THE NEXT MORNING, Dylan dropped Kristy off at the library—she was hell-bent on putting in her shift, reporters or no reporters. Since there were no news-hawks in sight when they arrived, he decided he and Bonnie would go on to the hardware store for new locks. In the bright light of day, he wasn’t sure it was a good idea, he and Bonnie and Sam moving in with Kristy and Winston, instead of vice versa, but Kristy was adamant. So he’d give it a try.
At a dusty little shop on Main Street, where locks and hammers and a variety of other things were sold, Dylan unbuckled Bonnie from her car seat and took her inside with him, leaving Winston and Sam there in the rig, with a window cracked. Choosing tools and supplies and wrestling a rambunctious two-year-old was a challenge, but he managed. Recalling that there were several sets of stairs at Kristy’s, he bought baby gates, too. And a playpen in a time-battered box.
Bonnie would hate being tossed into a portable hoosegow, he knew, but he needed some way to corral the little bugger while he swapped out the locks.
Later on, when Kristy got home from work, he planned to go back to the ranch, disassemble Bonnie’s fancy bed and commandeer Logan into helping him load it for the trip to town. Then the two of them could put the thing together in the small room next to Kristy’s.
Of course, the plan meant revealing to Logan that he was moving in with Kristy, and he was bound to take some ribbing over that. Might as well get in practice—by nightfall, word of the arrangement would be all over Stillwater Springs anyhow, with no help from Logan. Folks would have plenty to say, right to his face and behind his back.
At Kristy’s, Dylan used the key she’d given him at breakfast to get inside. He spent the next several minutes herding Sam over the threshold, along with Bonnie, and letting Winston out of his crate.
Disgruntled, the cat gave a snippy meow and disappeared into some other part of the house, no doubt bound for a private hiding place.
Sam invited himself along, much to Winston’s annoyance.
Setting up the playpen took half an hour—the instructions were in Sanskrit, as near as Dylan could guess, and there must have been a hundred different washers and bolts and screws—and Bonnie raised hell when he put her in the thing, immediately tried to scramble over the side.
He filled her sippy cup from the jug of milk in Kristy’s fridge, and the kid settled down. With luck, she’d go to sleep.
Without luck, she’d scream until his eardrums imploded or the neighbors called the cops.
The latter possibility didn’t bother him; he wouldn’t mind a word with Floyd Book, anyway. To his mind, the old man turning out to be a murderer would be about as likely as lasting peace in the Middle East, but it wouldn’t hurt to get a feel for the guy’s energy. Dylan had long since learned to trust the vibes he picked up from people and situations—he’d ignored them with Sharlene, but he’d come out of the deal with a daughter, too.
By noon, he’d set up all the baby gates and replaced all the locks. Mercifully, Bonnie slept through the whole thing.
He’d left his .45 locked up in the glove compartment of the truck, and he was just fetching it when Kristy showed up, carrying a bag from the Marigold Café.
“Lunch,” she said, smiling.
But her face changed when she saw the gun.
“Do you intend to bring that thing into my house?” she bristled, opening the side gate in her tidy picket fence with a force that made the metal latch clink when it swung shut again behind her.
“In a word,” he said, “yes.”
“Must I remind you that there is a two-year-old living under this roof?”
Dylan grinned. “No,” he said. “I’m up to speed on that one. She yelled like a banshee walking over hot coals for the first hour we were here.” He let his gaze fall to the sack in Kristy’s right hand. “Let’s eat. I’m starved.”
“Dylan, the gun…?”
“Could come in handy,” he finished for her. “You’ve already had one intruder, remember?”
“Yes,” Kristy retorted, “and if that thing had been in the house, I might have shot a woman I’ve known all my life.”
“You’re way too smart to do a dumb thing like that,” Dylan reasoned. Where he went, the .45 went. He’d never had to use it, hoped he never would, but if the need arose, he meant to be ready. “I’d forgotten how you talk in italics so much of the time. It must be practically aerobic, not to mention exhausting.”
Kristy stood at the base of the porch steps, still uncertain, looking downright delicious in her well-fitting black jeans and pink long-sleeved top. Letting his comment pass, she kept her attention on the .45. “Are there bullets in it?”
“No,” Dylan said.
“Would you really shoot a human being?”
“If necessary, yes.” Oh, yes, he’d pull the trigger under the right circumstances, with no compunction whatsoever and in a heartbeat.
