by Lexie Ray
“Then let me explain it to you again,” I said. “It’s not hard. It would bring in a lot more capital than the dude ranch and the rehab business combined. Horses are life out here. It’s how people get around. You don’t have to buy gas to fuel them or worry about getting their oil changed or anything like that. If we had a facet of the ranch dedicated to horse breeding, then we could really give the family business a boost.”
“What you’re proposing is more complicated than it already is,” my brother said, pushing himself away from the table and rubbing his eyes with his fingers. “I know this, and you have to know this if you know anything about the business. You’re asking for the use of an entire pasture when you know full well that the cattle need to be rotated among all of them to make this thing work.”
“It’s just one pasture,” I said. “We have double the pastures now, with Paisley’s land.”
“And double the herd.”
“Think about the other changes we’re making to support our new projects,” I tried. “Paving the drive down to the river for the rehab. Carving out another slice of land for the barracks. Why can’t you find it in this place to devote some space to a horse breeding operation?”
“Because what are we going to feed them?” Chance demanded. “If you can guarantee that the river will fill back up with water, that it will rain again, that the grass will grow and we can stop investing our time and money into buying grain or trying to make grain grow here on the ranch, then maybe we can come to an understanding about what to feed your goddamn horses.”
My brother’s patience was at its end, and I knew I’d have to slip away and try again another day. It always worked like this. I tried to stand up for my interests, what I truly believed would help the ranch, and when I got shut down, I had to slink away, tail between my legs, to lick my wounds.
“We’re already feeding our goddamn horses on the same things the herd is eating,” I said, a last-ditch effort to save some remaining shred of my pride. “If you ever cared enough to look at my business plan, you’d see what good sense this makes for the ranch.”
“If our parents had wanted us to breed horses for a living, that’s what this place would be,” Chance said. “But they didn’t. That wasn’t their vision, or the vision of our grandparents, or our great-grandparents, and so on. This is supposed to be a cattle ranch, and that’s what we’re trying to keep on doing, Emmett.”
I could’ve pointed out that things were as different now as humanly possible. Whatever ranching vision Chance was trying to preserve as a part of our parents’ legacy was night from day. Things had changed dramatically even over the course of the past year. That was the nature of life — it changed. The harder you tried to hold on to the way something was, the more different it became until you didn’t recognize what you now had to what you used to have.
If our parents were still alive today, they wouldn’t recognize our ranch.
It had to bother Chance that there had been so many changes, but if it did, he never let it show. He poured himself into the business side of things, examining the operation from every angle, trying to see where we could nip and tuck in order to keep everything running.
The Summers money influx had kept things going, but ranching was, more than ever, a losing business. We couldn’t turn a profit to save our lives, not until this drought ended, at least.
“Are we down a person today?” Chance asked, eyeing me, looking tired. “Are we suffering somewhere on the ranch because you insisted on telling me your pipe dream again today?”
I rolled my eyes at him, and pointed downward, toward my knee, still encased in a bulky brace.
“Doctor’s orders,” I said. “I’m supposed to see Hadley today to find out if I can go back to full duty.”
“It’s about damn time,” he grumbled, looking back at the spread of papers before him. They looked like bills and budgets and cattle logs, but there wasn’t any rhyme or reason to them. Chance needed someone to help him get organized, but he’d never admit it. That would mean another mouth to feed or pocket to pay, and there just wasn’t the capital for that.
At least, that’s what he said.
“Are you sure I can’t move your office out to the trailer?” I asked. “It’s vacant, and it wouldn’t take me much time.”
“But it would take valuable time away from me,” Chance said. “What am I supposed to do when I’m supposed to be taking care of payroll and balancing the checkbooks and making sure the cattle logs are up to date?”
“I don’t know, sleep?”
“Very funny.” Chance shuffled a few papers around half-heartedly. “I’m more comfortable in here, anyway. It’s quiet during the day with just Zoe moving around. Quieter still when Toby will start school in the fall.”
If I’d been a more daring man, I would’ve commented on that. Chance didn’t want to move the ranch’s office out to the trailer because he liked being around Zoe? He’d said the words himself, but I was pretty sure their meaning hadn’t registered in his mind. It seemed like we got something more than we expected with the housekeeper and her son when Hunter brought them home like wounded animals he hoped to rehabilitate. Chance had apparently taken a special interest.
“Well, then, unless you have any objections, I’d like to move my things out there,” I said. “Doesn’t make sense to let the place stand empty. I’ll make sure it’s properly maintained, make sure nobody unsavory takes up residence in it.”
“Do whatever you want,” Chance said tiredly. “I don’t care.”
“Horse breeding operation?”
“Shut up.”
Avery had held residence in the little trailer ever since Hadley had entered the scene, so hell bent on pulling Hunter back into the land of the living that she’d required a place to stay inside the house. But now that Hunter and Hadley had their own cottage down by the river, and now that Avery and Paisley officially lived in the Summers house on the other side of the property, the house was slowly emptying out. With me moving out to the trailer, it was only Chance and Tucker inside the big house again. I remembered how warm and loud it had been when our parents were still alive, all of us in there. It had gotten quiet for a while, right when Hunter had returned from Afghanistan in several different pieces. I thought it would get quieter with most of us leaving to live elsewhere on the property, but everyone found excuses to come back. The Summers house might’ve been nicer, but the Corbin house had more history, more life.
