“You look terrible,” Emma said suddenly.
Rowan heaved a sigh and rubbed her neck. “I was on night shift when I got your message.”
“You should go get some rest,” Emma declared.
“I was about to say the same to you. It’ll be hours before he’s out,” Rowan told her, glancing nervously at the door. “But someone should stay. In case.”
“In case he doesn’t make it,” Emma added grimly.
“Don’t say that!” Rowan snapped.
It was Emma’s turn to hush her. Willow stirred anyway, almost opened her eyes, but went back to snoring softly.
Emma sighed. “You two are so alike,” she said while gazing at her niece.
Rowan frowned, knowing Emma didn’t mean Willow. As a nurse, Rowan was practical about a lot of things, but not her family. She missed them too much. Living in Cheyenne felt too much like self-imposed exile, which was exactly what it was, if she was being honest. The thought of losing one of them, after having been away so long and having missed them so terribly, was too much to take.
“I’m sorry,” said Emma before Rowan could argue. “I shouldn’t have said that.”
The two of them sank down into chairs and sipped their coffees in silence. The rush of adrenaline that had carried Rowan this far dissipated quickly. Now a dull buzzing was growing behind her eyes, and she was struggling to keep them open.
Almost three hours later, the door opened (it must have been for the second time, because Troy was in the room and Rowan hadn’t heard him come in). Paul Renner was standing before them, looking almost exactly like he had in high school, but now with blond hair that was thinning a little on top. He smiled at her, though, and Rowan took it for a good sign as she hauled herself out of her chair.
She listened intently, translating for Troy and Emma as Paul told them it was a double bypass and that the surgeon was reasonably pleased with the results. There was a slight blockage in a third artery, and they’d go in for an angioplasty in a few weeks rather than take more veins out of his legs for the graft. Dad was still out from the anesthesia, but his blood pressure and heart rate were encouraging.
Rowan said a silent prayer of thanks that the beer bong hadn’t taken Paul’s last few brain cells. The duty nurse had been right—he seemed to be sharp, with a good head on his shoulders. Rowan shook his hand before he walked out the door. He looked like he might say something, about high school, or old times, but given the circumstances, he must’ve thought better of it.
He left after explaining the nurses were checking Dad into his room.
“I’m tired,” Emma declared then looked at Rowan. “Go home. Get some rest.”
“I think you have that backwards.”
But Emma shook her head. “No, you go,” she insisted, nodding to Willow. “This is no place to rest, even for a kid. Take her to the house, take a nap, both of you. I’ll come around in a few hours and we can swap.”
Rowan wanted to argue. As a sometimes-night-shift nurse she was far more used to long stretches of wakefulness than Emma, but the drive had been long, and she was close to stretching out on the tile floor and shutting the world out. “Okay,” she finally relented, gathering Willow in her arms. She was more than grateful to be offered a few hours’ worth of sleep, even if she wasn’t entirely certain she could relax enough to take advantage of it.
She could check on the sheep, too, and get them their feed. She tugged the hood down over Willow’s face and hurried back out the hospital doors. There was nothing she could do here at the moment, so it made more sense to go where she could be the most useful.
Chapter Three
‡
Seth passed through the sparse trees that lined the river and headed toward the Point to meet-up with the others. When he arrived to find no one, he fished out his hand-held and tried to raise Gabe.
“I haven’t heard from him,” came back Austin’s static-cracked voice.
They all used the same channel.
“They might—” Seth heard, but the wind took the rest.
“What? I didn’t get that.” The steady hum of the hand-held was all Seth got in response for a moment.
“—said maybe they found the eastern group,” Austin repeated.
Seth held down the slick, black plastic button. “Could be,” he replied, almost crossing his fingers. “That’d slow them down.”
Court, Austin, and Gabe were under orders to take the long way around, not stray from the trail, but keep an eye out for the group they’d split off before the storm. If they found them, they’d drive them to the Point to join with the other cattle they’d left down in the Gulch.
