Laurel watched, mentally taking each jolt with Rowdy. His back bowed back and forth, but his left hand stayed in the air.
When the ride ended, he jumped from the black horse and landed on his feet. The crowd went crazy, yelling and clapping. Laurel only smiled, knowing she’d invested her ten dollar gold piece wisely.
Her father cussed and demanded to know who number forty was. Five minutes later, when his men gathered round him, he said that Rowdy Darnell was the man to beat in this rodeo and there would be an extra month’s pay to the man who topped his final score.
Laurel felt proud. She stood and watched the young people move to the dance floor as the last light of the day disappeared. Her father and a few of his men rode off toward the saloon talking of plans for tomorrow. Every night the rodeo would end with saddle bronc riding and they planned to have the captain’s men shatter Darnell’s score.
When she knew no one was watching, she climbed on her horse and rode into the darkness. She didn’t need much light, for she knew the trail by heart. In fact, she knew the land for miles around. For as long as she could remember, she’d saddled up before dawn and rode out to watch the sunrise, crisscrossing the land before anyone else was up and about.
When she was in sight of her home, she remembered what her father had said about staying long enough to dance. If he got home and found her already there, he’d probably yell at her.
Laurel turned toward the cottonwoods along the creek that separated the captain’s land from the Darnell place. She rode through the shallow water until she reached a spot where cliff walls on either side of the creek were high enough to act as fence. There, twenty feet into the walled area, she found the slice in the rocks just big enough for a horse to climb up out of the water and through. No one watching from either ranch could have seen her, but one minute she was on Hayes’ land and the next on Rowdy’s property.
She knew he’d still be at the rodeo grounds. Everyone would want to shake his hand. She’d even heard several say that his ride was the best they’d ever seen.
As the land spread out before her, Laurel gave her mount his head and they began to run over the open pasture. Rowdy’s place had always been so beautiful to her. The way the ground sloped gently between outcroppings of rock colored like different shades of brick lined up. The landscape made her feel like every detail had been planned by God. Almost as if He’d designed the perfect ranch. Rich earth and good water. Then, He had set it down so gently in the middle of the prairie that no one had even noticed it.
She rode close enough to the ranch house to see that no light shone, then decided to turn toward home.
At the creek’s edge, she thought she heard another horse. Laurel slipped down and walked between the trees until she saw a man standing shoulder deep in the middle of the stream.
Her first thought was that she might have been followed. But most of the men who worked for her father were at the dance and someone following wouldn’t be a quarter mile away from the pass-through wading in the deepest part of the stream.
She stood perfectly still in the shadows and listened. The sound of a horse came again not far from her. As her eyes adjusted, she spotted Cinnamon standing under a cottonwood with branches so long they almost touched the water.
Rowdy had to be the man in the water.
Laurel wanted to vanish completely. She couldn’t get to her land, he stood in between her and the passage. If she moved he might spot her, or worse, shoot her as a trespasser for she was on his property.
Closing her eyes, she played a game she’d played when she was a child. If I can’t see him, he can’t see me, she thought.
“Laurel?” His low voice was little more than a whisper. “Is that you?”
She opened one eye. He’d walked close enough to her that the water now only came to his waist. His powerful body sparkled with water. “It’s me,” she admitted, trying not to look directly at him because there was no doubt that he was nude.