Josh regarded him narrowly, then his face brightened. “Tess and I were just about to ride out and look for that buckskin mustang who tried to run off some of the mares. Weren’t we, sweetheart?”
“Uh… sure.” Sweetheart. Sheesh! “We were.” They hadn’t planned any such thing, but Josh was matching Sean gotcha grin for gotcha grin, so she played along to see what he was up to.
“Want to come?” Josh asked Sean.
“Well, I-”
“You did say you were lonesome for the old days,” Josh said amiably.
“Yes, Sean. You did.” Tess tried to ignore Josh’s hand, which rested with apparent affection on the back of her neck. Queer how a warm hand could send such tingly shivers down a person’s spine.
“It would help,” Josh said innocently, “to have an extra man along.”
The hand kneaded gently. Tess didn’t know whether to grit her teeth or melt into a little puddle.
Sean gave them a sour look, then surrendered sullenly. “I guess I could use the exercise.”
When Josh led out Amigo for Sean to ride, Tess began to understand. Amigo, a rangy gray with huge hooves, had the most bonejarring gait of any horse that lived at the Diamond T. Josh knew it well, because just two days before, Tess had put him on Amigo when he insisted she give him a tour of the ranch. After two hours in the saddle, he had sat gingerly the rest of the day.
They set off at a good pace, assuring that Sean endured the greatest possible pain. Rojo trotted along with them, dashing off now and again to flush a rabbit or investigate a scent trail, then returning to play a game he and Josh had invented, where the dog grabbed a stick, leapt into the air high enough for Josh to grab it from his mouth, then ran full speed to retrieve the treasure when Josh threw it.
“You’re going to wear him out so he won’t be any use to us,” Tess complained.
“He’s got energy to spare,” Josh assured her.
In truth, Tess’s complaint came from a twinge of jealousy.
Rojo only tolerated most people other than Tess. Tess he adored. His taking up with Josh was a betrayal. She wouldn’t have wanted the dog to threaten Josh, of course. But a little standoffishness would have been nice.
“This horse feels like a broken rocking chair,” Sean complained before thirty minutes had passed.
“You’ve gotten soft,” Tess told him from her comfortable perch on Ranger, who floated over the rough ground. “Didn’t your ambitions for the Diamond T include doing any work here?”
“Didn’t you even read the letter I sent you after our father died?” Sean asked through jarring teeth.
“I read it, and I couldn’t believe you wanted me to sell the ranch and divvy up the money.”
“At least you wouldn’t have had to get married.” Sean gave Josh a cynical look. Ransom just smiled.
“Had to get married? Ha! I wanted to get married,” Tess lied. “The man just swept me off my feet.”
“Who do you think you’re fooling?” Sean scoffed.
Josh took offense. “Why do you have such trouble believing your sister is happily married?”
“I think a man with any sense would rather be staked out on an anthill than marry my sister. And you seem like a man with sense.”
The look on Ransom’s face took Tess by surprise, and it made Sean back into a lame apology. “Uh… that came out wrong. Tess is a great girl. After all, she is my sister. But you’ve got to admit that she doesn’t go out of her way to please a man. I mean, just look at her. Or listen to her.”
“Since I sleep with her every night,” Ransom said coldly, “I might know a bit more than you do about how Tess pleases a man.”
Tess hoped the shadow of her hat hid the flush that crawled up her neck. A rush of gratitude for his defense almost made her glad Rojo was being nice to him.
Lucky for her, before she could go totally mushy, something else demanded her attention.
“Looks like a mired cow over there.” Josh pointed to the brushy bank of an unnamed creek-unnamed because it seldom carried water. The uncommonly regular rains during the last month had turned more than one dry creek to quicksand and mud.
The cow was there, big as life. If Tess hadn’t been so distracted, she would have seen it without Josh’s help.
“She’s a mama,” Tess said.
Indeed, a spindly legged calf fled at their approach, but Rojo circled behind it to block its retreat. It halted uncertainly, bawling distress. Mama bawled back, more angry at the separation from her calf than the mud sucking at her legs.
When Tess started to dismount, Ransom told her to stay put. “No reason for all three of us to get mucked up,” he said cheerfully. “Sean here can back me up. Can’t you, Sean?”
Ordinarily, Tess would have bristled at Josh taking charge, but the prospect of seeing Sean make closer acquaintance with the slobbering, foamflecked, mudencrusted cow made her gladly settle for the role of spectator.
With impressive skill, Josh dropped a rope around the cow’s horns, wrapped the rope around his saddle horn, and drew the rope taut. Sean got the job of pushing from behind.
Predictably, he objected. “You expect me to wade out in that slime? These are new boots!”
Ransom grinned. “We could ask your sister to do it.”
Sean shot him a filthy look, but the challenge to his manhood was clear. Minutes later he stood knee deep in mud with a shoulder propped against the cow’s dungcoated rear end.
“Heave ho,” Ransom said as his horse put tension on the rope. “Push, Sean. Lean into her.”
“Go to hell.” But Sean pushed. The cow bawled her distress, raised her tail, and treated Sean to a stream of greenish brown cow plop.
Tess howled with laughter. She couldn’t help it. Her brother covered with steaming dung was a sight to treasure in her memory. Her sides nearly split.
Sean didn’t see the humor. Between moans and curses, he vainly searched for water to wash off the stuff, which spattered his chest and dotted his face. The creek offered no water, though. Only mud.
Tess took mercy on him. “Take my canteen,” she offered. “It will rinse some of it off.”
He waved it angrily away, still cursing the cow, Josh, Tess, the ranch, the mud, and the whole bovine population in general, which made Tess laugh yet again. In the meantime, the cow, with Josh’s horse steadily pulling, managed to struggle free of the mud. She shook herself and bawled as Josh flipped the rope from her horns. In response, her calf trotted in their direction. Still muttering and waving his arms in disgust, Sean started for his horse. Like some greenhorn, he made the mistake of getting between the distraught mama cow and her calf. Mama, already on edge from her ordeal, saw the man in her line of vision and did what any cranky range cow would do. She charged. Sean looked up to see a thousand pounds of beef bearing down upon him with tossing horns and distended nostrils.
Tess reacted in midlaugh, digging heels into Ranger and leaping forward to head off the charge even as Rojo rushed forward, barking frantically. But Josh got there ahead of both of them. He careened his horse into the angry cow’s beefy shoulder, making her stumble and go down on her knees. The move was both gutsy and dangerous-and probably the only one that could have saved Sean from becoming part of the soil layer.
Sean made a dash for his horse. The bewildered cow got to her feet, shook her head, and with Rojo’s loud encouragement, ambled off toward her calf.
“And you ask why I want to sell the ranch!” Sean growled. Less than an hour after they got back to the ranch, he packed his gear, saddled his horse, and rode off without so much as a huffy goodbye.
The story of Sean’s rescue got passed around the ranch faster than Rosie’s hot biscuits. Josh became the hero of the day. He had won the men’s admiration when he’d stuck with Nitro alongside Tess, but saving a fellow cowboy (even though Sean hardly qualified as a cowboy, in Tess’s opinion) sent him right up the ladder to a pedestal. The next morning, he just about elevated himself to sainthood when he led Nitro out of the barn with a saddle on his back, mounted, and in full view of everyone, rode the stallion one circuit of the corral and dismounted, still in one piece. The stallion tossed his head and regarded the man disdainfully- just to keep his dignity intact-but otherwise, he behaved like a wellbroke mount. Among the onlookers, jaws dropped, eyes widened.