The Cowboy’s Hidden Agenda

Chapter 13

The sun was climbing up a smoky sky splotched with gray and white clouds as they made their way across the plateau-taking a long slow time of it, it seemed to Lauren. What had appeared from above to be flat terrain had turned out to consist of undulating ridges separated by gulleys and washes and thickly dotted with cacti and numerous other species of inhospitable plant life. Though her impatience with their progress probably had more to do with the words Bronco had spoken to her just before they’d started out than their actual rate of travel.

Home. He was taking her home. He’d said so, and he had no reason to lie to her. Though where that home was or how he planned to get her there, she didn’t know; she couldn’t see him driving her up to her father’s doorstep, wherever he might be at the moment. The local police station seemed equally unlikely. On the other hand she couldn’t believe he planned to drop her off at the nearest phone booth or bus depot, either.

Home. The images in her mind and the longing in her heart evoked by that word had more to do with people’s faces than any particular place. She couldn’t wait to see them again-her father and Dixie, her brother and, yes, her mother, too. When this was all over, she told herself, just as soon as she could get to a telephone, she’d call. Yes, and tell her what? It had been such a long time; they were practically strangers. One phone call wasn’t going to mend sixteen years of anger and hurt, she knew that, but it was a start. It wasn’t too late. Now that this nightmare was all but over, once she got her life back, things would be different.

Different? Oh, everything was different now-for her. But what about Bronco? What was to become of him, this strange and contradictory man who’d kidnapped her, then saved her from almost certain death? Would he be in prison? Or assuming he was able to avoid capture, would he be off in some godforsaken wilderness camp planning further mayhem with another anti-government militia group? Or would he somehow manage to just go back to being John Bracco, half-Apache horse trainer with a driver’s license, credit cards and a drinking problem? And how could any of those scenarios possibly fit into her life?

The answer was simple and unarguable. They couldn’t. He couldn’t. No way. End of story.

The end. Lauren’s stomach turned over and tears stung her eyes. The pain in her heart was so sharp and terrible she gave an involuntary gasp.

That got her a soft, “You okay back there?” from Bronco. Concerned about her lack of a hat, he’d insisted she wear the poncho over her head like a burnoose as protection against the broiling sun. As a consequence, she was in imminent danger of death by steam-cooking.

She gulped two quick breaths and was able to reply in a grumpy tone, “I’m fine. If you don’t count suffocation.”

“Leave that thing on. Can’t have you getting sunburned.”

“What difference does it make? Oh, I forgot,” she jokingly said, “I’m so valuable.”

He gave his dry ironic snort and muttered, “Not anymore,” as Red, responding to an unseen signal, broke into a gallop.

Lauren laughed, a sudden sunburst of joy. No, not anymore. She was no longer a hostage. He was taking her home.

In disobedience of orders, she let the poncho slip below her shoulders and lifted her head to give the cooling wind access to her sweat-damp hair. She watched Bronco’s long black hair, loose on his back, gently lifting and falling against the soft cotton fabric of his shirt with the rocking rhythm of the stallion’s gait. And she couldn’t resist the impulse to lay her face against it and breathe in the warm masculine scent of him one more time. Oh, please-not the last time. She loved the smell of him-clean salt-sweat, human and horse; sun and earth and pine needles and a hint of herbal soap. She would remember that smell for the rest of her life.

The two mares cantered by, tails lifted to the wind, feeling their oats. Their belated arrival earned them barely a whicker from a subdued Cochise Red; the long trek through mountains and storms had taken its toll on the stallion.

“They’re still with us,” Lauren said, raising her voice above the rush of the wind, the horses’ grunts, the thump of hooves and the squeak of saddle leather. She’d feared they might have run off with the wild horses, though to her intense disappointment she’d seen no sign of the herd since sunrise. They’d be going back to the high country where the good grazing was, Bronco had told her, now that the storm had passed.

“Horses are herd animals,” he said now. “And we’re their herd. They’ll stay with Ol’ Red here-unless a better deal comes along.” He grinned at her over his shoulder. “They’re not a lot different from humans in that respect.”

