One Fine Cowboy

by Joanne Kennedy

  “I’ve read about that program,” Doris said. “The prisoners train the horses. It’s a skill they can use when they get out. Some of them get jobs on ranches—that kind of thing.”

  Judging from Nate’s situation, Charlie figured bank robbing and drug dealing were probably more secure professions, but what did she know?

  “Yeah, and the prisoners learn a lot from working with the horses too—patience, give and take, that kind of thing,” Nate said.

  Charlie figured she could use a lesson in patience. She was still waiting for Nate to mention that little to-do in the bedroom. Still waiting for him to tell her their kiss wasn’t really a “bad thing.” And she wasn’t waiting very patiently.

  Still, she wasn’t about to bring it up. If he really believed kissing her was a mistake, she’d never let him know it mattered.

  And it wasn’t like he was being rude, or giving her the cold shoulder. In fact, she’d caught him looking at her a couple times as if he was eating her up with his eyes and maybe pondering an encore of their bedtime romp.

  But they hadn’t been alone together since Sam had caught them kissing, so she had no idea what he was thinking.

  “Aren’t you nervous, taking Sam to a prison?” she asked.

  “I’ve been before,” Sam piped up. “The men are nice. And Dad says everybody deserves a second chance.”

  “Good for him,” Doris said. She climbed up into the truck and cranked the ignition, slamming the door as she started the truck moving. “Well,” she said as they bounced down the driveway. “It’s about time we had a chance for some girl talk. How are things going with that cowboy?”

  Charlie swallowed. She wasn’t ready to talk about Nate. Not at all. And she sure as hell wasn’t ready for Doris’s practical take on her love life.

  “Fine,” she said. “I think he’s happier now that his daughter’s here.”

  Doris gave her a hard look. “That’s not what I meant, and you know it. You two did the deed, didn’t you?”

  A dozen responses rose to Charlie’s lips. I’m sorry, that’s private. Hey, that’s none of your business. I don’t want to talk about it. But Doris’s shrewd eyes bored straight into her brain, demanding an answer, and all she could do was nod.

  “He any good?”

  Charlie choked on her next breath and lurched into a coughing spell.

  “That’s what I thought.” Doris settled back into the driver’s seat and grinned. “When you find the right man, it’s always good.”

  “He’s not the right man,” Charlie spluttered. “It was just a fling.”

  “Yeah, right,” Doris said. “Don’t tell him that.”

  “I already did.”

  “He believe you?”

  “I think so.”

  “Then he’s a fool,” Doris said.

  “No, he’s just practical,” Charlie said. “I mean, he’s got his daughter to think about. The last thing that poor kid needs is a stepmom.”

  “I’d say it’s the first thing she needs.” Doris shook her head and braked on a sharp turn. “You heard her talking about her mother and that so-called beauty school, right? The kid needs something better. So does the man.”

  Charlie shrugged and faked absorption in the landscape. The first part of the ride was hardly scenic—just a long stretch of scrubby wasteland, marked only by occasional twisted pines and boulders left behind by the long-ago glacier that had scraped the earth smooth. But somehow, the primal roughness of the land had its own beauty, rugged and stern, a challenge to anyone who might try to tame it and turn it to use.

  Doris dropped the truck into low gear as they headed up a hill. Charlie looked back over her shoulder, catching the same view she’d seen from horseback that first day with Nate—the distant ranch nestled in its hollow, with the silver stream making a long arc around it. But where the place had looked forlorn and deserted on her first sighting, it now looked completely different. The buildings seemed to be embraced by the long arm of the stream rather than cut off by it, the house protected by the hills, not dwarfed by their looming silhouettes.

  Nate’s pickup edged over to the side of the road and stopped. Doris pulled in behind him and rolled down her window.

  “What’s up?” she asked as he stepped out of his truck, Sam tumbling behind him.

  “Nice view from here. Thought you might want to take a look.”

  His eyes lit on Charlie, as if this place, this view, was a gift meant for her eyes in particular. She gave herself a mental slap. She was assigning all kinds of romantic intentions to his casual glances and accidental touches—but deep down, she knew it didn’t matter. She’d be gone soon, and whatever they had between them would be over.