For a long moment, he and Kristy just stared at each other.
Then Kristy asked quietly, “Define ‘necessary,’ if you don’t mind.”
“Don’t mind at all. Any threat to you or Bonnie—or my brothers.” He looked down at Sam, panting at his side. “Anybody or anything in need of looking out for.”
A visible shudder went through Kristy’s fine, responsive body. She was almost certainly remembering the night her father had shot that drifter and then hidden the body. “You’ll put it up somewhere?”
“I wasn’t planning to store it in the playpen,” Dylan pointed out, “or on the coffee table.”
Kristy stiffened, bit her lower lip and finally relented. “Okay,” she said. “But I don’t like it.”
“I don’t like it, either,” Dylan agreed moderately, “but the reality is, it’s a mean world out there, and shit happens. I’ll show you how to handle the gun, how to load and unload it, all of that.” At the look of rising resistance on her face, he added, “It wouldn’t be safe otherwise.”
Slowly, Kristy nodded, and they went inside. Dylan put the .45 on the highest shelf in the pantry, with the safety on, then went to wash up while Kristy unpacked the takeout grub she’d picked up on the way home. Bonnie woke up and gave a squall from the playpen in the living room, and Kristy hurried to fetch her. The kid was all smiles when they got back to the kitchen, cheeks flushed and eyes bright. Dylan, who had to hold Bonnie on his lap the whole time they were eating, made a mental note to bring her high chair to town, along with the little bed.
Once lunch was over, Dylan showed Kristy the shining new door handles, with their corresponding dead bolts, and gave her copies of the keys. She seemed pleased, and when she got in the Blazer and went back to the library to finish out her workday, she left a hole in the fabric of the day that Dylan had no idea how to weave back together.
He tried to interest Bonnie in cartoons, having positioned her playpen a safe distance from the TV in Kristy’s study, but she was having none of that. So he loaded her and Sam up, leaving Winston to his own devices, and headed out to the main ranch.
Briana met him and Bonnie at the front door, immediately reaching out for the child, who went to her readily.
“Logan’s out riding the range,” Briana told Dylan with a smile, after planting a resounding kiss on Bonnie’s cheek. “The auction people brought the new cattle this morning. Why don’t you saddle up and find him?”
Dylan looked at his daughter, who was gazing at Briana with the kind of adoration she usually reserved for Kristy. Felt a momentary pang. A child needed a mother, and in the long run, shacking up wouldn’t pack it.
“Bonnie will be fine, here with me,” Briana said.
Dylan pondered, then nodded and grinned. “Thanks,” he told Briana. Then he chucked Bonnie under the chin. “Behave yourself, monkey,” he said.
She barely noticed when he left, half sprinting for the barn.
There, he threw the spare saddle and a bridle on Sundance, who was fussing inside his stall, and mounted up.
Except for making love to Kristy, there was no feeling like being on the back of a horse. Together, Sundance and Dylan made for the bawling and churning dust-cloud indicating the approximate location of the herd.
The gelding was a little skittish, but eager to run, so Dylan let him.
The rush of wind felt as sweet as if somebody had left a window open between earth and heaven. Dylan bent low over the horse’s neck, grinning wide and dust be damned.
The crack of the rifle shot came as a stunning affront, as such things always do. Instantly, the world went into slow-mo—the gelding stumbled and pitched forward, nearly landing on its knees, and Dylan rolled end over end above the animal’s head. It seemed those somersaults went on forever, and when he finally hit the ground, he waited for the horse to land right on top of him, just as those logs had rolled down onto Jake and crushed the life out of his tough lumberjack’s body.
It didn’t happen.
Dylan passed out briefly, woke blinking. Stars sparked and whizzed around his head.
Sundance came slowly into focus, standing next to him, nuzzling the side of his face with a cold, wet nose. Dylan, with the wind knocked clean out of him, couldn’t figure out if he’d actually taken a bullet or not. Nothing ached or burned. On the other hand, he might as well have been a puddle of consciousness, disembodied there on the hard Montana ground, for all the sensation he felt.
At least the horse was probably all right, he thought, still dazed, though the stars receded. Sundance wouldn’t be on his feet if he’d been shot, or fallen hard enough to get hurt.
