Page 35 of Wellspring

BOOM!

The echo of a rifle shot tore Cade from a sound sleep.

He grabbed for his gun belt as he rolled from bed, sticking his feet in his boots as he stood.

He had the belt fastened around his waist before he was fully upright and his bow in his hand and his quiver on his back before anyone else had even gotten out of bed.

Crack! Crack!

“That’s gunfire, you idiots! Hurry up!” he shouted as he raced for the barn.

Things had been quiet with JR over the past two weeks, but it seemed their luck had run out.

He whistled for Nahnia, left in the paddock for the night, glad again that he’d trained the horse with and without saddle and bridle.

The moonlight glinted off the buckskin’s hide, his mane and tail all but invisible in the darkness, as Nahnia cantered toward him.

He opened the paddock gate to let Nahnia out, swung onto his back, and dug his heels in, driving him to a full-out gallop toward the northeast, where Kit and Mac kept the night watch.

Chel and Olav were guarding the southern pastures, too far away for a gunshot to be heard from the bunkhouse.

The others would follow as they could. Cade wasn’t leaving his friends without backup for any longer than necessary.

Cade was impressed to see Erick alongside Chiles and Beaufort riding toward him.

Like Cade, Erick hadn’t taken the time to saddle Zephyr; he was riding one of the mustangs he’d been training, with only a rope halter.

No saddle meant no place to holster his rifle, so he was armed only with the pistol at his hip.

He’d shown himself nearly as accurate with the smaller weapon, though Cade sincerely hoped this didn’t turn into a gunfight.

With a nod to Beaufort, Chiles took off in the opposite direction Cade was riding, leaving Erick to join him as if he’d been part of their team for far longer than just over a month. Erick didn’t speak, letting them both focus on trying to hear or spot the source of the gunfire.

Fortunately the moon was waxing, giving them some light to see by.

Even better, no more shots rang out, so whatever had caused the initial gunfire had not led to a full-on shootout.

Cade sat back, the shift in his weight causing Nahnia to slow to a trot and then to a walk.

Erick followed suit when Cade raised a hand to indicate caution.

The herd was in sight, but he saw no sign of Mac or Kit.

He gestured to the left, indicating they should ride that way since Jesse and Matt had gone to the right.

They would cover more ground if they split up, but Payne didn’t want anyone riding out alone, and given the gunshots they’d already heard, Cade understood the wisdom of those orders.

A few moments later they heard hoofbeats approaching. Cade nocked an arrow and Erick had his hand on his pistol, but by the time the rider neared Cade could recognize Kit’s horse, Scout. “Was that you shooting?” Cade asked.

“No, but it might have been Mac. We take turns riding the perimeter so we can both get some rest. He was bedded down a bit farther this way.” Kit spurred Scout on, leaving Cade and Erick to follow.

Cade couldn’t hear anything other than their horses’ hoofbeats, so whatever had led to the gunshots seemed to be dealt with.

He only hoped nothing had happened to Mac.

Kit wouldn’t take it well if Mac had been injured again—or worse.

The sound of more horses approaching had Cade reaching for his bow again before the shadows resolved into Beaufort and Chiles. “Have you seen MacRae?” Cade asked when they were within earshot.

“No, should we have?” Beaufort replied.

“His bedroll is here,” Erick called from where he’d ridden slightly ahead.

Cade frowned as they joined Erick. That wasn’t a good sign. He turned toward the fence between Wellspring property and JR land, scanning for any movement, but a cloud blew across the moon, obscuring his vision. “Well, shitfire. I guess we’re going to have to do this the hard way.”

Before Cade could dismount, intending to track Mac on foot, Beaufort raised his rifle and fired into the air. “That should get his attention, if he’s—” Kit glared, and Beaufort shrugged. “—within earshot,” he finished.

There was no return fire, but Kit jumped the fence before even Cade could see anything in the darkness.

He wondered if Kit’s vision was really better than his, or if he was just that attuned to Mac, who Cade finally spotted riding toward them with something draped across the saddle in front of him.

Too small to be one of JR’s men, at least.

“What the hell, MacRae?” Beaufort shouted. “You woke the whole ranch! What were you shooting at?”

“Saw something moving outside the fence line.” MacRae urged his horse over the fence and flung a carcass on the ground. “Thought it might have been one of Reichardt’s pricks, but it was just a coyote.”

“Next time maybe look a little closer before you 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 FELT like 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.