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He stopped and stood quiet for a while, watching the sky’s glory dissolve until the tints were as faint as a watercolor, then he walked on toward the barn, thinking about how much Micah might ask for the roan. The few thousand dollars he’d earned off the paintings he’d sold from prison over the years would be enough, he hoped, to buy the roan and a rig of some kind.
Of course, Micah would pay him something for the job riding the colts.
Blue glanced into the round pen as he passed. The colt was standing near the water bucket, eyes closed in a doze.
“Rest up,” Blue muttered. “I’ll be with you after breakfast.”
He took another long draught of morning air off the mountains. Crisp and fresh enough to crackle in his lungs, it carried the promise of a whole new life.
It gave him a fleeting thought of roaming with the colt through the mountains that were turning to purple crystal in the rising light. Roaming, not running. Wandering with no one on the back trail trying to hunt him down.
But when he stepped into the barn and stood in the midst of its aromas of manure and horse and hay and sweet feed all mixed with the smells of aged wood and oiled leather, he wanted not to run or roam. What he wanted was to have no reason to leave and, instead, every reason to stay in a place that felt this much like a home.
Micah kept his barn clean and neat and the horses in it were all hanging their heads over the stall doors looking at Blue with trusting, gentle eyes. They talked to him.
Where is it? The morning feed? Are you here to feed us and turn us out?
The peace. For a minute, Blue could feel it like a hand on his shoulder. There was nothing better than an old barn and animals depending on him to center a man.
But there was no peace for him. Not yet. Maybe not ever.
If not, so be it. Rose and Dannie never knew peace.
He went to pull a bale of hay down from the stack. There was a lot of satisfaction in feeding hungry animals. He reached for the wire cutters Micah had stuck by the handle into the cross-timber supporting the wall, and snipped the baling wire. While he broke off flakes and carried them to the stalls, he looked over the horses and kept his mind on them. There was a cute sorrel mare with a wide blaze and a tall gray gelding with black points. Last night, Micah said they both belonged to a friend of his.
The stalls across the aisle held a stocky gelding that Micah said had been his best mount for fifteen years and a young filly who’d been easier for him to start than the roan. She bore a vague resemblance to him. Half sister, maybe, since she had some gentle blood from somewhere.
He liked his roan colt better, though.
That thought made him grin but it also bothered him some. He hadn’t even bought him yet, but he must be getting attached to the ornery rascal.
Once they all had fresh hay and water, Blue stopped at the sorrel mare and, murmuring to her, started scratching her nose. Her neighbor, the gray, stuck his head out, too, and reached over to nudge Blue on the shoulder.
“Demanding your share of the attention, hmm, buddy?” Blue said, petting him with his other hand. “I’m thinking Micah’s friend has spoiled you both.”
They made him laugh, both of them, with their signs of pleasure as he pinched along the toplines of their manes and rubbed their polls. The mare had a sweet spot behind one ear that made her moan when Blue caressed it. She curled her top lip and let the bottom one tremble.
Blue petted them for a long time, not letting himself think, only being. Being with friendly horses, exchanging breaths with them, letting the feel of them comfort his hands. The sun poured into the barn and streamed down the aisle to paint all of them warm and yellow-gold.
GETTING UP and getting outside right before dawn, greeting the morning and the mountains and the horses, became a habit with Blue, if four days in a row could be called a habit. Micah usually slept until daylight and had breakfast ready when Blue went back to the house. After they ate, Blue helped clean up the dishes and then they both went on to their hard day’s work—Blue with the roan and the toughest of the twos, and Micah with the ones he’d been able to start on his own. The comfort of the routine was already beginning to ease into Blue’s bones.
This morning, he puttered around the barn as if it belonged to him, rearranging the saddles in the tack room and spreading fresh bedding in the stalls. He had fed Micah’s friend’s horses and they and the roan were about finished with their hay. It was time to get to work.
He knew that but instead of leaving the barn, he fell into a mindless reverie, sweeping out the aisle and feeling the sun on his back through the wide-flung doors. Finally, he roused himself.
