Christmas At Cade Ranch

Their trampling hooves slapped the hard, rocky earth in a heart-pounding rhythm. At James’s finger point, Jared swerved away in the white murk and chased after a breakout group of cows and heifers, his face animated, eyes intent, back straight. He looked as unruffled as he had when they’d begun searching for the runaways who’d broken from their winter pasture hours ago. Of course, it’d take a lot more than a hundred out-of-control livestock to rattle golden-child Jared’s bone-deep confidence.

As for him? Chaos got under James’s skin, made it itch. And whenever chaos hit, James’s restless thoughts didn’t quit until everything on the family ranch he managed was in its proper, predetermined place. The rules he’d instituted after his youngest brother Jesse died and older brother, Jack, left to seek justice were needed to protect his family and their way of life. Otherwise, their carefully pieced-back world risked falling apart again.

“Yip! Yip! Yip!” hooted his sister, Jewel. She barreled at lightning speed along the right side of the cattle atop her large bay. Her dark eyes flashed, and her mouth curled slightly at the edges in a fearless smirk. She’d lost her black Stetson, he noticed, and snowflakes clung to her dark, braided hair. Red filled in the pale skin between her freckles. If she was tired after their grueling day, she wasn’t showing it. Not that she ever would.

In fact, since Jesse’s death, she’d thrown herself into ranching as if possessed. As though she could somehow make up for the shattering loss.

At James’s signal, Jewel nodded then fell back slightly. The maneuver allowed him to begin arcing the cattle her way into an open, snowy space, turning the stampede in on itself so they’d mill instead of run.

More important, it’d stop them from mingling with the Brahman herd owned by their archenemies and neighbors, the Lovelands. Their bitter family feud went back over a hundred years, beginning with a tale of deception, theft and murder, the rivalry still fresh as it played out in water access disputes and missing cattle.

James pursed his lips and whistled long and high, urging on the Border collies. They lunged at the longhorns’ ankles, dodging horns, driving the livestock to the right. With the bluff drawing alarmingly close, they needed to make the turn in the next thirty seconds or it’d be too late. Devastating tragedy. Not on his watch.

He squeezed Trigger’s heaving sides and rode harder still, James’s body steaming and slick beneath his plaid shirt and flannel-lined jean jacket. He ignored the deep ache in his shoulders and the way his teeth ground with each jarring stride. All around him rose the thick, musky scent of animals. Their eyes rolled and they bleated loudly, showing no signs of slowing.

Out of the worsening blizzard, his youngest sibling Justin emerged, a lone, dark figure between the herd and the bluff’s edge.

“Get out of there!” James bellowed.

He ripped off his bandanna and waved at his reckless brother. Immediately, the wild swirl of icy wind and blowing snow snatched away his breath. Anger and concern roared in his bloodstream. Cool, unaffected Justin, however, didn’t budge. He sat slim and ramrod straight in the saddle and stared down the charging herd as if he dared them to mow him over. The fool. Their departed father taught them better when they’d begun working the family’s ten-thousand-acre ranch as kids.

Some said Justin had a death wish. Given his reckless antics since losing his twin, Jesse, James agreed. But he wouldn’t let anything happen to his little brother, to any of them, ever again. However, when he got Justin to safety, he’d kill him.

James kicked Trigger with his heels, dragging forth the blowing horse’s last bit of steam. At his command, Trigger neighed, then veered directly at the lead cow, obeying without hesitation. Make-or-break time. James flashed his red bandanna at the cattle, flaunting the “fish” to make them more afraid of him than whatever had spooked them.

The livestock balked, then broke to the right. The rest of the herd dashed pell-mell after their leaders, turning back. Confused and confronted by themselves, they slowed, raising the snow, tearing the naked brush, letting out hoarse bawls as they began to mill and spread farther down the white valley, no longer in danger. Out of the corner of his eye, he spotted Justin chasing off any stragglers who approached the bluff. James released a long breath.

Jared flashed by, effortlessly driving the group he’d wrangled back into the now-organized mob. Jewel pulled her mount around in a neat circle, scooped up her trampled hat, then trotted up beside James. After rounding up the last of the strays, the Cades corralled the bawling, red-and-white-spotted herd and guided them back on the long trail home.

Silence reigned as the herd’s lowing dropped down to its usual buzz. The Cades settled into their saddles and thoughts. Thick snow poured from the sky and clung to their hat brims, their noses and shoulders. They followed a meandering, beaten trail down the mountain slope.

The pungent scent of spruce filled the air and seeped into James’s nose, making his shoulders drop, his rigid spine bend and flex. He felt pummeled, his muscles tender and worn out the way he liked best. This was the right kind of tired, the type that followed a long, honest day’s work. It sometimes let him escape his worries about the ranch, his siblings and his grieving mother by falling into oblivious sleep.

