The North Forty

 

Griff got up early, saddled his favorite quarter horse, Winston, and rode north, followed by Rodya. A severe clear morning, the horizon stretched out to infinity and beyond, and the mixed-breed spirit inherited from his Arapaho mother and cowboy father reverberated from centuries back across the eternal great plains.

Griff smiled at Rodya’s attempts to run down jack rabbits, which zigged and zagged upslope to wear out their larger, heavier predator. The Husky roamed and returned, panting from his hunt, then took off again on the next futile footrace. It gave Griff pause to consider the power of such instinctual urges. Eventually, he led Rodya down a draw to a clump of cottonwood trees by a shallow creek where he and Winston could drink. After, they headed west up a trail that followed rising terrain into the foothills.

Griff did his most productive thinking when he wasn’t trying to think, something early morning rides or flights were best for. He got to a familiar rock outcropping, tied off Winston to a lodgepole pine, and went to sit at the edge with his feet dangling. Ninety-mile visibility allowed him to look far beyond his ranch land below. Clear to the north. Nearly to Nebraska, east—or so it seemed. A brownish smudge of smog to the south along the Colorado front range. Rodya came and sat beside him. He tried to imagine the ground blackened with a great herd of buffalo as it once was.

“Temptations abound, my friend,” Griff said out loud. He scratched the scruff of Rodya’s neck.

After reading Helena’s bio, the urge to make a quick trip to Sun Valley to debrief her ex welled up inside him. A fool’s errand, he decided, but didn’t entirely rule it out…yet. Griff thought a while about Taos and its luring siren’s song preying on his own instinctual urges—not to mention the Ford pony Helena evidently bought special just for the occasion of his visit. He wondered where in the world Helena’s Learjet might have taken her that day. And if Chicago wasn’t so far, he might be tempted to confront Lance face-to-face about what he obviously knew but left out of the wood pulp dump his minions prepared and delivered to his doorstep.

“Hey, Boss,” Ben, the elder ranch hand, called out from behind. “Figured you’d be here.”

Griff turned and looked up at Ben on his horse. Just down the trail, Johnny Eagle and Shep waited, their rides pawing at the ground. “Men…”

“We’re moving some herd over from the BLM,” Ben said. “You want in?”

“Yup. Thanks.”

Griff mounted Winston and followed Ben, Johnny Eagle, and Shep down the trail onto the government’s land.

The men worked the scrub oak in the foothills rounding up cattle without banter or chit-chat, communicating in whistles and shouts directed more at the cows than each other. Though the “Boss,” Griff fell in as part of the crew following Ben’s natural lead just as he had when, as a boy of twelve, his father sent him out with Ben’s father to start learning to be a man, though he let Shep ride drag once they had the small herd gathered and moving.

Back home after a long, hard day of riding and driving cattle, Griff relaxed on his deck with a glass of Helena’s ridiculously expensive but exquisite scotch and realized that sometime during the day, the decision was made unconsciously to start his quest on her behalf in Los Angeles.

So, the next day he flew himself into Van Nuys Airport and picked up a Chrysler 200 rental from Hertz—a distinct let down compared to Helena’s Mustang—then drove to Bel Air.

 

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