CHAPTER 20
Colt
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Muddy floodwater slapped the truck step hard enough to rock the cab, and rain tasted metallic every time Colt opened his mouth to breathe.
He stood with one boot on the running board and one sunk in the gravel shoulder, phone pressed between his wet palm and his ear, watching the low pasture crossing disappear under brown water.
Fifteen minutes ago, the creek had been ugly but passable along the upper edge.
Now it shouldered over the concrete slab and ate the fence line below it link by link.
"Say it again," he said.
Junie's voice came through with feed-store noise behind it. "Beau is with me. She had crackers, she is drawing stars on invoice paper, and she knows the road is too wet for daddy to come early."
Colt shut his eyes, just long enough to steady himself. Rain ran off his hat brim and down his collar. "She ask why?"
"She asked if the cows needed umbrellas."
That hit a tender place he did not have time to hold. "Tell her the cows are tougher than umbrellas."
"Already did. Also told her you would call before pickup changes."
"I'll call. " He looked toward the far side of the crossing, where the low pasture dropped into a brush pocket and rose again toward safer ground. The cows had moved uphill. Calves answered from the wrong side of the wash, high-pitched and scared. "I've got calves trapped below the crossing."
Junie's voice sharpened without getting louder. "How many?"
"Four, maybe five."
"Tuck with you?"
"On his way from the north gate."
"Good. I am sending chain."
Colt braced one hand against the open truck door as another slap of water struck the step. "I've got chain."
"You have ranch chain. I have the thirty-foot logging chain under the feed counter."
"Junie."
"And mineral tubs, calf rope, two slickers, a sack of cubes, and fence staples. Wren is loading them."
The rain seemed to strike harder.
Colt looked back toward the county road, half expecting to see headlights already cutting through the gray. "No."
"That wasn't a question."
"The road is going under."
"Not from town to the upper cattle guard. She knows the high cut from running delivery tickets for me."
"Junie, don't put her in this."
"Colt Duvane," Junie said, each word carrying its own weight, "that woman is already in this. She saw me reaching for supplies and asked what road still held. If you want to argue, do it after the calves are safe."
He gripped the phone until the casing creaked.
Across the wash, a little black calf slid in the mud, scrambled up, and bawled toward the cows on the hill. The sound went through Colt clean.
"Tell her no crossing," he said. "No water above her boot tops. No heroics."
"Tell her yourself when she gets there."
Junie hung up.
Colt lowered the phone. One missed call from Bennet Orvell sat below the weather alert: flash flood warning, move to higher ground, do not attempt flooded crossings.
He swiped the call away without listening.
The envelope was still in the office drawer.
Right now, money had teeth in every supply he was about to use: panels, gravel, hay, fuel, wire, Tuck's time, and every hour stolen from the repair list already waiting.
He shoved the phone into his slicker pocket, nosed the truck higher on the shoulder, killed the engine, and stepped out into rain that hit with a hard, needling force. The air smelled of torn weeds, hot metal cooling too fast, and creek mud ripped open from the bottom.
Tuck's truck came in from the north lane, stopping well above the water. He got out with a coil of rope over one shoulder and took in the crossing with one hard look.
"Bad?" Tuck called.
"Getting worse."
The water gap below the crossing had peeled loose and bowed downstream, trapping brush and calves together.
The safest route was not back across the slab.
It was through a narrow lane above the brush pocket, if Colt could open a temporary path and pressure them uphill without spooking them into water.
"Cows are up," Tuck said, scanning the far rise.
"Calves aren't."
"I see four."
"Heard five."
Tuck's mouth tightened. "Need longer chain for that bottom panel."
"Junie's sending it."
Tuck glanced toward the road. "Who?"
Colt did not answer.
Headlights appeared through the rain, slow and high, then stopped at the upper cattle guard where gravel still showed through running water. Wren climbed down from the feed-store pickup in a yellow slicker too big for her shoulders and reached into the truck bed.
Colt's first reaction was anger, hot and useless.
His second was fear.
The sight of her in that gray rain, boots sinking as she dragged a chain toward the tailgate, struck him with a force that had nothing to do with the flood.
Last night he had sent her a text so cold a man could hang meat in it.
Beau needed routine. Ranch is busy. Best not come by.
He had called it responsibility. Wren had answered with two words: Understood. Stay safe.
