Duncan's Bride Read online

“Every rancher absorbs a lot of medical knowledge just in the ordinary workday. I’ve set broken bones, sewn up cuts, given injections. It’s a rough life, sweetheart.” His face darkened as he said it. It had almost been too rough for her. He could so easily have crushed her ribs.

  He pulled on the dry underwear and jeans she had put out for him, watching as she brushed her hair and swung it back over her shoulder with a practiced toss of her head, every movement as graceful as a ballet. How could she still look elegant after what she’d been through? How could she be so casual about it? He was still shaking.

  When she started past him on the way downstairs, he caught her and wrapped his arms around her, holding her to him for a long minute with his cheek resting on top of her pale hair. Madelyn circled his waist with her arms and let herself revel in his closeness; he was home, and he was all right. Nothing was said, because nothing needed saying. It was enough just to hold each other.

  Reese paced the house that day like a restless cougar, periodically looking out the window to monitor the weather. He tried a radio station, but nothing came through the static. Around dusk the electricity went off, and he built a roaring fire in the fireplace, then put one of the kerosene heaters in the kitchen. Madelyn lit candles and lamps, and thanked the stars that the water heater and stove were gas-operated.

  They ate soup and sandwiches by candlelight, then brought down quilts and blankets and pillows to sleep in front of the fireplace. They sat on their bed of quilts with their backs resting against the front of the couch and their legs stretched toward the fire. Madelyn’s head was on his shoulder. He could almost hear her mind working as she stared at the fire, and he decided he might as well get it started before she did. “A flag with a swallow-tail end is called a burgee.”

  She gave him a quick look of delight. “The small flag carried in front or to the right of marchers to guide them is called a guidon.”

  “You want to do flags? Okay, we’ll do flags. The study of flags is called vexillology.”

  “The United States flag has seven red stripes and six white.”

  “That one’s so easy it’s cheating.”

  “A fact is a fact. Carry on.”

  “Bamboo is the fastest growing plant in the world.”

  “Cleopatra was Macedonian, not Egyptian.”

  They played the game for several more minutes, laughing at the more ridiculous items they pulled out. Then they got a deck of cards and played strip poker, which wasn’t much of a challenge, since she was wearing only his shirt and a pair of socks, and he was wearing only jeans. Once she had him naked, she lost interest in playing cards and moved on to a more rewarding occupation. With flame-burnished skin they moved together and for a long while forgot about the swirling white storm that enveloped them.

  The blizzard conditions had subsided by the next morning, though deep drifts had been piled up by the wind. The electricity came back on, and the weather report predicted slowly moderating temperatures. Reese checked on the herd and found that the cattle had withstood the storm in good condition; he lost only one calf, which had gotten lost from its mother. He found the little animal lying in a snowbank, while its mother bawled mournfully, calling it.

  They had been lucky this time. He looked up at the gray sky, where patches of blue were just starting to show through. All he needed was a mild winter, or at least one where the bad spells didn’t last long enough to endanger the herd.

  He was pulling his way out of the morass of debt, but one year of profit was a long way from being home free. He needed the mortgage paid off, he needed an expanded herd and the money to hire cowhands to work that herd. When he could expand his capital into other areas so he wasn’t entirely dependent on the weather and the market for beef, then he would feel more secure about their future.

  The next few years wouldn’t be easy. Madelyn wasn’t pregnant yet, but as soon as she was they would have medical bills to consider, as well as the cost of providing for a growing baby. Maybe he should take Robert’s offer despite his disinclination to allow anyone else any authority over the ranch. It would give him a financial cushion, the means of putting his plans into operation sooner, as well as taking care of Madelyn and their child, or children.

  But he had been through too much, fought too hard and too long, to change his mind now. The ranch was his, as much a part of him as bone and blood.

  He could easier lose his own life than the ranch. He loved every foot of it with the same fierce, independent possessiveness that had kept his ancestors there despite Indian attacks, weather and disease. Reese had grown up with the sun on his face and the scent of cattle in his nostrils, as much a part of this land as the purple-tinged mountains and enormous sky.

  “I’ll make it yet,” he said aloud to the white, silent land. It wasn’t in him to give up, but the land had required men like him from the beginning. It had broken weaker men, and the ones who had survived were tougher and stronger than most. The land had needed strong women, too, and if Madelyn wasn’t quite what he’d planned on, he was too satisfied to care.

