Wyoming Wildfire (2 page)

“There’s no shade to be had for anything but lizards and jackrabbits.”

“My aunt is neither,” the girl responded dryly.

No sense of humor either, he thought. “We’re coming up to a river,” he said aloud. “She can rest while I water the oxen.”

“She doesn’t need rest, she needs shade.”

“Don’t bother the poor man on my account, dear. You can’t expect him to produce trees where there aren’t any.” The soft voice belonged to Augusta Hauxhurst, a very attractive woman barely ten years older than her niece, yet the difference in dress and character made them seem decades apart. Augusta wore her ash-blond hair in a tight bun and protected her fair complexion with a broad-brimmed straw hat. She looked very much like her niece, with the same generous mouth and delicately chiseled nose, but her blue-gray eyes and serene countenance lacked the vivacity and intensity that characterized Sibyl.

“There must be trees somewhere. This whole territory can’t be covered in nothing but rocks and grass.”

“The lawyer did try to warn you,” her aunt ventured timidly.

“He said the climate was uncomfortable and the rangelands unending. He never said the place was a virtual desert. I can’t see how a camel can survive here, much less thousands of cows.”

“I feel sure, dear, that if he says cows live here in great numbers, we shall soon discover that they do.”

“Aunt Augusta,” Sibyl said with a grunt of disgust, “why must you accept everything a man says without question?”

“They do know more about these things than we women.”

“
I
know as much about farms and cows as any man,” her niece asserted. Her eyes flashed in defiance while the sun reflected the myriad shades of gold in her cascading hair.

“But you’ve never been here before, and it does seem a rather desolate place.”

Sibyl dared not admit to her aunt that she had already begun to question the wisdom of leaving Virginia. From the safety of her parlor it seemed like such a good idea, but now that she was actually face to face with the yawning wilderness, she wondered if it might not have been more prudent to accept the money and settle for a conventional existence. A mental image of her second cousin utterly routed that thought. Nothing could possibly be worse than being married to Kendrick.

Sibyl’s beauty, trim figure, and old family had insured her popularity but no acceptable offers of marriage. A moderate fortune, an educated mind, independent ways, and a sharp tongue had kept all but her thick-skinned cousin at a distance. That had all changed, much to her cynical amusement, as soon as it became known she had inherited a prosperous cattle ranch. The latest aspirant to her hand was Moreton Swan of the Moreton Swan & Son Hardware and Farm Supply Company. She didn’t mind hardware—one had to earn a living somehow—but she did mind Moreton Swan. No white-columned mansion on a hill was worth being mauled by that brute.

“It can’t all be this bad,” she said to her aunt with forced enthusiasm. “If Uncle Wesley loved it so much, there must be something about it we haven’t seen yet.”

“What?” asked her aunt, willing to be convinced.

“I don’t know, but it has several advantages over Lexington: No one has ever heard of Moreton Swan and his wandering hands, or his mother and her beady eyes, or his father and his drooling mouth.”

“Sibyl, you must not talk like that,” her aunt reproved. “I know you don’t like Moreton and his family, but—”

“I loathe Moreton and everything connected with him,” she stated flatly.

She’s a spirited filly all right, Ned thought, chuckling silently to himself, but with those looks it would certainly be worth the trouble to tame her. After staying a bachelor for thirty-seven years he wasn’t thinking of trying himself, but he’d give a year’s wages to see what happened when she met a man who could handle her.

They reached the river. The drought and blistering sun had reduced it to a tepid, slightly alkaline ribbon. Ned unhitched the oxen and the sensible beasts waded in, took a few swallows, and then waited patiently before drinking again. Sibyl climbed down to stretch her stiff legs. “I hope we get some rain before night,” she remarked to her aunt, pointing to a horizon that was beginning to show red in the west. But Augusta wasn’t interested in talking about the weather or exposing her tender skin to the broiling sun, and Sibyl was left to walk in silence. Meanwhile, Ned tested the river bed for a crossing, but the more he walked through the water, the more uneasy he became.

