NOT COMPLAINING—no matter what—was one of Blue’s points of honor with himself. He didn’t whine, not ever, not even silently in his own head. Fix it, ignore it, walk away from it—do something, even if it was wrong—but shut up about it. And don’t be having regrets. Thinking back and being sorry about something was just another way of crying.
He followed that credo religiously. For ten years in the pen, that careful practice had given him a portion of peace. It had let him see beauty in his mind and paint it on canvas instead of thinking about being trapped where he was. It had kept him from going crazy.
Now a loser kid and a gabby old man were causing him to break his own code.
Lying there along the edge of Micah’s porch with one boot crossed over the other knee and his hat down over his face, trying to get his twenty-minute after-lunch siesta, his gut was in a knot and his brain was sounding a steady drumbeat of bitching. How had he ever gotten himself into this? Why had he let himself be roped into this deal with Shane? He’d been doing all right with just the old man around and now he’d gone and given in to Micah’s ideas about how to help this obnoxious kid.
He’d been an idiot to run Andie Lee off like he did. He should’ve let her stay here for the day and ruin her own plans. One day of the humiliation of his mother hanging around telling him what to do and Shane would’ve refused ever to leave the Center again.
She was expecting Blue to take Shane to raise, even though she said she wasn’t and he said he wouldn’t, and he should’ve backed out of the agreement the instant he knew that. He had to find a way out of this.
“My tomatoes will outdo any medicine when it comes to healin’ a body,” Micah said. “You better be eatin’ that sandwich and don’t you peel them offa there, neither. Put ’em back on. And that leaf of lettuce, too.”
“What’ll it do? Give me the power to fly?”
“Don’t use that sneer with me,” Micah snapped. “If one mornin’s work wore you out so bad you can’t eat then you’ll starve slap to death, ’cause come suppertime, you’ll be too weak to lift a fork. You’re actin’ like a foolish young’ un, Shane.”
Silence.
Good. Maybe they’d be quiet for five minutes.
“Git up,” Micah said. “If you won’t eat, then you ain’t settin’ around like a prince on my porch. Git out there and pick the rest of that manure outta them stalls like I told you the first time. You ain’t half did your job and your mama ain’t raisin’ no slacker. Now hit it.”
“Andie Lee…” Shane began.
“I won’t hear it,” Micah said.
“What I’m trying to tell you is that my mama ain’t raisin’ no slacker at riding. She wants me to ride, not shovel manure. She asked Lawrence to let me come up here so I can ride. She wants me to learn to ride, Micah, and roughstock, too, so I can go live with my dad and get out of her hair.”
“You heard Blue this mornin’. Next week you can ride. If you’re clean and sober.”
“I’m sober now.”
“Mebbe so, but from time to time you’re shakin’ like you got the palsy.”
“What’s the palsy?”
“A shakin’ disease. Now get the hell to the barn.”
Blue listened to the squeak of the woven leather chair and boot heels on the floor and then the steps. Shane got up. He went.
“Reckon he’s got a stash on him?” Micah said in a low tone. “If he was to light a match in my barn, Blue, I’d have to kill him and tell Andie Lee he died.”
Blue swung his legs off the edge of the porch and sat up. He ran his hand through his hair and settled his hat.
Damn. No sleep was what he got for getting mixed up with everybody he met.
“I’d say not, or he’d already have used it,” he said. “He’s been in the barn by himself enough times this morning.”
“You’re right,” Micah said, watching Shane from beneath his hat brim. “He surely would be in a more mellow frame of mind if’n he’d had some dope.”
Blue watched the boy, too. Shane walked into the barn with a weak, but insolent, swagger and disappeared down the aisle.
It’d take a lot to influence that little idiot for the good. Something along the lines of a miracle.
And he was not the man who could perform one. Andie Lee was a foolish woman for even thinking he could help save her son. Right now Shane hated his own guts and considered himself to be a worthless piece of flesh and blood. She had no clue what it would take to overcome that, and Blue didn’t, either.
“Well,” he said, “I’ve got six more colts to work. You coming out to supervise your barn boy?”
“In a while,” Micah said. “I gotta clean up this mess and give it to the dogs. They like my tomatoes jist fine.”
Blue turned and looked at him.
“They eat three-day-dead guineas, too, Micah.”
Micah tried to look offended, but he grinned. “You had no call to point that out,” he said.
He gathered up Shane’s scattered remains of a sandwich.