The world dimmed further as the sun, buried underneath heavy-bellied clouds, slipped behind Mount Sopris’s craggy top. The valley floor billowed away, raw and untamed, growing gray in the dawning dusk. Walls of ice on stone, gleaming with the last of the light, enclosed the valley, stretching away toward the long, low Elk Mountain range.

The place was wild, beautiful and open with something nameless that made the highland spaces different from any other country to James. That made it home. The isolation, the vast, untouched stretches of valley and bluffs, soothed his restless spirit, lowered his guard and gave him peace.

He felt a bone-deep kinship with the land. It configured his DNA. His ancestors had labored, sacrificed and fought to protect it, to claim it as their own. It was his responsibility to maintain that legacy and pass it on to the next generation. No threats would cross its border again, not so long as he drew breath, he vowed, his own personal cowboy’s prayer.

The horses nickered as they clomped past barren aspen clumps, tails swishing. “That was fun,” Jewel drawled. She swayed in perfect rhythm with her enormous steed. It was the ranch’s largest mount, which, of course, made it the only one the petite roughrider would mount.

“Then you don’t get out much,” Jared said, then flinched to avoid Jewel’s trademark shoulder jab.

“Just wait till we get home. We’ll see how tough you are,” Jewel huffed. She rammed her misshapen hat on her head and pulled the brim low over her braids.

“I’m a lover, not a fighter,” Jared protested, riding with the easy grace born of years in the saddle. His perfect white teeth flashed in his lady-killer grin.

The family’s Romeo had left a swath of broken hearts across the valley. Jared’s ease at meeting women, at achieving anything in life, was downright irritating. Opportunities like college football scholarships and a starting NFL position seemed to fall into the small-town hero’s lap.

“That’s your excuse? Pathetic.” Jewel rolled her eyes and brushed snow from her horse’s forelock. “Don’t know why girls throw themselves at you.”

“Must be desperate,” Justin said through a yawn, looking ready to fall asleep despite today’s excitement. A thick belt of snow encircled his hat brim.

“Who is it this time?” teased Jewel, wagging a finger. “Mandy? Mindy? Mona?”

“It’s Melanie,” Jared clarified. He rubbed the back of his neck, then gave a rueful laugh. “Nope. It’s Melody.”

“See.” Jewel snapped her fingers. “They’re all starting to blur together. Even for you.”

She burst out laughing and Justin joined her. “Seriously, dude. Pick a girl. Any girl.”

“They pick me, bro.”

A wild howl pealed down the slope and Trigger’s ears shot up. It was loud and harsh, then softened to a mourn, lonely and haunting. The hair on the back of James’s neck rose. Wolf.

A pack of coyotes barked in answer, a sharp, staccato yelping chorus, the piercing notes biting on the chilly early-evening air. Trigger sidestepped, nickering, and James swiftly brought him under control on the slippery terrain.

“You’re so full of yourself,” scoffed Jewel once they’d settled their jittery horses. Their hooves clattered against the frigid slope.

“And you’re so full of—”

“Knock it off.” James’s fingers tightened around the leather straps in his left hand. “We’ve got more important things to worry about than Jared’s love life.”

Had his mother gotten out of bed this morning? Eaten? Dressed?

“At least I’ve got one, big bro.”

James opened his mouth but the denial dissolved, bitter on his tongue. Jared was right. Since Jesse’s murder, he’d worked nonstop to shore up the ranch and didn’t have time for anything, or anyone, else. He loved his family. That was enough.

So why did he sometimes wish for a confidante? A hand in his? A person to hold...someone to share a bag of peanuts with at a football game. The pelting snow slackened.

“Let’s pick up the pace or Ma’s meat loaf will be cold,” he said, needing to deflect, hoping that by saying those words they might be true and she’d had a good day.

“If Ma’s cooking... Didn’t see her up this morning.” A line appeared, bisecting Justin’s brow.

“Yesterday wasn’t one of her good days.” Jewel patted her horse’s sweat-streaked neck. “She was going through Jesse’s phone again. She still thinks those pictures are his son.”

James shook his head. “If that was true, Jesse would have told us.” Jesse had messed up a lot, but James didn’t believe his brother capable of turning his back on his own child. Besides, Jesse loved kids, all living things, in fact... Jesse keeping his child a secret made no sense. There had to be another explanation for the photo.

“I don’t like Ma getting her hopes up,” Jewel fretted.

“Obsessing is more like it,” James worried out loud. “Like when Jesse was alive.”

A collective moan rose from his siblings. Their mother’s fixation on healing their brother had taken a horrible toll on her physical and emotional health.

James’s hands tightened on the reins. He’d convince her to put away the phone and stop torturing herself. With the holidays approaching, this false hope came at an already painful time.

Jared deftly guided his horse away from a depression in the snowy field. “Should we get Ma help?”