Page 17 of The Cowboy and the Stray

Noah stepped back and studied our handiwork, his head cocked critically. "Not bad," he declared at last, dusting his hands on his jeans.

I huffed a laugh. "High praise. Thanks, boss."

Noah ducked his head, the brim of his cowboy hat hiding the quick flash of his grin. "You wanna help me again tomorrow?" he asked, his voice gruff.

"Count on it," I told him, and I meant it. I'd love to come to muck stalls with him tomorrow. Who knew the fastest way to feel human again was to spend the day waist-deep in horse crap?

We trudged out of the barn together. Noah peeled off toward the house with a backwards wave, his slight shoulders squared, his step jaunty. I watched him go, something warm and bittersweet unfurling behind my ribs.

Just a kid, a pitchfork, and a pocketful of ibuprofen. Not exactly a dream come true but maybe the closest I'd ever come.

8. CALDER

The day after I watched Noah and Tess working together in the barn, I rode back toward the house, Brimstone grunting with each heavy step. My wrist twinged where a steer had yanked the rope. I could've sworn the damn thing had been smirking as it tore off toward the tree line. Took me an age to catch it—by the time I got back to the herd, my neck was lobster red and hot as a recently fired pistol.

I should've seen it coming. That steer had too much swagger in its shoulders. Same as Buck when he was about to cheat at poker. There was a day when pounding through the hills on horseback, wrestling cattle, didn’t take quite so much out of me. But I wasn’t sixteen anymore, and my bones didn’t need to keep reminding me of that.

The shadows stretched longer and bluer as I neared the barn. A falcon wheeled overhead, black wings tinged copper by the setting sun. It smelled like the nights were going to start warming up for good.

Spring had been hot this year, but the nights tended to get pretty cool. It didn’t bother me. I liked the bite in the air, the way the stars shone sharper, clearer, in a cold sky. But the ranch hands were itching for balmier nights. They’d get antsy when the work ended and there was nothing left to sweat out. Idle hands, and all that.

As I rounded the corner to the barn, I pulled Brimstone up short. Voices threaded under the familiar creak of a water pump. Laughter, higher and lighter than anything I usually heard around here. And splashing. Lots of splashing.

I dismounted slow, ground my boots into the gravel just to feel it crunch and to let whoever was in there know I was coming. But they didn’t seem to hear, or if they did, they didn’t care. I leaned against the barn door and peered around into the main alley.

And just stopped and stared.

Water sloshed across the floor, overspray misting the air. Tess stood in the middle of it, face flushed, hair coming loose around her ears, spraying an equally drenched Noah with the hose. My nephew ducked behind a hay bale, whooping like some kind of wild creature as Tess turned the stream on him.

“Surrender!” she hollered, putting on what I supposed was meant to be an outlaw voice. “I’ve got you surrounded.”

Noah’s eyes gleamed. “You ain’t got nothing, Sheriff.”

He made a dodge for the next stall, but she anticipated him, catching him full in the face with a jet of water. He spluttered and laughed and shook his head like a dog, then launched a counterattack with a bucket I hadn’t noticed him sneaking from the wash stall. It caught her in the shoulder and drenched her right arm. She let out a yelp and nearly dropped the hose.

My first instinct was to wade in there and demand what in the hell they thought they were doing, horsing around when there was work to be done. That barn needed mucking out and fresh hay laid down. The horses needed brushing and oats. There were a hundred chores left and here they were using up the water without a care in the world. We weren’t running a summer camp. Water wasn’t free, and neither was time.

But something stopped me.

Maybe it was the gleam in Noah’s eyes, brighter and more alive than I’d seen in months. Kid had an imagination, no doubt about that, but he didn't open up with people outside of the pack.

Hang on. The stalls were gleaming and spotless. I couldn’t remember the last time I’d seen them so clean. The pit stalls might as well have been lined with silk for how pristine they looked. Even the damn rafters seemed freshly swept. Noah musta been working like a mule to get it this ship-shape. And from the looks of it, he’d had help.

I looked back to Tess, to the fierce joy on her face as she dodged Noah’s next volley, nearly stumbling into a wall in her haste.

She looked young. Lighter than I’d seen her. And somehow older too. Like she knew what that boy needed even before he did.

She was ransacking my ranch, rifling through my family’s lives, dragging up pieces of my emotions I’d buried deep. By any rights, I should want her gone. Should march right in and demand she pack her stuff and get out.

But watching her with Noah, it was almost like… An image shoved its way to the front of my mind, scattering my thoughts like a herd of spooked cattle.

My mother, pitchfork in hand, beating back the piled manure in the stalls. The heap never seemed to get smaller, no matter how long she worked at it.

I couldn’t have been much older than Noah was now, still young enough that I didn’t fully understand words like “mortgage” or “arrears.” All I knew was the bank men in their too-slick suits kept showing up, voices low and serious as they talked to my parents on the porch, their eyes roving over the ranch like it was a carcass and they carrion birds. I knew that look. The look of someone counting what you’re worth, and not in ways that matter.

Noah’s laughter yanked me back to the present, left me blinking in the blue shadow of the barn. He had Tess on the ropes now, darting and feinting like a boxer, keeping her off balance.

My gut clenched. I shouldn't let Noah get too close to Tess. Couldn’t let him get attached. She’d be moving on soon as she earned enough to get a car. No sense in him getting his hopes up.