Page 5 of Thunder

So I don't ask.

I've gotten good at not asking.

I run the cattle by myself, I keep my own book, I built the whole breeding program's records out of nothing but a laptop and a used desk.

Plus the four years of school nobody in this family thought a Lyle needed.

I do it without one of them in the room, because the work is the only thing left that didn't take a side.

She plants.

Sets all four feet and throws her head, and I click at her and wave the flag low and easy.

She still won't come, because a scared thousand-pound animal doesn't do anything on your schedule.

"She's eyeballin' the shadow on the ground," a voice says behind me. "Move to her off side, she'll come."

I know the voice before I turn.

Of course I do.

I'd know it in the dark, in a crowd, in my sleep—I spent months of my life learning the low gravel of it up close, and my body hears it before my brain gets a vote, the way it always has.

Thunder.

I don't turn around right away.

I give myself the half a second it takes to get my face right, and then I move to the heifer's off side the way he said, out of the shadow she's been staring at.

She blows out a breath and loads into the chute like she'd been planning to all along.

"Thanks," I say, to the heifer, to the fence, to anywhere but him.

"Didn't do anything. You had it."

Then I turn around.

He's leaning against the outside of the pen with his forearms on the top rail, favoring the left leg the way he does now, his cane hooked over the rail beside him.

He's not supposed to be out here.

There's no club reason for the Sergeant at Arms to be at my working pens at sunup, and we both know it.

I know neither of us is going to say it.

He looks better than the last time I let myself really look at him. There's color back in his face.

The beard's a little wilder, more salt in it than there was in the spring.

He's still too big for the space he's in, still takes up the whole rail, still watches me like weather coming.

"You're up early," he says.

"So are you."

I check a tag against my book so I don't have to hold his eyes.

"You're a long way from your cabin for a man who's supposed to be resting a hip."