Page 70 of Dusty Spur Ranch Cowboys

A reluctant smile tugs at the corner of my mouth. “That part’s true.”

Arizona glances between us. “What happened?”

I lean back in my chair and look past the crowd. Twenty years disappear in an instant.

“Championship weekend.” The memory settles into place with uncomfortable clarity. “Biggest purse either of us had ever ridden for. Whole place was packed.”

I can still see the arena if I let myself.

The lights, the dirt, the smell of livestock and diesel fuel hanging over everything, the kind of night every rider dreams about.

“Travis had been drinking.”

Arizona’s eyebrows rise.

I hold up a hand before she can interrupt. “He wasn’t falling over drunk.” I shake my head. “But he’d had enough that he should’ve stayed off a horse.”

Every rider knows the difference. Most of us ignore it at least once. Some of us get lucky afterward.

Some don’t.

“He got warned more than once, but Travis wasn’t interested in listening. That wasn’t exactly a rare occurrence. If a bad idea walked into a room, Travis usually offered it a beer and invited it to stay awhile.”

Willy huffs a laugh into his bottle. “That’s the nicest thing anybody’s ever said about him.”

Arizona’s attention never leaves me. “What happened?”

I stare down at the label peeling off my beer bottle. Twenty years later, I can still see the ride clearer than I’d like.

The announcer introducing him. The crowd packed shoulder to shoulder. Travis grinning like he was bulletproof while half the people around him tried to talk sense into him.

“Draw wasn’t in his favor that night,” I say. “Mean horse. Strong. The kind that makes experienced riders think twice.”

“And Travis wasn’t famous for thinking twice,” Willy adds.

“No. He wasn’t.”

Arizona folds her arms on the table and waits.

“He climbed on anyway. Gate opened. Horse came out hard and ugly from the start. One bad move turned into another, and before anybody could react, Travis got hung up.”

Arizona’s expression changes. She knows enough about rodeo to understand what that means.

Anybody who spends enough time around arenas learns fast. Getting thrown is part of the job. Getting dragged is a different story entirely.

I rub a thumb against the neck of the bottle. “The horse kept going. Travis didn’t.”

The words sit between us.

Willy looks away first. Even after all this time, none of us enjoy talking about it.

“By the time they got him loose, he’d taken a hell of a beating.”

Arizona swallows. “How bad?”

I let out a breath through my nose. “Bad enough that most people thought he wasn’t getting back up. He spent months in hospitals. More surgeries than I can remember. Rehab after that. The doctors managed to put him back together, but his riding career was over.”

Arizona winces. “That’s awful.”