Lauren punched him on the back. She was unprepared when he swore and brought the stallion to a shuddering bone-crunching halt. “What?” she gasped, blinking away tears of pain from a bitten tongue and a bruised pubic bone. Then, in the sudden quiet she heard a new noise-a rushing roaring noise.

Bronco had lifted himself high in the stirrups in order to see farther ahead. Now he settled back in the saddle, still swearing and shaking his head. “Damn,” he said. “Damn, damn, damn.”

“What is it?” Her breasts had shivered hard and tight, brushing against a body suddenly taut and twitchy with ill-contained frustration.

“Flood,” he replied succinctly as he urged Cochise Red forward at a cautious walk.

A few paces farther on she could see it for herself. See that the earth ahead of them ended abruptly at the edge of a deep gulley. The bank on which they stood was higher than the one on the far side, and at least twenty feet below, a torrent of yellow-brown water boiled and churned and roared by with the speed and noise of a runaway freight train.

“Flash flood,” Bronco said, his voice distant and tired. “All that rain yesterday-last night. I told you it was a male rain-no good to anybody. The soil’s baked dry-the rain comes too hard and fast to soak in. So it just runs off-from every slope and down every little ravine-until it all winds up here. A few miles farther down it’ll spread out and either soak into the sand or stand on the hardpan until it eventually evaporates. But that won’t do us any good.”

“We have to cross that?” Lauren asked in a small voice.

“Yeah,” he replied on an rusty exhalation, “we have to cross that. Except we can’t. So we’ll have to go around it-one way or the other.” He turned to look at her and she saw the bleak set of his features, the furious black glitter of his eyes. “It’s going to take time…”

Time they didn’t have. Though neither of them said so, the knowledge that they were running out of that precious commodity lay like a chasm between them. What day was it? She’d lost track and couldn’t bring herself to ask him. The convention-it must have started by now. The acceptance speeches would be on the final day. How would they possibly still get there in time? Oh, Daddy, I’m so sorry.

New sounds intruded on that vibrant space-a squeal of surprise, a frightened whicker.

Bronco jerked around in the saddle. He muttered, “Oh, hell,” and an instant later was on the ground and running toward the edge of the wash. Still clutching the back of the empty saddle, Lauren watched in frozen fascination as the hindquarters of the gray mare, Linda, sank from sight, while her front hooves still lunged and scrabbled futilely at the edge of the ravine. Then all at once, undercut by the flood waters, the entire section of bank gave way. With a terrified scream, the mare disappeared. And right behind her was Bronco, plunging feet-first down the slide, into the raging torrent.

Just that quickly it happens. The unthinkable. Lauren felt the searing pain of a scream rip through her throat, heard the echoes of her own voice hanging in the hot shimmering sunlight, crying out his name.

Then, somehow, she was in the saddle and the reins were in her hands, and the big red stallion was thundering along the edge of the wash while she strained to catch a glimpse of one black head in all that water. She could see the mare thrashing, struggling to stay upright-if she started rolling, she was as good as lost. But where was Bronco? She screamed his name over and over. “Johnny! Johnny!”

There he was! Yes-she could see him, churning through the water, arms reaching for the frantic mare. But then, before he could grab hold of her mane, the current caught him, tore him away and rolled him under.

“Bronco!” Searching frantically for a glimpse of him, Lauren raced Cochise Red flat out along the edge of the gully, racing the torrent, refusing to accept that Bronco could be gone. Gone so completely, so suddenly. Just that quickly the unthinkable happens.

Then, once again she saw him, clinging with all his strength to a clump of willows far out in the middle of the maelstrom. Crying his name, sobbing with relief, she reined the stallion to a halt and all but fell from his back. “Hang on, I’m coming!” she yelled, frantically trying to free the coil of rope that was tied onto the front of the saddle.

There-she had it in her hands. Now-she needed something to secure it to. A rock or a bush… She smacked her forehead with her palm. Of course-Cochise Red! He was a quarterhorse, bred and trained to work cattle, strong enough to hold steady against the pull of a bucking steer. Oh, but he was tired, bone weary. Would he be strong enough to hold against a flood? A swift look around told her she had little choice-there were no rocks close enough to snub a rope around, and all the bushes seemed pitifully small. It was the stallion or nothing-and if she did nothing, Bronco was going to drown.

