Montana Gold. Genell Dellin

with a willow switch. He had absolutely no fear, or if he did, no one ever saw it.

      Remembering those stories and knowing she was named for him was what got her through those terrible days when she was twelve. They gave her courage when she was scared to death and helpless, and they gave her courage the first time she walked into the arena as the bullfighter.

      Her mother had unfailingly called her Farrell, but everybody else, from the time the baby girl had tried to say her own name, called her Elle. When she started bullfighting, though, she insisted that the rodeo announcers use her full name because it made her spirit even stronger.

      Elle punched the Forward button on the CD player. Time to quit looking in the rearview mirror.

      And time to quit worrying about whatever lay ahead down the road. Trying to plan for that was a waste of energy.

      Worse, it was a waste of a beautiful spring night with the smell of rain on the wind.

      “Really, Aussie,” she murmured, glancing at the Australian shepherd who’d put his front feet on the console to stand up and look at her, “you’re the only male animal we need around this outfit.”

      Aussie gave her a melting look of agreement. Elle set the coffee back in the cupholder so she could reach over and scratch him a little. He sank back down, closed his eyes and nestled his nose between his paws. She patted his head and grasped the leather wheel again, firmly and with both hands.

      She really ought to travel with Missy Jo more often. But it was hard to do—M.J. had to enter the rodeos and barrel-racings that offered the most prize money and Elle had to work the jobs that offered her contracts, of which more and more were package deals for her and Rocky and Junior. They’d just have to make the best of these rare times when they both worked the same rodeo.

      Which probably was just as well. Missy Jo had romance on the brain now that she had a serious boyfriend, and she wanted to fix Elle up with somebody, too. It was sweet of her but maddening. Last night, Missy Jo had sensed the attraction between Elle and Chase and today that had been her main topic of conversation.

      Something moved at the side of the road. A long way up ahead, at the end of the headlights’ beam, but Elle knew she’d seen it. She started slowing down.

      Probably it was an animal. If it ran across the road in front of them, she might have a wreck trying to miss it. She looked away, then tried to spot it again as she let the speed drop all the way down to fifty.

      The night was black around them. Whatever it was had been white, or she would never have seen it. She kept searching and slowing and then she saw two eyes shining in her lights, looking down the road at her. She’d have to stop, just long enough to check it out.

      When she got close enough, she signaled that she was going to pull over, gradually moved onto the shoulder of the road, and slowed the rig to a stop. As she set the parking brake, Missy Jo sat up.

      “What’s going on? Where are we?”

      “Middle of nowhere,” Elle said. “I just want to check on something.”

      “You think we’ve got a flat?”

      “No. It’ll only take a minute.”

      “Skitter? Is she kicking again?”

      “No, M.J. Nothing’s wrong. Hang on a second.”

      Elle could feel Missy’s eyes on her back as she walked along the side of the highway, following the headlights’ beams to the yellow eyes looking at her from the ground.

      “You’ll get your hand bit off,” Missy Jo screamed from the truck. “Elle, you don’t even know what that is.”

      “It’s a dog,” Elle called back. “It’s a Husky. Or an Eskimo.”

      “If it’s hurt, it could be dangerous. Wait ’til I get there.”

      Elle squatted down at a safe distance while Missy Jo ran to her, talking as she did so.

      “I’m not going to let you drive another mile,” she said. “Nobody but you would stop out in the boonies in the middle of the night for a hurt dog. You can’t help him, Elle.”

      But the dog stood up right then and they saw that, aside from his left hind leg hanging at a weird angle and a cut bleeding into the fur of that shoulder, he appeared to be healthy. Sort of. Under the thick—and admittedly, horridly matted—haircoat, he was too thin.

      Elle started talking to him and holding her hand out for him to sniff.

      “It’s just a broken leg,” she said. “A good veterinarian can fix him right up.”

      “Do you see one anywhere around here?”

      Elle let that pass without comment except to say, “He’s not wearing any tags.”

      “You can’t do this to Carlie,” Missy Jo said with an exaggerated sigh of sympathy for the woman who was Elle’s landlady. “If you take in any more strays, you’ll have to stay home and take care of them yourself.”

      “Carlie calls them her grandchildren,” Elle told her, letting the dog lick the tips of her fingers. “She likes them. They keep her from being lonesome.”

      “You’re her biggest stray,” M.J. said, with her usual tendency to speak truths that struck too close to the bone. “She just doesn’t want to hurt your feelings, Elle.”

      M.J. definitely had a point, but Elle did, too.

      “She says—all the time—that she’s a rich widow with nothing else to do but feed, water, doctor and entertain the hurting four-footed creatures I drag in there.”

      She was stroking the dog’s head by now. He was whining his thanks.

      “Talking to you is like talking to a rock,” M.J. said.

      “Well, what would you do?” Elle said, keeping her voice as calm as she could so as not to excite or scare the dog. “Leave him here to suffer?”

      “I never would’ve stopped in the first place,” M.J. said. “But now that you’ve done it, damn it, I’ll go get a blanket.”

      HE’D DONE IT NOW.

      Chase moved slowly as he sat up in bed, swung his feet out onto the floor, and stood up. He was sore all over and the pain in his bad leg seared through him like a firebrand, but he tried to shut it out of his mind. He had two pins and a screw in his left femur and that same kneecap had been cracked like a walnut in his very next ride back from that surgery, but all that had healed up six months ago. Surely it didn’t mean he couldn’t take it anymore.

      He wasn’t going to let his body crater on him. Not yet. No way.

      He’d planned to do a little cutting today to try a couple of his colts that’d just been started. But maybe he ought to take it easy instead.

      Damn. The day a man couldn’t do anything and everything that he wanted to do was the day he might as well count himself old. He wasn’t there yet. He still had two more buckles to win.

      He set his jaw and walked to the window in spite of the hurt, which began to turn into a sharp ache that ran all the way up into his teeth. Probably that was only because this Montana morning at the end of March was a whole lot colder than Texas, where he’d just been. Surely it wasn’t because he had too many bones that had been broken too many times.

      Carefully, he widened his stance and began to stretch, bending to one side and then the other, breathing deep against the pain and keeping his eyes on the pinkening dawn outside the window. He’d been having crazy dreams, which were what had wakened him.

      He rarely dreamed. Or else he didn’t remember his dreams. All his life, he’d been so tired when he finally went to bed at night that he had no trouble sleeping no matter what. Except maybe when he was a kid and never knew when his dad would jerk him out of bed in the middle of the night to berate or beat him.

      Retirement