Cloud-filtered daylight finally seeped across the landscape, turning the world into endless, blinding white, and he almost missed seeing the gate leading into the hayfield.
Abby rode up close to Lucy. “How far now?”
“About an hour to where the cattle are.” He lifted a hand to brush away the slushy sleet on her jacket. “I’m hoping they’re by the gate, waiting for their next hay delivery.”
Abby patted the saddlebags tied behind the cantle of her saddle, where she’d stowed the duffel. “Hungry? Thirsty?”
“I just want to get this done and get home before the weather gets any worse. You?”
“Agree.”
Jess moved his horse into a jog and then into a lope, and Abby followed in the trail he’d broken through the snow until they were through the hayfield and the terrain began to change, the land interrupted by stands of timber, with fallen trees to navigate and snow-mounded boulders strewn along the base of the rising hills.
Here the horses were cautious, heads low as they picked their way through the hazards.
Jess pulled to a stop and waited for Abby to come alongside him. “Still doing okay?”
“Fine.” She leaned forward to scrape some of the icy slush from Bart’s mane. “I’m just glad the temperature hasn’t started dropping yet. We should be fine.”
“The herd up here has been brought home for several spring calving seasons. Unless the changing weather has them nervous, they shouldn’t be much of a challenge for you.”
“Challenge? How quickly you forget,” she said dryly. “I’ve been moving cattle since grade school. Let’s get moving.”
He hadn’t forgotten. He’d just wanted to tease her and see if she’d smile.
Their similar backgrounds had attracted them to each other from the first day they’d met.
She’d started riding ponies bareback when she was three, and moved up to team penning and reining horses by the time she hit high school.
He’d once thought she was his perfect match. But how wrong he’d been.
By the time they neared the final gate, the wet, sloppy sleet was changing over to a thick blanket of snow and the temperature was dropping.
With the worsening weather and over six hundred acres of rough terrain to search, trying to round all the cows up would be nearly impossible if they were scattered.
God hadn’t ever listened to his own prayers much, but he sure hoped Abby had been saying some prayers about finding those cattle.
“Do you see anything?” Abby shouted into the rising wind.
Just then, a curtain of snow swirled and lifted, and a huddle of cattle blanketed in white came into view. Bawling at the appearance of the horses, they pushed forward against the metal pipe gate, agitated, impatient and hungry for the hay they expected—but wouldn’t get until they reached home.
Jess rode along the fence line in one direction and then the other, standing in his stirrups as he counted. “I’m guessing at least a hundred are here—but I can’t see beyond the rise. I’ll get a better count as they come through the gate.”
Abby nodded. “I’ll keep them together out here till you know for sure.”
The cattle milled around and jostled each other as they poured through the gate.
According to Jess’s count, three were missing. And those three could be anywhere. The chance of finding them was growing more slim by the minute.
With a sinking feeling in his stomach, Jess rode into the pasture and made ever widening loops as he hunted for the stragglers.
Nothing. Just snow and pine trees and absolute silence except for the wind keening through the branches overhead. Please, Lord... Help me out, here. They could easily die in the coming blizzard.
He needed to move the ones he already had down to safety. That made sense. The dollar value of a few, weighed against the value of the entire herd, wasn’t nearly enough reason to delay, given the worsening storm. And yet, like the parable of the lost sheep, he just couldn’t leave the last three out here to die if the blizzard grew worse and he couldn’t get hay to them.
He pivoted Lucy back toward the gate.
“I’m going to look one last time,” he called out to Abby.
She stood in her stirrups to look over his shoulder, then pointed. “Look.”
Sure enough, a haphazard line of three head of cattle were just coming into view, trudging slowly toward the gate.
Agitated by the changing weather, the herd needed no encouragement to head toward home, where trees and the walls of the valley provided some protection. There, too, they’d find long loafing sheds angled to protect them from the prevailing winter winds and large round bales of hay waiting in the circular feeders.
After driving the cattle through the final gate, they rode to the main horse barn, dismounted and led the horses inside and down the wide cement aisle. The warmth of the barn and the bright overhead lights felt like a warm and welcome embrace.
“I’m glad to be back,” he muttered. “How about you?”
“I’m just glad I got to go along. Thanks!”
Jess’s jacket was weatherproof, but his jeans were frozen stiff and his feet were numb.
Abby, however, pulled off her stocking cap and strode merrily down the aisle ahead of him with Bart, her ponytail swinging against the back of her red jacket as if she were still seventeen and ready for another adventure.
Just watching her made him feel like he’d stepped into the past.
She stopped in front of the tack-room door and looked over her shoulder. “Can I cross tie Bart here?”
“Yep.” He stopped his mare at the previous set of cross ties. “The halters are just inside the door.”
Except for where their saddles covered their backs, the horses were blanketed in snow, and their manes and tails were clumped with ice. Steam began rising from their thick winter coats in the warmth of the barn.
Abby slipped off Bart’s bridle, put on his halter and hooked the two ropes hanging at either side of the aisle to it, then brought Jess a halter with a hopeful smile. “I can stick around for chores.”
“Just go on to the house. But thanks. I couldn’t have done it alone.”
“No problem.” Her expression crestfallen, she turned away. “Any time I can help with chores, I’d be glad to.”
She disappeared through the door, leaving him feeling oddly unsettled.
Which made no sense.
Riding up into the hills with her today, facing the worsening elements, had reminded him of things he hadn’t thought about for many years. The camaraderie that he’d never felt with anyone else. Their shared sense of adventure and determination.
And this morning, he’d felt that little thrill of anticipation that he’d always felt when he knew he’d be seeing her again soon.
It would have been far better to wait for Fred’s help rather than to have awakened old emotions he had no business exploring, he realized with chagrin.
He’d have to be more careful in the future.
She’d been running on pure adrenaline this morning while going after the cattle with Jess. The joy of being on horseback for the first