In seconds she had the rope securely tied to the pommel of the saddle, and just for good measure, snubbed it twice around the horn. “Whoa, boy, hold steady,” she crooned, stroking Cochise Red’s neck. She didn’t know what commands to give him; she could only hope he’d understand.

Then she was running, uncoiling the rope as she ran. The bank wasn’t as high here, but the flood was much wider. Bronco seemed so far away. Would the rope even be long enough to reach him? Could she throw it that far?

He was waving his arm, shouting at her. “Hold on,” she yelled, “I’m coming!”

“Go…go!” The words carried to her above the roar of the water. “Don’t try it. Take Red and go!”

“Are you crazy?” Lauren shouted. “Just hold on. Don’t you dare let go!” Standing as close to the edge of the flood as she dared, she hurled the coil of rope with every ounce of strength in her body-and watched in dismay as it fell with a plunk-far short of its target. Sobbing with frustration and fear, she reeled it in and tried again-with the same result.

“Go!” Bronco yelled. “It’s too far! Take Red, follow the flood until you come to the road. Go, dammit! You have to get…to your father…in time. Please…just go!”

Lauren was no longer listening. She was sobbing, furious with him beyond all understanding, muttering over and over under her breath as she reeled in the rope one last time, “I’m not going to leave you. I’m not going to leave you…”

Okay, but she had to accept the fact that she wasn’t strong enough to throw the rope out to him. It seemed to her there was only one thing left to do: she’d have to take it to him. Oh, she couldn’t possibly swim against the current, she knew that-she’d only drown, and then where would Bronco be? But there was Red. The stallion was strong. If they started far enough upstream and swam hard across the current, they could make it to the middle of the flood before it carried them past the willows.

With no other options open to her, she didn’t waste time thinking about it. Climbing into the saddle, she backtracked Cochise Red along the edge of the gully, then dismounted and tied the free end of the rope around the base of the biggest strongest-looking bush she could find. Then, fervently praying, she lifted herself once more into the saddle and urged the stallion forward. Forelegs stiff and trembling, he plunged over the side of the bank. She leaned far over his neck, coaxing and encouraging, begging and cajoling. “Come on, big boy, we can make it…we can do it…”

And suddenly they were in that muddy churning torrent. She felt the water hit with unbelievable force, felt Red’s feet lose their purchase, and for a horrible heart-stopping instant believed that they were lost. Then all at once she knew that the stallion was swimming, swimming gallantly, powerfully, swimming for his life, and all she could do then was hold on and try as best she could to keep him headed in diagonal across the current, on a line toward the clump of willows.

The current was so swift! More quickly than she could have imagined, before she even had time to think about it, the willows were looming ahead, dark above the churning rapids. And then suddenly Bronco’s hand was reaching toward her, clutching at the stallion’s neck…at the saddle…at her. Through a muddy veil of water his eyes blazed at her, black and bright with fury.

“You idiot!” he gasped. “You should have left me!”

“Shut up! Just shut up!” she sobbed, her fingers tangled in his hair, in his shirt. “Did you think I’d leave you? Just shut up and hold on. We’re getting out of here.”

But to do that they’d have to pull themselves back along the rope, working against the current-and against Cochise Red, who was doggedly determined to continue on as he had been, swimming with the flow.

“Let him go!” Bronco shouted, struggling to get a better grip on the rope and on her. “It’s the only way. We have to let him go!”

Lauren gave a shriek of protest and shock, gulped water and came up choking and gagging to watch the stallion surge away from them, lunging and fighting against the waves-and then disappear from sight. But she had no breath for sobs, and no time for tears. Because almost in that same instant, the rope that was their only lifeline suddenly went slack, and she and Bronco, too, were being swept away with the flood.

