Shotgun Surrender

Dusty looked over at her friend, surprised how off balance she felt. She let out a little chuckle and pretended she wasn’t shaking inside. “Some ride, huh.”

But it wasn’t the ride that had her hugging herself to ward off a chill on such a warm spring night. She wasn’t sure what she’d seen. Letty, like everyone else, had been watching Huck Kramer once the bull had gone into the chutes.

Dusty had been watching Boone. That’s why she’d seen the expression on his face when he reached through the fence and hit Devil’s Tornado with something. Not a cattle prod but something else. The bull had been in her line of sight, so she couldn’t be sure what it had been.

Boone Rasmussen’s expression had been so…cold. It all happened so fast—the movement, Boone’s expression. But there was that moment when she wondered if she’d made a mistake when it came to him. Maybe he wasn’t what she was looking for at all.

TY MOVED ALONG the corrals to the exit chute where Devil’s Tornado now stood, head down, unmoving. Rasmussen stood next to the fence as if watching the bull, waiting. Waiting for what?

A chill ran the length of his spine as Ty stared at Devil’s Tornado. This had to be what Clayton had seen. The look in that bull’s eyes and Rasmussen acting just as strangely as the bull.

“Where do you think you’re going?” Lamar Nichols stepped in front of him, blocking his view of the bull and Rasmussen.

Ty looked past the big burly cowboy to where Rasmussen prodded the bull and Devil’s Tornado stumbled up into the trailer. Rasmussen closed the door behind it with a loud clank.

A shudder went through Ty at the sound. “That’s some bull you got there.”

“He don’t like people.” Lamar stepped in front of him, blocking his view again. “Unless you’re authorized to be back here, I suggest you go back into the stands with the rest of the audience.”

Ty looked past Lamar and saw Rasmussen over by the semitrailer. “Sure,” Ty said to the barrel-chested cowboy blocking his way. No chance of getting a closer look now.

He knew if he tried, Lamar would call security or take a swing at him. Ty didn’t want to create that much attention.

As Ty headed back toward the grandstand, he searched the crowd for Clayton T. Brooks with growing concern. Now more than ever, he wanted to talk to the old bull rider about Devil’s Tornado and what had happened at the Billings rodeo that had riled Clayton.

But Ty didn’t see him in the crowd or along the fence with the other cowboys. Where was Clayton anyway? He never missed a rodeo this close to home.

“THANKS FOR HANGING AROUND with me,” Dusty McCall said as she and her best friend, Leticia Arnold, walked past the empty dark grandstands after the rodeo.

The crowd had gone home. But Dusty had waited around, coming up with lame excuses to keep her friend there because she hadn’t wanted to stay alone—and yet she’d been determined not to leave until she saw Boone.

But she never got the chance. Either he’d left or she just hadn’t seen him among the other cowboys loading stock.

“I’m pathetic,” Dusty said with another groan.

Letty laughed. “No, you’re not.”

“It’s just…” She waved her hand through the air unable to explain all the feelings that had bombarded her from the first time she’d laid eyes on Boone a few weeks before. He was the first man who’d ever made her feel like this, and it confused and frustrated her to no end.

“Are you limping?” Letty asked, frowning at her.

“It’s nothing. Just a little accident I had earlier today,” Dusty said, not wanting to admit she’d ridden a saddle bronc just to impress Boone and he hadn’t even seen her ride. She hated to admit even to herself how stupidly she’d been behaving.

“Are you sure Boone’s worth it?” Letty asked.

Right at that moment, no.

“He just doesn’t seem like your type,” her friend said.

Dusty had heard all of this before. She didn’t want to hear it tonight. Especially since Letty was right. She didn’t understand this attraction to Boone any more than Letty did. “He’s just so different from any man I’ve ever met,” she tried to explain.

“That could be a clue right there.”

Dusty gave her friend a pointed look. “You have to admit he is good-looking.”

“In a dark and dangerous kind of way, I suppose,” Letty agreed.

Dark and dangerous. Wasn’t that the great attraction, Dusty thought, glancing back over her shoulder toward the rodeo arena. She felt a small shiver as she remembered the look on his face when he’d reached through the fence toward the bull. She frowned, realizing that she’d seen something drop to the ground as Boone pulled back his hand. Something that had caught the light. Something shiny. Like metal. Right after that Monte had picked whatever it was up from the ground and pocketed it.

“You’re sure he told you to meet him after the rodeo?” Letty asked, not for the first time.

Dusty had told a small fib in her zeal to see Boone tonight. On her way back from getting a soda, she’d seen Boone, heard him say, “Meet me after the rodeo.” No way was he talking to her. He didn’t know she existed. But when she’d related the story to Letty, she’d let on that she thought Boone had been talking to her.

“Maybe I got it wrong,” Dusty said now.

Maybe she’d gotten everything wrong. But that didn’t explain these feelings she’d been having lately. If she hadn’t been raised in a male-dominated family out in the boonies and hadn’t spent most of her twenty-one years up before the sun mending fence, riding range and slopping out horse stalls, she might know what to do with these alien yearnings. More to the point, what to do about these conflicting emotions when it came to Boone Rasmussen.

