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“I’m on your six.” Beau pushed his plate aside and rose from the table. As much as he would have liked another cup of coffee, it was clear Will wanted to get the day’s work started.
As they strode across the yard side by side, Beau couldn’t help noticing the rather grim-lipped expression his brother had.
“Is there a problem, Will?”
“Just thinking about that damned foal,” he admitted in a near mutter. “I’d planned on gelding any colt that was born so he’d be gentle enough for Erin to ride.”
Beau nodded in understanding. “And now you can’t afford to geld him. A palomino stud can be worth his weight in gold, especially if he can pass that color on to some of his babies.”
Beau knew there was no guarantee of that. Palomino was a color, not a breed of horse. And breeding golden horses was as chancy as rolling dice in Las Vegas.
“I’ll just have to convince Erin that she can have the next foal born,” Will concluded in that same pigheaded tone Beau had heard their father use.
“That would be a waste of your time. She’s already named him,” Beau reminded him. “You aren’t going to change her mind now.”
“I can’t have her taking on a stallion as her first horse,” Will replied with an emphatic nod. “You know what a handful a young stud colt can be. Unpredictable as hell, even rank sometimes. Too many blasted things can go wrong. Erin could end up getting hurt bad.”
Beau shrugged off his brother’s concern. “You’ll just have to cross that bridge when it comes. If it comes. Right now the foal isn’t even a day old. Put some trust in Sky’s training. He isn’t going to let Erin have the colt until he’s sure she can manage him. Things will work out. You’ll see.”
Will gave Beau a pained look. “I can tell you’ve never been a father, especially to a girl. So many blasted things can go wrong. And in a few years, when she’s old enough for boys, it’ll be ten times worse.”
“And she has her mother’s looks.” Beau shook his head, savoring the rare chance to needle his brother. “Given a choice, would you rather she’d been born plain as mud like you?”
“Don’t ask. And I don’t even want to guess what Tori’s going to say about all this. She’s even more protective of Erin than I am.”
They walked in silence a moment before Beau spoke. “What happened between you and Tori anyway? You never said.”
Will cast him a stormy look. “It’s over. Dead and buried. So mind your own cattle.”
In the last two centuries, little about the annual spring roundup on a cattle ranch had changed. Its purpose remained the same: to gather all the cattle that had wintered in sheltered canyon pastures in preparation for moving them to their summer graze on the plain above the Caprock. Once the gather was made, the herd would be sorted, culled, and counted. Pregnant cows and heifers would be separated from the rest, and any calves or yearlings that had been missed the previous fall would be branded, vaccinated, tagged, and, if destined to be steers, castrated. For the cowhands and bosses, that meant long days of backbreaking work, days that could stretch into two weeks, or even longer.
After only three days in the saddle, Beau was sore and bone-weary. Yet, despite the discomfort, he was secretly pleased that he remembered how to cowboy. Admittedly he was a little rusty, but the old skills were coming back—along with a level of contentment that was rare to him.
Between the clear spring days, the hard physical work, and the easy camaraderie with the cowhands, who weren’t above teasing the “dude” in their midst, Beau could feel his tightly clenched nerves unwinding. It was as if his whole body had begun to breathe again; he was even sleeping the whole night through without waking up. Truthfully he couldn’t remember feeling this at ease with himself in years.
He wasn’t about to admit it to his brother, but Beau was enjoying this break from Washington and those long days of sitting behind a desk dealing with stacks of dreary paperwork and harried people who wanted everything yesterday. And the open country around him was a welcome change from that hellish D.C. traffic.
Open was something of a relative term, Beau acknowledged. This particular section of the ranch they were working stretched below the escarpment. It was a veritable maze of gullies, draws, and box canyons. And every inch of it needed to be searched.
In his side vision, he caught a glimpse of rusty red hide. He snapped his head around just as a pair of steers trotted out of view, heading up a brushy side canyon. Touching a spur to the horse’s flank, he reined the gelding after them. Jutting rocks marked the canyon’s entrance. Beau had already ridden past them in pursuit of the cattle before he recognized the distinctive formation that identified his exact location on the ranch. Abruptly he reined his horse to a plunging stop to look around, letting the half-forgotten knowledge come flooding back.
This small arroyo lay along the ranch’s boundary line that butted against Prescott’s land. The canyon itself was Y-shaped, dividing into two branches. He glanced up the left branch, recalling that it ended in a sheltered rock wall where he and Will had gone as boys to view the Indian petroglyphs scattered over its surface, making up their own wild stories as to the meaning of them.
But it was the second branch that claimed the whole of his attention now. Where once a clear stream of water had tumbled down from the rock and spilled to the pool on the canyon floor, now there was nothing but a dry wash, overgrown with scraggly brush and mesquite. Rusty strands of barbed wire blocked the path that had led to the stream. A crudely painted sign hung crookedly from the fence’s top wire:
NO TRESPASSING
PROPERTY OF PRESCOTT RANCH
Beau glared at the board, surprised that he could still feel the anger of years ago so strongly.
“It still smarts, doesn’t it?” Will’s voice traveled across the stillness.
Turning, Beau discovered that his brother had ridden up to join him. “How many times did Bull pound in our heads when we were kids that no Tyler ever sold an inch of Rimrock land—that a Tyler would cut off his roping hand first. That little canyon and its water was Rimrock property.” Beau jabbed a finger in its direction, his voice tight and low with barely suppressed anger. “And Bull sold it. And not just to anybody. No, he sold to Ferguson Prescott, the man Bull hated. And the purchase price was one dollar and ‘other valuable considerations.’ What the hell was he thinking?”
“It never made sense to me either,” Will admitted.
“Didn’t you ever ask him about it?” Beau challenged as his horse moved restlessly beneath him.