It would be nice to have a space apart from everyone else. I doubted anyone would really notice I was gone.
I labored up the stairs and packed what few effects I cared to keep around — a few tomes on horses, my clothes and boots, a smattering of toiletries — and looked at my childhood room. It was strange to be a grown man here. I guess I’d never stopped to think about it. I’d expected to ranch with my family until my parents grew old and we took over for them, all of us living either on the property or around it, but I knew that wasn’t what all of my brothers wanted. All of them had plans to leave the place, or at least dreamed of it, but not me. This was the life I’d always wanted, even if it hadn’t turned out exactly the way I’d expected, ranching without our entire family intact. Things would’ve been much smoother if our parents hadn’t gotten into that car wreck, but there wasn’t much point in wishing for things that would never be. The important thing was that the ranch was still ours — at least for now. There always seemed to be something that was trying to take it away from us, whether it was the bank or offers from people interested in the operation or the land or the drought or some other disaster. The latest was a spate of cattle thefts that we hadn’t gotten to the bottom of, one of which had resulted in Avery getting shot.
You could say one thing about life on the ranch: it was never boring.
The trailer was stuffy, but that was nothing opening a few windows wouldn’t solve. Avery had never been thrilled with being on the ranch — not on the surface. He’d stayed out here to get a
way from us, I believed, even with Hadley in the equation. I liked the idea that being here would give me a little privacy away from everyone to think, to figure out what angle of the horsing operation I could tackle next, the perfect argument to convince Chance and the rest of my brothers that this would work well for our family’s business.
It would come to me. All I needed was time.
What I really needed was to get back to work. When I wasn’t working the ranch, all I could think about was the horsing operation. Then, I couldn’t help but pester Chance, getting under his skin in an attempt to escape my own boredom. If I was back on a horse again, riding with my brothers and the rest of the ranch hands, at least I’d be too exhausted at the end of the day to think about the things that might’ve turned out differently for my family and me if my parents hadn’t picked that night to ride into town, if the weather had been just a little different, if the road had been a little straighter.
Jesus. I really needed a distraction. Putting my things away in the little chest of drawers that Avery had cleaned out when he finally started living full time in Paisley’s house wasn’t cutting it. I left that job only half done and made my way to the barn, the brace hindering my movements more than helping them, in my opinion.
I shouldn’t have let myself get so worked up earlier. I’d gone to Chance because I needed to tell him something. Something important. Something that didn’t have a damn thing to do with a horsing operation. But now, I thought that maybe it wouldn’t do Chance a lick of good to know that I’d recently taken a strange phone call on the house line. The person, whose voice I didn’t recognize, had threatened both me and my family, telling me that if we didn’t leave, things were going to get ugly. Well, like it or not, things already were ugly. Avery had been shot, and we were still sending night patrols to stay with the herds to try and discourage thefts. I had no idea what could be even harder than that on this family. We were ranchers. We did this almost as a compulsion rather than out of any real passion for it. It was in our blood.
A single phone call wasn’t going to change that, and I started to feel better about not troubling Chance with it. He didn’t really need to know. It would only cause him to worry.
I arrived at the horse barn — by far, my favorite place on the ranch. I liked the smell of it, the solitude, the ability to truly do what I wanted to be doing. I remembered my parents the best here, both of them teaching all of us to care for the animals who helped us do our jobs. The rest of my brothers followed along grudgingly; I was the only one who really took to grooming and everything else. All of my brothers liked the wind in their hair, but none of them were terribly interested in helping the creatures that gave them that wind. All of the horses knew me and liked me, and I spoke soft words to them as I passed by their stalls, pausing in front of mine, Sugar. Sugar was a sweet old mare, slower than some of the others in the stable, but dependable. The rest of my brothers had turned their noses up at riding her, preferring the more spirited ones, but Sugar was their loss and my gain. She was a pretty thing, too, gray with a white mane and tail I kept brushed to a glossy shine.
“Hey, there, sweet girl,” I crooned as she nuzzled the palm of my hand. “You want to go for a ride?”
Riding horses had been expressly forbidden by Hadley, but I figured if I galloped up to the clinic that doubled as the house she and my baby brother shared, she’d be persuaded to end my medical leave of absence from the ranch.
Securing a saddle to Sugar was like second nature to me. Most horses fidgeted or kicked or blew up their bellies so you couldn’t get a true fit, but she seemed to like the attention and activity, waiting patiently until I fastened all of the buckles.
Now came the true test.
I’d wrenched my knee and torn some tendons fetching a calf out of the gorge several weeks prior, which necessitated rest and the enormous brace on my leg. Hadley had warned me against overexerting myself and doing further damage to my knee, but she also said there was a possibility that I could return to my normal duties today after a quick checkup down at the clinic.
I wasn’t going to drive down there when I had a chance to ride.