Instead, she felt inept, something she wasn’t used to. She’d always been pretty good at everything she tried. She could ride and rope and round up cattle with the best of them, and she’d been helping run the ranch for the past few years since her father’s heart attack.

But even with four older brothers, she knew squat about men. Well, one man in particular, Boone Rasmussen. And after tonight, she felt even more confused. She wasn’t even sure that once she got his attention, talked to him, that she would even like him. Worse, she couldn’t get that one instant, when he’d reached through the fence, out of her mind. What had fallen on the ground?

“Dusty?” Letty was a few yards ahead, looking back at her.

Dusty hadn’t realized that she’d stopped walking.

But then again, she was a McCall. She’d been raised to go after what she wanted. And anyway, she couldn’t wait around for Boone to make the first move. Heck, she could be ninety before that happened. She was also curious about what Boone had dropped. Stubborn determination and unbridled curiosity, a deadly combination.

“Oh, shoot, I forgot something,” Dusty said, already walking backward toward the arena. “I’ll talk to you later, okay?”

Letty started to argue with her, but then just nodded with a look that said she knew only too well what Dusty was up to.

She thought again about the look she’d seen on Boone’s face earlier and felt a shiver as she wandered back through the dark arena.

The outdoor arena looked alien with all the lights off, no crowds cheering from the empty stands, no bulls banging around in the chutes or cowboys hanging on the fences. Even the concession stands were locked up.

As Dusty headed toward the chutes, stars glittered in the dark sky overhead. The scent of dust, manure and fried grease still hung in the air. She felt a low hum in her body that seemed to grow stronger as she neared the chutes, as if the night were filled with electricity.

The same excited feeling she’d had the first time she’d seen Boone Rasmussen a few weeks before. He’d been sitting on a fence by the bull chutes, his cowboy hat pulled low over his dark eyes. He’d taken her breath away and set something off inside her. Since then, Dusty hadn’t been able to think straight.

Like now. If she had a lick of sense, she’d turn around and hightail it out of here. She heard the scuffle of feet in the dirt behind the chutes, a restless whisper of movement and saw a dozen large shapes milling inside a corral. The bucking horses.

The roughstock contractor hadn’t finished loading up. That meant Boone could still be here since he had been working with Monte Edgewood, who provided the stock for the rodeo. Maybe Boone had stayed behind to help load the horses.

She climbed over the gate into the chutes. It was dark, but the stars and distant lights of the city cast a faint glow over the rodeo grounds. She moved along the chutes, stopping when she heard voices.

She looked past the empty corral and the one with the bucking horses and saw what appeared to be several cowboys. All she could really see were their hats etched against the darkness. Boone? She couldn’t be sure unless she got a little closer.

Climbing over the fence, she dropped into an empty corral next to the one with the bucking horses. On the cool night breeze came the low murmur of voices. She felt her stomach roil as she tried to think of what she would say to Boone if that was him back there.

Unfortunately, she found herself tongue-tied whenever she saw him. She’d never had trouble speaking her mind. Quite the opposite. What the devil was wrong with her?

She knew she couldn’t keep trying to get his attention the way she would have when she was ten. She had a flash of memory of her bucking horse ride earlier and Boone completely missing it. She still hurt from the landing. And the humiliation of her desperation.

Through the milling horses, she caught sight of the dark silhouette of three cowboy hats on the far side of the corrals. She couldn’t see enough of the men to tell if one of them was Boone. It was too dark, and the horses blocked all but the men’s heads and shoulders.

She stepped on one rung of the fence and tried to peer over the horses, surprised to hear the men’s voices rise in anger. She couldn’t catch the words, but the tone made it clear they were in a dispute over something.

She recognized Boone’s voice and could almost feel the anger in it. Suddenly, it stopped. Eerie silence dropped over the arena.

Hurriedly she dropped back down into the corral, hoping he hadn’t seen her, but knowing he must have. She felt her face flush with embarrassment. What if he thought she was spying on him? Or even worse, stalking him?

BOONE CAUGHT MOVEMENT beyond the horses in the corral and held up his hand to silence the other two.

A light shone near the rodeo grounds exit, but the arena and corrals lay in darkness. He stared past the horses, wondering if his eyes had been playing tricks on him. Through a break in the horses, he saw a figure crouch down.

“Go on, get out of here,” he whispered.

Lamar nodded and headed for the semitruck and trailer with Devil’s Tornado inside.

Boone glanced at Waylon Dobbs. The rodeo veterinarian looked scared and ready to run, but he hadn’t moved.

“Who is it?” Waylon whispered.

Boone motioned with an impatient shake of his head that he didn’t know and for Waylon to leave. “I’ll take care of it. Go. We’re finished here anyway.”

Slipping through the fence into the corral with the bucking horses, Boone used the horses to conceal himself as he worked his way to the far gate—the gate that would send the massive horses back into the corral where he’d just seen someone spying on them.

Had the person heard what they’d been saying? He couldn’t take the chance. Everyone knew accidents happened all the time when nosy people got caught where they didn’t belong.

The horses began to move restlessly around the corral, nervous with him among them. His jaw tightened as he thought about who was just beyond the horses. He couldn’t see anyone, but he knew the person was still there.

Carefully, he unlocked the gate and stepped back in the shadows out of the way of the horses. Whoever had been spying on him was in for a surprise.

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