“Have a nice ride?” He looked at her with amusement as she stopped and Navajo pawed the ground.

“Charming, thank you.” But there was a feeling of victory nonetheless to have found them at all, and she watched the emerald eyes glinting in the sun. And then, without saying anything further, she wheeled her horse and joined the men, dismounting a few moments later to help carry a newborn calf in a sling made of a blanket. The mother had died only hours before, and the calf looked as if she might not make it either. One of the men hoisted the small, scarcely breathing animal in front of his saddle and rode steadily toward the livestock barn, where he would bring her to another cow in the hopes of giving her a foster mother. It was only half an hour later when Sam spotted the next one on her own, this one even smaller than the first, and the mother had obviously been gone for several more hours. This time with no assistance she fashioned the sling on her own, hoisted the calf onto her saddle with the help of a young ranch hand who was far too intrigued by Samantha to be of much use with the calf. Then, without waiting for instructions, she began to canter at a steady pace after the other ranch hand, toward the main barn.

“Can you manage it on your own?” She looked up, startled, to see Tate Jordan riding along smoothly beside her, his sleek black and white pinto making an interesting pair with her brown and white Appaloosa.

“Yeah, I think I can manage.” And then with a look of concern at the animal in front of her saddle, “Do you think this one will live?”

“I doubt it.” He spoke matter-of-factly as he watched her. “But it's always worth a try.” She nodded in answer and rode harder, and this time he veered away and turned back. A few minutes later she was at the main barn, and the orphaned calf was taken into expert hands that worked on him for over an hour, but the little calf didn't live. As she walked back to Navajo waiting patiently outside the livestock buildings, she felt tears sting her eyes, and then as she swung her leg over the saddle she suddenly felt anger. Anger that they hadn't been able to save him, that the poor little beast hadn't survived. And she knew there were others like him out there, whose mothers had, for one reason or another, died as they delivered in the cold flight. The men always had an eye out for livestock in trouble on the hills, but it was inevitable that there were some who escaped their notice and died on the hills every year. It was common for those who delivered in winter. The others had come to accept it, but Samantha had not. Somehow the orphaned calves seemed almost symbolic of the children she could not bear, and now she rode back out to the others with a vengeance and a determination that the next one she brought back would live.

She brought in three more that afternoon, riding hell for leather as she had that morning on Black Beauty, the calves wrapped in the blankets, the men watching her with combined intrigue and awe. She was a strange and beautiful young woman, bent low over her horse's neck, riding as no woman had on the Lord Ranch before, not even Caroline Lord. The extraordinary thing was that as they watched her fly across the hills, Navajo moving like a brown streak until they saw him no more, they knew just how good Samantha was. She was a horsewoman like few others, and as they rode back to the barn that night the men joked with her as they hadn't before.

“Do you always ride like that?” It was Tate Jordan again, his dark hair ruffled beneath the big black Stetson, his eyes bright, his beard beginning to cast a shadow across his face by the end of the day. There was a kind of rugged masculinity about him that had always made women pause when they saw him, as though for just a moment they couldn't catch their breath. But Samantha did not suffer from that affliction. There was something about the self-assured way he moved that annoyed her. He was a man who was sure of his world and his job, his men and his horses, and probably his women as well. For a moment she didn't answer his question, and then she nodded with a vague smile.

“For a good cause.”

“And this morning?” Why did he want to push her? She wondered. Why did he care?

“That was a good cause too.”

“Was it?” The green eyes pursued her as they rode home after the long day.

But this time Samantha faced him frankly, her blue eyes locking into his green. “Yes, it was. It made me feel alive again, Mr. Jordan. It made me feel free. I haven't felt like that in a long time.” He nodded slowly and said nothing. She wasn't sure if he understood, or if he even cared, but with a last look at her he moved on.

7

“Aren't you going to ride Black Beauty this morning?”