Dylan gulped in a breath, tried to make contact with his physical self, but it seemed as if all lines of communication had been cut. Nothing to do but wait, and hope to God the feeling came back to his arms and legs, though he’d hurt like hell when it did.
Logan rode up, seemed to slide to Dylan’s side on his knees, like a baseball player trying to steal home plate without messing up the front of his shirt.
“Are you hit?” he gasped.
“I—don’t know—” Dylan managed.
Logan looked him over hastily, shook his head. “You’re not bleeding. Can you move?”
Dylan tried again, felt tentative messages beginning to pass between his brain and his body. He was relieved, but he braced himself for the inevitable pain, too. He knew from experience that a spill like that one, even if he hadn’t broken or ruptured anything, would call for a lot of aspirin. “Somebody—There was a shot—”
“I know,” Logan said. “I heard it.”
“Sundance—?”
“He’s okay.” Saying this, Logan looked around, scanning, no doubt, for the shooter, who might try again, seeing as he—or she—had missed the first time.
“Who the hell would want to shoot me?” Dylan asked. Actually, there was a long list, but most of those guys were far away and probably wouldn’t carry a grudge this far anyhow. By now, they’d have gotten themselves new girlfriends.
“I don’t know,” Logan replied. “Tyler?”
“He’s pissed off,” Dylan said, mildly disgusted, as Logan helped him sit up. “But trying to kill me? I think that’s a little over-the-top, don’t you?”
Logan’s jaw tightened. “The shot must have come from the orchard,” he said, after a few moments spent grinding away his back molars. Dylan knew his brother wanted more than anything to go racing off into those gnarled old apple trees, looking for the assailant—so did he.
And it would be a damn good way to get themselves shot for real.
Dylan assessed his arms and legs and back. Nothing was broken, but the all-over ache, so familiar from his rodeo days, was settling in for sure. Forget aspirin; he’d need to fill a horse trough with liniment and submerge himself to the eyeballs.
“Let’s get you back to the house,” Logan said. “Can you ride?”
“Hell, yes, I can ride,” Dylan snapped, his pride stung.
Gaining his feet, with more help than he liked taking from Logan, he limped over to Sundance, soothed the horse and hauled himself back up into the saddle. For the first second or two, his head swam, and he half expected that second bullet.
Back at the main house, a panicked Briana wanted to call an ambulance—after the sheriff.
Logan silenced her with a look.
Alec, Briana’s youngest, stood beside the chair Dylan sank into in the living room.
“Did you get thrown off a horse?” the boy asked, wide-eyed.
Dylan bit back a testy Hell, no, I didn’t get thrown. Alec was a kid, after all, and the question was an innocent one. No call to take his head off. “Not exactly,” he said, measuring out the words.
Logan was already on the line to Sheriff Book.
“I’m going out there,” he said, as soon as he’d snapped his cell phone shut.
“No, you’re not!” Briana and Dylan chorused.
Bonnie, eyes wide with worry, clambered up onto Dylan’s lap.
He mussed her hair, gave her a squeeze. It made his ribs hurt.
Some of them were probably cracked.
“Let Floyd handle this,” Briana argued, frowning at her husband. “You need to take your stubborn brother to the emergency room.”
“I’m not leaving you and the kids here alone,” Logan said, but he was wavering. Dylan saw worry in his brother’s dark eyes when he turned them on him. “There’s some nut out there with a gun.”
“Wow,” Josh said, impressed. Briana’s firstborn, he’d been at the computer when Logan and Dylan came in, and he still hadn’t moved.
Dylan flashed briefly, in his distraction, on the IM from Gravesitter that had unnerved Kristy so much. Of course the boy hadn’t sent it, but he might know how to find out who had.
In the next instant, the thought spun off his mind.
“Let me look into your eyes,” Briana demanded, stepping up to him, cupping her hands around his face and cranking upward. “Just as I thought—” She turned back to her husband. “Logan, there’s a good chance your brother has a concussion.”
Dylan set his jaw. “I’m all right,” he insisted.
“I’m calling Kristy,” Briana decided. “And what’s taking Sheriff Book so long?”
“Don’t call Kristy,” Dylan said.
“It hasn’t been five minutes since I called Floyd,” Logan added.
“Maybe you’ll have to have a cast, like I did,” young Alec put in solemnly. “My stepmother hit me with a car.”
“It was a van,” Josh corrected.