“They should have had enough to drink by now,” Sibyl said, impatient to resume their journey. “My aunt can’t stand much more. How much farther do we have to go?”

“No more than fifteen or twenty miles, as best I can figure. We ought to make it in about three or four hours.”

“Thank goodness. I can’t wait to be through with this interminable journey. I’ve been thinking of a long hot bath for days.”

Ned couldn’t help staring. He had never seen a bathtub outside Laramie. Cowboys bathed in creeks or water troughs, but he couldn’t imagine the proper Miss Cameron settling for anything like that. “I don’t think we should cross here,” he said, wading farther out into the river. “The bottom is too sandy.”

“How can it be too sandy when we’ve seen nothing but rocks for the last hundred miles?”

“It washes down with the spring runoff,” answered Ned, unsure of just where the sand did come from.

“It does that everywhere, but there’s always a bed of rock underneath. How far is the next ford?”

“I don’t know.”

“Then how do you propose to find out?” she asked crisply.

“Follow the river until we come to one.”

“But that could take hours, and my aunt’s nearly exhausted now.”

“If we get stuck, you’ll have to unload the whole wagon,” Ned warned.

“I guess we can wait while you take a few of the smaller trunks across.”

“I can’t, not with this leg,” he said, pointing to the twisted limb that had ended his days in the saddle.

“Then we’ll cross here,” she decreed. “I’ve crossed hundreds of streams without the least bit of trouble.”

“But that was in Virginia, dear,” cautioned her aunt. “Maybe you should listen to Mr. Wright.”

“Not if it means spending the rest of the day following this river. I want to reach the Elkhorn before midnight. If you don’t want to drive the wagon, then I’ll do it.” Sibyl informed him, climbing into the driver’s seat.

Ned hitched up the team, his final protest receiving short shrift. As he waded toward midstream, the sluggish water barely up to his knees, his ever alert eyes noticed a rider in the distance. It was possible the man knew of a safe crossing, but even as the rider paused, Ned decided not to signal him. You never knew what kind of man you might meet on the range, and he didn’t want to invite trouble. He waded on across.

The far bank was low enough for the oxen to pull the wagon out and Ned waved Sibyl in. She gathered up the reins and eased the wagon down the bank and into the water. At least she knows something about driving, he thought.

Sibyl angled upstream into the current until halfway across, then straightened out again. She kept the oxen at their task, never permitting the wagon to stop or the weight to mire them down. Yet she didn’t hurry them or wear them out unnecessarily. She was beginning to feel rather smug when ten feet from shore she felt the ground give way under her wheels. She cracked the whip sharply, but the efforts of the straining beasts could not keep the wagon moving and she did not abuse them. “We’re stuck,” she acknowledged, thoroughly annoyed and somewhat chagrined. “I hope it’s not quicksand.”

“Quicksand!” exclaimed her aunt in wide-eyed terror. “But we can’t die here, we just can’t”

“It’s okay, Aunt Augusta, we can always walk to shore. But I’m afraid it will mean the loss of all our things.” Her afflicted aunt, caught between the fear of drowning or facing strangers in no more than a soaked petticoat, looked perilously close to fainting.

“It’s not quicksand,” Ned reassured her. “If we throw out those heavy trunks, we can probably drive the wagon out.”

“What’s the use of saving the wagon if we lose everything in it?” Sibyl asked, her temper showing signs of fraying.

“If it means having to remain in the middle of this river, I think I’d rather do without my clothes,” her aunt decided. “I can’t think it would be comfortable for very long.”

“It won’t come to that,” Sibyl smiled, forcing her temper down. “Well take a few things with us and send someone back for the rest. I suppose they will be safe enough.”

They disappeared behind the canvas flaps to choose what to take with them, unaware that the distant rider had left his observation post. Ned was not unaware, however, and he watched the stranger’s approach apprehensively.

