jerked his hand back and opened the stall door. He snagged the horse’s halter and led him out into the center aisle.
Fernando tossed a blanket over the gelding’s back and followed with a saddle. Reed quickly cinched the saddle in place and slid a bridle over the horse’s head, slipping the bit between stubbornly clamped teeth.
Fernando nodded. “I’ll wait outside. We need to hurry, it’s getting close to dark and I haven’t seen the boss in a couple hours.”
Reed braced a boot in a stirrup and swung his right leg over the saddle. When he emerged into the waning sunlight, he blinked at the brightness after being in the dark interior of the barn.
As soon as Reed exited the barn, Fernando took off.
Reed pressed his heels into Diablo’s flanks and the beast took off at a gallop. As if it hadn’t been thirteen years since Reed had been on the back of a horse, he settled into the smooth rhythm. He urged his mount forward until he rode side by side with Fernando.
Galloping wasn’t the best time to quiz the man, but Reed wanted to know more about the job before he committed to it—if the boss saw fit to hire him. “Has there been trouble on the ranch?”
“Sí.” The foreman either was in a big hurry or he wasn’t sharing what kind of trouble. The older man nudged his horse faster, racing across the low range grasses of the Texas panhandle.
Knowing he wasn’t getting any more information out of the man, Reed dropped back, content to follow. His questions would be answered soon enough by the ranch owner himself.
Fernando topped a rise and dropped down behind it.
When Reed reached the top of the slope, his heart leaped into his throat at the steep drop on the other side.
As if anxious to catch the other horse, Diablo danced to the side, straining against the reins.
“Okay, go for it.” Reed gave the horse his head and held on while the animal plunged downward into a small canyon tangled with a maze of ravines and fallen rocks.
He thought he heard someone’s shouts echoing off the canyon walls, but the sound of the horse’s hooves slipping and sliding down the rocky path could have been playing tricks on his hearing.
Fernando had eased his horse into a walk, picking his way through the rocks and bramble that spooked his mount. With the skill of one born to ride, the man held his seat and urged his mount to continue down the hill to the bottom of the canyon.
A riderless horse passed Reed and leaped over the top of the hill behind him. He assumed it was the boss’s horse and spurred his own forward at a lethal pace for the downhill slide.
When Reed reached the canyon floor, he just caught a glimpse of Fernando’s horse rounding the corner of a sheer bluff wall.
Without hesitation, Reed dug his heels into the horse’s flanks and raced after him, wondering, not for the first time, if this was some kind of test or trap. He reached beneath his denim jacket and flicked the safety strap off his Glock. Whether he was being led into an ambush or the boss of the Rancho Linda was really in trouble, he’d be ready.
When he rounded yet another corner of rocky wall, he pulled up sharply, narrowly avoiding a collision with Fernando and his mount.
Diablo reared and screamed.
Fernando’s bay mare danced to the side but refused to go forward.
Ahead a hundred yards was a cow, lying on her side, clearly in the midst of a birthing gone bad. In front of her was a herd of wild hogs. Between the downed cow and the canyon wall stood a small woman with flowing black hair and brown-black eyes. She waved her straw cowboy hat at the angry animals and yelled. As small as she was, she wasn’t making much of an impression on the three-hundred-pound swine circling her and the distressed cow.
Fernando pulled his rifle from the scabbard on the front of his saddle and aimed it in the air. A round exploded, the sound echoing off the canyon walls.
While most of the hogs jumped and scattered, a few of the larger, more aggressive males turned their attention from the girl to Fernando. Fearless, or too mad to care, two of the beasts charged.
The older man’s horse reared and spun. In order to stay in the saddle, Fernando had to drop the rifle and hold on. His horse lit out with several of the hogs in pursuit.
Reed’s horse danced to the side behind a stand of rocks. A scream ripped across the canyon walls, chilling his blood.
The largest of the boars rammed into the cow’s swollen belly. The cow bellowed and tried to roll to her feet. With a calf lodged in the birthing canal, she wasn’t going anywhere.
The woman behind the cow shouted and waved her hat. “Get the hell away from her. Get!”
What did she hope to accomplish? Her little bit of flapping served as a red cape waved in front of a bull. The boar lowered his tusks and rammed the cow again.
The woman leaned across the cow’s belly and beat at the boar’s snout.
“Move back!” Reed shouted. “Move back!” He leaped to the ground, yanking his pistol from the holster beneath his arm.
“No! Don’t hurt the cow!”
The boar rammed the cow again.
Since the woman still leaned over the downed bovine, the force of the boar’s impact catapulted her backward. She hit the rock wall behind her, sliding down to land hard on her butt.
When the boar backed away, preparing for another charge, Reed aimed at the hog’s head and fired.
The hog dropped where it stood.
Reed raced to where the woman sat, rubbing the back of her head, her eyes glazed.
“You all right?” He held out a hand.
She ignored him and scrambled to her feet. “Move!” Shoving him to the side, she ran a few steps along the base of the bluff before doubling over and throwing up in the dirt.
Reed hurried over to her and held her hair out of her face until she was done, hesitantly patting her back. He wasn’t sure what to do. Something inside him made him want to comfort this woman who’d gone through a particularly scary event.
When she straightened, her face was pale, but her lips were firm. She looked like a woman with a tentative grasp on her control and the determination to maintain it. “Can you give me a hand with the calf? It’s stillborn and stuck.”
Reed stared into her eyes until he was sure she was going to remain on her feet, then he turned to the laboring cow.
He’d seen this happen before when a cow tried to give birth to a calf too big for the birth canal. Half the time, they lost cow and calf. With the calf already dead, the best they could hope for was to save the cow.
He sat in the dirt behind the cow, braced his feet against the animal’s backside and grabbed hold of the dead calf’s legs.
Too tired and battered to help, the cow lay on her side, breathing hard. When the next contraction
