Les bent backwards to be accommodating and attractive to Ward, but nothing hot burned in his eyes except anger or resentment. The hard animal heat she saw when Dal looked at Freddy was not present when Ward looked at her. The closest Ward came to the looks that Freddy inspired was when he talked about the money. Sometimes she regretted her choice, but it was too late to do anything about it. Ward had sold his store; his commitment to her was total.
She sighed as she rode up beside Freddy, scrutinizing her sister carefully. Like Les, Freddy was peeling from too much sun. Her nose and cheeks flaked, as did the tops of her ears and the back of her neck. Today Freddy wore her hair pinned up inside her hat, wore a sun-faded shirt, and dusty trousers and boots. A flame of jealousy scorched Les’s throat. Freddy’s vivid coloring and vivacious expression made her beautiful even now, when conventional wisdom insisted women required curls and powder and corsets and frippery to appeal to men. It irritated Les that Freddy could attract two men with her hair skinned back, dressed as a man, her skin peeling, and coated with dust and grime.
“Alex and the chuck wagon are already across. So are Ward and Luther and Jack.” Les saw no reaction to the mention of Jack Caldwell’s name. “Dal will start the herd soon.”
Les had come a long way since the drive began. Now she could spend all day in the saddle without feeling crippled by suppertime. She would never be comfortable around the horns, but the beeves no longer terrified her as they had in the beginning. It didn’t happen often, but occasionally she experienced a euphoric moment when she felt like a capable woman, a person who was carrying her own weight. “Dal says we’ll hold the herd here for two days and let them graze. We’ll all have a chance to ride into Austin and have a bath if we like.”
Up ahead, the lead steers had accelerated the pace, trotting toward the water. They would wade into the river up to their knees to drink. The herd would follow, bawling with thirst, and sheer numbers would push the lead steers on across the river.
“It should be an easy crossing,” Freddy commented, shielding her eyes to peer ahead.
But something went wrong. She and Freddy didn’t realize it immediately, but eventually, even with their limited experience, they sensed the time had come and passed when they should have moved up the stragglers. Clouds of dust billowed near the river, and the sound of bellowing and shouting rolled back to them.
“Ride up and see what’s happening,” Freddy suggested. Her frown said she would have preferred to check things herself. But recently Freddy had been gritting her teeth and following Dal’s orders to the letter.
What Les saw first was chaos. The cattle, this close to water, raged out of control, every instinct urging them forward, but strangely, the drovers were working frantically to turn the steers back toward the range. Puzzled, knowing her best course of action was to skirt the pandemonium, Les rode to the riverbank above the point Dal had chosen for the crossing. Reining hard, she stared and her mouth fell open. What she saw horrified her.
Directly opposite the crossing point, Luther and Jack’s wagon sat sunk in mud, at an angle that blocked the animals surging out of the river. Pushed by the herd entering the water behind them, the lead steers had crossed the river, had run into the mired wagon, and had no time to veer around it before the oncoming herd shoved them forward. Blocked, the animals began to back up. Now, those caught in deep water with no room to move forward and the herd coming down on top of them were being pushed under the water. They were drowning.
Feeling like she was strangling, Les scanned the banks of the river, narrow here. Dead cattle swirled in the current, littered the water’s edge. Terrified animals thrashed in the river, then went under as she watched. And the herd kept coming, escaping from the drovers’ frantic efforts to turn them away from the death trap the river crossing had become.
Frozen by the enormity of the disaster, Les might have sat on her horse staring at the carnage for God knows how long. But suddenly Freddy appeared beside her, swearing steadily, her face pale and stunned. “My God,” she whispered.
“Who’s watching the tail of the herd?” Les remembered to ask.
“We can round them up later. Right now the boys need help.” Dropping forward over her horse, Freddy raced along the bank toward a seething mass of heaving, hooking horns and hides.
Even the thought of joining her made Les feel lightheaded and sick. If she sat here one more second thinking about it, she would never do it. Grinding her teeth together, she sucked in a gulp of air, then galloped after Freddy, screaming and shouting as the others were doing. In the dust and bawling madness, she lost sight of Freddy. After a minute she no longer thought about anything except staying on her horse and avoiding the slashing horns and terrified steers.