“Dang it,” he said. “I shoulda made him clean this up before I sent him to the barn. I’m gonna take some tomatoes down to the big house and when I come back, I’ll work his little tail off. I aim for him to learn to pick a stall today if has to stay at it ’til midnight.”
He went into the house, letting the screen door slam closed behind him.
Blue stood up and stretched. He would quit wasting time even thinking about Shane. He didn’t owe the kid any more than a few minutes here and there. Micah was the one who’d had the idea to bring him up here, so Micah could take care of him.
Deliberately, he moved his thoughts to the roan colt. And to Gordon. He had to have a plan put together for Gordon by the time the colt was solid and dependable.
Too bad he and the roan couldn’t be together for a long lifetime. Of course they might, if everything went the way he planned it and he planned well. He’d been caught before because he’d been in a blood heat.
That, and the fact that he couldn’t leave Dannie’s body to run.
But surely he could make a plan that would let him stay free. Andie Lee could tell him lots about Gordon and his habits, since she was staying down at the big house and since she’d known the big SOB for so long.
If Andie Lee would ever speak to him again.
All generative power resides in thought. That was an old Cherokee truth, but right now he had to quit thinking. Time to get something done.
He walked through the barn on the way to the small catch-pen out back where he’d been putting the twos for the last day or so. He still brought them all into the round pen for a couple of hours so they could get used to being worked with other horses in there, and at night he still turned them out into the pretty pasture with the trees, but today he was holding them in the pen just for something different. Variety was good. He ought to know.
Shane wasn’t in the barn. Blue glanced into the stalls and the tack room but he wasn’t there.
Micah didn’t put his two using horses in for the night except in the very coldest weeks of winter, so Andie Lee’s two head were the only ones who’d messed up any stalls. The bedding in both appeared to have been stirred a little, but there were still piles of manure scattered on top of it and wet spots, too.
Lousy job. Shane’d probably never done a day’s work in his life. Evidently he didn’t have the will to do it, either. He was probably lazy. Years of doping sure went hand in hand with laziness.
Dannie had had lots of energy as a young girl, but as soon as she got on the stuff every scrap of ambition had left her. Permanently. Even in the few short weeks that she had lived sober in the year before she died.
Andie Lee ought to know that this whole effort with Shane had less than a snowball’s chance in hell.
When he reached the west end of the barn, Blue looked out and saw the boy.
With the roan.
Instinct sent his adrenaline surging. Worry that Shane could get hurt. Anger at the blatant disobedience. He’d told him to stay away from that colt, damn it.
He started toward them, moving slowly so as not to startle them. The colt was still more than skittish—downright nervous and mean—with everybody but Blue.
Which was why he couldn’t believe what he was seeing.
Shane was at the fence, standing very still…with his head leaning against Roanie’s neck. Unbelievable. The horse wouldn’t let anyone get near him but Blue.
He stared, closed his eyes and looked again—at a loose-limbed scarecrow made of sticks propped up against a statue of a horse. He couldn’t even see them breathe.
Boy and horse stood full in the sunlight, soaking it up through their skins. That was the only thing that made them real. Watching them made Blue feel it, too, even though he was in the shade.
It brought back the memory of the day he stepped out into the sunlight, free. This was a side of Roanie he would never have predicted.
A horse could tell the difference between an adult and a vulnerable young one—of any species. But the roan colt was very young, himself, to be trying to act on that recognition to offer support.
Especially since he’d had such a rough history with people. Shane wasn’t all bad or all crazy, if any animal, especially this one, accepted him to such an extent.
It’d be an irony for sure if Roanie eventually developed into the rare babysitter kind of horse. Anything could happen. Horses were full of contradictions just like people.
But probably this was a fleeting moment, the first sign of the slightest trust between the colt and any other person. It probably happened because Shane was weak and wandering.
Remember this lesson, Bowman. You can’t know all there is to know about a horse any more than you can about another person.
Shane stepped back. He backed up another step, bent double, and began to vomit into the grass. Roanie backed up, too, watched Shane for a minute, then dropped his head and began to graze along the fence.
Blue pulled the handkerchief from his hip pocket.
You can’t know all there is to know about yourself, either. Who’d ever have thought you’d be out here on Gordon’s ranch playing nursemaid to a junkie?
Shane had his hands braced on his trembling thighs.
He straightened up and wiped his mouth on the sleeve of his shirt. Blue dipped the cloth into the watering trough as he passed and wrung it out as he approached the boy. He held it out to Shane, who waited a while and then took it.
