Craving My British Cowboy novel · Chapter 3 of 24

Chapter 3: Cut Wire

At night the neighbor's hands cut the fence; Jemima and Rex round up cattle in the dark and nearly kiss; a call from London.

"He never told me anything," I said. "He sent me a card every Christmas with a cow on it."

"That sounds like him." Zelma dragged a barrel to the edge of the tailgate. "And I'll tell you the rest when you've earned the telling. Orville'd skin me otherwise."

"Earned how?"

"You tell me. You're the one who tore up Lamar's paper in front of my church ladies."

She grinned, showing a gold tooth, and shoved a pie into my arms.

By nine, the barrels were emptied into the dry tank, and forty thirsty cows were crowding the trough.

By midnight I was asleep on the porch swing, because the bed in Orville's room smelled of liniment and loneliness.

A hand touched my shoulder.

"Jemima."

I came up swinging.

Rex caught my wrist, easily, and let go at once.

"Headlights on the north fence," he said. "Come and see."

He was fully dressed, boots on, a flashlight in his fist.

I looked past him.

A mile off, on the black line of the ridge, two pairs of lights sat still.

Then one winked out.

"They'll be at the wire," Rex said. "You can stay here."

"Don't be ridiculous. It's my wire."

"I'd rather you were somewhere safe."

"I'd rather a lot of things." I pulled on his spare work jacket, which came to my knees. "Drive."

We went without lights across the pasture, the truck bucking.

He stopped a hundred yards short, and we crept the rest on foot.

Two men were bent over our north fence with bolt cutters, working quickly, and the wire went ping, ping, ping in the dark.

Behind them, a white truck idled with its tailgate down.

I raised my phone.

The flash was off, but I had the camera on night mode, and I walked straight into their light.

"Evening," I said.

Both men jumped.

I photographed their faces, the cutters, the truck and its plates.

"That's private property," I added, since it seemed to be the local custom.

One of them swore and ran for the truck.

The other froze with the cutters held up.

"Lady, we were told..."

"Shut up!" the first one yelled from the cab, and the truck roared off through our new gap with both of them in the cab.

Silence.

Then, behind me in the pasture, a low, uneasy sound.

Twelve of Rex's cows were drifting toward the gap in the fence, and the county road lay a quarter mile beyond.

"Oh, no," I said.

"Get the truck," said Rex, already running.

I had never driven a pickup in my life.

I had definitely never driven one at two in the morning across a field, with the headlights on a herd of frightened cows and Rex on a horse I had not known existed galloping alongside to turn them.

I did it anyway.

I leaned on the horn.

I swung wide of the cows and put the truck between them and the road, and Rex whistled something low and strange, and the lead cow stopped.

It took us forty minutes.

At the end of it we had all twelve in the south pen, and I had a torn sleeve, a skinned palm and mud to my hips.

I had also, at some point, fallen headlong into the creek bed.

Rex had hauled me out by the back of his jacket.

We stood together by the fence post as the cows settled, both of us panting.

The moon had come out.

He had a streak of mud on one cheek and straw in his hair, and his hat was somewhere in the creek.

"You drove that truck," he said.

"I did."

"Where'd you learn?"

"I didn't. I was angry."

He laughed, a real one, low and surprised.

It did something unfortunate to my knees.

He reached out and brushed a strand of silver hair off my cheek with two fingers, slowly.

I did not move.

His hand stayed against my jaw.

The whole night smelled of cedar and cold water and horse.

I looked at his mouth.

He looked at mine.

Then I stepped back.

I did it myself, deliberately, because I wanted to be sure that if I kissed this man it would be my idea, on a night when I was not shaking with adrenaline and borrowed courage.

"Not like this," I said.

"No." His voice was rough. "Not like this."

He dropped his hand and picked up the flashlight, and we did not say anything on the long walk back.

At dawn, I sat on the porch steps with a mug of coffee and scrolled the photos.

Two men.

A truck.

A bolt cutter.

On the jacket of the one who had frozen, plain as day, was an Ullrich Land & Cattle patch.

I smiled for the first time in two days.

Then my phone lit up in my hand, with a London number I knew by heart.

SIR FERDINAND PENGELLY, it said.

A text, one line: Jemima. 8 a.m. your time, video, a personal matter. Be so good as to be at a desk.

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