Page 45

She pulled back so hard, the horse reared.

Reed knew holding too tightly to Mona wasn’t an option, so he let go and slid down the horse’s rump to land on his bottom on the damp earth already steaming in the morning sun.

Trailing Mona, Fernando almost ran over Reed, his horse’s hooves narrowly missing Reed’s hands.

Mona fought to calm the horse, pulling it in a circle until it came to a standstill. Then she turned to Reed. “Are you all right?”

“I’m fine.” He picked himself up off the ground and brushed the mud from his jeans. “I thought I heard a dog—”

Another howl rose in the air from somewhere in the vicinity of a dip in the landscape two hundred yards ahead.

Mona stared at Fernando. “Chewy?”

He nodded and they kicked their mounts at the same time, sending them loping toward the sound and leaving Reed to make the trek on foot.

The two riders disappeared into a gully.

Reed increased his pace until he was running, his heart thundering against his chest. What if one of the rustlers had set a trap? What if the howling dog wasn’t Chewy but a rabid coyote?

When he reached the banks of the gully, his lungs were bursting inside his chest.

Mona crouched in the dirt beside a still form, her ear pressed against it. The black-and-white border collie nudged the lump of rags and raised his snout to the sky, sending up a sad and lonely howl.

“Is it Jesse?” Reed asked as he scrambled down the banks into the muddy gulch.

“Sí.”Fernando held his hat in his hands, his brown eyes sad.

“Is he alive?” Reed dropped to his knees and reached for the man’s throat to feel for a pulse.

“I think so. I can hear his heartbeat and he’s breathing. Barely. We have to get him to a hospital.” Mona stared at his shredded clothing and the scrapes on his face and hands. “What could have happened to cause all that?”

Reed stood, the muscle in his jaw twitching. He nodded toward the rope burns around Jesse’s wrists. “He was dragged across the prairie. Probably by the four-wheelers that chased us.”

Mona’s face paled and she staggered to her feet. “Damn it!”

Jesse stirred, his eyelids fluttering open. Through cracked lips he croaked out, “Chewy bit one of them on the hand. Pretty bad.”

* * *

MONA COULD BARELYcontrol the anger burbling up inside her. She’d stayed with Jesse while Fernando rode back to the ranch and called for an Air Life helicopter to lift Jesse to the hospital in Amarillo.

It was one thing to target her ranch and the cattle. But after Catalina and Jesse had been hurt, she was madder than hell and determined to put a stop to all the bloodshed.

A careful search yielded some of the stolen cattle, scattered across her uncle’s ranch. Apparently the storm and the mud scared the rustlers into aborting their mission. She’d deal with the loose cattle when she could. Fernando made the call to her uncle to buy time until they could get out there and bring them back over the fence line.

The thought of mending more fences made her want to drop into a chair and cry. The lightning strike that knocked out the electricity had also fried her computer. They hadn’t been able to log on to the tracking Web site to check the cattle locations.

Mona groaned. Would the work ever lessen? Would the problems ever go away? Hell, no. But some problems seemed too big for her to handle.

She paced the wooden floor of her father’s study, unsure of her next move, but determined not to fail. She’d called the state police, but they’d referred her to local law enforcement. Did someone she cared about have to die before they did anything?

Reed leaned against the door frame, his brows raised. “You should sit and give that baby some rest.”

“We have to stop this, Reed. I just don’t know how.” She paced across the floor and back to stand in front of him. “Do I have to sell my ranch to keep others from getting hurt?”

“You’re not selling your ranch. We need to find someone who’s been bitten recently by a dog and follow his boss back to the source of all this trouble.”

Mona snorted. “Yeah, like whoever it was will just show off his dog bite to us and the police.” She wrapped her arms around her belly and stared up at the ceiling. “We could start by calling all the local hospitals and emergency clinics to see if someone came in with a dog bite.”