  She slid down from the truck. The panorama below made her forget about Nate and everything else, hitting her like a blow to the heart. The land undulated away from them like a rumpled blanket, hill upon hill, dotted with trees and sage. The late summer grass was dry and coarse, but in the morning sun it took on a golden glow, with silvery highlights that glittered in the ever-changing breeze. In the distance, a rock cliff reared up against the clear blue sky, the ruddy red wall slashing like the broad swipe of a child’s crayon across the scene.

  “It’s beautiful,” Charlie said.

  “Down there’s where your car broke down,” Nate said. She hadn’t even noticed he’d come around the truck to stand beside her. “Remember?”

  Charlie nodded. “But it looked so—so different then. So bleak.”

  “It wasn’t home then,” he said.

  Home?

  What the hell did that mean?

  It didn’t matter. She wasn’t staying. But he was standing close to her—really close—and as he watched her, waiting for a reaction, the truth swept over her.

  This was home. She’d never felt so part of a place. She could feel her roots snaking down into the hard dry soil, deeper and deeper the longer she stayed. However unlikely it seemed that a city girl could feel at home in such a godforsaken place, she felt like she belonged here. Part of it was Nate, but he wasn’t the only thing binding her to Latigo. There was the land, the animals, the big, broad sky, the hard bright sunshine, and the clear gray dawns.

  She loved it here.

  She cleared her throat and glanced around, looking for a neutral subject of conversation, and pointed toward the clusters of showy white blossoms that dotted the landscape.

  “What are those flowers down there?”

  “Prairie roses. I’ll show you.” He took her hand and led her down the steep slope that fell away from the road. She shook her hand loose, glancing back at Sam.

  “It’s okay,” he said. “Listen, I’m really sorry. I’ve been wanting to talk to you, but all these people… I just couldn’t. We need to go slow, okay? For Sam’s sake. I can’t let her see us—you know.”

  “Then we need to drop it,” she said, trying to ignore the surge of disappointment that washed over her. “I’m not going to sneak around.”

  “I don’t mean that. I just…” He slumped his shoulders. “I just don’t know what to do.”

  Charlie knelt to examine a clump of flowers. The blooms were enormous, bobbing on slender stems and bunched together like a bridal bouquet. “These are pretty,” she said.

  “Charlie, I’m not asking you to sneak around. I’m asking you to take things slow. But I’m serious. Serious about—us.”

  “Serious?” She glanced up at his face.

  He took a deep breath. “I want you to stay.”

  Stay. She pictured herself living at Latigo, rising every morning to care for the horses, working side by side with Nate all day and tumbling into bed with him at night. It was a nice fantasy—but that’s all it was. A fantasy.

  It’ll never happen, she thought. Graduate students didn’t live in places like Purvis, Wyoming. If she wanted to do real work—meaningful work, the work her education had prepared her for—she’d have to go where her career took her.

  Besides, she already had a
home back in Jersey. Her apartment.

  Yeah, right. 228 South Broad, Unit B was hardly a home, with its threadbare furniture and bare-bones kitchen, where the windows opened onto a stretch of cracked concrete as stark and barren as her love life and the night was filled with the shouts and curses of strangers and the blare of distant sirens.

  She’d always pictured home as something more—a white frame house with a kitchen steeped in family memories, smelling faintly of some long-gone grandma’s fresh-baked cookies; a cozy, old-fashioned place with a fireplace and a woodshed. Now she wanted home to have a barn too, sweetly scented with hay and horse. And most important, she wanted to wake up every morning to a look like the one she’d caught in Nate’s eyes that morning on the sofa.

  He was giving her that look now.

  No one had ever looked at her like that before. And maybe nobody ever would again—unless she was lucky enough to find a place like this to call home.

  And a man like this to… no.

  She wasn’t ready. She had work to do, a life to build. She wasn’t going to shuck all her ambitions for a man.

  Not even this one.

  Maybe someday she’d come back to Wyoming—but now was not the time.

