To Tame A Texan (25 page)

“That's it!” Ace yelled. “Get 'em movin', boys!”

Lynnie took a deep breath and galloped Boneyard along the edge of the herd, urging the reluctant longhorns into the water. All along the route, cowboys shouted and whistled as they pushed the cattle toward the river. Old Twister was swimming strongly for the other side. The others, seeing the big, brown lead steer in the water, followed him slowly, and the leaders waded in and paused, but the cowboys drove them on.

“Watch out, boys!” Ace yelled. “Don't get caught in the herd.”

Lynnie watched him hesitate, then urge his black stallion into the current, swimming Nighthawk along the edge of the hundreds of lunging cattle. Lynnie rode into the river, cracking her quirt, urging the stragglers forward. Somehow, the cattle had parted, and she had longhorns all around her. She was now in the middle of the swimming mass of flashing horns, and the panicked cattle were pushing Boneyard along.

She gasped as the red water came up around her chaps. She hadn't realized it would be so cold. Around her, all she could see were heads and big horns as the cattle began to swim the river.

“Lynnie, what the hell are you doin'?” Ace had made the other bank and reined in there, he and his horse both dripping water.

She was scared now, very scared because she was caught in the middle of the swimming herd. She couldn't turn back if she wanted to. “What does it look like I'm doing?” she yelled back at him. “I'm bringing the herd across!”

Behind her, cowboys pushed the rest of the herd into the river and rode in themselves.

“Hell!” she heard a cowboy yell. “If that little gal can do this, shorely we can!”

A shout of agreement, and the cowboys who had hesitated pushed the stragglers of the herd into the river. Ahead of her, she could see cattle finding the bottom of the far shore and scrambling to climb the bank. She'd made it halfway now, and all she could see were hundreds of brown heads and flashing horns as cattle mooed and swam.

On the far bank, Ace looked terrified. “Lynnie, get the hell out of there! They begin to mill, you can't make it!”

Leave it to a man to comment on the obvious.
She fought to keep her horse moving with the cattle crowding and swimming all around her, the cold current pulling at her horse. “You think I don't know that?” she yelled back, angry and scared.

Then, out in the middle of the river, some of the cattle hesitated and tried to turn back to the safety of the old camp.

“Hey, they're tryin' to mill!” Ace shouted. “Boys, keep them movin'!”

Around her, cowboys fired pistols and slapped quirts in the faces of frightened cattle, trying to make them swim.

“Oh, my God,” Lynnie whispered, and it was more of a prayer than a curse. Boneyard's legs churned as she attempted to swim ahead, but around them, cattle were moving into a circle, trying to return to the original bank. All she could see was red water and the whites of terrified cattle's eyes. It was a mill, all right, one of those deadly mills that were legends in Texas. They could lose most of the herd in this river, swept away and drowned, the survivors scattered for miles downstream so that they could never round them up. “Come on, Boneyard,” she urged her horse forward, and the valiant horse was giving her best, but surrounded by panicked cattle, the horse was caught in the crush of a swimming, thrashing brown river of beef.

“Ace, help!” she yelled without even thinking.

He paused just a moment on that safe, far bank, his face white as cotton; then he plunged his great stallion back into the deadly water. “Hang on, Lynnie, I'm comin'!”

He wasn't going to be able to help her, she thought as she struggled to keep her horse from being swept away. She was only going to get him killed, too. “Throw me a rope, Ace!”

He reined in and tossed a loop, but he missed. “I'm comin' to get you. Hang on!” he yelled.

It was a comforting sound, a welcome sound, and yet she feared for him. The water was cold as death, and the world seemed like miles and miles of swimming, bawling cattle. In the water ahead, Ace used his whip to make a path through to her. He looked a million miles away. At that exact moment, Boneyard lurched, and Lynnie lost her seat and went under.

“Lynnie, clear your stirrups!” he shouted.

She came up fighting for air, trying to get her boots out of her stirrups. If she should get a foot caught and not be able to scramble free, she would drown.