“Enough, both of you,” Briana interjected. Her gaze shifted from Logan to Dylan and back again. Then she sighed and hoisted Bonnie off Dylan’s lap.
Bonnie’s lower lip wobbled, then she jammed in the thumb.
“Kristy will be furious if I don’t call her,” Briana said. Then, with Bonnie riding on her hip, she disappeared into the kitchen.
“Do something,” Dylan said to Logan. “About your wife.”
Logan spread his hands. “Like what?”
If every bone and muscle in his body hadn’t been throbbing, Dylan would have laughed at the bewildered look on his brother’s face.
“Talk Briana out of calling Kristy,” he replied, practically through his teeth. “This is going to freak her out.”
“Yeah,” Logan agreed. “But not like it will if she hears it through the grapevine.”
Dylan sighed. Briana came out of the kitchen again, holding out a cordless phone and looking intractable.
“What happened?” Kristy demanded, before he got all the way through “hello.”
He explained, though not in any great detail. First of all, he wasn’t that much of a talker any time, let alone when his head was pounding, and second, he didn’t remember much beyond hearing the shot and tumbling above Sundance’s head like a lone shirt in a clothes dryer.
“And you think you’re not going to the emergency room?” Kristy challenged tersely, when he’d finished. “Think again, buckaroo. I’ll be on my way as soon as I make sure Susan or Peggy can stay until closing time—”
Dylan thought of the shooter, possibly still out there in the orchard or the cemetery or someplace even closer, with a bad attitude and plenty of ammunition. Or careening along the country roads, primed to open fire on the first car he met.
“Stay put, Kristy,” he said, closing his eyes. “Sheriff Book is on his way out here right now. As soon as we know for sure what the situation is—”
She hung up on him.
He held the receiver out a little way and stared at it, confounded.
Kristy arrived at the ranch house at the same time Sheriff Book did, pale as milk and stiff-jawed.
Floyd took charge right away. Asked a lot of questions. Called in the state police for backup, since neither of his two deputies was available.
Once they arrived, bent on swarming over the whole ranch looking for either the shooter or some evidence of his identity, Kristy insisted on driving Dylan to the clinic in town. Bonnie stayed with Briana and Logan and the boys.
He didn’t have a concussion, as it turned out; just a few sprains. The doctor gave him a prescription for pain pills, which he crumpled up and tossed into the waste can outside the clinic’s front door.
Kristy was still so pale that Dylan thought she should have been the one to see a medic. “Who would do a thing like this?” she fretted, steering Dylan toward the front passenger door of her Blazer and all but wrestling him inside.
He tolerated the fussing. In fact, he kind of liked it.
“Damned if I know,” he answered, when Kristy had rounded the rig and climbed behind the wheel. She stabbed at the ignition three times before she got the key in. “Gunnar Wilkenson probably wouldn’t mind taking a potshot at me, but he isn’t agile enough to come all the way down from that shack of his and hide out in the trees. Anyway, all he’s got for firepower, as far as I know, is that old shotgun of his. It wouldn’t have the range a rifle does.”
“As far as you know,” Kristy pointed out. “How about Zachary’s son? What’s his name—Caleb? You had a run-in with him over Sundance, didn’t you?”
“He was pissed off for sure,” Dylan admitted. “But trying to shoot me out of the saddle seems a little drastic.”
“Isn’t shooting at someone always drastic?” Having said that, Kristy began to tremble. Then tears swelled in her eyes.
Since they were still sitting in the clinic parking lot, Dylan leaned across the console and pulled her into his arms.
“Hey,” he murmured. “You heard the doctor. I’m all right.”
She gave a great, snuffling sob, and he felt her tears soaking through his shirt.
He held her for a long time, his chin resting on top of her head, then said, “Swap seats with me, babe. You are in no condition to drive.”
She drew back, looked up into his face, her eyes still swimming. “Neither are you.”
Dylan chuckled. “We can spend all day going back and forth about this, or we can trade places, go back out to the ranch to get Bonnie and find out if Floyd and the staters found anything.”
She sighed heavily. Opened her door, got out and came to his side of the Blazer, resigned.
Dylan kissed her lightly on the mouth and a minute or so later, they were cruising past the city limits.
There were Smokies all over the place when they arrived at the ranch, radios crackling, the transmissions being picked up on every scanner in the county, most likely. And there were a lot of scanners—the locals loved them, listened to police and fire and ambulance calls like it was their civic duty.
