The Cowboy’s Hidden Agenda

Furious at what she considered a double betrayal-a mind that wouldn’t take flight and a body that wouldn’t listen to reason-Lauren worked with even fiercer concentration than usual, brushing the hide of the little gray mare until it gleamed like pewter.

She started on the rangy chestnut mare and was acutely aware when Bronco picked up the currycomb and began working on the animal, too, on the opposite side. To cover her edginess, she scolded the mare roundly for rolling in the dirt, and to her confusion, was both warmed and annoyed when she heard Bronco chuckle. But she wouldn’t meet his eyes across the mare’s sunbaked back. Instead, she leaned over and worked her way down the flanks and across the belly, while her overzealous heart pumped more heat into her cheeks.

Then only the stallion remained. Lauren moved cautiously to the beautiful bay horse’s side, her heart thumping wildly against the walls of her chest. Cochise Red-what a magnificent animal he was. So much power, that incredible vitality. She could feel it surging just beneath that sleek red hide of his. She began to brush it with long smooth strokes, while the stallion whickered his appreciation and turned his head to nibble at her shoulder.

Ever notice how horses do with each other? They just nuzzle with their lips real gently, like this…

The voice was no more than a murmur in her mind, like the lazy hum of a hot summer day, but it seemed to fill her up, blotting out everything else. She was unaware that she’d leaned closer to the stallion’s body until she felt his heat and vitality envelop her. Eyes closed, she moved her hands along his neck, under the fall of mane, and beneath her fingers the warm hide became human skin, copper-brown and slick with sweat, and the coarse black mane cascading over her arms was human hair, a man’s hair, sun-warmed and fragrant with the smell of green herbal soap.

“You about done there?” Bronco stood at the stallion’s shoulder, holding a coil of rope in one hand as he gently scratched under the horse’s jaw with the other.

Lauren nodded, too dazed and dry in the mouth for speech. Keeping her face averted so he wouldn’t see and wonder about her scarlet cheeks, she turned away from the stallion and let the brush drop to the ground beside the corral fence. When she dared to look at the man and horse again, Bronco had tied the lead around the stallion’s neck. He handed her the rope and nudged the gate open with his hip, motioning with his head for her to take the horse on through.

Though he knew it probably wasn’t necessary, Bronco put leads on the two mares, as well. When he came up even with Lauren just as they reached the edge of the meadow, she gave him a quick edgy look. But at least this time he didn’t see any fear in her eyes.

He looked at the sky where the day’s thunderheads were already beginning to gather into billowing white mounds.

“We’ll get ’em watered,” he said, “then turn ’em loose. Let ’em graze awhile.”

He could feel Lauren’s eyes turn toward him. “Won’t they run away?”

He met her glance and smiled. “They’ll run, but how they gonna get away? This whole place is fenced.” All five thousand acres of it. Which had always seemed a shame to Bronco.

“What if you want to catch them?”

He shrugged. “They’ll come to me.” He could feel Lauren looking at him like she found that unbelievable, but it was the simple truth, not bragging. Horses came to him-it was a fact. They always had.

“Gil told me you were the best horse wrangler there ever was,” she said after a moment as if she’d heard his thoughts. “Is that true?”

Again he shrugged. He didn’t consider it a question that needed answering.

They walked a ways in silence, listening to the swish of grass against the legs of their jeans, watching grasshoppers jump up out of their way and go skimming across the meadow ahead of them. Then Lauren said in a musing tone, “Gil told me he hired you after you got…discharged from the service.”

Bronco acknowledged that with a wry snort. This was his cover, well rehearsed and often repeated-safe enough ground. “Kicked out, you mean.”

“He said you’d had some bad breaks.”

“Yeah, well-” his smile was easy, even a little bit cocky “-Gil talks too much.”

Again he could feel her eyes on him, for what seemed a long measuring time. Then she said, “Is that why you’re doing this?”

“Doing what?” And now he felt a quietness inside himself, and the first vibrations of warning.

“This-” she kicked with sudden anger at a hummock of meadow grass “-this crazy revolutionary start-your-own-country militia stuff. Or whatever you call it. Is it because you think you owe something to Gil McCullough?”

He looked at her, but she was glaring at her boots. He could see the bright flush in her cheeks. He said, “What makes you think I don’t believe in the cause as much as he does?”

She lifted her head then and met his eyes in open chal lenge-and, oh, he wished she hadn’t. He was reminded of the leaden blue of monsoon rain clouds, with flashes and flickers of lightning hidden in their depths. “Do you?”

“Yes, ma’am, I sure do.” But he knew even as he said it that it was too quick, too glib. And he watched her eyes turn silvery bright with speculation as she considered whether to believe him or not.

Having reached her own conclusions, she shook her head and said softly, “If you say so.” She looked away again and after a moment went on in that musing tone, as if she was trying to figure it out in her own head, “You’re not the type. I don’t know why, but there’s something about you. You just don’t… fit.”

This time his snort was mildly derisive. “Fit? Fit what-some romantic idea you have of what a revolutionary’s supposed to be like?”

Her eyes lashed at him, and he felt their sting like a summer squall. “I don’t find anything the least bit romantic about people who go around blowing up government buildings.”

“Who?” He felt genuinely outraged. “We haven’t done any such thing!”

“Well,” she snapped, “it’s probably only a matter of time. Anyway, that’s what it’s all about, isn’t it? Guns, bombs, violence, fear, intimidation-the usual weapons of power and control-that’s what it’s always about.” She paused for a beat or two, then played her ace, making her point with it. “You don’t even carry a gun.” She glanced at him, waiting for him to deny it. He didn’t. For lots of reasons, but mostly because it was one of those clashes between conviction and duty that he’d have had a hard time explaining, even to himself.

They’d come to the creek at a natural ford, a place where the water was wide and shallow, with a rippled sandy bottom and sloping banks, and quiet eddies where dragonflies darted and hovered among the cattails. The grass here was trampled, and patches of muddy earth showed the imprint of deer hooves. The mares forgot their manners and forged ahead, pulling against the limits of their leads as they waded into the stream and began sucking greedily at the clear cold water.

Bronco waited until they’d taken the edge off their thirst, then clucked to the mares, bringing them close to the bank so he could remove their lead ropes without getting his boots wet. Meanwhile, Cochise Red, who’d patiently stood watch while his mares drank their fill, tossed his head and danced impatiently. Bronco took the lead from Lauren’s hands, murmured, “Easy,” as he slipped the rope from the stallion’s neck, then waved him away with a soft laugh. “Go get ’em, boy.”

He turned, coiling rope, to find Lauren watching him. She was standing on the creek bank with her arms loosely folded across her breasts and the wind blowing back her hair, and he thought suddenly of the stories his grandmother Rose used to tell him, of Changing Woman and how the People came to be. And though the sun was hot on his shoulders, he felt a shiver go through him.

Maybe, he thought, it was because her eyes had that silvery speculative look again. Still trying to figure him out. What made him uneasy was the thought that she might just be smart enough to do it.

“Something on your mind?” he asked, and the uneasiness made him gruff and snappish. The last time he’d asked her that, he remembered, she’d looked at him like he’d just sprouted devil’s horns.

This time, though, he saw no fear in her eyes, but only a certain wariness, as if she had herself cocked and ready to deflect anything he might send back at her.

“I was just wondering,” she said, jutting her chin at him. “What do you believe in, Johnny Bronco? Do you believe in anything-besides horses, I mean?”