After that she was aware only of churning water and Bronco’s arms around her and pain and exhaustion and terror-and something inside her. A voice, a spark, a rage that would not let her give up. And then, when she no longer believed it possible, the feel of something solid beneath her feet. She thought it must be a dream, a miracle, but she fought to hold it nonetheless, to gain a step, then another. Clinging to each other, half dragging each other, she and Bronco pulled themselves and each other inch by inch out of the clutches of the current. And then she was on her hands and knees, retching and vomiting muddy gritty water onto the sunbaked rocks.

A few feet away, Bronco lurched to his feet, swaying. “Why didn’t you…” he rasped, then crumpled to the ground.

Lauren crawled to him and gathered his head into her lap. She held him tightly cradled against her chest, sat and rocked him, peeling strands of sand-crusted hair away from his proud warrior’s face, crooning in a hoarse and half-drowned voice, “I won’t leave you, Johnny. I won’t leave you. I won’t leave you.”

“Johnny’s strong. He’ll be okay.” Grandmother Rose looked up, and for a moment her eyes glittered in her broad lined face like little black beads. Then they went back to watching her fingers cut strips from tin cans and roll them to make the “tinklers” that would adorn the large hand-woven basket near her feet. When completed, the bead-decorated basket, along with others made by Grandmother Rose’s daughters and daughters-in-law, would fetch a pretty penny from a mail-order catalogue company headquartered in Gallup. “He’ll take the sweat bath with his uncle Frank and cousin Roger,” she said. “Then he’ll be fine. You’ll see.”

Lauren nodded, but it was too great an effort to reply. She felt utterly drained, limp and bone weary. She thought she might never find the energy to speak a word or move a muscle again. She felt so good here-safe and comforted and warm.

She was sitting on a blanket in a “summer shed,” a shelter made of wooden poles, open to the breezes on three sides and thatched overhead and along the back wall with willow branches. It was surprisingly comfortable there in the shade, even in the midday heat. A few feet away Rose’s great-grandson Matthew slumbered peacefully in his “cradle board,” propped against the back of the shed. His mother, Roger’s wife, Rachel, had gone into Rose’s modest but modern prefabricated house to prepare lunch; the menfolk would be hungry when they emerged from the sweat lodge. Like Grandmother Rose, Lauren was dressed in a “squaw dress,” a voluminous soft cotton skirt with a loose-fitting matching top. Lauren’s was fuchsia; the old lady’s was turquoise blue. It, too, was surprisingly comfortable and cool.

From where she sat Lauren could see the brush corral in the shade of two gnarled cottonwoods, where Cochise Red and the little gray mare were being brushed, fussed over and fed handfuls of corn and hay by a half-dozen assorted-size boys in jeans and T-shirts, cowboy boots and cowboy hats. She and Bronco had come upon the two horses a little ways downstream from where they’d managed to drag themselves from the water, standing together with heads low and flanks heaving. Red’s saddle had been hanging half under his belly; the saddlebags and blanket were gone. Of the buckskin mare they had seen no sign.

Lauren’s eyes shifted to the sweat lodge, a canvas-covered frame that had been set up on the banks of what must normally have been a small meandering stream. Now it, too, was a churning freshet of muddy water, rushing down to join the main flood. She could hear it roaring in the distance, like the rush of wind through trees. She’d always liked that sound, but now, from this day on, it would remind her of terror and panic, the feeling of utter help lessness that comes with the certainty that death is imminent.

She gave an involuntary shiver. Bronco’s grandmother glanced at her, then, following her gaze, made a sound that reminded Lauren of his dry one-note laugh. “Yeah, that flood come down early this morning. Heard it when I woke up-still dark, but I knew what it was. Took out part of my garden, too. Good half of my peppers and most of the pinto beans.” She shrugged; what, after all, could be done about weather?

Then the old woman surprised Lauren by reaching for her hand, taking it up in fingers as smooth and dry as leather and giving it a gentle squeeze. “Johnny’ll be fine,” she said again, softly. And after a moment added as she went back to her task, “His soul’s troubled, but Frank can help him with that.” His uncle Frank was a shaman, Bronco had told Lauren. He was teaching his son, Roger, to be a shaman, too, which was a process that could take years.

