Heart Butte was south and west of Browning, nestled in the flanks of the mountains, or so Galen said. Their destination was a few miles shy of town. David wasn’t sure why he’d been dragged along, and he didn’t ask. He was pretty much on his own, fighting a battle on enemy turf. Wouldn’t hurt to learn as much as possible about his opponent.
Besides, the scenery was a whole lot better than the inside of his trailer.
The day had turned off gorgeous, the sky an endless stretch of blue, the sun warm enough he could finally shed his jacket. The highway dipped and swerved through miles of spring-fresh range, past rainwater ponds and across a river frothing with snowmelt. A song came to mind that David had heard at a rodeo in Alberta. Something about heaven in the foothills of the Northern Rocky range and it not getting much better for a cow.
No kidding.
“What are we doing out here?” David asked.
“Gotta write brand papers for some bucking horses. They’re takin’ ’em to a rodeo in Choteau this weekend.”
“You’re a brand inspector?”
“Yah.” Galen made a disgusted noise. “Damn poor one, considerin’ I bought a stolen horse. Never could figure out what Muddy’s brand was s’posed to be under that scar.”
“Circle P,” David said, stifling the urge to rub it in. “What does Kylan call him?”
“My wife, Cissy, named him Muttley, like the old cartoon.”
David gave him a blank look.
Galen sighed. “Guess you’re too young to remember. Damn near everybody is these days.”
“It sounds a lot like Muddy.”
“I s’pose that’s why he seemed to take to it.”
They lapsed into a silence more comfortable than it should have been, given the circumstances. Galen turned onto a gravel road that meandered along a rocky creek bed. Quaking aspens crowded the banks, white-barked trunks stunted and twisted by the wind, which had dropped to a stiff breeze that set the leaves quivering. Around one bend, a pair of mule deer peered at them from the tall grass in the ditch, then bounded up and away, disappearing into the brush.
The dirt track ended at a set of pole-fenced corrals filled with high-headed, platter-footed bucking horses. While Galen checked and noted the brands, David made himself comfortable on the flatbed of the pickup and stared up at the mountains, his brain grinding.
He didn’t have a whole lot of options. He’d paid off his debts, but his credit was still in the crapper, and he didn’t own anything he could use for collateral other than his worn-out pickup and trailer. And Muddy.
He could’ve had the money in a single phone call back when the bank in his hometown was locally owned, but it’d been swallowed up by a larger chain. Now they had to follow corporate rules, and a man’s character didn’t count for much compared to the numbers on a computer screen.
The bank president was still there, though, riding out the last few years until retirement. He was a part-time rancher and sometime roper, and he knew what Muddy was worth. If there was any way, he’d approve the loan.
Then David would just have to be damn sure he won enough to make the payments.
Galen finished up, handed over the blue brand-inspection forms, and collected his fee from the owner, who’d given David a lot of curious looks but hadn’t ventured over to chat. Galen climbed in the pickup and pointed it back down the dirt track.
Finally, David couldn’t stand the silence anymore. “I assume you didn’t bring me along just for the company.”
“Nah.” Galen hooked his wrist over the top of the steering wheel, squinting into the distance. “I need to ask a favor.”
David stared at him in disbelief. “I can’t leave Muddy here for another six weeks. Let Mary haul him halfway across the country to Pueblo for nationals. Anything could happen.”
“Ain’t worth takin’ the chance,” Galen agreed. “For you or for her.”
“Then what was all that about this morning?” David jabbed a finger toward town and the lawyer’s office.
Galen contemplated the road ahead for a few beats. Then he sighed. “Don’t get me wrong. I got nothin’ against Yolanda, but soon as you get the lawyers involved, things go to shit. We’d be goin’ about this a whole lot different if I’d stayed in Kalispell until Sunday.”
“Why didn’t you?” David asked.
“Cissy’s aunt fell and broke her hip.” Galen gave an eye roll. “Yeah. No joke. But if we’d been there, Mary wouldn’t have called Yolanda when you showed up. We coulda handled this amongst ourselves, the way it should be.”
David frowned, putting the pieces together. “It wasn’t Mary’s idea to bring Muddy back here?”
“Nah. That was Yolanda. Always figures you gotta have home-field advantage.”
