still had leftovers for me and the guys. I had to pare it down to just me riding out a storm. Maybe I’d just make some spaghetti.
With meatballs. Mozzarella-stuffed meatballs.
I was digging out a pound of hamburger when barking intruded on my recipe formulations. I shoved the food back in the fridge and straightened. Claws skittering up and down my porch filtered into the house. My old cattle dog had died a couple of years ago and I should’ve gotten around to replacing him, but I hadn’t.
Going to the front window, I peered out. Bristol’s dog was going batshit on my porch, racing up and down the length, hopping at the windows and rising up to her hind legs at the door like she was going to barge in. “Daisy?”
The dog must’ve heard me. She spun around and went crazy barking. Every few barks, she’d pause and gaze toward the pastures.
Something was wrong.
I ran to the mudroom and got back into everything I’d just gotten out of. As I jogged outside, my boots crunched against old snow and ice that hadn’t gotten a chance to melt yet in our cold March temperatures.
Daisy raced around the house and stopped when she saw me. She turned one way, then whined and looked back at me.
“What’s wrong?” As if she could tell me.
I dug into my pocket and fished out my keys. This wasn’t the weather to take a horse out in. The guys and I maintained painstakingly manicured trails through the pastures so we could use wheeled vehicles, whether it was the Ranger or the pickup. I went for the little Ranger. It had a cab and was more versatile in the pastures than my pickup.
Daisy didn’t wait for me. She ran off.
“Dammit. Wait.” I sprinted for the Ranger, slipping and sliding, but made it without falling. I fired up the engine and hoped I could find the dog.
She raced through the pastures, not waiting for me to stop and open gates, then stop on the other side and close them. I sped after her.
I bumped and jumped over the pastures, pushing the speed of the small engine. After we crested one rolling hill, I spotted Bucket. My stomach bottomed out. He was saddled, but there was no rider. There was bad weather coming. Where the hell was Bristol?
As the Ranger struggled up a particularly nasty hill, my gaze was on Bucket—was there any logical reason that Bristol wasn’t around?—when Daisy’s barking caught my attention. Bucket trotted away from the noise but I barely noticed.
Bristol was on her side, her body curled in on itself.
Fear drove adrenaline through my veins. I stopped as close as I could to Bristol. A section of fence had fallen, not a surprise with the shoddy work Danny Cartwright had done with his land. But somehow Bucket had bucked Bristol right into the mess of it. She hugged herself tight, her stocking hat tugged so far down it was hard to see her brilliant red hair.
“Bristol?”
I don’t know if she nodded or just shivered. I gingerly stepped over the fence. It was twisted around her legs. The headlights of my Ranger lit the rusty blood staining her jeans where the barbs had stabbed her.
“M-m-my l-l-leg.”
“Broken?” How’d a rider like her gotten thrown? It didn’t matter. My mind worked over everything I needed to do. “Which one?”
She extracted one hand to tap on her right leg, then tucked it back into the warmth of her body. Sitting in a heap of metal on top of ice, injured, she had to be freezing. Freezing to death.
“Wait here.” I went back to the Ranger. Bristol had to be in bad shape if she didn’t bite my head off asking about where else she could go. I searched the little toolbox for what I needed to free Bristol from the wire.
I went to work. She stayed still as I cut around her. I cut as many points as I could, but I still had to remove it from her body.
“Bristol, this is going to hurt.” The animosity we’d nurtured over the years was tabled. She needed help and I was the only one to give it.
“D-doesn’t matter. D-d-do it.”
Not many points were actually still stuck in her, but even I winced as I yanked them from her body.
She drew in a shaky breath, but I wasn’t done.
“I have to move you, and you’re lying on some wire. Can you sit up?”
I knelt next to her, cold leeching through my jeans. How