Grandmother Rose glanced up, her bright black eyes almost hidden in the creases of her smile. “It’s not a bad thing, you know, to have a troubled soul. What’s bad is to have no soul to be troubled.” Her eyes shifted once again to her busy hands. “Johnny didn’t have a soul for a long time. His mother took it with her when she left.” Lauren must have made some small sound, because the old woman’s eyes darted back to her, wide open, and now as warm as black fur. Oh, how they reminded Lauren of Bronco’s eyes. “He’s got it back now, though, I can tell,” said Rose. “Maybe you gave it back to him.”

“Oh,” Lauren protested in a crackling voice, “I don’t…” Under the soft cotton dress her heart was thumping, and she no longer felt safe in the summer shed. She felt hot and scared. She’d been feeling scared ever since the realization had come to her, there on the edge of the flood, that she’d been willing and prepared to give up her own life to save Bronco’s.

As if she sensed how Lauren felt, Grandmother Rose veered abruptly away from that subject. At least, it appeared for a moment as if she had.

“Johnny’s mother wasn’t a bad person,” she said in a gossipy way. “She was a sweet girl-a real sweet girl, too kind-hearted for her own good. You ask me, I think she left because she got her heart broke one too many times.” She dropped another twist of metal into the pile that had collected in the dip of her skirts between her knees, then stirred her fingers through them, listening with satisfaction to the jingling sound they made. “She was a teacher, you know. She used to say it broke her heart to see them, those bright beautiful little children, so talented, eager and full of promise, wasted.” She looked at Lauren and now her eyes seemed sad. “So many of our children, you know, they grow up and the alcohol gets them. They get to drinking, get themselves killed on the highway, or they go on the streets and get killed there, like my cousin Lutie’s boy, Daniel. Got knifed in a bar fight in Albuquerque.” She shook her head and went back to cutting and twisting. “Couldn’t take it anymore, Grace couldn’t. She had to leave-went back home. She lived back there in the East, you know.” She looked up suddenly. “You from back East?”

Lauren shook her head. “Iowa.” To her, “east” meant New York, New England.

Grandmother Rose wrinkled her nose and said, “Huh. I was back East once. Long time ago, after my husband, George, got killed in Korea. They gave him a medal, and I had to go back there so the president could give his medal to me. All I remember was a whole bunch of trees. Never saw so many trees. Trees, trees, everywhere you looked. Drive down the road and it was like going down a long green hallway-nothing on either side but trees. Never could figure out which way was which-east, west or whatever-no mountains to guide you by. How a person’s supposed to know which way to go, I’ll never know. Funny thing is-” she paused to toss another jingler onto the pile with a tiny clink “-all those trees, and most of ’em won’t even grow out here at all. I tried it-brought a few home with me, watered ’em, took care of ’em. One or two struggled along for a while, but eventually they all died. But now, some trees, like those willows there-” she pointed up at the greenish-gray thatch overhead “-they grow just about anywhere. You give a willow enough water, it’ll grow wherever you plant it.” Her eyes slid sideways to twinkle at Lauren, and she smiled again in that sly way. “You so tall and slim you remind me of a willow, in a way.”

While Lauren was choking and trying to find an answer to that, Rachel came to the door of the house and called, “Grandmother, how’s Matthew doing? He still sleeping?”

“Like a baby,” Grandmother Rose replied with a cackle of laughter. “He’s such a good baby,” she said to Lauren. “Reminds me a lot of the way Johnny was when he was a baby.” She reached out her hand and again gave Lauren’s a squeeze, but this time it seemed to Lauren there was something urgent about it. “Johnny’s a good man, too. A good man.” She placed a hand on her ample chest. “I know it-in here.” Then she shook her head and added dryly, “Even if he’d like everybody to think he isn’t.”

In the darkness of the sweat lodge Bronco’s mind drifted with the rise and fall of his uncle’s voice singing the traditional songs. He no longer understood the words, but it was his hope, his prayer, that the soothing familiarity of the chants might cover his troubled spirit as the steamy heat enveloped his body, and cleanse it of confusion, doubt and fear as the sweat cleansed his body.

But as the ancient songs filled his ears, it was only im ages of the past that filled his mind, while his path through the present and into the future remained clouded, lost in darkness.