She'd lost her hat, and she coughed and choked on the cold water as she thrashed about, her wet clothes pulling her under. She had been swept off her horse, and Boneyard, freed of the extra weight, was now making for shore, leaving Lynnie to try to keep afloat while surrounded by hundreds of thrashing, bawling cattle.

Abruptly, Ace was there, his black horse swimming strongly as he reached for her. She grabbed for his strong, callused hand, but the current was sweeping her downstream. “I—I can't make it!”

“Oh, Lordy!” he gasped, hesitated, and then he was off his horse, in the water with her, reaching for her. “Hang on, honey; you can do it!”

She fought the current, struggling to reach that lifesaving hand, yet being swept farther away as she struggled. Now Ace himself seemed to be in trouble, thrashing, his face panicked.

“Give up, Ace, I—I can't . . .” She went under again and choked on the cold water.

“And miss that women's convention?” he taunted her. “What about women's votes in Texas?”

They were counting on her, she thought, all those women who needed the vote. “Damn you,” she gulped, and came up, fighting to reach him. He looked a thousand miles away as she swam, held back by sodden clothes. Finally, she caught his hand and he pulled her to his horse.

“Hang on, girl,” he ordered, and his strong arm went around her. Then, grasping on to his saddle horn and swimming, he turned Nighthawk and headed for shore.

She didn't remember much else that day except that Ace had picked her up and carried her out of the river. “You look like a drowned rat,” he grumbled as he dumped her under a tree.

She struggled to sit up. Over in the shade of a grove of trees, the chuck wagon was reined in with its load of bawling calves. Ace seemed to be everywhere now that he was once again mounted up on the big black horse. They'd gotten the mill stopped and were driving the wet and bawling herd ashore, roping the stragglers and helping them across. It was almost dusk when the whole herd was safe. The cattle began to graze calmly on the Indian Territory side of the Red River, and Ace dismounted and walked over to her. “You all right?”

“Thanks,” she gulped. “I'm much obliged; I was scared for you.”

He grinned. “You'd been more scared if you'd known the truth. I can't swim.”

“You can't swim?” She was horrified at the thought. “And yet you came in anyway?”

He shrugged and paused to roll a cigarette, came up with a sodden bag of tobacco and sighed. “I kept thinkin' what Dad and Uncle Maverick would do to me if I let you drown. That was scarier than the river.”

She didn't think he was telling the truth, but she didn't push it. “I can't believe you took that chance.” She was in awe of him. “That was a very brave thing to do.”

He snorted. “Forget it. I would have done it for any of the wranglers.”

“Oh. I thought maybe . . .” She wasn't sure what she had thought, and anyway, what did it matter? She was crestfallen as he turned and sauntered back to the cowboys. She would have sworn he had called her “honey.” Not that it mattered. She wouldn't have an untamed brute like Ace Durango on a platter with an apple in his mouth. His manners and grammar were crude, and he thought poetry was something cowboys wrote on outhouse walls.

Still, for a man who couldn't swim to fight the Red River to save her life—it had been a very brave thing to do, the kind of thing cowboys would be telling around campfires for a hundred years. It was the kind of thing a real trail boss would have done, and they had gotten the herd across.

While the muddy cattle grazed and Lynnie got her calves out to dry them off, the cowboys gathered around the campfire, and Cookie got his kettles going.

“We lose any?” Ace asked.

Cookie said, “Only one or two. Must be a new record for crossin' the Red, only losing a couple. I got Joe cuttin' up one of the dead ones. We got beef stew tonight.”

 

 

After a satisfying supper, the cowboys gathered around the fire to sing as twilight came on. Lynnie had managed to find some dry clothes she'd wrapped in oilcloth in her saddle bags, and had gone down to the river to wash the mud out of her hair.

Ace came up behind her. “You sure you're okay?”

She nodded and toweled her hair, looking up at him in the darkness. “That was a mighty brave thing, Ace.”

He hesitated. “When I heard you screamin,' I came in without thinkin'.”

“I reckon you're your father's son after all—a real cowman.”

