Page 39 of Wellspring
“Next time maybe look a little closerbeforeyou shoot and give us all conniptions?”Cade suggested.“I was having a good dream.”Not to mention riding bareback at full gallop on a freshly fucked ass—he had found Erick working shirtless in the tack room and hadn’t been able to resist temptation—wasn’t exactly comfortable.He hadn’t noticed it when his emotions were running high, but now that his pulse had settled, he could feel it and was planning a slower ride back to the bunkhouse.
“Sure, I’ll just sneak up on any intruders and give them a chance to take a shot at me instead of picking them off from a distance, just to protect your dreams,” Mac replied, his voice laden with sarcasm.“Because those are my top priority.”
“Look, you know I didn’t mean it that way,” Cade said, because he wasn’t actually a selfish prick.“But you gave us all a scare over nothing.”
“No harm done,” Matt interceded before Mac could spit back an angry reply.“Mac didn’t know what was out there, and with Reichardt’s threats, it’s a natural reaction to be safe rather than sorry.But we might want to think about some way to let the night hands know if any of us have to approach them.We wouldn’t want to shoot one of our own by mistake.”
“One of our own wouldn’t be prowling around outside the fences in the dark,” Mac muttered, but he edged his horse closer to Scout after the bay jumped back onto Wellspring land.“Sorry, Kit.Didn’t mean to cause a big stink.”
“Don’t apologize.”Cade felt bad.Mac had been doing his job, even if it had turned out to be nothing.“You reacted to what you saw as a threat, despite what I said a minute ago.As for a signal, there’s any number of bird whistles we could use.”He ran through a couple he’d learned from the Comanche.“We can discuss it tomorrow and decide on one.For now, I vote for going back to bed.”
“Jesse and I will round everyone else up,” Matt volunteered.“We’re on shift at the ranch tomorrow, not out with the herd, so we have an easy day.You and Heller need your rest more than we do—especially since Heller’s riding the range for the first time tomorrow,” he added with a grin.
Cade waved his thanks and turned Nahnia back toward the bunkhouse at an easy lope that wasn’t too rough on his ass.“Nothing like a little excitement to liven up the night,” he said to Erick as they rode back.
“I prefer our earlier excitement to this,” Erick replied dryly, and Cade couldn’t help but laugh.“Though I anticipate tomorrow may hold its own excitement.I look forward sharing my first experience tending the herd as a true cowboy with you.”
“Yeah, me too.But we’ll have time to ourselves again tomorrow.Ourselves and a few hundred head of cattle, anyway.”
IT FELTlike he had barely closed his eyes before the clang of the triangle announcing breakfast woke Erick from his sleep.The sun was scarcely high enough to cast any light into the bunkhouse, so he scrambled into his clothes, spotting Cade shrugging his quiver over his shoulder before he headed out the door with a wink.Erick resisted the urge to hurry after him, though he didn’t resist the smile that spread across his face at Cade’s sauciness.As much as he wanted to spend every possible moment with Cade, he could not ignore the threat to his new home.Erick buckled on his gun belt and retrieved both the pistol from beneath his pillow and the rifle from beneath the lower bunk.After a moment, he opened the storage chest and drew the knife from inside and slid it into one of his boots.He hoped he wouldn’t need any of his weapons, but with the tension gripping everyone at Wellspring, he decided to err on the side of caution.
Breakfast was a tense, somber affair, as if the middle of the night gunfire had been more than a false alarm, making Erick wonder if the news had not made the rounds that it had been just that, or if something else had happened that he was unaware of.
“Is aught amiss?”he asked Javier when it was his turn to fill his plate.
“Kit and Mac haven’t checked in this morning,” Javier replied.“They could simply be waiting for you and Cade to relieve them, but usually they’d be back for breakfast.”
“We will eat quickly and go to find them,” he promised before spotting where Cade was sitting.He slid into the space beside him, some of his tension easing as Cade leaned against his shoulder.As eager as he was to experience his first day as a true cowboy, this was not the way he would choose to begin it.Could something have happened to the two hands after they left them?Still, with Cade at his side he felt he could face anything.“Do you know that Logan and MacRae have not returned?”he asked.