This is a deal-breaker. If you can’t depend on him to follow orders you can’t have him around horses. Send him packing, right now. He can ride down the hill with Micah when he goes to headquarters.
“I told you to stay away from this horse,” Blue said. “He could’ve killed you.”
“I know.” Shane wiped his mouth again. “I was hoping he would.”
He meant it. The low, flat tone of his voice rang true to despair.
“I’m such a fuck-up,” Shane said.
Blue’s anger flared.
“That’s your choice. Don’t be.”
Shane raised his eyes to meet Blue’s.
“My dad thinks so, too,” he said. “I’ve not heard from him in a real long time.”
His face flushing pink with embarrassment, Shane turned away. He stuffed the wet handkerchief into his own back pocket and tried to regain his swagger as he walked as fast as he could toward the barn.
Blue knew it well: Shane’s blood was racing through his veins in a prickling flood of hopeless, helpless desire. Blue could feel it, too, fast and fresh and bitter as if he were still fifteen and wanting a father.
Micah’s truck started up with a roar and drove, rattling, out onto the road in a cloud of dust.
ANDIE LEE ARRIVED before the middle of the afternoon. When Blue opened the gate of the round pen, leading the palomino filly out, Andie Lee was standing right there in his way.
“Blue,” she said. “I need to talk to you.”
Here she was again. How could such a beautiful woman be so stupid?
“The deal’s off,” he said.
She froze in place so he couldn’t get past her.
“No! Why? That’s what I came to see you about. Micah said you’re riding and Shane’s picking stalls. All day. I thought it’d be just for a little while and then he’d ride.”
Blue’s anger flared.
“You think Micah was lying?”
“No! Of course not. But you said you’d ride with Shane. You’re not doing it.”
She stepped up closer and he caught the smell of her flowery hair, even with the dust and horse and scent of pines from the mountains.
It still shocked him deep inside to realize he was looking at a real woman. Standing this close to one. She was breathing so hard, her breasts rose and fell under her shirt. He wanted to touch her, with a fierce desire that was an entirely separate thing from anything she was saying or doing. Her just being within his reach caused it.
Years. It had been years since he’d been with a woman.
Her eyes were full of worry.
He shouldn’t be mad at her. He should be thanking her instead. She was giving him an excuse not to have to go through this torture again.
“You said you’d stay away. You’ve been here twice on Shane’s first day.”
“I know, but—”
He interrupted. He wanted to get past her.
“You don’t trust me. I can’t do you any good.”
He took a step forward but she didn’t back up.
“I do trust you or I never would’ve asked you to help me with Shane.”
“I’m done.”
“No! You can’t be.”
They were standing way too close now. The shape of her face was all strong lines that called to his hands—determined chin and high cheekbones and delicate jaw. Her skin looked soft as a foal’s muzzle.
“Get out of here, Andie Lee. Take your boy back to the Center. Now step aside, please, and let me get by.”
“Not yet. You have to give me a real reason for going back on your word.”
Anger flashed through him like heat lightning.
“Neither you nor your son can take direction,” he said. “You’re proving that again standing here in my way.”
She fell back.
He walked out, and Andie Lee fell into step beside him before the filly even cleared the gate.
“Please,” she said. “Think about it some more before you send Shane away. He’s already failed so many times. You’re the one who said he’s interested in the horses.”
“As a way to try and get attention from his dad,” Blue said. “That’s all.”
Andie Lee was silent. Evidently, she was thinking about that. They walked around the barn to the west end. He stopped and began to unsaddle the filly. Absently, Andie Lee picked up a comb and started working on the mane.
“Blue,” she said quietly, “Shane’s dad is hardly more than a dream anymore. He hasn’t been to see us in a long time because he’s so absorbed in his own goals. You’re the only real man in Shane’s life that he shows any respect.”
“And that’s not enough to obey me,” he said, as he lifted the saddle off and dropped it onto the rack standing outside the door of the barn.
He took off the blanket and threw it wet-side up over the saddle. Then he began to scrape the sweat from the horse’s back.
“I’m sorry I keep coming up here when I promised not to,” she said thoughtfully. “This morning I had such a feeling that Shane’s hit bottom now and is going to go only upward from here. I guess I’m just trying to watch him do it. Trying to hurry it along, so I’ll be free of all the burden and sorrow.”
He didn’t answer.
“Give him two days,” she said. “Please. Today and tomorrow.”
He looked up at her. She was watching him with those big gray-sky eyes, her bright hair shining in the sun. Her lips were slightly parted, waiting for his answer.