“You look troubled, nephew,” his uncle Frank said to him as they were emerging from their revitalizing dip in the flooding creek. “Your sweat did not restore you to peace and harmony?” He spoke sardonically, smiling a little; he knew very well that it had been many years since Bronco had participated in the traditions of his father’s people.

Bronco’s reply was equally ironic. “Peace and harmony?” he said. “What’s that?”

“Anything I can do to help?” They were walking back toward the brush corral now, leaving Roger to put the lodge to rights.

Bronco threw him a glance. His uncle’s broad face was serene, smooth and unlined-very little there to remind him of the father whose face he could barely recall. He drew a deep breath and was surprised to hear himself say on its exhalation, “I work for the government, Frank. Did you know that? The same government that hunted and slaughtered our ancestors and tried its best to destroy us. I guess…I’m having a little trouble with that.”

“I can understand that,” his uncle said with a hitch of his broad shoulders. After a moment he went on in a conversational tone, “My dad-your Grandpa George-he fought in Korea, did you know that?”

“Yeah,” said Bronco, “I guess I did.”

“Got killed over there. They gave him the Medal of Honor-Mama went back there to Washington, to the White House, to get it, shook hands with the president and everything.”

Bronco nodded; he’d heard the story many times. He thought it might have been one of the factors that had induced the army time and time again to give him yet one more chance.

They paused in the shade of the cottonwoods and looked out across the sun-blasted landscape. After a while his uncle said softly, “This land has seen a lot of changes since it was given to our ancestors by Changing Woman. Yes, people have tried to destroy us. Destroy our ways. But they haven’t succeeded.” He nodded his head toward the summer shed, where the bright dresses of the women stood out like flowers in a shady garden. “Our ways, our traditions, our language still survive. At the same time our people are learning to thrive in the white man’s world. We have our own industries-cattle and lumber, ski resorts and tourism. We have hospitals, stores and computers in our schools. The other stuff-” he hitched his shoulders as if throwing off a burden “-that’s the past. We don’t live in the past. We live in this world. It is this world we must live in harmony with.” He stopped and looked at Bronco with a smile. “That’s how I see it. For what it’s worth-if it helps you any.”

“It does,” said Bronco, and meant it. He gathered his damp hair in his two hands and swiftly twisted it into a knot, then untied the bandanna he’d knotted around his forehead. “Tell you what,” he muttered, embarrassed now, “right now I could use another kind of help.”

“Yeah? What’s that?”

“I need to borrow your truck for a few days. I’ll reimburse you for it.”

“I’ll tell you what,” said Frank, his eyes twinkling as he jerked his head toward the brush corral. “I’ve got a mare comin’ in heat pretty soon. You leave that big red stud here for two-three weeks and you can have my truck-free of charge.”

“Deal,” Bronco said, laughing as they shook on it.

A moment later, though, as Bronco’s gaze drifted once again to the summer shed, his uncle said in a teasing voice, “Son, something tells me the U.S. government’s not the only thing that’s troubling you.”

Bronco’s reply was a gust of dry laughter. What could he say? He didn’t even know what to think about what had happened to him today. His mind had been in a turmoil ever since that moment of truth out there in the middle of the flood, when he’d realized he’d rather take a chance on losing his own life than let Lauren give up hers. And that it had nothing to do with duty, responsibility or honor.

His uncle Frank didn’t have anything more to say, either; both of them knew that kind of trouble was something a man had to work out for himself.

There was silence in the dusty brown Ford pickup as they drove away from Grandmother Rose’s, until Lauren turned to look back through a haze of dust at the brush corral under the cottonwoods. She looked for a long time, until the dirt road dipped into a dry wash and even the tops of the trees disappeared from view.

When she turned and faced forward again, Bronco cleared his throat and said gruffly, “Don’t worry about him. He’ll be there when you can get back for him. Be well taken care of, too.”

She nodded, and he could see her swallow a couple of times before she spoke. “I know. It’s just…hard to believe it’s really over.”

Bronco laughed-one brief dry note. “It’s not over yet. We’re still a long way from Dallas.”