  She could feel Nate’s gaze on her, waiting for a response.

  “I can’t, Nate,” she said. “I can’t.

  He held out his hand to her, but she rose on her own and they climbed the hill in silence. She could feel him watching her as she hiked herself up into the seat of Doris’s truck, but she refused to look back, even though her body warmed under his gaze as if he’d touched her.

  Chapter 26

  They turned off the highway in Riverton and stopped at a glass-enclosed guardhouse. Nate presented some paperwork and a uniformed woman waved them through to a parking lot. Piling out of the pickup, they were met by an extravagantly mustached man in a cowboy hat standing beside a short bus.

  “I’m Archie, from the BLM Wild Horse and Burro Program,” he said, handing out paperwork. “Need your signatures on these release forms. Basically says we’re not liable if y’all get yourselves killed in there.”

  “Is that likely to happen?” Doris asked.

  “Not really,” he said. “Not unless you do something stupid.”

  Charlie snorted. She’d been doing stupid things ever since she arrived at Latigo. Falling for Nate. Kissing him. Sleeping with him.

  And now that he’d asked her to stay, she realized how foolish she’d been. There was no happy ending for the two of them. She’d leave, and he’d find someone else. Hopefully, she would too—someday.

  They handed in their forms and climbed onto the bus. Charlie was the last to climb on, and the only seat left was beside Nate and Sam. She sat stiffly, clutching the back of the seat in front of her, feeling suddenly claustrophobic. She’d been on a bus like this once before. It was back in New Jersey, but it was the same kind of bus, headed for a similar destination.

  It hadn’t been a good trip.

  Archie, who was doubling as their driver, eyed her in the rearview mirror, assessing her top to bottom.

  The driver in New Jersey had done that too.

  “Hey, Shawcross,” Archie said. “Is that the one who…”

  “Uh-huh.” Nate nodded.

  “Hmm.” The man’s eyes scanned her in the mirror. Scanned her slowly. Thoroughly.

  “What did you tell him?” Charlie hissed at Nate. Surely he hadn’t blabbed about their tryst. The guy could barely put a sentence together. Maybe he was different with his friends, though. Maybe when men got together, they talked about…

  “I didn’t tell him anything,” Nate said. “But I guess the State of New Jersey gave him an earful.”

  “What?”

  “It’s a prison,” he said. “They do background checks.”

  “Oh, shoot.” Charlie sank down in her seat, hiding her face in her hands.

  “Don’t worry,” Nate patted her shoulder. “You’ve already paid your debt to society. Although I think society probably should have paid you.”

  She flushed. “I was young,” she muttered. “And besides, that wasn’t me. It was my evil twin.”

  “Huh,” Nate said. “We ought to invite her for a visit.”

  Charlie glanced meaningfully at Sam. “I’d rather not discuss it,” she said. The “Naked in Newark” PETA protest was hardly a topic for a seven-year-old. She’d felt like a crusader, out on the street in nothing but her “I’d Rather Wear Nothing Than Fur” sign—but now she just felt like an idiot.

  Nate grinned. “Guess not,” he said. He leaned forward and whispered, his breath tickling her ear. “Almost makes me want to mistreat an animal, though, just to get you to protest me.”

  She turned away, folding her arms across her chest and lifting her chin while he laughed.

  “What?” Sam asked. “Charlie failed a background check? Is she from a bad background?”

  “You bet,” Nate said. “Bad right down to her, um, bare bones.”

  “That’s okay,” Sam said. “Everybody deserves a second chance, right, Dad?”

  “You bet,” Nate said, grinning. “And I’ll give her one.” He slid a sly look toward Charlie. “Anytime she wants.”

  ***

  Nate watched Charlie’s eyes widen in wonder as they crested the hill that overlooked the compound. Dozens of corrals covered acres of ground below them, every one filled with milling horses of every conceivable color and build. He’d seen the facility before, but he’d never seen it so full.

  “Wow,” Phaedra said. “How are we ever going to decide?”

  “Just remember what you’ve learned and stay rational,” Nate warned. “Don’t go picking a horse you feel sorry for. Pick one that has a future.”