“Yeah,” Cade said grimly.“After a night shift, Mac’s ugly mug is usually first in line.”He gulped the last of his coffee.“Are you riding Zephyr or the paint today?I’ll get the horses ready while you finish eating.”
Erick stuffed the last piece of bread on his plate into his mouth and swallowed it quickly.“Zephyr, but I will saddle him.He has not been handled as much since I started working with the mustangs, and I would not want him to kick or bite you.”He had hopes of getting his hands on Cade’s body again later, and letting his horse injure him would hardly be conducive to those plans.
“Let’s go, then.It’s probably nothing, but I won’t sit easy until I see them safe with my own eyes.”
They headed to the barn and readied their horses with an economy of movement that spoke of their agitation and then they were on their way, retracing their route from the night before at almost the same speed.
They found Logan and MacRae in the same place they had left them.“You weren’t at breakfast,” Cade said, half observation, half question.
“Sorry to worry everyone, but we saw riders on the fence line just before dawn and didn’t want to leave the herd unattended,” Logan said.“Now that you’re here, we’ll head back in and let everyone know we’re safe and what happened.I know you always do, but keep a sharp eye out today.I’ve got a bad feeling.”
So did Erick, but he kept it to himself, nodding at MacRae and Logan as they mounted and rode away.He turned his attention to Cade, who sat at seeming ease on his horse, but Erick had come to know him well enough to sense the coiled tension beneath his calm mien.“You must instruct me in what to do.”He brought Zephyr to a walk beside the smaller buckskin.
“Depends on whether Kit’s bad feeling is right,” Cade replied.“If it isn’t, we keep each other in sight and keep an eye on the herd.If it is, we deal with whatever happens the best we can.And we hope like hell Kit’s wrong because even if his bad feeling is a stampede instead of JR hands causing trouble, two of us against several hundred head of cattle is pretty bad odds.”
Erick regretfully set aside his hope of sharing any intimacy with Cade.Perhaps another day they might steal some time together, but he would not put Cade or the herd at risk by contributing anything but his full attention to their surroundings.
Fortunately the morning was quiet.They spotted a section of downed fence tie, but it did not appear that any of the cattle had jumped the sagging rails, and Cade was able to repair it with a few nails and a small mallet from his saddlebag.They dismounted long enough for a quick lunch of sandwiches Javier had provided to Cade.Instead of sitting across from Erick as he’d done during their trip to Wellspring, Cade sat down close enough that their thighs touched, bringing back thoughts of the day before.Erick leaned into Cade’s side as they ate, relishing the opportunity to be close to Cade with no one around.The eager way Cade lifted his face for a kiss only reinforced Erick’s delight at the chance.Sooner than he would have liked, Cade sighed and rose.Erick followed, duty reasserting itself, and they were riding again.
The dry, flat land all looked the same to Erick, but Cade pointed out features like the line of scrubby trees that marked the creek’s path and described a remote waterfall on the south side of the ranch where he promised to take Erick one day.He also showed Erick the mounds of dirt thrown out from the burrows of prairie dogs.To Erick’s delight, one of the creatures popped out of its hole to chitter at them, and Cade laughed at his excitement.
“Not enough meat to make ’em worth shooting,” he said.“Just be careful your horse don’t step in one of their holes.It could bust a leg.”
Erick wouldn’t wish that on any horse, and especially not on a horse like Zephyr, so he kept an eye out for the holes as they continued their ride.While Cade still had so much to teach him, he delighted in being able to ride with him as a near-equal.
He couldn’t have said, later, what set off the knot of cattle grazing a little way off from the rest of the herd, but one minute all was quiet and the next, half a dozen cows and calves had bolted.Before Erick could react, Cade spurred Nahnia forward, unspooling a long whip from a hook on his saddle.Its crack rang out across the whole valley as he snapped it over the heads of the runaway animals.Nahnia raced toward them, Cade moving in concert with him, and then to the side.The whip cracked again, and the cows veered away from it, beginning to turn back toward the rest of the herd.
Cade’s “hyah” could be heard even over the pounding hooves as he leaned closer over Nahnia’s neck.If anything, the cow pony seemed to pick up speed as he passed the cattle.Cade spun Nahnia almost on his heels to face the oncoming rush and cracked the whip again.The cows shied away from it, and Cade drove forward, sending them back toward Erick and the rest of the herd.
