“Herd. It’s a herd, not a pack.”
“See this small x? That’s the runaway steer. This larger X is me. The steer darts left, but I’m not fooled, it’s not returning to the herd.” She dragged her stick along the lines, her brow furrowed in concentration. “I pull back on the reins, and assess the situation. Then I gallop in front of the steer, and he stops, turns, and goes back to the herd.” Looking up she gave him a triumphant smile that might have taken his breath away if he hadn’t been so flabbergasted.
“Miss Roark,” he began. But he couldn’t think where to go from there that didn’t involve a string of cusswords. Fuming, he grabbed the stick out of her hand and broke it over his knee.
“What are you doing? And how dare you!”
“Come with me.” Grabbing her elbow, he half walked, half dragged her toward the corrals behind the barn. Little x’s and lines. What the hell was she thinking of?
Outraged, she tried to jerk free, tried to hold on to her parasol and at the same time lift her hem away from splats of manure. Ignoring her indignation, he dragged her forward.
“How dare you lay hands on me? How dare you—”
He almost flung her against the log fence circling the branding corral. “Shut up and watch!” Gripping her shoulders, he turned her around. Instantly, she stopped shouting, stiffened, and sucked in a quick deep breath.
The black steer that burst snorting and bellowing out of the chute was on the small side, but still weighed over a thousand pounds, and the span between his horn tips approached four feet. Through a haze of dust Dal saw three of the King’s Walk hands run forward, ropes swinging. Two throws missed but the third was a good catch or would have been if the cowboy had been able to hang on. But the steer hooked left and jerked the cowboy off his feet before charging the men waiting near the bonfire.
“Oh my God,” Freddy gasped as the steer ran through the bonfire, scattering men and wood and branding irons without giving any sign that it did more than infuriate him to run through a blazing fire.
Dal leaned an elbow on the corral rail and stared at her white face. “Looks to me like that steer didn’t stop on his X like he was supposed to.”
She gave no indication that she’d heard. She stood there, eyes wide with shock, her parasol drooping at her side.
Eventually the boys brought the steer down and burned a road brand on his left shoulder. Then a couple of cowboys chased him out the gate, and another steer charged into the corral, a brindle this time, with sharp-tipped horns that gleamed wickedly in the sunlight.
“Well, what a surprise,” Dal said tersely. “That beeve isn’t following his lines and x’s either. And I don’t notice anybody stopping and assessing. Seen enough?”
Finally she looked at him, her green eyes as large as lily pads, and nodded. He walked toward the entrance to the barn, hearing her stumbling along behind him. He went directly to the tack room, measured out two coils of rope, then returned to the doorway where she was waiting, her head down, her shoulders slumped.
“I guess you think I’m stupid,” she said, blinking down at her soiled hem.
“If you’ve wasted most of a week drawing lines in the dirt, then yeah, I do.” Thinking about it pissed him off. “Have you ridden a cutting horse yet? Done any target shooting?”
“I was waiting for you to tell me what to do!” He spotted the accusation in her eyes. Like he was to blame that she’d wasted a week. “That’s what we hired you for.”
“No, Miss Roark,” he answered, speaking between his teeth, “I was hired to take two thousand beeves to Abilene.” He took off his hat and swept a sleeve across his brow, hoping to wipe off the anger along with the sweat. “Frankly, it doesn’t take too much sense to figure out that no wild steer is going to follow the little lines and x’s of your scene.” He stared at her. “I have a suspicion that standing at the corral just now is the closest you’ve ever been to a longhorn. Can that possibly be true?”
“Pa didn’t like us going down to the barn. He said it was no place for ladies.” The fire went out of her eyes as suddenly as if she’d pinched out a candle. “Oh God. They’re so big. And the horns…” She swayed on her feet and for an instant he thought she was going to topple in a faint. Her eyelids fluttered and when she looked at him again, there was only a hint of her former defiance. “Mr. Frisco, I need my share of the inheritance, but I don’t think I can do this.”
Well, hell. He didn’t want to feel anything for the Roark sisters, didn’t want this drive to be anything but a job. But he wasn’t so jaded that a beautiful woman couldn’t reach him. And her fear reminded him that he wasn’t the only one with a lot at stake.