Chapter 2

The rider sat in the saddle with negligent ease as his mount dodged gopher holes and leapt over the uneven ground. Even on horseback he looked extraordinarily tall. Powerful legs, bare of chaps, wrapped themselves securely about the barrel of the blue-grey gelding while the loose-fitting shirt and vest could not disguise his broad shoulders and chest. Except for the square chin and clean-shaven cheeks, his face was hidden under the low brim of his hat. His mount’s steel-shod hooves sent a shower of small stones into the river as he pulled up at the water’s edge. He was clearly not an ordinary cowboy, and Ned walked forward to greet him.

“Even a tenderfoot knows better than to drive an overloaded wagon into a soft river bottom,” he said, without waiting for an introduction. “Or were you planning to walk the rest of the way to Montana?” His tone was matter-of-fact, but his mockery was unmistakable.

“We’re not heading for Montana.”

“You don’t talk like an Easterner.”

“I used to ride herd above Cheyenne.”

“Then you must be a fool. See that sky? A flash flood could carry you miles downstream.”

“The fault was mine,” Sibyl announced with rigid aloofness as she stepped through the canvas into the sunlight.

Burch turned easily toward her, but his first glimpse caused him to sit bolt upright and take a painful gulp of air. Old Blue, sensing the sudden change in his rider, caracoled nervously. Burch controlled his mount by instinct alone, his mind momentarily stunned. He was acquainted with every wealthy beauty from St. Louis to Denver, but none of them could equal this daughter of an ordinary cowboy. He blinked, cursing his sun-tired eyes for playing him false, but when he opened them again she stood before him as solidly as the rock rim in the distance. Nature’s craftsmanship in flesh and bone was superior to what She had achieved in the sculpted ridge, but the girl’s expression was carved from the same granite.

“Please spare my driver your abuse,” she intoned haughtily.

So she was not an ordinary cowboy’s daughter, Burch thought, and his interest intensified.

“If you wish to be of assistance, which I don’t suppose you do, you could help us out of this river. I don’t want to remain here all night, even without the threat of a flash flood.”

“You can help yourself by throwing half that stuff out and handing the reins over to your driver.” His bemused brain was rapidly regaining its equilibrium.

“Is that the way all men out here think, or is this just your own personal attitude?”

“I thought it up all by myself, and in less time than it took you to get stuck in that river.”

Sibyl’s eyes flashed and her manner became less aloof. “Our property is more important than your opinion,” she said, stamping her foot angrily. “If you were a gentleman, you’d bend your wits to getting us unstuck without the loss of so much as a single petticoat.”

For a moment Burch hovered on the edge of abandoning her to her fate. Then, without knowing why, his anger evaporated and a broad smile spread across his leathered features.

“You’re a frisky little heifer, aren’t you? Some poor homesteader is going to have his hands full.”

“I’m nobody’s handful,” Sibyl announced indignantly, “and we are quite capable of rescuing ourselves,” she said, regaining her dignity.

Augusta peeped anxiously from behind the canvas at Burch’s imposing form. She looked as though she would have preferred to withdraw into the safety of the interior, but she gathered her courage and spoke to him in a calm, controlled voice.

“I do hope you will assist us. We seem to have allowed our inexperience to lead us into difficulty.”

“Aunt!” exclaimed Sibyl, feeling betrayed.

“You cannot deny that we are firmly mired. It would be foolish not to permit such a strong young man to do what he can to extract us from this predicament.”

“We can do without his help,” Sibyl stated loftily.

“Can’t we at least allow him to try?” her aunt asked reasonably. The grin of Burch’s lips grew wider and wider.

“I’ll do what I can, Mrs.… . ?”

“Miss,” Augusta informed him with heightened color, “Miss Augusta Hauxhurst.”

“We’ll have to take some of your things out first. Let me have a look.”

“I don’t see why you have go nosing through our wagon,” Sibyl muttered, a hint of petulance in her voice.

“I’m sure we can trust him, dear,” her aunt said, noticeably relieved to have his assistance.