Her face was beautiful, yes. But her mouth went even beyond that word and he wanted to do things with it that he couldn’t even put words to.
Many more talks with her and she, too, would be making him break his code. It wouldn’t be the part about whining, though. In her case, it would be the part about blowing himself all to hell over a woman.
He would be playing this sight and the sound of her husky voice over and over in his mind and it wouldn’t be long until he was crazy for more. For a guy in his position, there was no way he could take that.
No. No. I won’t have any more to do with Shane or with you. There is no hope for your son.
She didn’t push him. She waited for him to speak, working the tangles out with her long slender fingers before she pulled the comb through the blond hair of the horse that just matched her own. Finally, she shook hers back and turned to look at him.
The look in her eyes must be the same one that desperate mothers everywhere took on when their children started to go down. Tanasi Rose had looked at him just that way.
And he had failed her. That right there was the real reason he had to say no. He, too, had failed at a lot of things. Big things. The real reason he was sending Shane away was that he couldn’t save him, so he didn’t have the heart to try.
Besides, it’d do more harm than not if he could get a handle on Shane. Blue would disappear from here for good someday. Then Shane would see that as another desertion.
Anyhow, he was a killer. That was nobody for a kid to admire.
“No,” he said, his frustration and his own despair starting to rise. “If you and Micah want Shane to ride your horses, that’s your business, but I’m having nothing to do with it.”
He would not let himself look away from her like a coward. He was relieved to see no change in the expression in her eyes. Desperation was desperation. Maybe, once there, it couldn’t deepen any more.
BLUE RODE every one of the twos longer than usual, making himself be patient, making himself concentrate, making himself focus on the individual facts about that particular horse. And making himself take each horse one more step forward in its training before he let it go and got on the next one.
He had so much going on in his mind and his heart that it was all he could do to ride intelligently, but if he hadn’t made himself do it, he would’ve punched a hole in the barn wall. Andie Lee had been gone when he came out of the round pen after his next ride and Micah had pretty much stayed on top of Shane, so he didn’t know if they’d talked or not.
He was fighting an onslaught of memories, and a whole new wave of rage against Gordon. If he hadn’t talked to Shane like he did, Blue would never have gotten into this in the first place.
Now he felt like a quitter and he hated that. But better now than later, after going through a whole lot more frustration from Shane and putting time and thought into him that needed to go into the plan for Gordon.
Except that he’d cut himself off from any information about Gordon that Andie Lee could’ve given him.
“Blue!”
He turned to see Micah at the round-pen gate and rode over to him.
“I’m gonna run down to the machine shop fer twenty minutes, no more,” the old man said. “Gotta pick up my tiller. Shane’s straightenin’ up the tack room.”
“I’m not watching over him, Micah.”
“I know. Andie Lee told me.” He kept his face neutral but his voice had a trace of an aggrieved tone in it.
“I caught him with the roan colt after I told him to stay away from him.”
“I know. I seen it all from the back porch,” Micah said. “I can’t fault you for a minute, Blue. He could get hisself killed and there ain’t no call for you to have that on yore conscience.”
As if Micah knew anything about his conscience.
Micah meant it, but he was disappointed, too. Well, so was Blue. He should’ve known before he ever said yes the first time that Shane was too far gone in rebelling. He and Micah both should have known.
Blue felt his gut crank one notch tighter. Damn. That was no good because the little paint horse he was on had already sensed it and was refusing to listen to him.
And it was no good because he was breaking his code again.
Micah’s truck roared to life and he left and Blue opened the gate to ride outside. A change of place and a look at the mountains. That’d help him and the colt both settle down.
He rode out along the edge of the yard, following the road until he came to the thick trees, then swung the paint to the left to go up the hill a little and around behind Micah’s house. By the time they almost got around it, the colt was settling down nicely.
“You’re gonna be all right,” he told the horse. “Everything’s gonna be all right.”
And then he rode out to where he could see the barn and the pens again. Everything wasn’t all right. Shane was horseback, riding on the patch of soft dirt between the round pen and the road.
Blue smooched to the paint and got a faster trot. At first he thought the horse was one of Micah’s older ones, but it wasn’t. It was one of Blue’s twos, the big bay colt.
Shane hadn’t quite had the nerve to pick the roan. Or maybe Roanie hadn’t let him catch him.
This open defiance proved he was right to wash his hands of the boy.
However, it hadn’t done him much good because now he was the only adult on the place and it was up to him to stop Shane before he got hurt. He did have the horse saddled. Blue could only hope he had it cinched down tight.
