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“It means you usually only remember that you have a wife when you’re hungry, the children are crying, or you feel the urge to make love,” she retorted. “Any other time I might as well be a chair, for all the notice you give me.”
“Are you saying you aren’t happy?”
“No, I’m not happy. Who would be in my place?” Lorna said, thinking of the way he shut her out and wouldn’t let her share in his plans.
“That’s too damned bad, because you’re just going to have to live with your mistake. So don’t get any crazy ideas in your head about changing things. This is the way things are going to be, so you might as well learn to live with it.”
In the next second, Benteen was slamming the door. Lorna’s first impulse was to run after him and demand to have an explanation for that remark, but the banging door had awakened the boys. By the time she had dealt with their cranky whines, Benteen was riding away from the barns.
She stared after him, a determined glint in her eyes. He was wrong. Regardless of what he wanted, there were going to be some changes. If he chose not to include her voluntarily, then it was going to be involuntarily.
She wasn’t one of his men to be given orders—or one of his cows to be branded and bred once a year. She was his wife, and he was damned well going to have to realize that.
26
When cattle walk through grass, they push it down behind them in the opposite direction they’re walking. A horse pushes the grass forward in the same direction it’s going. Reading sign is something a cowboy learns early in his career.
Since the prairie fire had blackened the land and burned out the line camp in the southwest section, Shorty had been shifted back to the central headquarters. He was out riding in the northeast quadrant when he cut the sign of twenty head of cattle being driven away from the ranch by four riders.
Being roundup time, it was possible cowboys from a neighboring ranch had ventured onto Triple C range looking for strayed cattle and were driving them home—except they were riding unshod ponies. The trail was fresh and easy to follow, not more than an hour old. Shorty swung his horse alongside it and pushed the snip-nosed bay into a slow lope.
He scanned the muscular Montana land ahead of him and occasionally looked at the trail to be sure it didn’t take any abrupt turns. He wished for his rifle back in the bunkhouse, but it got in the way when he was tending cattle. His pistol was loaded, and he had a spare in the saddlebag. He didn’t expect the thieving Indians to make a fight of it. Usually they just scattered across the plains and regrouped elsewhere, then slunk back like a pack of coyotes to raid again.
The country was getting rougher as the trail wound around the jutting base of a butte. When Shorty rounded the point, a bunch of cattle with Triple C brands were spreading out to graze on sun-cured yellow grass. He yanked back on the reins, setting the bay on its haunches.
One minute, there was stillness broken only by the grunting breath of his snorting horse, the jangle of bridle chains, and the groan of his saddle leather. There was no sign of Indians, horses, or riders.
In the span of seconds it took Shorty to absorb the scene, the air was ripped by shrill whoops. There were five of them, coming at him from all sides. As he grabbed for his gun, Shorty wondered how he had missed cutting the fifth rider’s sign. He must have been lying to the side.
There wasn’t any cover. He was trapped, flat-out in the open, and they had rifles. His gun hadn’t cleared leather when he sank his spurs into the bay and raced it for the middle of the bunched cattle. Explosions rent the air as bullets whined all around him.
He was in deep trouble and he knew it, with three pressing after him from behind and two screaming savages angling at him from the front. It was a cool September day, but sweat was streaming down his forehead as he snapped off three shots at the Indian coming from the right front. The Indian slumped, and Shorty had his opening.
Then something jerked his arm. A second later, it felt like a fist had plowed into h
is back. The force of it shoved him forward onto the bay’s neck. A weird numbness seemed to go through his limbs. He didn’t feel like he was in the saddle at all. Blackness was closing in, narrowing his vision. He couldn’t seem to breathe or sit up.
The bay mustang was running for all its worth. Shorty’s head was resting against its stretched-out neck. His blurring eyes saw the riders giving chase. For a confused second he was sure one of them was white. The last thing he remembered was wrapping the reins around his wrist and wondering why he couldn’t feel it.
The clothes hanging on the line rigged from a corner of the cabin to a tree were cool to Lorna’s touch but they were dry. She checked the pair of pants that had once belonged to young Joe Dollarhide, but there was no trace of the mildew she had discovered when she unpacked the trunk they had been stored in.
When she glimpsed the horse and rider out of the corner of her eye, Lorna turned her head to look, thinking it might be Benteen. Her attention was first caught by the uneven gait of the bay horse, favoring the right front leg. Then it was the motionless body of the rider slumped against the horse’s neck.
For an instant Lorna stared until it sank in that the rider was hurt. She dropped the clothes and picked up her skirts to run across the yard toward the shed-barn to intercept the horse. Ten minutes ago, she’d seen Rusty outside the bunkhouse. Lorna yelled for him to come.
The lathered horse shied its head when she grabbed for the reins. She murmured something to the animal and moved to the limp rider. It was Shorty Niles. When she touched his right shirt sleeve, her hand came away sticky with blood. A bullet had creased his thigh, laying open his pants leg and turning the material dark with blood. Lorna stretched to put an arm around his waist to tug him from the saddle, and discovered the wetness of more blood on his back.
With a sudden shock she realized Shorty could be dead. She knew a moment’s fear when she cradled his face in her hands, mindless of the blood she smeared on his cheek. Relief trembled through her at the faint pulse her fingers found. She tried again to pull his deadweight from the saddle. Then there was another pair of hands to help her as Rusty arrived on the scene.
“He’s alive,” Lorna murmured as she struggled to unwrap the reins bound around his wrist.
“Somebody pumped some lead in him, though.” Rusty grunted with the effort of dragging the body out of the saddle.
Lorna moved quickly to help him hold Shorty up. With Rusty on one side taking most of the weight, she draped an arm behind her neck and braced his body with her shoulder, so they could half-drag and halfcarry him.
“We’ll take him to the bunkhouse,” Rusty stated.
The bunkhouse was alien territory to Lorna. It was unheard-of for a woman to venture into the sacred domain of the cowboy. When Rusty kicked open the door, she was assailed by the odor of sweat, cow manure, and the licorice scent from tobacco plugs. It was a filthy, untidy mess with dirty clothes sitting stiffly on the floor and pages from catalogs tacked to the walls. Lorna saw lice scurrying for cover as Rusty pulled back a cover on one of the cots.