What was keeping that pack of reporters that had been bothering Kristy since the bodies were found?
Logan was pacing the front porch, restless as a tiger just snatched from the jungle and tossed into a cage. Clearly, he’d have preferred to be on the scene, with Floyd and the investigators he’d called in, but he had a family now. A wife, a couple of stepsons—loved ones to protect.
It made Dylan smile as he strolled up the walk, Kristy double-stepping alongside him, like she thought he might topple over any minute now.
“Any news?” Dylan asked his brother.
Logan folded his arms, leaned one shoulder against one of the posts supporting the porch roof. The pose was probably meant to look casual, but instead, Logan came off as what he was—frustrated and annoyed.
“They found a shell casing and some footprints,” Logan said, sparing a reassuring grin for Kristy. “Whoever did the deed is long gone.”
“Good,” Kristy said, passing Dylan to mount the steps and pass Logan, too. “I need to see Bonnie.”
With that, she was inside the house, the screen door banging shut behind her.
“I take it you’re going to live,” Logan said calmly, watching Dylan.
Dylan nodded, not bothering to climb the porch steps. “Let’s go out there and see what’s going on,” he murmured. “With all these cops around, the women and kids aren’t in any danger.”
Logan grinned. “We’d better be quick,” he said, with a glance over one shoulder. “If Briana spots us, we’re busted.”
That made Dylan laugh, despite the aches and pains, which were bound to get worse before they got better. He tossed Kristy’s Blazer keys into the air, caught them again. They both headed for the rig, Dylan hobbling a little, Logan at a sprint.
It wasn’t hard to find Floyd and the scene-investigation crew from Missoula; there were half a dozen cars and official vans nosed up to the edge of the orchard. The police seemed oblivious to the seventy head of cattle milling around, bawling and flinging up dust.
By Dylan’s reckoning, it was a miracle old Cimarron, the white bull, hadn’t moseyed over to conduct an investigation of his own. He scanned the field with a sudden turn of his head—one he immediately regretted—and sure enough, there was his rodeo nemesis, looking on from within charging distance, one forefoot pawing at the ground.
“Uh-oh,” Dylan said.
The bull lowered his massive head.
“Should somebody yell ‘olé’?” Logan quipped. He’d always been a bold bastard, even in his prerodeo days. Now, the damn fool seemed to like the idea of being skull-butted over the top of the tallest tree in the orchard.
“Somebody,” Dylan answered evenly, “should yell ‘look out.’” He squared his shoulders, took a slow step in Cimarron’s direction. “It’s me he’s after,” he added, shaking off his brother’s hand when he reached out to grab his arm. “Tell Floyd and the boys to get into their cars. Now.”
He took another step.
Cimarron pondered his options, tossed his head.
“Damn it, Dylan—” Logan protested.
“It’s all right,” Dylan said, without stopping or turning around. He made himself bigger in his mind, a trick a veteran rodeo clown had taught him, and took care not to look the bull directly in the eye. “This has been coming on for a while, hasn’t it, old buddy?” he said to Cimarron, though afterward he couldn’t recall whether he just thought the words, or spoke them out loud. “I was the last man to lower himself onto your back in a chute. You threw me. I reckon now you’re curious to know why I left you here on this ranch all this time.”
Behind him, Dylan heard a few raspy curses and the slamming of car doors. He didn’t look back.
Maybe it was shock from the sniper incident earlier in the day, but he’d have sworn he and that animal were communicating with each other, on some intangible level. He knew what the bull was thinking and, furthermore, he was convinced the reverse was true, as well.
Had he hit his head on a rock when Sundance sent him flying?
Another sound stopped him, made him look back. The lever on a rifle.
Dylan whirled, saw Sheriff Book standing about ten feet behind him, aiming a high-powered Winchester.
A little thrill went through Dylan, an adrenaline rush, in the split second he spent analyzing the situation. Kristy’s suspicions about Floyd did a kaleidoscope turn in his brain; he even wondered if the sheriff had been the one to fire that shot a few hours before.
He discarded the possibility almost as soon as it came to him—if Floyd Book had taken aim at him, even on a running horse, he, Dylan, would be cooling on a slab at the county morgue by now. Despite his age, the man was a marksman.
