Cowgirl, Unexpectedly. Vicki Tharp

ended with a jarring trot step. I was improving, but we hadn’t been in the saddle long and already my quads hurt and my butter-soft jeans had turned to sixty-grit sandpaper against my inner thighs.

      I tried to concentrate on the rolling hills to keep my mind off the nagging discomfort. The brush was short and scraggly in this area, small rocks plentiful, and the view of the craggy, snow-capped mountains ahead of me could have made the centerfold of National Geographic.

      I eyeballed the fence for signs of damage, but not particularly hard, because there were three of us watching the same fence line. Not a three-person job, but it gave Santos and me the opportunity to start learning our way around the ranch.

      My mind wandered back to this morning and my luck in getting the job. Dale must be desperate for warm bodies to fill the saddles if he’d actually taken the chance and hired me on. Not an auspicious sign.

      A sharp, high-pitched yelping jerked me to attention. Adrenaline buzzed, not a surge, but a soft spike that kicked my heart into the next gear and widened my focus. Santos dug his heels into his horse and galloped off. In the distance, Jenna yanked her rifle from its scabbard before disappearing over a rise.

      The yipping continued unabated, loud and so intense that even from a distance it threw me back to the streets of Iraq, to the screams of pain, the zing of bullets, and the brain-numbing concussive forces of the explosions.

      Sierra skittered sideways, anxious to join the others, and I grabbed onto the horn, gave her her head, and catapulted down the trail like an F-18 Super Hornet off an aircraft carrier. I didn’t know the old girl had that kind of speed. The brush and rocks screamed by in a blur; the speed flushed my cheeks and constricted my lungs and plastered a smile on my face.

      Sierra and I flew over a rise and almost plowed into Santos. My horse slid to a stop in half a stride, and my momentum propelled me out of the saddle. It was only because of my death grip on the saddle horn that my feet flew out of the stirrups first and I was able to crash-land on my feet a nanosecond before my ass and then my side hit the ground with a jaw-jarring thud, my left arm going out to help break my fall. My left shoulder pulled, bringing tears to my eyes and reminding me that maybe I wasn’t as well healed from my previous injuries as I’d fooled myself into believing.

      The dog’s howls came in waves, rising to a frantic, glass-shattering pitch before sinking to an eerily quiet before the next rise. My ears rang, muffling my panting. I spat dirt out of my mouth and scooted the remaining few feet to where Jenna sat with her arms wrapped around the dog. She’d pulled him into her lap, hugged his head and neck to her chest, and murmured reassuring words into the dog’s ears.

      Santos was using all of his muscle to depress the springs on a leg-hold trap. The rusty metal jaws—the size of which looked big enough and strong enough to hold a bear—bit full force with shark-like teeth onto the dog’s right foreleg. Blood dripped steadily into the thirsty ground. The bone was a chewed, mangled mess.

      I added my strength to Santos’s and together we released enough pressure on the jaws for Jenna to pull Dink’s leg out. The yowling immediately quieted to a pitiful whimper as Jenna buried her tear-streaked face into the dog’s fur. Santos sat back on his haunches. Even with his darker complexion, I could see the red anger on his face, his lips flat and tense.

      “There’s a handheld radio in my saddlebag,” Jenna said to Santos as she pulled herself together. Dink lay still in her arms, panting fast and heavy, thick ropes of saliva trailing down Jenna’s arm. Her eyes drifted to her rifle a few feet away in the sand and the air caught in her lungs.

      I knew what she was contemplating.

      “It’s bad,” I said, stating the obvious. “He’s in a lot of pain and he’s lost a lot of blood. I’ve seen worse. Much worse. We’re going to get him home and he’s going to have a long recovery, but he’s strong. He’ll be okay.”

      Jenna’s eyes held mine. She nodded once, needing to believe.

      I glanced over at Santos, who’d managed to gather all three horses. Luckily, there was a nice patch of tall grass, not twenty yards from where we were, that had captured the horses’ attention. He rummaged in one of the packs for the radio.

      “Right,” I said to no one in particular. I stood slowly, stiffness already setting in from the ride and my unscheduled dismount.

      We had to stabilize the bone and stop the bleeding. I’ve had more experience with field dressing wounds than I cared to remember. I walked around searching for sticks I could use for a brace. As mangled as the leg was, it would be important to support the leg from front to back as well as side-to-side to prevent as much pain as possible when we moved him, and to protect the delicate tissue from the cutting forces of the jagged bone.

      A few minutes later, I had the sticks gathered but I still needed something to bind them to the leg. I was wearing a sports bra, so I didn’t hesitate to strip off my T-shirt and use my four-inch fixed blade boot knife to cut the material into strips.

      “This is going to hurt,” I warned Jenna and Dink.

      Jenna nodded, her face pale but determined. Dink eyed me through half-slitted lids, his lips drawn back into a submissive grimace.

      “Santos, come hold his leg,” I ordered.

      He slid to the ground beside me and gently held Dink’s leg on either side of the break. The radio hissed beside him, the volume turned up full bore.

      “Were you able to get hold of anybody?” Jenna asked. Her eyes were dry now, but there were dirt streaks on her face where her tears had fallen.

      “Not yet.” He used his thumb to hold the strip of the T-shirt in place while I wrapped it around the leg, being careful not to get it too tight and cause more swelling. “When we’re done here, I’ll ride to the ridge and see if I can get a better signal.”

      * * * *

      We were halfway back to the ranch house by my estimation when Dale’s dilapidated farm truck lurched over the rise, belching black exhaust from a broken tailpipe. Moments later, Sierra’s ears perked up and she called out, shaking me in the saddle like a flesh and bone earthquake. Hoof beats sounded on the distance, then Hank and his horse popped out of a wash about a hundred yards from our position. Jenna sank into her saddle as if all the steel in her spine melted at the sight of help arriving.

      Santos and I dismounted and he pitched his horse’s reins to me and lifted Dink from the front of Jenna’s saddle. Dale alighted from the truck and Hank stepped out of his stirrups before his horse had completely stopped. I held out my hand to take Hank’s reins, but though his nostrils flared and his ribs heaved with every breath, his horse dropped his head and cocked a hind leg as if his rider had arrived at the saloon after a month-long cattle drive.

      Hank slid Jenna from the saddle, wrapped her in his arms, and held her to his chest. “You all right?”

      I looked away, feeling inexplicably as if I was witnessing something private. I turned my attention to Santos and Dale as they settled Dink onto the threadbare fabric of the truck’s front bench seat. The remnants of adrenaline popping through me made my veins itch and my stomach collapse on itself.

      The situation was surreal.

      On the one hand, I fought the urge to check the tightness of the chinstrap on my combat helmet. On the other hand, it was freeing to watch the evacuation of the wounded and not worry if the vehicle will make it back without running into an IED or the business end of an RPG.

      I stood there unseeing, lost in my thoughts, and unaware of my surroundings. Sierra nudged my back as if telling me to get on with it. Nothing rude, just a gentle reminder there were things she’d rather do than stand in the middle of a dirt road all day. It hadn’t even registered that Santos had retrieved his horse from me until the truck and Santos’s horse disappeared over the hill.

      Past its zenith, the sun was warm on the side of my face. Then it dove behind a gray cloud dousing the heat like carbon dioxide on a gas fire. I glanced up into Hank’s arctic-blue eyes and caught his assessing gaze.