens started clucking and jumping around frantically. The pigs started to squeal. Idalou's horse ran back and forth along the corral fence.

That was when she heard the sound of rushing water and knew that someone had blown up the dam.

She didn't know how many minutes it would take before the water reached her, but she had to free the animals. The chickens were first. They came fluttering and squawking out of their pen. She hoped they could find safety in the trees. Next she went to the pigpen and opened the gate. She
had to push the reluctant sow out while trying to keep from stepping on the pigs that ran around their mother's legs.

She saw the first of the water about the same time she got the sow out of the pen. The water crashed over rocks and around the trunks of trees and was rapidly spilling over the banks, but it was only about two feet deep. She breathed a sigh of relief that part of the dam still held. No sooner did that thought go through her head than she heard what sounded like the cracking and shattering of large pieces of wood.

The entire dam must have given way. Moments later, a wall of water strong enough to destroy anything in its path was rushing toward her.

The corral was far enough from the creek that it wasn't in the direct path of the water, but the horse could be pinned against the rails and drowned or badly injured by floating debris. She grabbed at the poles to the corral. Ignoring the splinters in her fingers, she pulled the poles back and tossed them aside. Panicked by the sounds of rushing water, her horse leaped the last rail before she could remove it.

By now the water had risen high enough to soak the bottom of her dress. She looked back at the house, but it was impossible to cross the turbulent water to reach it. She tried to decide if she could climb one of the trees along the creek. Before she could calculate the risk, the wall of water came rushing down the creek. In seconds a lake of water filled the space taken up by the ranch and all its outlying structures.

The water rose so rapidly, Idalou knew she wouldn't be able to outrun it. Her best hope would be to climb up on the corral rails and pray the water didn't rise high enough to wash her away.

In no time the pigpen was flooded and the chicken coop swept away. She climbed up on the corral fence,
but the water covered first the bottom rail, then the middle rail. Wrapping her arms around the top rail with her feet on the bottom, she managed to stand even as the water reached her thighs.

The sound of wood screaming, of joints being torn apart, caused her to look up to see their house being wrenched from its foundation. Before her stunned and horrified gaze, the front porch disintegrated and fell away as the flood waters lifted the house and carried it toward the towering cottonwoods that lined the creek bank. The water hurled the house against the tree trunks, some measuring more than four feet in diameter. The house shuddered, spun around, and was slammed into a tree a little further along. Flanked by eddies on either side, the floodwater thundered down the main channel, ripping up shrubs and small trees, and tossing the foot-thick beams from the dam around like toothpicks. The current battered the house against the trees before lifting it and flinging it toward the main channel.

A beam as large as a tree struck the house broadside. It shuddered, hung for a moment, then simply came apart. Seconds later all that remained of Idalou's home was floating downstream or sinking to the bottom of the creek.

She was in shock. Everything they had was gone, including her grandmother's prized set of china, destroyed beyond reclamation in a matter of minutes. Not even Will's money could save the ranch now. There was nothing to save.

She clung to the fence as the water rose higher and higher, swirling around her thighs, her waist, and then just under her breasts. There was nowhere for her to go, no way to climb higher. She was stranded with the deadly floodwater swirling around her. She had to do something before the water swept her
away and the weight of her clothes pulled her under. She couldn't shed her clothes and keep her hold on the corral fence. As much as the thought of being found naked appalled her, drowning appealed to her even less.

Seeing a horseman riding toward her increased her sense of helplessness. No one could reach her through the swirling water. As he drew closer, she recognized Will. She called out to him, but her voice couldn't be heard above the roar of the water. But he could see her, and as she watched, he uncoiled the rope attached to his saddle. Going upstream, he rode his horse knee deep into the water. Then he made a lasso, whirled it over his head, and threw it far out into the water.

The current brought the rope toward her, but it passed well out of her reach. Will retrieved the rope, re-coiled it, and prepared to throw it again. It took two more tosses before the rope came close enough for Idalou to grab hold of it. But having done so, she didn't know how she could use it to reach the shore. She wasn't strong enough to stand up against the current. Will was motioning her to hook the lasso over the corral post. When she had done that, he secured the other end to his pommel and backed his horse until the rope was taut. Next he took off his hat and tossed it aside. That was followed by his vest, shirt, and boots, leaving him naked to the waist. Then, using the rope to hold him, Will waded into the water.