“Don’t shoot him, Floyd,” he said quietly. “He’s got legitimate business with me.”
“He charges,” Floyd argued flatly, and it was only then that Dylan realized Logan was standing right beside the sheriff, “I shoot.”
Dylan silenced his older brother with a shake of his head, turned back to face Cimarron. In some ways, he was facing a lot of other things, too—his own past, mostly. His dad’s life—and death. His mother’s accident, and Tyler’s mom’s unconditional surrender, alone in a tacky motel room. Losing Kristy that last time. And all the time he’d missed with Bonnie.
This wasn’t high noon with a retired rodeo bull.
It was a showdown with himself.
Stand, or run.
He’d done enough running, and that left just one choice: claim his patch of ground and hold it.
“Dylan, you damn fool!” Floyd shouted. “What the hell are you trying to do? Prove to everybody that Jake Creed wasn’t the only one in this family without the God-given good sense to be scared?”
It was a mouthful, Dylan reflected, with a slight smile, more a crook at the corner of his mouth than anything. Most likely, Floyd would have had to lower the rifle to say all that.
“You shoot this animal,” Dylan replied cordially, without turning away from Cimarron, “and I’ll have your badge.”
“You want my f-ing badge,” Floyd retorted furiously—he was old-school and didn’t use the f-word lightly—“you can have the gawdamn thing!”
“You’re scaring the sheriff,” Dylan told Cimarron calmly.
Cimarron, for his part, snorted a couple of times and flung up some more dust with that right front hoof. His long tail switched at the flies trying to come in for a landing on his haunches. He seemed to be pondering everything Dylan thought or said, deciding whether to send him flying skyward or hear him out.
“I’m gonna stay right here on this ranch,” Dylan went on, keeping his voice down low, so Logan and Floyd and the others wouldn’t hear. “Keep you in hay and heifers for the rest of your days. You and me, we’ve got a bond. Because you know, don’t you, that you didn’t throw me that night at the National Finals. I could have made the eight seconds, but you’d never been ridden, and when it came right down to it, I didn’t have the heart to spoil your record.”
Cimarron cocked his head to the left, then the right. Snorted again.
“It’s our secret,” Dylan finished. “I’ll never tell anybody that I jumped off you and made it look like a spill.”
With that, he folded his arms and waited.
Maybe Floyd was right, and he was crazier than Jake had ever been.
Cimarron huffed and tossed his head and raised up some more dust.
Then, as if the two of them had come to an agreement, the bull turned and ambled off toward the other side of the field, most of the heifers following.
Dylan was still standing in the same place when the dust settled and Logan turned up at his elbow.
“What the hell was that all about?” Logan asked, his voice gruff with irritation and, if Dylan’s guess was right, a certain wonder over the ways of proud bulls and former rodeo cowboys.
“I promised I wouldn’t say,” Dylan answered, after a long time, turning a grin on Logan.
“Floyd’s right,” Logan muttered. “You’re certifiable.”
But when they started back toward Floyd and the cluster of cops, Logan slapped Dylan’s back, and Dylan managed not to wince.
He looked at the shell casing the state police had found, and at the tracks in the soft floor of the orchard. Not much to go on, for all the public money they were burning through, poking around taking pictures and samples of tree bark and even making plaster casts.
It was Law & Order gone country.
And whatever the hell was going on, Dylan knew, it was a long way from over.
“They think it was just some kid playing with a rifle,” Logan said, as the two of them stood watching the crew pack up to leave.
“They always think it’s just some kid,” Dylan agreed. He hurt everywhere; almost wished he hadn’t pitched that prescription into the trash, back at the clinic.
“You got any ideas?” Logan asked, as they started toward the Blazer.
She’d be spitting nails when they got back to the ranch house, Kristy would. There’d be a backlash that would bend the trees parallel with the ground and strip off every leaf.
Dylan smiled at the prospect as he eased himself behind the wheel, while Logan took the shotgun side.
“Yeah,” Dylan said, at his leisure. “I’ve got some ideas—about a shot or two of whiskey, a hot bath and a certain woman anxious to soothe my troubled brow.”
Logan laughed. “That isn’t what I meant and you know it,” he replied. “I don’t know about the whiskey, but the hot bath and a sympathetic woman sound real good. If I limp when we get back to the house, will you tell Briana I got trampled by that old bull of yours?”