  CHAPTER NINE

  AT THE END of January another big weather system began moving in from the Arctic, and this one looked bad. They had a couple of days’ warning, and they worked together to do everything they could to safeguard the herd. The cold front moved in during the night, and they woke the next morning to steady snow and a temperature that was ten below zero, but at least the wind wasn’t as bad as it had been before.

  Reese made a couple of forays out to break the ice in the troughs and stock ponds so the cattle could drink, and Madelyn was terrified every time he went out. This kind of cold was the killing kind, and the weather reports said it would get worse.

  It did. The temperature dropped all that day, and by nightfall it was twenty-three below zero.

  When morning came it was forty-one degrees below zero, and the wind was blowing.

  If Reese had been restless before, he was like a caged animal now. They wore layers of clothing even in the house, and he kept a fire in the fireplace even though the electricity was still on. They constantly drank hot coffee or chocolate to keep their temperatures up, and they moved down to the living room to sleep before the fire.

  The third day he just sat, his eyes black with inner rage. His cattle were dying out there, and he was helpless to do a damn thing about it; the blowing snow kept him from getting to them. The killing temperatures would kill him even faster than they would the cattle. The wind chill was seventy below zero.

  Lying before the fire that night, Madelyn put her hand on his chest and felt the tautness of his body. His eyes were open, and he was staring at the ceiling. She rose up on her elbow. “No matter what happens,” she said quietly, “we’ll make it.”

  His voice was harsh. “We can’t make it without the cattle.”

  “Then you’re just giving up?”

  The look he gave her was violent. He didn’t know how to give up; the words were obscene to him.

  “We’ll work harder,” she said. “Last spring you didn’t have me here to help you. We’ll be able to do more.”

  His face softened, and he lifted her hand in his, holding it up in the firelight and studying it, slim and femininely graceful. She was willing to turn her hands to any job, no matter how rough or dirty, so he didn’t have the heart to tell her that whenever she was with him, he was so concerned for her safety that he spent most of his time watching after her. She wouldn’t understand it; they had been married for seven months, and she hadn’t backed down from anything that had been thrown at her. She certainly hadn’t backed down from him. Remembering some of their fights made him smile, and remembering others made him get hard. It hadn’t been a dull seven months.

  “You’re right,” he said, holding her hand to his face. “We’ll just work harder.”

  It was the fourth day before they could get out. The wind had died, and the sky was a clear blue bowl, making a mockery of the bitter cold. They had to wrap their faces to eve
n breathe, it was so cold, and it taxed their endurance just to get to the barn to care for the animals there. The cow was in abject misery, her udder so swollen and sore she kicked every time Reese tried to milk her. It took over an hour of starts and stops before she would stand still and let him finish the job. Madelyn took care of the horses while he attended to the milking, carrying water and feed, and then shoveling out the stalls and putting down fresh straw.

  The animals seemed nervous and glad to see them; tears stung her eyes as she rubbed Reese’s favorite mount on the forehead. These animals had had the protection of the barn; she couldn’t bear to even think about the cattle.

  Reese got the truck started and loaded it and a small trailer with hay. Madelyn climbed into the cab and gave him a steady look when he frowned at her. There was no way she would let him go out on the range by himself in such bitter cold; if anything happened to him, if he fell and couldn’t get back to the truck or lost consciousness, he would die in a short while.

  He drove carefully to the protected area where he had herded the cattle and stopped, his face bleak. There was nothing there, just a blank white landscape. The sun glittered on the snow, and he reached for his sunglasses. Without a word Madelyn followed suit.

  He began driving, looking for any sign of the herd, if indeed any of them had survived. That white blanket could be covering their frozen carcasses.

  Finally it was the pitiful bawling that led them to some of the cattle. They had gone in search of food, or perhaps more shelter, but they were in a stand of trees where the snow had blown an enormous snowbank up against the tree trunks, blocking some of the wind and perhaps saving them.

  Reese’s face was still shuttered as he got out to toss some bales of hay down from the trailer, and Madelyn knew how he felt. He was afraid to hope, afraid that only a few head had survived. He cut the twine on the bales and loosened the hay, then took a shovel and dug an opening in the snowbank. The anxious cattle crowded out of what had become a pen to them and headed for the hay. Reese counted them, and his face tightened. Madelyn could tell that this was only a fraction of the number there should have been.

  He got back into the truck and sat with his gloved hands clenched on the steering wheel.

  “If these survived, there could be more,” Madelyn said. “We have to keep looking.”

  By a frozen pond they found more, but these were lying on their sides in pathetic, snow-covered humps. Reese counted again. Thirty-six were dead, and there could be calves too small to find under all the snow.

  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!”