He stubbed his toe in the mud and looked embarrassed. “That means a lot, comin' from you.”

“What are you talking about?” she scoffed. “If it hadn't been for me being so stupid and getting myself in that mill, you wouldn't have had to risk your life. I reckon you're mad at me for that.”

“Not really. My ma would have done the same thing. You got spunk, Lynnie. Texans admire that in a woman.”

“Then you don't care if I finish the trip with you?”

He shrugged. “It don't make me no never-mind. I reckon you've earned the right to go on.”

She stood up slowly. He was so big and broad shouldered standing there in the moonlight, and suddenly, she wished she was pretty like her older sister.

“What are you thinkin'?” he asked.

She shook out her wet hair. “Not much. Sometimes I wish I was pretty. In my family, they call me the smart one.”

“You ain't exactly coyote bait.”

She looked up at him. “Thank you—I think. I'm not beautiful like Cayenne or full of personality like Stevie, or winsome like Angel.”

He came closer. “Don't compare yourself to your sisters, Lynnie. You're smart and spirited, and that's a good thing in a woman. Besides, I think you're pretty.”

Her heart seemed to skip a beat. “Aw, you're just saying that because you're gallant.”

The puzzled look on his dark, handsome face told her he didn't know the meaning of the word.

“Ace, you behaved like a real gent,” she assured him.

“Lynnie, I ain't no gentleman. You can ask any of the girls in San Antone or Austin about that.”

He was standing close—too close.

“All the girls say you're so charming, you could talk a dog off a meat wagon.” Lynnie ducked her head “I'm sorry you got stuck with taking me to the ball.”

“I enjoyed takin' you to the ball,” he protested.

“Now you're lying.”

“A Texan, lie? If you was a man, I'd wipe up this riverbank with you.”

She stepped closer, feeling some emotion she had never felt before. She couldn't identify it. “It's nice of you to say it, anyhow.”

“Lordy, girl, let me put it this way; bein' with you is never dull, and most girls—even the pretty ones—are dull.” He was looking at her in a way that made her insides turn to jelly.

“Ace, they say even coyote bait begins to look pretty good to a cowboy after he's been on the trail for weeks.”

He reached out and put his big hands on her slight shoulders very gently. “Lynnie, believe it or not, there's other things as important as being pretty.”

“Not to hear most men tell it.” She swallowed hard. “And I know I'll never be as pretty as a lot of those girls you were looking over at the ball.”

“But I took you,” he reminded her, and then he pulled her close and kissed her.

She forgot then that she hated Ace Durango for being such a smug, superior male animal and that she knew that her sister and Ace's mother had forced him to take her to that dance. She returned the kiss with all the pent-up longing and emotion of a lonely, vulnerable girl, her tongue brushing lightly against his lips until he opened them with a gasp and pulled her hard up against him. She could feel his aroused manhood through both their clothing, and his hands stroked up and down her back as she leaned into him.

“Lordy, girl, Lord!” He seemed amazed at his own reaction to her as he kissed her harder and deeper, turning her so that one of his big hands went into the collar of her shirt, stroking along her collarbone, and then down the swell of her breast.

She knew she ought to stop him, but his hand caressing her flesh aroused feelings in her that she hadn't even known were possible. She pressed closer to him, moaning softly in her throat, urging his hand to stroke and caress her breast while her breath came in deeper gasps. It seemed he was holding her so tightly, she could scarcely breathe.

It was Ace who pulled away, and when he spoke, his voice was shaky. “I—I'm sorry, Lynnie; I shouldn't have handled what weren't mine to touch. I wouldn't blame you if you slapped my face.”

Lynnie took a deep breath, too, and tried to straighten her shirt. “Now, why should I? I liked it, too.”

“A lady ain't supposed to admit that.” He backed away.

“Well, I'm nothing if not honest, am I?”

She saw just the slightest glint of admiration in his dark eyes. “You are shorely different than other girls, and that's a fact. So now I'm gonna do something I don't usually do. Lynnie, I'm a bad
hombre
when it comes to women; any of them will tell you I love 'em and leave 'em.”