Seth watched the horizon, hardly daring to breathe. He hated waiting. He hated wondering. All that was left to do was hope that his brothers and Gabe had found the group.
And that the cattle were alive.
And that they hadn’t run into trouble at the river the way Walker, Austin, and Seth had.
That was a lot of things to hope for.
Maybe too many.
He waited nearly an hour, alone in the biting wind, and was about to give up and head east to try to spot them when he finally saw the shape of a rider rise over a far hill. It was Gabe, Seth noted, or rather Azteca he recognized first. The paint horse was striking against any landscape, clearly the result of Dakota’s (Gabe’s younger sister’s) most successful breedings. Behind him, a slow-moving group of cattle started to appear over the horizon.
Relief flooded Seth, and he clenched his teeth to keep from letting out a whoop of joy at seeing them, both the man and his four-legged charges. No sense in spooking any of them or attracting the curiosity of predators up in the hills.
Court and Sawyer, at the rear of the herd, were usually trading naughty limericks, but this afternoon they were somber, silent, perfect mirrors of each other with their dour expressions. Though not twins themselves, Court and Sawyer seemed to have an even better bond between them than Austin and Walker. Seth supposed it was because they’d lit out together to join the rodeo a few years ago and hadn’t looked back. Sawyer and Court travelled together, lived in a trailer on the road together, and competed together on a roping team in addition to their individual bronc-riding efforts. Though they’d been back for almost two months, Seth still had trouble adjusting to their presence. Sawyer’s constant jokes were wearing thin, and Court was rather surly these days, apparently preferring the roaring crowds to the relative silence of the open range.
Sawyer wasn’t cracking jokes now, though, and one look at the cattle they were driving made it all too clear to Seth why.
Ahead of them, Gabe slowed considerably, crossing the last quarter mile at a slow walk, settling the cows down and preparing them for a stop. When he finally got close enough—and the rest of the head crested the hill—Seth raised his hand in greeting. “Gabe,” he said, nodding, but was unable to keep his eyes off the group of cattle trailing the younger vaquero. “Shit.”
Gabe made an affirmative grunt. “One third,” he said quietly. “We lost one third.”
And there was no way that wolves, even multiple packs, could take out that many, so that meant they’d starved during the blizzard when the Barlows and Gabe had been unable to bring food. Just before the mercury dropped and the snow on the ground started to freeze, they’d hauled all their remaining hay bales out to the range with snow cats, hoping it was enough, then had been forced to return to the homestead and wait.
It had not been enough.
The storm had hit harder than even Austin could have predicted. The men had been cut off from the herd for too long.
“Maybe,” said Seth, turning in his saddle and gazing at the trail that led down in the Gulch.
Gabe said nothing. And that was all right. Seth hated even asking the man to go down there, but there wasn’t much choice. The younger man was so like his father before him, serious minded, responsible, loyal to a fault, even given the circumstances. And Seth hadn’t really noticed before, but Gabe also looked so much like Manny that Seth had to turn away. The guilt was still too overwhelming. He focused, instead, on Court and Sawyer heading toward them. Both the younger Barlows looked exhausted.
“We have to head down,” said Seth.
Court frowned. “We could wait. Make camp. Go in the morn—”
“No,” Seth argued, knowing there was safety in numbers, and knowing, as well, that they couldn’t afford to lose even one more cow. “Wolves’ll be all over this valley come nightfall. We’ve got to keep moving.”
He took up the lead position in the trail line and headed down into the Gulch, leaving the small number of cattle up top. It was still a half hour’s ride down into the valley where they’d left the other group. They’d split up the cattle in November, based on Austin’s prediction of record-breaking temperature drops. Even knowing what they were in for, they couldn’t predict which side of the spread would get it the worst. They were going to have losses, that much was certain. Hell they’d already lost one third of the eastern plains group. As they headed down the slope, Seth prayed silently that they hadn’t lost any more.
The future of Snake River Ranch depended entirely on this spring’s head count…and the rest of the year’s weather.