My knee gave a couple of twinges of protest, but I mounted Sugar with relative ease, confident that I would be even less awkward without the brace, and set out.
It was going to be hot today. It was already uncomfortably warm outside, a lazy wind doing little to cool my face as I urged Sugar forward alongside the road leading down to the river. It was very nearly finished thanks to the dedicated efforts of the paving crew, but I knew the realities of maintaining such a road. If we had freezes and snowstorms come winter, it would require scraping and salting. With the change of each season, it would likely need repairs to cracks and potholes as the pavement expanded and contracted according to the weather. I wasn’t sure Chance understood what he had signed on for with this road, though maybe he did and that was one of the many reasons he despaired so much lately.
The road forked off in another direction — that was going to be the way to the barracks for the dude ranch. That had been a surprising brain child from Avery of all people, but Chance and Paisley agreed it was a great way to bring in more money and educate people about life on a ranch the way it was supposed to be done. The idea was that if people understood how happy the cattle stayed and how well taken care of they were, they might be more likely to support ranching operations like ours and buy beef from us or others like us. It cost just a little more in stores, but that was because so much more effort went into the care for the herds — unlike other operations that were little more than feed lots. Those operations were loath to invite the public onto their ranches because of the foul conditions the cattle endured to turn such a pretty profit.
The dude ranch would benefit us. I wasn’t about to rain on the parade that was Avery’s sole major contribution to the ranch. He’d dug his heels in for whole years about working here, so it was good he finally was experiencing some form of ownership and investment in the ranch.
I just wished I could contribute in the same way, in something highly visible that would finally distinguish me in the Corbin family legacy. I already worked so hard — well, prior to my injury — around the ranch. I was the superior horseman, I knew how to read the herd, and I could run a fence line and fix it better than anyone. I was more meticulous with logs than any of my brothers, neatly and carefully making notations and then helping analyze them. On top of that, I cared for everyone’s horses. But did I get any recognition for that? Did Chance or anyone ever take me aside and tell me just how important all of my hard work was for the survival of the ranch? Nope.
“Emmett Corbin, I better be hallucinating. I hope that I can rub my eyes and not see you on a horse I expressly forbade you to ride.”
I’d reached the clinic without realizing it, and Hadley was waiting outside for me, her arms crossed in front of her body. She was not happy. Not even a little amused.
“I just wanted to see if I could,” I said, defensive. “And look. I can.”
I hopped back down to the ground with little difficulty and just a few of those odd twinges, giving Sugar a pat on the neck for getting me here in one piece.
“And what if you’d hurt yourself again?” Hadley demanded, just as unhappy with me off the horse as on it. “That would mean that all the work we did would’ve been in vain.”
“But I didn’t hurt myself,” I reminded her gently. “I’m just fine.”
“Ugh, Emmett.” She uncrossed her arms and rubbed her face. “All of you Corbins are just alike. Stubborn as hell and impossible to deal with and deaf to reason.”
“Problems with Hunter?” I guessed.
“Don’t even get me started.”
She waved me inside the clinic and past a couple of walk-in appointments already sitting in the waiting room.
“It’s not a problem, Hadley,” I said, looking at the old man holding his elbow and the younger man with a padded boot on one of his feet. “If these guys were
ahead of me, I can wait.”
“You’re the one with the early appointment,” she said grimly, opening a door to one of the examination rooms and waiting for me to pass through. “Let’s just get this over with.”
“Hunter wants to be back out on night patrols, doesn’t he?” I guessed again — right enough to press on the nerve that made Hadley stop glowering and start talking.
“I don’t understand why, when he had such an episode after Avery got shot,” she said, jerking her thumb at me in a gesture that I was pretty sure meant she wanted me to sit up on the examination table. “I know it’s PTSD, but he really wasn’t well. He wasn’t himself. And now he wants to go out there like everything is fine? Who in this family does Hunter listen to?”
“Well, you,” I said, unfastening the Velcro that held my brace in place. “And maybe Tucker, after you.”
“What I say to him doesn’t mean shit,” Hadley said. “Maybe I’ll deploy Tucker and get him to hammer some wisdom into Hunter’s head. He doesn’t need to be out there at night with all those guns and the potential for something to happen.”
“Is he talking to anyone?” I jerked as Hadley tapped on my knee with a little rubber mallet, testing my reflexes.
“He barely talks to me about it,” she said, gesturing for me to lie back on the table. “I didn’t think ranching was going to be like this.”
“This … this is a little different from what ranching usually is,” I allowed as she tested my range of motion. I was no physical therapist, but even I could tell that my knee was much better than the first day, when she’d taken me to her Dallas office for a proper assessment. I’d come a long way, and now I was ready to resume my real life.
“When is it going to be back to normal?” she asked, opening my file but not really looking at it. She was worried, a rumpling between her eyebrows. I couldn’t really blame her. Things were pretty distressing right now.
“Normal is kind of a relative term,” I admitted. “Are you asking when the ranch is going to be normal? Because it never really is. If it’s not one thing, it’s another. If we got the cattle theft problem to go away, we’d still have money worries. If we got those resolved, we’d still have the weather to obsess over. At least it’s not boring, right?”
