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One cow had become trapped in a tangle of brush and wire, and her calf was lying on the snow beside her, watching with innocent brown eyes as its mother weakly struggled. Reese cut her free, and she scrambled to her feet, but then was too weak to do anything else. The calf got up, too, stumbling on shaky legs to seek her milk. Reese put out hay for her to eat and continued the search for more.
They found seven survivors in a gully, and ten more carcasses not five hundred feet away. That was how it went for the rest of the day: as many as they found alive, they found that many dead. He put out hay, used an axe to chop holes in the ice-covered ponds, and kept a tally of both his losses and the ones that had survived. Half of the herd was dead, and more could die. The grimness of the situation weighed down on him. He’d been so close—and now this!
The next day they rounded up the strays, trying to get the herd together. Reese rode, and Madelyn drove the truck, pulling another trailer of hay. The temperature was moderating, if you could call ten below zero moderate, but it was too late.
One yearling objected to rejoining the herd and darted to the left, with the horse immediately following suit and getting in front of the impetuous young animal, herding it back the way it had come. The young bull stubbornly stopped, its head swinging back and forth, looking for all the world like a recalcitrant teenager. Then it made another break for freedom and bolted across a pond, but it was a pond where Reese had chopped holes in the ice near the bank, and it hadn’t refrozen solid enough to hold the yearling’s weight, which was already considerable. Its rear feet broke through, and it fell backward, great eyes rolling while it bawled in terror.
Cussing a blue streak, Reese got his rope and approached the bank. Madelyn pulled the truck up and got out. “Don’t go out on the ice,” she warned.
“Don’t worry, I’m not as stupid as he is,” he muttered, shaking loose a loop and twirling it a few times. He missed the first throw because the young bull was struggling frantically, and its struggles were breaking off more ice; it slipped backward and went completely under the icy water just as Reese made his throw. Still swearing, he quickly recoiled the rope as Madelyn joined him.
The second throw settled neatly around the tossing head, and Reese quickly wound the rope around the saddle horn. The horse began backing up under his quiet instructions and the pressure of his hand, dragging the yearling from the water.
As soon as the yearling was free of the water the horse stopped and Reese kept his hand on the rope as he worked to loosen the loop around the bull’s neck. As soon as it was free, the animal gave a panicked bawl and bolted into Reese, its muscled shoulder knocking him sideways into the water.
Madelyn bit back a scream as she ran forward, waiting for him to surface. He did, only about ten feet out, but they were ten feet he couldn’t negotiate. The numbing cold of the water was almost immediately paralyzing. All he could do was drape his arms over the edge of the broken ice and hang on.
She grabbed the rope and urged the horse forward, but she couldn’t swing a loop and in any case wouldn’t drag him out by his neck. “Can you catch the rope?” she called urgently, and one gloved hand moved in what she hoped was an affirmative answer. She slung the rope across the water toward him, and he made an effort to raise his arm and catch it, but his movement was slow and clumsy, and the rope fell into the water.
She had to get him out of there now. Two minutes from now might be too late. Her heart was slamming against her rib cage, and her face was paper-white. There was no help for him except herself, and no time for indecision. She pulled the rope back to her and ran to the pond, edging out on the ice herself.
He raised his head, his eyes filling with horror as he saw her inching toward him. “No!” he said hoarsely.
She went down on her belly and began snaking toward him, distributing her weight over as much of the ice as she could, but even so she felt it cracking beneath her. Ten feet. Just ten feet. It sounded so close in theory, and in practice it was forever.
The edge of the ice he’d been holding crumbled, and he went under. She scrambled forward, forsaking safety for speed. Just as he broke the surface again she grabbed the collar of his coat and pulled him upward; the combined pressure of their weight caused more ice to fracture and she almost fell in with him but she scrambled back just enough.
“I have the rope,” she said, her teeth chattering in terror. “I’m going to slip it over your head and under your arms. Then the horse will drag you out. Okay?”
He nodded. His lips were blue, but he managed to raise one arm at a time so she could get the rope on him. She leaned forward to tighten the slip knot, and the ice beneath her gave with a sharp crack, dropping her straight downward.
Cold. She had never known such cold. It took her breath, and her limbs immediately went numb. Her eyes were open, and she saw her hair float in front of her face. She was under the water. Odd that it didn’t matter. Up above she could see a white blanket with dark spots in it, and a strange disturbance. Reese…maybe it was Reese.
The thought of Reese was what focused her splintered thoughts. Somehow she managed to begin flailing her arms and legs, fighting her way to the surface, aiming for one of those dark spots that represented breaks in the ice.
Her face broke the surface just as the horse, working on its own, hauled Reese up on the bank. It was trained to pull when it felt weight on the end of the rope, so it had. She reached for the edge of the ice as Reese struggled to his h
ands and knees.
“Maddie!” His voice was a hoarse cry as he fought to free himself of the rope, his coordination almost gone.
Hold on. All she had to do was hold on. It was what she had been praying he would be able to do, and now it was what she had to do. She tried, but she didn’t have his strength. Her weight began dragging her down, and she couldn’t stop it. The water closed over her head again.
She had to fight upward, had to swim. Her thoughts were sluggish, but they directed her movements enough so that just when she thought her tortured lungs would give out and she would have to inhale, she broke through to the surface again.
“Grab the ice. Maddie, grab the ice!” He barked out the command in a tone of voice that made her reach outward in a blind motion, one that by chance laid her arm across the ice.
The wet rope was freezing, making it stiff. Reese fought the cold, fought his own clumsiness as he swung the loop. “Hold your other arm up so I can get the loop over it. Maddie, hold—your—other—arm—up!”
She couldn’t. She had already been in the water too long. All she could do was lift the arm that had been holding on to the ice and hope that he could snare it before she went completely under.
He swung the loop out as her face disappeared under the water. It settled around her outstretched arm, and with a frantic jerk he tightened it, the loop shrinking to almost nothing as it closed around her slender wrist. “Back, back!” he yelled at the horse, which was already bracing itself against the weight it could feel.
She was dragged underwater toward the bank, and finally up on it. Reese fell to his knees beside her, screaming hell in his eyes until she began choking and retching. “We’ll be all right,” he said fiercely as he fumbled with the slip knot around her wrist, trying to free her. “All we have to do is get to the house and we’ll be all right.” He didn’t even let himself think that they might not make it. Even though they weren’t that far, it would take all his strength.
He was too cold to lift her, so he dragged her to the truck. Her eyes kept closing. “Don’t go to sleep,” he said harshly. “Open your eyes. Fight, damn it! Fight!”
Her gray eyes opened, but there was no real comprehension in them. To his astonishment, her fist doubled, and she tried to swing at him as she obeyed his rough command.
