Wyoming Woman Read Online Free PDF

dusty smell of them.
    The dogs, however, were a different matter.
    She watched in fascination as the two border colliesdarted among the sheep, nipping at the flanks of the stragglers, keeping the whole herd moving along together. Sometimes Luke spoke to them in a low voice or commanded them with simple hand gestures. For the most part, however, the dogs seemed to know exactly what they were doing and needed no direction. Rachel had always liked dogs, and these two alert, intelligent animals were as fine a pair as she had ever seen.
    â€œYour dogs are magnificent,” she said, watching the darker of the two chase a straying lamb back toward its mother. “Did you train them yourself?”
    â€œShep and Mick came with the sheep when I bought them,” Luke said tersely. “ I was the one who had to be trained.”
    It was a civil enough answer, but there was a dark undertone in Luke’s voice, a hidden tension in his muscular body, as if something were lurking below the surface of everything he said and did. She had held a gun on him, Rachel reminded herself. She had treated Luke Vincente with as much contempt as he had treated her. But there was more at work here, she sensed, than simple animosity. There were things she didn’t know, things she needed to understand for her own safety.
    Rachel held her tongue for a time, hoping Luke would volunteer more. But when he did not speak again, her impatience got the better of her.
    â€œI’ve been at school in Philadelphia for the past three years,” she said. “You and your sheep certainly weren’t around before I left.”
    He sighed, as if resigning himself to a conversation he did not want to have. “I came here two years ago. My property butts onto the northwest corner of your family’s ranch, where those reddish foothills jut out onto the prairie.”
    â€œIn that case, I’m surprised my father hasn’t tried to buy you out,” Rachel said. “At a fair price, of course.”
    Luke shrugged. “He has. Not in person, but through that little weasel of a land agent who comes sniffing around my place every few months.”
    â€œMr. Connell is a good man,” Rachel said. “My father has been dealing with him for years, and he’s never cheated us out of a penny…even though he does look a bit like a weasel.” She suppressed an impish smile. “What did you tell him when he made an offer on your land?”
    â€œThat I wouldn’t sell. Not even for a fair price.”
    The edge in his reply was not lost on Rachel. “But why not?” she demanded. “You could run sheep in Nevada, or Colorado, or New Mexico, and nobody would care a fig! Why set up a sheep ranch smack in the middle of cattle country, where three-quarters of the people you meet are going to hate you?”
    â€œMaybe because there’s no law that says I can’t.” He spoke in a flat voice that defied her to argue with him. “Do you play poker, Miss Rachel Tolliver?”
    â€œSome.”
    â€œI won my land in a poker game while you were probably still in pigtails,” he said. “Some rough years came and went before I was able to live on it.But it was my own piece of the earth. Whatever happened to me, it was always there, like a beacon to get me through the bad times.”
    Rachel wondered about those bad times, but she knew better than to ask too many personal questions. Luke Vincente, she sensed, was a very private man who would not show his scars to unsympathetic eyes.
    How old was he? she found herself wondering. He had the flat-bellied, lean-hipped body of a man in his early thirties and his hair carried only a light touch of silver. But his creased, windburned face had a hard set to it, as if his eyes had seen more than his mind wanted to remember.
    â€œI understand how you must feel about the land,” she said.
    â€œDo you?” he asked, clearly implying that Rachel