“Mary went along, though.”
“She panicked. Wouldn’t you, something like that happened with your kid?” Galen’s frown dug deep furrows on either side of his mouth. “Mary’s scrambling, buying time, wanting to believe she can salvage something out of this deal for Kylan. And Yolanda…she’s a lawyer. They figure any time somethin’ goes wrong, somebody’s gotta pay. She looks at you, thinks, ‘Hey, big Colorado rancher, rodeo stud, what’s five grand to a guy like him? He can win it back the first time he ropes on Muddy.’”
David did a mental eye roll of his own. If she only knew…
The hell of it was, if all this was happening to someone else, David might think the same. Muddy was worth every cent. Besides, he had put up the reward, and he hadn’t rescinded the offer, so why shouldn’t he have to pay? And, yeah, Galen was right. David’s parents probably would do for him what Mary was trying to do for Kylan. His sister would, for damn sure. She was a hard ass.
“If you don’t agree with what Mary’s doing, why don’t you just say so?” David said. “She seems to listen to you.”
Galen shook his head. “I’m not sure she’s wrong, and it’s not up to me to judge. Either way, it’d be best to give it some time, let everybody calm down.”
“I have to be in Reno by noon on Friday.”
“Then you’ve got a couple of days to spare,” Galen said, and his tone said, And that’s that.
Hot, frustrated words piled up in David’s throat, burned all the way down as he swallowed them. Arguing would be a waste of effort at best and antagonize Galen at worst. If Mary wanted time, Galen would give it to her.
“There’s more going on here than just roping,” Galen said quietly. “Kylan had given up on school, seemed like he was dead set on following in his mother’s footsteps. He isn’t good at basketball or football or anything like that, but with Muddy to even the odds, he can at least play along in the arena. That’s all we want. To keep him interested, give him a reason to keep trying.”
David scowled out the windshield. What was he supposed to do, apologize for ruining everything? “So what do you want from me?”
Galen shifted in his seat, rubbed at his thigh as if it ached. “Cissy and I set some money aside for after Kylan graduates, hoping he’d go on and get some kind of schooling. If we put that with what Mary could afford to borrow from the bank, we’d have at least ten thousand dollars. Fifteen if you pay the reward like they’re asking.”
“You’d spend his college fund on a horse?”
Galen blew out a tired sigh. “Wouldn’t be our first choice, but Kylan… Well, it’s hard to say what he might do if he gives up on roping, and since he turned eighteen, there’s not much we can do to stop him.”
Except bribery in the form of a new horse. Ten or fifteen grand might be enough if they got lucky and found just the right one. Nothing close to Muddy’s caliber, but that wasn’t necessarily all bad. Putting Kylan on Muddy was like handing the kid a grenade launcher when he needed a shotgun. He might be more likely to hit his target, but as often as not the kickback would knock him on his ass.
“You know a lot of people,” Galen said. “And you see a lot of horses. I was hoping you’d help us find one to suit Kylan.”
Using David’s five grand. That rankled, forget all the justifications. But if he could help them, reward or not, he wouldn’t be leaving Kylan on foot, and that might keep the guilt monkey off his back.
“I’ll call Rusty Chapman first,” David said. “He’ll know of anybody around here who’d have something.”
Galen grunted his approval. David thumbed through the other contacts on his phone, considering and discarding names. He wanted somebody trustworthy, who wouldn’t try to take advantage, pawn off a cripple or a head case. “Be nice if you could find a horse in time for nationals, but that would be rushing it pretty hard.”
“Good way to get took,” Galen agreed. “Once is enough.”
Back in Browning, Galen wheeled through the drive-up at the burger joint. “I got this. Least I can do.”
David considered arguing, then decided Galen was right and supersized his fries. He propped his elbow on the window frame, watching the traffic rumble past as they waited for their order. “You know, I could just wait until you show up at nationals and have the cops impound Muddy.”
“Would you do that to a kid?” Galen asked.
David held back the answer for a long moment. Then he sighed. “No.”
Relief flickered in Galen’s eyes, and his voice was gruffer than usual. “Good to know.”
No doubt. David shouldn’t have admitted it, but they would’ve seen through him anyway. Unlike Galen, he had no poker face at all, and that was probably going to cost him.