eyes when Brett had broken it to them about the downed fence and the missing cattle. As if Brett had let the herd loose on purpose. As if he was still the same reckless punk he’d been four months ago.
Then again, maybe Brett hadn’t completely vanquished the recklessness from his blood, because here he was, racing across the rolling plains of the Lucky C ranch’s backcountry, straight toward the deadly funnel forming in the distance. Any minute, a flash flood might come rocketing through, if lightning or a twister didn’t hit down first, but he refused to return to the Lucky C homestead without the half dozen pregnant cows that had escaped.
The downed fence was a mystery that Brett would have to contemplate later. He’d checked that line himself the week before. All he knew was that the ranch that he’d once thought of as a fortress was no longer an impenetrable haven for his family, and the decades of peace and prosperity that the Coltons had enjoyed had been shattered beyond repair.
Brett had followed the tracks of the six stampeding cows southwest, keeping them in sight through the rain and the darkening sky, right up until the clouds had let loose with hail. With zero visibility and the cows’ hoofprints lost in the churned-up ground and melting balls of ice, he was riding with nothing to guide him but the hunch that the cows had headed toward Vulture Ridge, as the stock on the ranch had done so many times over the years. As long as they’d had enough sense to stop at the ridge instead of going over the edge—Lord, please don’t let them have gone over the edge—Brett would find a way to get them back to the Lucky C before the twister touched down.
Outlaw expertly cut around scrub trees and boulders without losing speed until Vulture Ridge came into view.
“Gotcha,” Brett said, though his words were lost in a crash of thunder.
Four of the cows crowded at the edge of the infamous gully, their hind hooves pawing at the muddy, disintegrating ledge and baying, clearly terrified. Brett slowed Outlaw to a trot and instead of closing in on the cows head-on, guided the horse in a wide arc. Then he rode along the ridge and came up on the cows from the side. Outlaw knew the drill, imposing his authority to the cattle, crowding and nudging them away from the edge.
Once they complied, Brett craned his neck to scan the expanse of prairie land for the remaining two cows. One, he spotted immediately, huddled against a boulder, but the other was nowhere to be seen. Fearing what he’d find, Brett turned his focus to the gully below Vulture Ridge that had been carved out by centuries of flash floods. The missing cow’s ear came into view first, tagged with a green tag that meant she was a heifer—a young first-time mom who was probably beyond freaked out at the moment.
He dismounted and got closer to the edge. The heifer was perched on a narrow outcrop of dirt and rock ten feet below the lip of the ridge, lying on her side, propped against the ridge wall, her massive round belly undulating. She was in labor, and the way she was angled, when the calf was born, it would fall the additional ten feet or so into the gully’s basin. That is, if the ledge didn’t crumble and the heifer didn’t fall herself, first.
This time, Brett’s curse was loud enough to be heard over the storm. An older, seasoned cow might have been amenable to Brett’s efforts to get her standing and help her pick her way out of the gully, but he already knew this heifer wasn’t going to make his life easy like that. He was standing next to Outlaw, debating his options, when a thunderclap sounded so loudly that Brett’s teeth rattled. The four cows they’d gathered immediately spooked and took off along the gully ridge.
Brett swung up into the saddle again. Shaking away the water and ice from his face, he set his teeth on his lower lip and whistled in the same tone he used on the livestock around the ranch, the one that often worked—in normal conditions, anyway—as a command for them to stop. These particular cows weren’t interested in commands. If anything, they picked up their pace.
He gave another, different toned whistle command to Outlaw and the horse surged toward the cattle as Brett reached for his lasso. Throwing it in this weather would be a crapshoot at best, but he had to try. He secured the rope in his hands, then drove Outlaw faster, getting in front of the cows and cutting them off.
He waited until they were right up on the beasts to throw the lasso. It caught the neck of the farthest cow, just as it was supposed to, so he cinched it nice and tight and brought all four cows crowded between the lassoed cow and Outlaw’s body.
“Thataway, Outlaw,” he called over the wind and hail, stroking the gelding’s neck. “Thataway.”
They maneuvered the cattle to a cluster of shrubs not too far away from where the fifth cow was still huddled by the boulder. Brett swung off the saddle, then looped the other end of the rope around the neck of a second cow. He tied another rope around the necks of the third and fourth cows and hooked all the ropes into the branches of the sturdiest scrub tree. It wasn’t all that secure, should another thunderclap spook them again, but it was the best he could do for now.
He left Outlaw standing near them, but refused to tie him to the tree, even if it meant Brett getting stranded should the gelding take off. Because what if the horse needed to flee with good reason? What if Brett didn’t make it out of the gully alive? Brett would rather chance getting stranded than put his horse in any unnecessary danger, which was a vital part of the cowboy code he lived by.
Brett threaded his head and an arm through his last bundle of rope from his saddle bag, then stroked Outlaw’s neck and got close to his ear. “You stay with the stock. Keep ’em calm for me until I get back.” For all he knew, Outlaw understood every word. He liked to imagine that bit of magic, anyway.
It wasn’t until he was slogging to the edge of Vulture Ridge that he realized how soaked-to-the-bones he was. The muddy ground sucked at his boots, and his jeans felt as if they weighed twenty pounds. He flapped the tails of his duster around his body, then checked the collar to make sure it was standing on end, but still, bits of hail wormed their way between his collar and his hat to melt against his neck. Sniffing, his eyes downturned and marking each labored step, he put his shoulder to the wind and pressed on.
The heifer was lying on her side still, but didn’t seem to have given birth yet. Her hooves hovered in midair over the gully that was rapidly filling with water. The path she’d slid down was steep, but wouldn’t be impossible for her to traverse back up over the ridge—if he could get her standing again.
He was debating the merits of risking his life for a single livestock, when the heifer brayed, a pained, fearful cry. Then one of her hind legs and her tail lifted. The water sac was visible already.
“Holy day...” Brett muttered.
The calf was coming.
He slid down the mud wall following the same path the heifer had. There wasn’t enough room on the ledge for both of them to fit comfortably. His boot heels cut into the dirt wall as he skirted her body to reach her tail. The calf’s tail was crowning first.
“Damn it. This baby’s not making it easy on you, is it, girl?” Brett wiped his muddy hands on his coat, then pushed the calf’s rump back in. Working by feel, he located the hind legs and positioned them one at a time in the birthing canal.
The heifer brayed and kicked out. If they were at the ranch, Brett would’ve secured her in a head gate and called for help. All he had now was luck, a single rope and his wits, and he was going to need all three to birth the calf before it died.
He took off his coat and draped it over the heifer’s face, hoping the reduction of stimulus from the rain and storm would calm her down. No luck. She kicked harder, and before Brett had gotten back in position near her tail, she tipped over the edge