“All right,” he said, petting the sorrel and then the gray, “I need to get on that ornery roan and you two need to be outside. Ready?”
He turned to take their halters from the wall.
His gaze swept across the west door of the barn and he froze.
From the corner of his eye, he’d caught a glimpse of movement, he would swear it, at the edge of the opening. But he waited and no one stepped into his line of sight.
The hackles lifted on his neck. He kept watching the doorway.
Micah was still in the house, as far as he knew. If not, he certainly wouldn’t come to the barn and look in without saying something. That old man liked to talk too much for that. Besides, he wouldn’t be sneaking around on his own place.
Maybe it was an animal. Blue crossed the aisle to the opposite side of the door with two silent strides.
He listened. Nothing.
He took a step forward and looked out. No one.
But when he turned to look toward the house out the east end of the barn aisle, he saw him.
Gordon.
Blue knew it the way a horse knew a storm was coming. He knew it, even though all he could see was his back as he strode toward the house.
Walking away, Gordon gave off the feeling that he was advancing instead. He wore ordinary clothes. A battered Resistol, faded jeans, and a plain white shirt made him look like a thousand other men, but every line of his substantial body gave that the lie. Tall, broad-shouldered, with hair as white as his shirt curling at his neck, he walked with a rare authority. The way his feet touched the ground told anybody with eyes to see that these acres belonged to him.
It was an easy arrogance he wore, simple as his clothes, one that never expected to be challenged.
Blue’s gut stretched, then tightened like a guitar string. His hands were trembling. Gordon had looked in on him as he would a horse in a stall, and had walked away without a word.
Which was one step up from the way he’d treated him his whole life.
It wasn’t until Gordon had reached the porch, walked up on it and shouted for Micah that Blue realized how shaken he was and how tangled his thinking. Gordon didn’t know him. Gordon had no clue that his son was there.
Or that now it was Blue watching him.
THE ROAN COLT KICKED the trailer just as they were pulling out of the yard with him. Kicked it so hard it sounded like the metal split in two.
Micah shook his head and flashed a grin at Blue.
“Just like old times,” he said.
Blue moved on over against the door and sat sideways so he could look through the back window at the colt.
“Aw, now, cut us some slack,” he said. “We’ve not had our hauling lesson yet.”
“That’s what you get for babyin’ him along,” Micah said. “Seven or eight days of playin’ games and pettin’ and such carryings on. That’s liable to ruin any horse. Why don’t you just tote him around on a pillow?”
“Yeah,” Blue said. “Reckon I ought to tie his nose to his tail or whatever it was that the Little Creek boys did to him. That’s the way to get control of this outlaw.”
“On second thought, take your time,” Micah said.
Blue chuckled, too, as the old rig straightened out on the gravel road and headed for the asphalt one that ran between the highway and the valley. Then his stomach clutched.
He might see Gordon today. Face to face. The big indoor arena wasn’t very far from the main house. It was Gordon’s arena.
It galled him to use anything of Gordon’s. Yet it had occurred to him that he was entitled, after all—as the son and heir.
Yeah. Right.
“Micah,” he said, “do we pay a fee to use the indoor? You said your operation’s separate from Gordon’s.”
Micah shot him a narrow-eyed glance while he shifted gears.
“It is,” he said. “But I done paid that rent. Years ago. Workin’ for nothin’ but grub and bed them first coupla years and short pay for five or six more.”
“That’s you,” Blue said. “This is my horse.”
Micah shrugged. “Then you can pay the same way,” he said.
“Hell’ll freeze over before I work for Gordon.”
Micah gave him a look. “I meant pay me.”
“With which? Working for only grub and bed? Or short pay?”
The old man grinned and mashed his foot down on the accelerator.
“Ain’t my cookin’ worth every dusty, bone-jarring minute of every ride?”
Blue squinted back at him. “I wouldn’t go so far as to say that.”
Micah raised one scraggly eyebrow. “Think about my biscuits,” he said. “They’re better’n any canned biscuit you ever did eat.”
“Canned biscuits don’t set the bar too high,” Blue said.
