Emma's Blaze (Fires of Cricket Bend Book 2) by Marie Piper

I believe it to be morning.”
    As they reached the front of the herd, Bill saw Maggie skitter away from a cow. Sparrow held on and rode the little jump, and Jess shooed the troublemaker cow back to the herd.
    “Maggie’s right not to trust him. That one,” Bill said as he pointed to the particularly surly looking cow standing at the head of the pack. With horns at least five feet across, and a scar on his muzzle from some argument long past, the longhorn huffed and glared at the riders. “We call him King. He’s made himself leader. Bossy, grumpy, does whatever he wants.”
    “Should have named him Andrew,” Jess joked.
    “He’s worthy of it. But the others follow where he goes. You need a leader, a cow who’ll go first, or the others won’t budge. Pa may be the boss out here, but King, he calls the shots. Jess and I ride the point, up front.” Bill began to explain the order of things, and she listened up. “We lead the way. It’s a formation, like soldiers.”
    “If soldiers were going to be turned into meat at the end of their march,” Jess said.
    “Pete, Ollie, Nick, and Blue ride flank—that’s at the sides, keeping the cows from drifting wide. Andrew, he brings up the rear and keeps the weak and the lazy in line. At least, he’s supposed to. ’Cept he vanishes all the damn time, so Hiram shares the position and does most of the work. We call it dragging. The dust eaters are the men in the back.”
    Jess laughed. “If Andrew wasn’t blood, Pa’d have fired him years ago. Last year, especially.”
    “What happened last year?” Sparrow asked.
    Jess charged ahead with the story before Bill could shoot him any looks. “I’m embarrassed to say that a bunch of us went into a little town to visit the saloon and take a break from hard riding, and wound up causing a little trouble.”
    Bill scoffed. “Trouble. You nearly burned down the saloon, then went back and fought half the town in the street.” He looked at Sparrow. “They all landed their behinds in jail.”
    “And Bill, like an angel down from heaven, came and bailed us out,” Jess said. “Andrew started the brawl, I still say. Drank too much and decided to get rough with the working girl at the saloon.”
    “What did he do?”
    Jess set his jaw before he answered. “He beat on her. Won’t say why to this day.”
    “Was she hurt?”
    “Bruised. But she was a tough one, and threw him off a balcony.”
    “Well.” Sparrow looked deeply uncomfortable. “Sounds like he deserved it.”
    “He did,” Jess agreed. “She tossed him right over the side, but he was drunk and mean. He didn’t stop fighting until the owner of Porter’s Saloon pounded him into the dirt. I thought he was going to kill Andrew, I truly did.”
    Sparrow had been listening intently, but Bill saw her eyes change quickly. “Porter’s Saloon. In Cricket Bend?”
    “That’s the one.” Jess nodded. “You know it?”
    “Heard of it,” she replied.
    Bill made note of how she’d perked up at the mention of Cricket Bend and the saloon. She hadn’t given him many clues as to who she was after. Maybe Porter’s meant something to her. There wasn’t much else in Cricket Bend to commend the little town, but their saloon was impressive.
    “Good thing Bill is the one taking you to town,” Jess said. “If any of the rest of us stepped foot there, the Sheriff would fire first and ask questions later. His deputy ain’t so bad, though. Heard he was engaged to that girl, the pretty one Theo went after.”
    “Theo?” Sparrow asked.
    “Enough,” Bill cut off the conversation with a meaningful look to Jess. “Whyn’t you go right and keep the edge.”
    Jess took the hint in Bill’s tone, and trotted away.
    “It’s a nice view,” Sparrow said of the endless land ahead of them. “I’ve spent the past few days looking at the rear end of cows.”
    “Thought you might appreciate a new view,” he said. Bill clicked his tongue and lashed the whip, and King