They rode for twenty minutes alongside the churning San Pedro before Luis’s cussing, the dogs’ barking, and the bawling of frightened cattle carried to their ears. Tess cursed the darkness. All she could see were blackonblack shadows. She could make out Luis only because his shadow rose taller than the cattle’s. Frantic barking pierced the night above the pandemonium. Bold cattle dog Rojo must have crossed when the water was lower. Tess doubted he would be able to fight the current now. Rojo’s son Chief, not as bold as his father, barked in frustration from the near bank.
Without saying a word, they all three headed straight for the water. Ranger was Tess’s favorite mount. The big buckskin gelding would go anywhere or do anything she asked, which didn’t say much for his brains but spoke volumes for his heart. He didn’t hesitate, but plunged into the flood. Josh, mounted on the somewhat smarter Jughead, had a fight on his hands, but he finally goaded the horse into the swirling water. Henry’s mare, already tired from a night’s work and having already swum the river a time or two, absolutely balked. No amount of spurring would send her down that path again.
Ranger swam steadily while Tess tried not to think of unseen dangers the swirling current might send careening toward them. Whole trees torn from the bank could ride the flood and spell death for an unlucky rider. Whirlpools and eddies could suck horse and rider beneath the churning water. Floating mats of vegetation could sweep them downstream like a lethal broom. Crossing such a flood during the day was dangerous. At night it was just damned foolhardy.
But the fool cattle would simply stand there and drown while the river ate at their sandbar.
Both Ranger and Jughead climbed onto the sandbar at the same time, carrying rain and riverdrenched riders. Luis raised his arm in the darkness and Rojo barked a greeting.
“Take the rear,” Tess told Josh.
He didn’t argue.
Luis already had the left flank in hand, and Rojo read the situation as any good cattle dog would and harried the beeves on the right. After squinting through the darkness for a few minutes, Tess spotted the lead cow, the animal whose loud bawling drove the others to greater panic, the animal they would follow if she could be persuaded to reason.
Tess urged Ranger through the churning mass of cattle and tried to cut her out. The cow wanted none of it. Tess cursed, but the cow didn’t care. The wind snatched away Luis and Josh’s shouting. Even Rojo’s hoarse barking whipped away into the night.
“Well, damn it all, anyway!” Tess maneuvered upwind of old bossy and let her lasso fly. Three tries later, it hooked around the lead cow’s horns. “I don’t care if you want to go or not, fleabrain. You’re going.”
At a touch of Tess’s heels, Ranger tightened the rope and pulled the struggling cow toward the water. She bawled and bucked, went to her knees, and struggled like a fish on the end of a line until the current snatched her feet from beneath her. Then she followed instinct and swam, striking out for the opposite bank, where Henry and Chief waited to welcome her. Tess snubbed up the rope and swam beside the cow on Ranger to keep her headed in the right direction.
Under the goading of the two men and dog, the beeves began to move, mindlessly following the lead cow. Josh and Luis kept the animals in a tight knot in the current. When the last one climbed onto dry land, Josh turned Jughead back into the current. Tess’s heart caught in her throat as he lunged up onto the rapidly shrinking sandbar and scooped a dripping Rojo onto the saddle in front of him.
Tess would have gone back for the dog, who-forty pounds dripping wet-didn’t have the bulk to fight the stillrising current. A cowboy didn’t leave a good cattle dog, or even a bad cattle dog, behind. The dogs were part of the family. But for Josh to do it, without even being asked- well, there she went turning to mush again, and she couldn’t blame a corset this time.
She didn’t have anything to blame at all, except herself, when she met him at the river’s edge, leaned over Rojo’s wet body, and gave Josh Ransom that fullcooperation kiss she’d thought about all evening. And suddenly the rain, the wind, her drenched hair and soggy clothes no longer were cold.
NEXTmorning, Tess slept long past her usual predawn rising time. Perhaps her slothfulness resulted from stumbling to bed in the wee hours of the morning after hours spent cold, drenched, and in danger of losing both her cattle and her life. Or perhaps she snuggled more deeply into her bed because of the dreams entertaining her sleep. The dreams featured Josh Ransom in a prominent role. Josh smiling, Josh shaving in front of the little mirror hung outside the kitchen door, Josh riding Nitro and giving her that smug look that he did so well, Josh hauling poor Rojo onto his saddle and letting the dog kiss his face. Then Tess was kissing his face.
Josh kissing. Yes indeed, that was the meat of the dream, complete with heartthumping, bloodboiling bolts of sensation that shot through her like lightning.
Periodically she woke, soft and warm with remembered sensations, and in those brief conscious minutes, having a reallife husband didn’t seem like such a bad idea, as long as that husband was Josh. In fact, in those otherworldly moments between one dream and the next, having the man here day and night seemed a hell of an idea. Why had she ever thought that it wasn’t?
Sun streamed through the bedroom window and made square patterns on the bed when Rosie marched in and put an end to Tess’s dreams.
“Aren’t we the lazy one this morning!” Rosie punctuated her comment with a sharp slap to the lump beneath the covers that was Tess’s rear end.
“Ow! Don’t! I’m getting up!”
“Well, you’d better, because you’ve got business to attend to in the kitchen.”
Tess stuck her head out from beneath the blankets. “What business?”
“Just you get up and find out. And don’t be too long about it.”
Tess grumbled as she rolled out of bed, pulled on clean jeans and a cotton shirt, and quickly plaited her hair into one long braid. She couldn’t think of a thing she needed to take care of in the kitchen, except maybe grabbing some breakfast. What had Rosie all stirred up this morning?
She found out when she walked into the kitchen to find Josh sitting at the table. At the sight of him, her dreams hit her smack in the chest and nearly stopped her breath.
She greeted him normally, even though heat climbed into her face. “Ransom.”
“Tess.”
His expression looked a bit grim. And at his feet lay a small carpetbag that belonged to Miguel. What was this? After last night, he couldn’t still be…still be-
“I’m leaving this morning, Tess.”
Her heart nearly stopped. “Leaving?”
“I told you I would go at the end of two more days. Two days is up.”
Right. But he would change his mind if Tess told him she wanted him to be a real husband, that he could be master-well, assistant master-of the Diamond T. Any man’s head would turn at a precious gift like the Diamond T.
Rosie stood by the stove, plump arms crossed over her chest, regarding Tess with a “what are you going to do now?” expression.
“Rosie, git!” Tess didn’t intend to make this bargain in front of witnesses.
Rosie got, but not without sending Tess a look over her shoulder. She pulled the curtain closed behind her, leaving Tess and Josh alone. Tess started talking before she lost her nerve.
“I know you said two days, but things have changed. I don’t think it would be a bad idea for you to stay. I mean, at first I thought you were a sot and a bum, but you’re not. You’re steady, and you’re good with horses, and you know cattle. And…and I don’t mind your company. Not at all.
I figure we’re already married, so that’s out of the way. You might as well stay.”