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“An hour?” she murmured provocatively. “You’re not bragging much.”
“You sassy little—” He wasn’t allowed to finish the rest, as she pulled his head down to kiss him.
Epilogue
From free grass to fences,
A lotta things have passed,
But one thing that’s for certain
This Calder range will last.
1902
In the early morning light, Benteen led the two saddled horses to the camp. When Lorna saw him coming, she shook the coffee dregs from the tin mug and left them in the wreck pan by the chuck wagon. It wasn’t as good as Rusty’s coffee had been. She smiled briefly at the thin man named Bogie who had taken his place. She missed the irascible, white-whiskered cook. There wasn’t anyone to tell her where she should look for the “wildflowers” growing. He had died peacefully in his sleep one night—just slipped away. She regretted that she hadn’t told him how much she liked him, but it always seemed there was time.
Conscious of Benteen’s gaze on her, Lorna shook off the faint sadness and smiled. His eyes darkened as they ran over her. A pair of pants fit snugly over her hips, softly curved hips created for a man’s pleasure by the wise Maker. The denim material was new and stiff, making a rustling noise as she walked to meet him. She was just as slender and beautiful as the day he’d married her, although considerably more experienced, Benteen thought with a hint of a smile.
He handed her the reins to a blaze-faced roan, observing, “I think you come on these roundups just so you have an excuse to wear pants.” He liked her in them, but it wasn’t something he intended to admit to her.
“I think you asked me to come just so you can see me wearing them,” Lorna returned saucily, and hopped to step her foot in the stirrup, swinging easily into the saddle.
It was a movement Benteen watched over the seat of his saddle, enjoying the way the material stretched to outline her firm buttocks. She continued to stir him, as nature had intended from their first mating.
Benteen mounted his horse. “I should have made you take those things off the first time you put them on instead of thinking it was going to be a temporary thing. Give a woman an inch, and she takes a mile.” But he smiled when he said it. “You do know everyone in the Stockmen’s Association talks about the way you ride around like a man?”
“I don’t know why they should talk,” Lorna declared. “I’m not the only woman who rides astride.”
“But you’re the only one who does it wearing pants,” he pointed out, and turned his horse toward the gathering pens. “All the rest have split riding skirts.”
“Are you trying to tell me what to wear, Benteen Calder?” she challenged.
“It wouldn’t do any good. You’d do just as you damn please, the way you’ve always done,” he replied dryly.
“Not always,” Lorna corrected, because there was a time when other people’s opinions had mattered. “This land taught me to be independent.”
They rode out to where the cowboys were making the spring gather. The Hereford cattle being rounded up had shiny white-faced calves at their sides. The gate was opened so another small bunch could be driven in to add to the growing number inside the pens. Benteen and Lorna reined to one side to watch.
The Triple C brand was a burned mark on the rust-red flanks of the cows. Lorna felt a sense of pride and achievement whenever she saw it. She cast a brief glance at Benteen, while the bulk of her attention remained on the wild rangeland that they owned.
“Do you feel like a cattle baron?” There was a smile in her voice—she was aware the term irritated him.
“Nobody ever says ‘cattle baron’ without saying ‘greedy cattle baron.’” He rose to her baiting tone. “It’s something I’ll never understand. It’s always the homesteading farmer with his little wife who gets all the sympathy and support for the hardships and struggles he’s gone through. They always make out that the big cattle ranchers are some kind of feudal lords.
They don’t take into account the struggles and hardships we endured to have what we now possess.”
“You told me a long time ago it’s human nature to want what someone else has,” Lorna reminded him.
“Yes. But someday people will have to recognize the cowboy. Nobody had a lonelier, harder job, not even the farmer. The hours are long, the working conditions usually poor, and all he has for company is a horse. We were here before there were towns and people—when there were just prairie dogs and Indians. We built something where there was nothing, and now we’re condemned for it.” There was disgust and impatience in his voice.
“That’s because they think we are somehow to blame for the high price of beef at the stores,” she said. “When they’re trying to feed their family, they aren’t interested in the bad years we’ve had—the droughts, the blizzards.”
“The winter of 1886-1887 was the worst, coming right after a summer drought that left the range in bad shape,” Benteen remembered with a grim look. “A lot of ranches went under after that.”
Lorna recalled the year that had nearly crushed them along with so many others. After deep snows fell in late November, the chinook had come in early January to give them hope. But it had turned bitter cold. The partially melted snow had turned into an armor of ice that hooves couldn’t break through to reach the grass. Frozen and starved cattle had died by the thousands.
It had been a severe blow. The previous year, they had branded nearly ten thousand calves at spring roundup, but after that killing winter there were only twelve hundred calves branded. A lot of ranchers had gotten discouraged and quit or lost their financial backing.
