Page 71 of Runaway Hucow

Shannon Duffy was traveling with three men. One of them, a wheat-blond cowboy by the name of Tanner, was the pilot of the airship, and he was currently talking shop with Peyton, showing the bespectacled bisonman around the parked craft, letting him inspect the engines and controls.

The second man, Logan, was a tall Cherokee with flowing black hair. Tess took him to be a bodyguard based on the long rifle he carried and the protective way he kept watch over Shannon. At the moment, he and Spike were chatting and showing each other their weapons. He seemed to be very impressed by Spike’s 4 gauge.

Last was Rufus. He was just as tall and strong looking as the other two men, with a messy head of copperish hair. He was keeping an eye on the children while Tess and Shannon talked.

There were two children, a boy and a girl. Shannon said they were both a year old, but they looked bigger than that, and they were surprisingly steady on their feet. If Tess hadn’t known any better, she would have guessed they were two.

She supposed one of the three men must be their father, but she wasn’t sure which. The girl had blond hair that matched Tanner’s, but the boy looked as though he could have been Logan’s son.

Both of the children were obsessed with Chase, and Roscoe was keeping them entertained by showing them all the tricks the eagle could do. They shrieked with laughter every time the big bird swooped overhead.

“He’s good with kids,” Shannon said as she and Tess watched from a distance.

“He is,” Tess agreed.

She had been the most worried about Roscoe. Out of the three minotaurs, he seemed the least likely to take kindly to visitors from the outside, and indeed, as the airship had been coming in for a landing, the alpha minotaur had practically been shaking with rage. But as soon as he had seen the children, all his aggression had disappeared. Tess had never seen Roscoe act so gentle before.

He’s going to make a great father, Tess thought. The father of my babies.

She and Shannon Duffy were walking together through the grass near the edge of the pond. They were accompanied by Shannon’s pet, a one-year-old red wolf. Though the wolf was already quite large, he still had the playful personality of a pup, and he kept bounding ahead to chase the butterflies fluttering over the grass. In the distance, the grazing bison watched the wolf with a mixture of curiosity and caution.

“This is quite a place,” Shannon said. Like Tess, she was dressed in jeans and a shirt. Her tanned skin and dark hair also resembled Tess’s, but she was a little less buxom, and her eyes were the color of polished turquoise. “I’ve never seen so many bison before.”

“Neither had I before I came here,” Tess said. “Pretty much nobody has. Nobody that’s alive, anyway. Right now, this is the biggest herd of bison in the whole world. Bigger than all the other herds combined. That’s the reason why the minotaurs want to keep it a secret.”

“I can understand that,” Shannon said, nodding. “And now I understand why your telegrams were so secretive too. I guess I took you by surprise showing up like this.”

“A little,” Tess said.

“Well, I’m sorry to drop in unannounced. It’s just that I was worried about you.”

She explained how she had arrived at Jeremiah’s house a few weeks earlier, but Tess wasn’t there. Then, when she received Tess’s telegram a few days ago, she had been overjoyed to learn that the hucow was safe. But when the second telegram had followed a day later, she had been confused. She wondered why Tess had changed her mind so suddenly.

“I was worried you had gotten into some kind of trouble,” Shannon said. “Your first message was so cryptic, with the coordinates in the middle of nowhere, and the oblique way you identified yourself—Dr. B’s daughter. When the second message came so close on the heels of the first, I thought maybe you had been forced to send it under duress.”

“I appreciate your concern,” Tess said. “Really, I do. These days, most people aren’t willing to look out for a stranger like that. But how did you find the valley?”

“Well, me and the guys were planning to make a trip up to Denver in a few days. We’ve got an important piece of equipment we’re picking up. I figured, why not leave a little early and check out those coordinates you sent me. We didn’t find anything there, so we decided to make a big circle of the region, just to see if there were any dwellings around. We saw this valley, and decided to come check it out. And, well… here we are.”

“And here I am too,” Tess said. “I feel guilty for making you go through so much trouble.”

“It’s no trouble at all, really. Like I said, we were already planning to make the trip up to Denver anyway. Now we’ll get there early and have some time to enjoy the city.”

“You said you were going there to pick up a piece of equipment,” Tess said.

“That’s right. It’s a new device for marking our hucows back at the ranch. I don’t like the practice of branding. My father who started the ranch always considered it a cruel practice, and I agree, but if we don’t mark our hucows somehow, then there’s a risk someone might steal them. We have good security at the ranch, but still, I’d rather be safe than sorry. Supposedly this new device doesn’t hurt as badly as the old-fashioned method of branding. Of course, I won’t force any of my hucows to use it if they don’t want to, but I’ll make it available to them.”

Tess understood. One of the reasons the auctioneer had been able to carry her away to Crooked Valley was because her father had never branded her, so there had been no way to prove who owned her.

Shannon stopped walking and gave Tess a serious look.

“Tess, you can still come with us if you want to. You know that, right? You are always welcome at Duffy Ranch. We have milking machines, but you won’t ever be forced to use them if you don’t want to. We would provide you with a comfortable place to sleep and as much food as you want. And you would have lots of friends. We have over a thousand girls in our herd now. We call it Duffy Ranch, but really it’s more like a sanctuary, a place where hucows can be safe and happy.”

Tess liked Shannon Duffy. She wasn’t like most other humans who just viewed hucows as nothing more than livestock.

“Thank you,” Tess said. “But I think I’m going to stay here with the minotaurs.”

“You sure?”