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“I could have a lot less, too. I’m happy, Reese. If you took the offer I’d still be happy, and I’ll still be happy if you don’t take it.”
“He said you wouldn’t take sides.”
“That’s right, I won’t. It would be a no-win situation for me, and I don’t waste my energy.”
He lay awake long after she was sleeping quietly in his arms. It was a way to instant financial security, but it would require that he do something he’d sworn never to do: risk ownership of the ranch. He already had a mortgage, but he was managing to make the payments. If he took an investor he would be paying off the bank but taking on another debtor, at a price he might not be able to meet. The big lure of it was that, perversely, he wanted to give Madelyn all the luxuries he would have been able to provide before.
To take care of his wife as he wanted, he’d have to risk his ranch. He didn’t miss the irony of it.
THE DAY AFTER Robert left, a big weather system swept in from Canada and it began snowing. At first it was just snow, but it didn’t stop. The temperature began dropping like a rock, and the wind picked up. Reese watched the weather build into something nasty, and the weather reports said it would get worse. While he still could, he herded the cattle into the most sheltered area and put out as much hay as possible, but he wasn’t certain he’d had enough time to get out as much as would be needed.
On the way back to the barn it started snowing so heavily that visibility dropped to about ten feet, and the wind began piling up drifts that masked the shape of the land. His own ranch became an alien landscape to him, without any familiar landmarks to guide him. All he could go on was his own sen
se of direction, and he had to fight to ignore the disorienting swirl of snow. His horse picked its way carefully, trying to avoid the snow-covered holes and indentations that could easily cause it to fall and perhaps break a leg. Icicles began to form on the horse’s nose as the warm vapor of its breath froze. Reese put a gloved hand to his own face and found it coated with ice crystals.
A ride that normally took twenty minutes stretched into an hour. He began to wonder if he had missed the barn entirely when it materialized out of the blowing snow, and even then he would have missed it if the door hadn’t been open revealing the gleam of yellow light. A brief frown creased his face; he knew he’d closed the door, and he certainly hadn’t left a light on. But it had been too close a call for him to be anything but grateful; another half hour and he wouldn’t have made it.
He ducked his head and rode straight into the barn. It wasn’t until he caught movement out of the corner of his eye that he realized Madelyn had come out to the barn and was waiting for him, literally with a light in the window. She struggled against the wind to close the big doors, her slender body leaning into the teeth of the gale. The cow bawled restlessly, and the cats leaped for the loft. Reese slid out of the saddle and added his weight to Madelyn’s, closing the doors and dropping the big two-by-eight bar into the brackets.
“What the hell are you doing out here?” he asked in a raspy voice as he grabbed her to him. “Damn it, Maddie, you can get lost going from the house to the barn in a blow like this!”
“I hooked up to the tension line,” she said, clinging to him. Her voice was thin. “How did you get back? You can’t see out there.”
He felt the panic in her, because he’d begun feeling some of it himself. If he’d been five feet farther away, he wouldn’t have seen the light. “Sheer blind luck,” he said grimly.
She looked up at his ice-crusted face. “You have to get warm before frostbite starts.”
“The horse first.”
“I’ll do it.” She pointed toward the tack room, where he kept a small space heater. “I turned on the heater so it would be warm in there. Now, go on.”
Actually, the barn felt warm to him after being outside; the animals gave off enough heat that the temperature inside the barn was above freezing, which was all that he required right now. Still, he went into the tack room and felt the heat envelop him almost unbearably. He didn’t try to brush the ice from his face; he let it melt, so it wouldn’t damage his skin. It had actually insulated his face from the wind, but too much longer would have resulted in frostbite. He’d had mild cases before, and it was painful enough that he’d rather not go through it again.
Madelyn unsaddled the horse and rubbed it down. The big animal sighed with pleasure in a way that was almost human. Then she threw a warm blanket over it and gave it feed and water, patting the muscled neck in appreciation. The animal had earned it.
She hurried to Reese and found him knocking chunks of snow off his heavy shearling coat. That shocking white layer of ice and snow was gone from his face; what was almost as shocking was that he already seemed to have recovered his strength, as if the ordeal had been nothing out of the ordinary. She had been in torment since the howling wind had started, pacing the house and trying not to weep uncontrollably, and finally fighting her way out to the barn so she would be there to help him if—no, when—he made it back. Her heart was still pounding. She didn’t have to be told how easily he might not have made it back, even though she couldn’t bear to let the thought form.
“It won’t be easy getting back to the house,” he said grimly. “The wind is probably gusting up to sixty miles an hour. We’ll both hook on to the line, but I’m going to tie you to me as a safeguard.”
He knotted a rope around his waist, then looped and knotted it around her, with no more than four feet of slack between them. “I want you within reach. I’m going to try to hold on to you, but I damn sure don’t want you getting any farther away from me than this.”
He put his coat back on and settled his hat firmly on his head. He eyed Madelyn sternly. “Don’t you have a hat?”
She produced a thick woolen scarf from her pocket and draped it over her head, then wound the ends around her neck. They each got a length of nylon cord with heavy metal clips on each end and attached one end to their belts, leaving the other end free to clip to the line. They left the barn by the small side door; though the line was anchored right beside it, Reese had to grab Madelyn by the waist to keep the wind from tumbling her head over heels. Still holding her, he grabbed her line and hooked it overhead, then secured his own.
It was almost impossible to make headway. For every yard they progressed, stumbling and fighting, the wind would knock them back two feet. It tore her out of his grasp and knocked her feet out from under her, hanging her in the air from the line at her waist. Reese lunged for her, yelling something that she couldn’t understand, and hauled her against him. It was obvious she wasn’t going to be able to stay on her feet. He locked her against his side with a grip that compressed her ribs, almost shutting off her breath. She gasped for air, but couldn’t manage more than a painful wheeze. She couldn’t have yelled to make him understand, even if she’d had the breath, because the howling wind drowned out everything else. She dangled in his grip like a rag doll, her sight fading and her struggles becoming weaker.
Reese stumbled against the back steps, then up onto the porch. The house blocked some of the wind, and he managed to open the back door, then reach up and unhook both their lines. He staggered into the house and fell to the floor of the utility room with Madelyn still in his arms, but managed to turn so that he took most of the shock. “Are you all right?” He gasped the question, breathing hard from exertion. The wind had gotten worse just since he’d made it back to the barn.
She didn’t answer, and sudden fear brought him up on his knees beside her. Her eyes were closed, her lips blue. He grabbed her shoulder, shouting at her. “Maddie! Madelyn, damn it, what’s wrong? Are you hurt—wake up and answer me!”
She coughed, then moaned a little and tried to curl on her side, her arms coming up to hug herself. She coughed again, then went into a paroxysm of convulsive coughing and gagging, writhing from the force of it. Reese pulled her up into his arms and held her, his face white.
Finally she managed to wheeze, “Shut the door,” and he lashed out with his boot, kicking the door shut with a force that rattled it on its frame.
He unwound the scarf from her head and began opening her coat. The rope around their waists still tied them together and he hastily pulled the knots out. “Are you hurt?” he asked again, his face a grim mask.
Coughing had brought color to her face, but it was quickly fading, leaving her deathly pale. “I’m all right,” she said, her voice so hoarse she could barely make a sound. “I just couldn’t breathe.”