“Stubborn man,” Micah muttered to himself. “Hardheaded as a mule.”
He shook his head sorrowfully, then turned and fixed Blue with one of his piercing looks.
“Why’re you in a fret about using that arena?”
“No way will I be beholden to Gordon.”
“How come?”
“I don’t like him.”
“How do you know that? You ain’t even met the man.”
“I despised him the minute I laid eyes on him.”
“You didn’t even know who that was the minute you seen him. Not ’til I told you.”
“I knew him. Who else would step up on your porch and holler for you like you’d damn well better appear right then and be all ears when you got there?”
Micah clicked his teeth and looked out across the valley. “Sounds like prejudging to me. Or jumping to conclusions, I’d say.”
“I knew I didn’t like him the same way you’d know a horse you didn’t like.”
“Lotsa times, a man has to get close to a horse to know that.”
“If there’s gonna be any question at all about me bringing my horse into that arena, I’d rather haul out to the fairgrounds,” Blue said. “I saw we passed them that day on the way in.”
“Look, son,” Micah said. “You can set your mind to rest. Every horse in my barn and in my pastures is my deal. I ain’t started a horse for Gordon for right at ten years and he ain’t got a dime in anything I own.”
He gunned the motor and pushed it up to sixty, but when they got close to turning onto the road that ran out to the highway, he sucked in his breath and started pumping the brakes. “Hey, what the hell?”
Blue turned toward the noise of another vehicle coming. Another pickup, a big white one, was roaring downhill into the valley.
Micah got their rig stopped just before the dually reached the intersection. It swerved to the right as it passed them, as if they were still moving into its path.
Blue caught a glimpse of long blond hair beneath a cowboy hat and a woman’s slender hand on the wheel, then all he could see was the rear end of the truck fishtailing. Ahead of it, he saw why.
A fawn, with the doe too far ahead, flashed across the road in a blur of tan and white and away into the trees in the blink of an eye, the truck missing it by a hair. The woman ran off the asphalt onto the shoulder of the road and corrected too fast back up over the edge of the pavement.
“That’s Andie Lee,” Micah said. “God damn it, that girl’s gonna kill herself to save a fawn and I’ll have to set right here and see it.”
The big pickup spun around in a full circle twice, ran astraddle of the right-hand edge of the pavement for a hundred yards or so and then left the road for good, headed south in its original direction. The woman managed to run it down the ditch awhile, then it took a jump or two and hit a bank of earth, slowed, finally jarred to a stop, lurched, lifted on one side and rocked as it threatened to roll. Finally, it landed and stayed upright on all six tires.
Micah started shifting gears. “Maybe she ain’t hurt, after all,” he said.
He didn’t take his eyes from the white truck as he sawed on the steering wheel, gunned the motor and started toward it.
Blue stared at it, too, hoping that the woman wasn’t hurt—for her own sake but also, selfishly, for his. He didn’t need to get involved in anybody’s upset. He didn’t even want any contact with anybody but the roan and Micah.
They plunged downhill as fast as Micah could push his old rig, but the woman was faster and she opened the driver’s door before they could get there. She half jumped, half fell from the running board down to the ground, a distance of about three feet since the truck was angled high on the left.
She had lost the hat and her golden hair caught the light from the sun. Her legs were long and slender in jeans and boots. Clinging to the door for only a second to get her balance, she looked to see them approaching, pushed her loose hair out of her face, and started climbing up the side of the ditch to meet them on the road.
Micah slowed, Blue opened the door, and she got in before they even came to a stop. Her eyes met his for one direct instant, as if to see who he was. Or whether he could help her.
They were gray, storm-cloud eyes with a sure purpose. That was clear even through the fear and relief.
“Girl, you are mighty lucky,” Micah said. “I thought you was a goner for sure. Scared me half to death.”
“Baby,” she said, gasping for air. “Couldn’t bear to hit it.”
She pointed down the road while she dragged in enough breath to talk more. “Go, Micah,” she said. “Shane’s in trouble again.”
Her voice was a little bit low, with a catch in it.
Micah blurted, “Damn,” and stepped on the gas.
