Page 21 of Steers and Stowaways
“Shut up.” Cruz unearthed a granola bar, peeled back the wrapper, and filled his mouth with it. He chewed and swallowed. “You talk too much.”
He didn’t seem concerned about the safety of those he was traveling with, nor about the safety of the cattle wailing at the tops of their bovine lungs about the festering storm.
A voice over the loudspeaker replaced the siren. Tucker had to crack his window to make out what the man was saying.
“Severe storm warning. Please seek shelter. This is not a test. Severe storm warning. Please seek shelter.”
The robotic voice repeated the same message a few times. Then the sirens blared some more. Tucker couldn’t hear the helicopter above the noise.
Rain mixed with snow pelted down on the windshield. Tucker turned on his wipers and squinted at the next road sign, trying to figure out where they could take shelter. He didn’t have to wonder long. Across the next knoll, the flashing lights of a patrol car forced him off the highway onto the exit ramp.
“Let’s pretend to get off the road,” Cruz growled from the backseat. “On the other side of the overpass, we can get right back on.”
Chapter 5: Stormy Detour
Mallory was amazed at how quickly the sky darkened. Only minutes earlier, it had been sunny and bright outside the truck windows. She recalled nothing ominous in the forecast, not that she ever paid much attention to the Weather Channel. The weather gurus were wrong so much of the time that she usually just went by her gut.
“What’s the plan, chief?” She directed her question to Tucker.
“Working on it.” He crawled up the exit ramp at a snail’s pace, alternating between squinting through the windshield and fiddling with his cell phone.
She’d never seen him text and drive, and was surprised he wasn’t pulling to the shoulder to do so. Then again, there were no other vehicles on the road, and he couldn’t be driving over five miles per hour.
“Have you heard of the Goodnight-Loving Trail?” he asked suddenly.
“Of course.” She’d been born and raised bycattle ranchers, who’d enjoyed telling stories about the Goodnight-Loving Trail. It had served as a major cattle route across Texas in the late 1800s, and she could think of only one reason Tucker would mention it now. “We’re on it, huh?”
“Yup.” He laid his phone on the dashboard, face up so he could continue watching for incoming messages. “It’s not a town many people have heard of, because it was purchased years ago by a?—.”
“Man claiming to be the son of Doc Holliday and his first cousin, Mattie Holliday,” Cruz interrupted impatiently. “Nobody asked for a history lesson, dude. Just keep driving.”
Mallory spun toward the backseat. “Are you telling me we’re heading to a town owned by descendants of the West’s most famous gambling dentist? Aka besties with Wyatt Earp?” She was a western movie junkie, and Tombstone was her all-time favorite. She’d watched it dozens of times.
“According to folklore, yes.” Tucker braked at a stop sign. “No one has ever proven it. Not sure they’ve even tried.” In front of them loomed the entrance to re-enter the highway, except it was blocked off. Orange-and-white striped sawhorses, eerily reminiscent of the faux blockade from earlier, stretched across the entrance to it.
Mallory glanced around nervously, half expecting another set of gunmen to ride up to the truck masked and armed. However, the road running parallel to the highway remained empty both ways as far as she could see.
“There’s gotta be another way back to the highway,” Cruz grumbled. “Let’s find it so we can stay on schedule.”
“In this weather?” She gaped at him. “Are you crazy? The cattle are already squalling to wake the dead backthere.” They needed to find shelter under an overpass or something.
“Who cares?” he shot back, sounding reckless. “They’re all about to become hamburger, anyway.”
“You don’t know that!” She caught herself in the nick of time before blurting out that the opposite was true. Though many of her steers ended up in freezers, the ones in the trailer had been purchased for something else entirely—to pull plows and buggies for the cast of an Old West reenactment show. They would be housed in a barn next to the indoor amphitheater, where they would be performing.
Chip snorted out a laugh. “You sound just like the boss lady back home. She treats all the cows on her little ranchette like house pets.”
Ranchette?Despite how close Mallory was to having her cover blown, she felt her face grow red with rage. The only reason she’d agreed to sell a hundred acres of prime ranch land was to stay afloat financially. Sadly, she’d been forced to sell them to some anonymous nut job, whose attorney was badgering her to sell the rest of it.Hard pass.Though the sale of the hundred-acre parcel had reduced her ranch to a lowly hundred-and-twenty-five acres, she had every intention of maintaining her family’s legacy of quality livestock through good old-fashioned elbow grease and top-level customer service.
“I like her already, even though we’ll probably never meet.” Mallory was tempted to throw something across the seat at Chip. Instead, she forced a matter-of-fact note into her voice. “Most folks don’t realize what affectionate animals they are. And smart!” She considered herself to be a subject-matter expert on how intelligent cattle were. “They’re easier to potty-train than toddlers.”
“What kind of weirdo would potty-train a cow?” Chipspluttered. “That sounds even dumber than the stuff Miss Evans does.”
Whew!It was good to hear him declare a distinction between the real her and the fake her.Crisis averted.She was still hiding in plain sight. For now.
A red pickup truck burst through the swirling rain mixed with snow to her right, making her jolt. “We have company, Tuck!” She didn’t intend to use a shortened version of his name. It simply slipped out.
He sent her a bemused sideways glance. “I’ve got eyes, Brat.”
