The High Country Rancher by Jan Hambright

gleaming lights surrounding the arena didn’t penetrate.
    She rushed to the end of the bucking chutes and stopped, trying to ascertain where he’d gone. She spotted him rushing down a narrow corridor, and gave chase.
    There were fewer cowboys the farther into the back of the rodeo grounds she pushed.
    She could hear the rustle of restless livestock in the maze of pens. Caution zipped through her for an instant when a bull bellowed in the holding pen beside her.
    She tried to get her bearings in the dark, cramped and dusty corridor.
    Where was Buckner?
    She felt a push from behind at the precise moment the small gate she was standing next to opened, and she was shoved through it into the holding pen.
    Mariah hit the ground on her belly and raised her head to stare in horror at dozens of hooves.
    Reality dawned hard and fast as she rolled to the left, a hoof barely missing her head.
    The massive animal came at her again head down, horns poised to gore her if given the chance.
    She went on autopilot. Move, keep moving.
    Where was the gate? She’d have to stand to open it.
    She could shoot the bull, but there were a dozen more just like him in the pen.
    Mariah glanced up at the fence. The rungs were six inches apart. Too narrow for her to slip through. She’d have to use the gate. If she timed it right, she could stand up and make it through before he killed her, and she had no doubt that the eighteen-hundred-pound Brahma bull snorting and pawing the earth a few feet away could do just that in a matter of seconds.
    “Mariah! Up here. I’ll pull you out.”
    The sound of Baylor’s voice was a relief, and she scrambled to her feet just as the bull lunged, slamming into her body with his head and hooking her with his horn.
    A sting of pain shot through her left arm and she saw stars for an instant, trying to suck in a breath.
    She was lifted up off her feet by the force of the blow.
    Baylor bolted up the fence, lodged his feet in one of the rungs, bent over at the waist and snagged Mariah from the bull. He then raised her up above the enormous animal before he could finish her off.
    He set her on the other side and jumped down, pulling her into his arms.
    His heartbeat hammered in his eardrums, drowning out the cheers of fans as an animal tossed its rider before the eight-second buzzer.
    He felt her sag in his arms and looked down at her. Blood stained the front of his shirt and the sleeve of her jacket gapped open.
    “Mariah?” Fear constricted his chest, making it hard to breathe. Time ground to a stop, images clicking by in slow motion. He was there again. In the water, a prisoner of that night a year ago. Amy…he had to save Amy. The car filled with water. Icy water. Terror’s crushing power dug into his brain and immobilized him.
    “He hooked me. I need the EMTs.”
    The whisper of Mariah’s words cut through the replayed trauma stuck in his brain and sucked him back into the present.
    “Where?”
    “My arm.”
    He scooped her up and laced through the crowd heading for the ambulance and the EMTs who could do for her what no one had been able to do for Amy, not even him.
    Save her.
    She was fragile and small in his arms. Urgency bubbled up in him and he quickened his step, not satisfied until he reached the EMS staff.
    “A bull hooked her,” he said as he sat her down on the back step of the ambulance.
    Already he missed the feel of her in his arms, and he watched as they took a pair of scissors to the tattered sleeve of her jacket and exposed her arm.
    A gash marred her skin just above her elbow. The bleeding had almost stopped, but she was going to need stitches.
    “You’re lucky he didn’t catch the brachial artery,” the EMT said as he cleaned the gash and applied a sterile dressing. “You need to roll up to the hospital and have it stitched.”
    Mariah nodded and felt suddenly nauseous. She’d been inches from death. If it hadn’t been for Baylor…
    “Would cowboy Ray Buckner please come to the