  “They all have a future,” Charlie said sharply. “They don’t euthanize them, do they?”

  Nate shook his head. “Nope. But some of them have a future with humans, and some end up in holding facilities for the rest of their lives.”

  Charlie figured life in a holding facility was probably a lot like living at 228 South Broad, Unit B. She’d been in holding for a while now.

  They stepped off the bus and followed the mustachioed driver to the first corral. “These are from the Rock Creek herd,” he said. “Been here about three months.”

  The horses, about twenty of them, were bunched in a tight group on the far side of the corral. They shifted nervously, watching the humans with flared nostrils.

  “Let’s see some long-term residents,” Nate said.

  “Okay. This is a good group,” Ernie said. He opened a gate and they stepped inside a large enclosure. Thirty-some horses were munching hay that had been spread on the bare ground in the center of the enclosure. “From Nevada. Been here a while.” He scowled over his clipboard, flipping pages. “Five months, most of ’em.”

  The horses lifted their heads, watchful, still chewing their hay. One or two stepped forward cautiously, stretching their necks toward the visitors.

  “Oh,” Charlie whispered. “They’re so tame.”

  “Not really. Just curious,” Nate said. “Remember what you’ve learned. Don’t look right at them. Turn your body away a little bit. Sam, go ahead. See if you can make a few friends.”

  Sam edged away from the group along the fence, studiously avoiding the horse’s curious gazes. The horses seemed to sense she was harmless and a few mares approached, their heads low, their steps cautious. She extended one arm slowly, her hand curled into a loose fist, fingers toward the ground. One of the horses sniffed carefully, mumbling its lips over her hand, and Charlie could see Sam suppressing a giggle as she turned and walked back to the group, still ignoring the horses.

  Several more joined the group following Sam. Charlie looked away as they approached, avoiding their eyes. A skinny buckskin took a cautious step toward her and eyed her curiously. Slowly, she held her hand out, following Sam’s example, then reached up and stroked the horse’s nose with the back of one finger. The hor
se stood stock-still for a heartbeat, then snorted and wheeled away.

  “Wow,” she said.

  “Their capture was long enough ago that they’ve forgotten any rough treatment—or forgiven, anyway,” Nate said. “They forgive easy.”

  “Sweet things,” Charlie whispered.

  Taylor and Phaedra were befriending a black gelding in the far corner. Phaedra’s eyes were shining as the horse took a fistful of hay from her hand.

  “I like this one,” the girl said.

  Nate eyed it critically. “Not bad,” he said. “But we’ll look at a lot more before we decide.”

  ***

  The last pen held horses from Oregon. Like the others, they lifted their heads and watched warily as the humans approached—all but one, who jerked her head up and took off, running in wild circles around the perimeter, kicking and bucking in a high-spirited display that reminded Charlie of Junior. She was a bay with long legs, a graceful neck, and a delicate, slightly dished profile.

  “Wow,” Charlie said. The horse arched her neck and carried her tail like a flag streaming out behind her. She looked like the flaming horse in Charlie’s tattoo. As she neared the humans, she slammed on the brakes and skidded to a stop, tossing her head, then pivoted and dashed away.

  Nate watched her go. “Trouble,” he said.

  Charlie eased away from the crowd while Archie explained the meaning of the freeze-brands on the horse’s necks. Moving to a corner of the pen, she knelt down and watched the bay horse. It was still running, but slower now, and as it circled, its orbit kept straying closer and closer to Charlie’s corner.

  “Pshhhhh,” Charlie whispered, looking away.

  The horse stopped and lowered its head, watching her, curious.

  “Pshhhh.” The mare took one step closer, then another, mincing forward. Stretching her neck out, she sniffed the air in front of Charlie’s face. Charlie breathed out slowly, and the horse sniffed again. Charlie dared to meet the animal’s eyes and the mare stood stock-still for a long heartbeat, then turned and trotted away, quiet as a circus pony. When she reached the center of the pen where the hay was spread out, she shoved a few other horses away, then bent her head to eat, still watching Charlie from the corner of her eye.