His Outback Cowgirl(43)
“Sorry. I was heading to the lake but fell asleep and Molly took me to cattle rustler’s cave. When I woke up the only place I wanted to be was ... here.”
Henry nodded, relief softening his faded blue eyes. “Well, Ethan’s not. He’s gone after you.”
She frowned. “He did. I was hoping he wouldn’t.”
“You hoped wrong. Where you’re concerned he’ll break every rule in that sensible book of his.”
She stood. “I’ll go and find him.”
Henry shook his head. “Hold your horses. You’re just like your grandmother. She always jumped headfirst into trouble. I told him that if you came back, I’d keep you here. The weather’s going to be bad up there.”
Bridie remained standing and bit the inside of her cheek. She looked through the window at the peaks now shrouded in dark cloud. “What am I going to do while I wait? I’ll go stir-crazy.”
Henry patted the puzzle book. “That’s easy. Crosswords.”
Bridie barely heard him. Her gaze remained fixed on a ridge that rose above the foothills. “Henry ... is that smoke?”
Henry swung around and then was out of his seat and rummaging through a sideboard drawer. Finding a pair of black binoculars, he held them to his eyes. His jaw tightened.
He lowered the binoculars and headed for the phone on the kitchen bench. “Grab a coffee and there’s a bacon bagel in the fridge you can eat while you drive.”
In under seven minutes Henry had called Fire and Rescue and also the Sheriff’s department. Bridie hadn’t bothered with coffee, she grabbed the bagel, her boots and Henry’s truck keys. She was no stranger to wildfires and what to do in an emergency. Her family farm had suffered two summer grassfires but there was something about Henry’s grim mouth that hinted he knew far more about the fire than he let on.
“Where are we heading?” Bridie asked as she drove the truck through the wooden archway of Larkspur Ridge Ranch’s entrance.
“Right, then first left.”
Bridie did as she was instructed and the road soon turned into gravel, pitted with deep washboards. The truck bounced and rattled.
“Henry, this can’t be good for your hip.”
“I’m fine.”
She hadn’t missed the concern in his eyes, concern that now superseded his pain. “So what do you think is on fire? A tree? I haven’t seen any lightning but that doesn’t mean there hasn’t been any.”
“It’s no tree.”
She shot him a sharp look. “What’s going on?”
He grunted. “See those truck tracks on the road? They’re Ethan’s. He knew you’d head for the lake so loaded Captain into his trailer. He was planning to drive and then ride into the backcountry to save time.”
Bridie swallowed down her fear. “Is the fire ... his ... truck?”
“Nope, an old line cabin.”
She breathed out her deep relief. “Ethan pointed the cabin out to me the other day after we’d seen what I’m still sure was a –” She frowned at Henry. “Poachers would use an old cabin, wouldn’t they? That’s why you called the Sheriff as well, wasn’t it?”
Henry grunted. “Yep.”
She didn’t need to ask any more questions. If it were only poachers responsible for the cabin fire, Henry wouldn’t have risked taking her. He’d known Ethan would have wanted her to stay at the safety of the ranch. Bridie applied more pressure to the gas pedal. It wasn’t only poachers up there in the vicinity of the fire ... Ethan was too.
Henry touched her arm and when he spoke it was in a soft tone she’d never heard before. “He’ll be okay. I left him a message on his phone, he’ll know help is on the way. He can take care of himself.”
“He can. But when he tackled the Taylor boys, he had Cordell with him.”
“You and I both know he doesn’t need Cordell with him to teach those poachers a lesson.”
A tense silence settled in the pickup cabin, broken only by the protest of the truck’s suspension.
“Bridie ...” Again Henry used an unfamiliar tone, a serious and earnest tone. “All my life I’ve lived at Larkspur Ridge and I was happy to die there. Anna and I weren’t lucky to have children so I believed I had no one to pass the ranch on to and now I do. I’m so honored to have Cordell and Ethan as my sons.”
Bridie’s throat ached at the raw emotion rasping in his words.
“I have a new hip, hard-working and strong sons who’ll continue the Watson legacy and there’s a whole world out there to see. I don’t want to spend the rest of my life doing crosswords. I spoke to Ethan last night. He’s thinking about staying and running the ranch as it’s supposed to be run. Cordell will still run his and Payton’s cattle on the land he now uses.”