Now she was here anyway, hauling chain through rain because calves were crying and Junie had sent her.
Colt started toward her.
"Stay at the truck," he called.
She lifted her head. Even through the rain, he saw the look she gave him. Whole enough. That had been last night's text. This was flint.
"I brought the chain," she called back.
"I see that. Stay there."
"Junie said you needed supplies, not spectators."
"This water is rising."
"Then stop using time to put me somewhere decorative."
Tuck made a sound that might have been a cough if a man was feeling generous.
Colt shot him a look, then crossed to Wren. The road under his boots had turned slick. Wren had already dragged the heavy chain to the tailgate and hooked both hands under it again.
He reached for it. "Give me that."
She let him take the load, but she did not step back. "There are tubs, cubes, rope, staples, bolt cutters, slickers, and a thermos Junie threatened me with."
"You should have stayed with her."
"Beau is with her."
"That's not what I meant."
"I know what you meant. " Wren's voice was steady, but her mouth had gone pale from cold. "You meant the same thing you meant last night. Put me at a distance and call it care."
The words landed where they belonged. There was no time to answer them.
Colt looked past her to the low pasture.
The calves bunched near the brush pocket, one trying to climb the slick bank and failing.
If he and Tuck went in without somebody holding the temporary gate, the calves might scatter back into the flood line.
He could sideline her and risk a bad gather, or he could trust the woman who had shown up.
"Listen close," he said.
Wren went still in the working way, attention sharpening.
He pointed to the bent panel near the rise.
"We pull that bottom panel uphill with the chain and make a funnel.
Tuck and I push the calves slow. You take the high side with cubes.
When the first calf commits, shake the sack, step back through the opening, and keep your body angled toward the brush.
Don't wave. Don't shout. Keep them looking uphill. "
Her eyes flicked over the pasture, reading what he had pointed out. "If they break toward the water?"
"You get out of the way."
"That wasn't the question."
"It is the answer that matters."
"Colt."
He met her eyes. Rain ran between them in hard silver lines.
"If they break toward water, I will be there," he said. "You do not plant yourself in front of a scared calf. Stay useful and movable. Follow my voice even if you hate the words coming out of it."
Her chin lifted. "I can do that."
"I know."
She blinked once. That mattered too. He did not dress it up.
"Get the cubes," he said.
They moved.
The flood made every sound larger. Water hammered the crossing, calves bawled, cows answered from the rise, and rain hissed over Colt's slicker.
He and Tuck ran the chain from the feed-store pickup to the bent panel, pulling it away from the brush catch and securing it to a cedar post higher up.
The links ground tight. Mud sucked at Colt's boots, and old rope-burn scars tightened in his palms.
Wren carried the sack of cubes to the high side, exactly where he'd told her. Wind shoved rain under her hood. She turned her face away, then reset her stance.
Tuck looked at Colt over the chain. "Ready?"
Colt checked the water, the calves, Wren, the wire, the post. "Slow."
Tuck eased his truck forward in low gear. The chain went tight. The bent panel groaned, dragged free of the brush with a wet screech, then lurched uphill.
"Hold," Colt shouted.
Tuck braked. Colt looped the chain twice around the higher post and set the hook. It only had to hold until the calves cleared.
He waved Tuck down the far side with him.
The mud there had no bottom. Colt slid more than walked, keeping his weight back from the fast water.
The calves saw them and bunched tighter.
Four heads. No, five. The smallest stood half-hidden behind torn brush, legs trembling, flank streaked with red mud.
"Easy," Colt said, low though the rain swallowed it. "Easy now."
Tuck moved left. Colt moved right. They gave the calves room to choose the high opening and enough pressure to make water less tempting. A big roan calf bolted two steps downhill. Colt snapped his rope against the mud, not touching the animal, only making sound.
"Hup. Get up."
The calf swung away from the noise and saw Wren.
Instead of waving, she shook the sack once, tipped a handful near the open lane, and stepped back as Colt had told her. Her face was white and intent. Her boots slid. She corrected without looking down.
The roan calf bawled, took one doubtful step uphill, then another.
"Good," Colt called. "Wren, keep moving back. Slow."
She moved.
The second calf followed. Then the third. The fourth tried to cut toward the broken panel, but Tuck shifted and turned it with the rope in his hand. The calves stumbled through the funnel and up toward the cows, legs splayed in mud.