Blue couldn’t see Shane while he rode along the side of Micah’s house and around the end of the barn. When he came out where he could see him again, the bay was bucking. Not too hard, but he was getting wound up.
“Over-and-under him! Give him some encouragement if you’ve got the guts!”
Blue swung around in the saddle to see Gordon on a big, heavy-muscled white horse charging toward Shane, coming up off the road with a scatter of gravel and dirt. Blue’d been so intent on Shane he hadn’t even realized someone else was near.
The fury was already roaring in his ears, threatening that that was the last calm thought he’d have. He took a deep breath and tried to get control. Shane was his responsibility whether he wanted it or not. He had to be careful what he said and did so he could try to help the kid get out of this. The horse wasn’t broke and he and Shane could get into a terrible wreck.
“Use the ends of your reins,” Gordon yelled. “Damn it, boy, don’t you know what I mean? Hit him on the hip and the withers.”
Shane had a hold on the saddle horn with one hand and it was all he could do to hang on to the reins with the other. The horse bucked harder with every shout Gordon made and he began to shy sideways to get away from the oncoming horse.
Blue could’ve killed Gordon that minute with his bare hands.
“Make him buck,” Gordon yelled. “Whip the snot out of him, boy! Help him get it out of his system.”
Blue guided his horse around the round pen, hoping to head Gordon off, but he was too late. Gordon pulled up at the edge of the dirt and kept up the barrage.
Shane lost a stirrup and slid sideways, then pitched up over the horse’s neck. By some miracle, he didn’t come off, though, and he came back down about half in the saddle.
“You’ll never make a cowboy,” Gordon sneered. “Turn loose of the horn and ride with your hand in the air. What’s the matter with you, anyhow?”
Blue ached to get his hands on him. He got around the action and rode up next to Gordon.
“Shut up,” he said.
Gordon flicked a scornful glance at him as if he were a fly. The bay colt slowed down and came to a sudden, jarring stop. Shane fell forward and grabbed him around the neck, then, when the horse stayed still, the boy sat back up in the saddle.
He found his stirrup and stuck his foot into it. He turned to look at Gordon, his eyes blazing in his paper-white face.
“I rode him, didn’t I?”
His yell was loud but not strong. His confidence was gone. He wasn’t giving up, though. That was a point in his favor.
“Because he let you,” Gordon said. “That horse knows when a baby’s on his back. He let you stay there.”
Shane shook his head.
“If you wanta rodeo so bad, fork the saddle on that roan colt,” Gordon said. “Show him you’re the boss and I’ll call you a roughstock rider.”
Who cares what you call him?
Blue held his tongue. It’d only shame Shane further if he didn’t let him fight his own battle.
“The roan colt likes me,” he said. “I can ride him, too.”
“Yeah. Like pigs can fly.” Gordon was even more scornful, if that could be possible. “You’re always full of brag. If you ever get where you’re not hungover, you’ll have to back that up or eat your words.”
Shane managed not to look away from Gordon. He fought it, but he resisted breaking their locked look, just as he’d done the day he tried to run. This time he didn’t show any tears, which was another point for him. His chin trembled, though.
Blue kept his eyes on the boy so he wouldn’t reach over, drag Gordon off his horse and have at him right there.
Shane’s lips parted but he couldn’t speak. The best he could do was to pull the bay around and ride toward Gordon, then past him, so he wouldn’t be turning tail and running. He didn’t look away from Gordon’s glare as long as they faced each other but every line of his body said he had to get out of there because he’d had all he could take.
Blue said, “Nobody rides up to this barn and insults my hand. Get off this hill.”
Gordon laughed. “That’s one thing I like about you, Bowman. You’ve got a hell of a nerve.”
“Make tracks.”
For a long minute Gordon sat and studied him, almost as if trying to decide whether to bail down off his horse and pull Blue off his. Yet a fight wasn’t what was in the air.
Gordon looked at him with eyes the very same deep blue color as Blue’s own.
“I may like your nerve,” Gordon said, “but it’s a sad day when a jailbird can come onto my ranch and tell me where to go.”
Jailbird. The word sent a bolt of shock through Blue.
“And there’ll be another sad one for you,” Blue drawled, “because someday even the great Gordon Campbell will go to the Ghost Country.”
Gordon waited, holding his head cocked with the air of the big boss man looking down his nose at a lowly beggar.
“Am I to take that as a threat?”
Blue held the blue-steel gaze and pierced it with his own.
“Take it for the truth,” he said.