Peggy Nicholson - The Wildcatter

Not daring to kick him, Miguel shook the reins. “Faster, you!” From the barnyard to the nearest border of the flats was nine miles, he’d calculated on his map. At this rate, he could not reach it before midnight.

Pulling on one leather, he hauled the horse’s head toward the trail he’d seen riders take this morning, which must lead to the valley floor. “To the river,” he told his conveyance. “You know the way.”

The well-trodden trail sloped gently downward toward the outcrop of sandstone that formed the edge of this bench. Halfway there, Miguel felt his mount’s ribs expanding beneath him—then he burst out with a shrill, shuddering whinny. “Whuh!” Miguel grabbed the saddle horn with one hand, while he jerked on the reins with the other. “¿Qué tienes?”

“He speaks Spanish?” A horse emerged from the narrow cut that led down through the caprock. Mounted astride it was Tankersly’s daughter—she of the mountaintop and the Mercedes, though he’d heard there were two more about the ranch. But with her wicked smile and her golden eyes that seemed to take in his awkwardness all in a glance, this one was quite enough.

“No, and maybe that’s the problem,” Miguel admitted. “I tell him to go a la derecha, and he goes to the left. Izquierda gets me right. Tomorrow I buy the big mutt a dictionary.”

She had a low, musical laugh—a fine thing in a woman. “The problem might be that you’re holding your reins too tight. And then—there—you cluck at him, telling him to move on? He doesn’t know if you want him to stop or go.”

“So we’re both confused.” Miguel let his reins out a grudging inch. “Like so?”

“More. See the curve mine make?” Her horse, a golden palomino, sidled around to face the way it had come.

“Ah.” Though what had caused her mount to turn like that? She’d made no movement he could see. “Weren’t you headed to the barn?” he added as her horse leaned back on its haunches and started down the steep cut. He grabbed the saddle horn as his own horse snorted—and plunged after.

“Was, but this is more entertaining,” she called over her shoulder.

Just what he needed—a witness to his incompetence. “Sí, entertainment must be hard to come by out here. Owning a ranch the size of Louisiana must be very boring.”

“Not quite so big,” she said, refusing to take offense. “And I don’t own it. My father does.”

“Ah, yes, a big difference.” The only difference being that Tankersly worked, after his fashion, and she was a lily of the field, buying her right to existence by beauty alone.

Still, why quarrel with flowers? She wore a cream-colored Stetson this evening, which had slipped off her fiery head. A dark rawhide cord across her slender throat now held it in place on her shoulders. He could imagine hooking a fingertip under that cord, his knuckle brushing petal-soft skin as he drew her closer…

“Very different,” she said under her breath, then added with an edge, “if the guys see you holding your saddle horn, you’ll never live it down, you know.”

Miguel let go the horn, stole a glance at her, then transferred his reins to the left hand the way she held hers. He rested his right hand on his thigh, fingers clenched in spite of himself. “Aren’t you missing your supper?”

His own stomach growled at the taunt and she laughed. “Yes, but I’m waiting for my fiancé.” Reining in, she gazed out over the twilit valley. “That might just be him there, coming back from Durango.” She nodded toward the county road, some five miles to the east, and a tiny pair of moving headlights.

But they passed the ranch entrance and crawled on to the north. Her fiancé. “You mean Señor Mercedes?” A pity. He would make a poor husband, ill-tempered and overbearing. And a man who was full of himself would be selfish in bed.

“I mean Eric Foster, who does happen to own a Mercedes, and it’s a nice one, too.”

“Except for that dent in the door. Must be a careless driver?”

“Ha!” She touched her spurs to her palomino’s ribs and the horse surged toward the river.

Without signal from his rider, Miguel’s own horse followed. Miguel grabbed the horn—grimaced and let it go—yelped and clutched it again, half standing in his stirrups. Dios, a mile of this and he could forget having sons!

She glanced back at him around the brim of her hat and called mockingly, “Let go of that horn, cowboy!”

“¡Brujita!” he swore under his breath. She was a little witch, with her hair of burning embers blowing back over her face as she laughed and tortured him. Impossibly slim in the saddle. And graceful, her hips barely bouncing against the polished leather, while he slipped and jolted like a clown.

Abruptly she took pity on him and reined in, letting him catch up to her at the next cut down to a lower level. “Why haven’t you sold these worthless brutes for dog food and bought yourselves something useful? All-terrain vehicles or dirt bikes?”

She smiled as she rubbed her horse’s glossy neck. “Oh, they sort of grow on you. No bike’s going to blow down your collar or rest his head on your shoulder.”

“Gracias a Dios.”

“Of course, it’s partly your choice of ride,” she added with a twinkle. “Did they tell you his name?”

“Jack is what Wiggly called him.”

Her smile broadened. “That’s short for Jackhammer.”

“And thank you, Wiggly!” He dared to touch Jackhammer with his heels, and miraculously the beast didn’t resent it but moved on. His tormentor pursued, drawing even with him again. Their knees brushed for a moment and he glanced at her sharply. “I suppose you’ve been riding since you could walk.”

“Oh, no. I started late myself. Fourteen.”

He cocked an eyebrow; how could that be? But she’d swung away from him, was gazing off in the direction her fiancé would come. The pale line of her profile against the gathering dusk was a thing of beauty, like Venus rising in her veils of light, there in the east. Someday, once he’d made his fortune, he’d find himself a woman like this one, all grace and spirit and fire.

But first, but first, he reminded himself. First came the means to win, then keep her. Because a man without money—

“There he is!” she cried on a note of satisfaction. A pair of headlights slowed for the turn into the ranch, then seemed to glare at them across the intervening miles as the car topped a low rise.

She reached over and laid two fingers on Miguel’s wrist. Her touch shot up his arm like a spark leaping to tinder and he sucked in his breath. “Pull back on your reins and hold them,” she commanded.

“Like so? But why?”

“Because I’ve got to run and you don’t want to follow.”

Or do I? But already her horse had spun in its length, snorting and dancing.

She gave him an absent smile, her mind filled with another already. “Have a good ride.” The palomino thundered away uphill.

Jackhammer threw up his head, fighting the reins, eager to race for the barn. “Whoa, you cabro! ¡Cabrón! Who’s the boss here?”

A good question. By the time they’d settled it, she was long gone.

THIS WASN’T THE SUMMER Risa had pictured when she’d invited Eric to Suntop. She’d imagined them riding out daily. She’d show him all her favorite, secret spots—the canyons, the swimming holes, the high country. They’d pack picnics along every day, and somewhere outside, sometime this summer, sometime just…right, they’d make love. She wanted her first time to be outdoors, under the stars. Or in a high-mountain meadow, in the lush grass and flowers, with the sun blazing down, only eagles for witness.

Wanted some way that distinguished the act from the casual rolls in an unmade bed, in a small shabby room with cobwebs in the corners and cigarette smoke hanging heavy in the air. Half-empty beer cans on the bedside table. That was her earliest impression of love, the way her mother had gone about it.