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“Well you can say good-bye here and now!” Slade turned his fury on Natalie. “Back in high school, everybody knew you were doing it with him. If I find out you were messing around with him again—”
“Stop it, Slade!” Natalie exploded. “Don’t be an idiot! We weren’t even alone! Lute was there the whole time, cleaning out the stalls! If you don’t believe me, go in and ask him.”
Beau saw the big man pause, as if hesitant to call his wife’s bluff. Then Slade took a firm grip on her elbow. “Come on, we’re going to the house to say hello to all those fine folks together.”
“Not now.” She twisted away from him. “We both need some time to cool down. I’m going to my car. I’ll see you at home.”
“No, you don’t.” His big fist locked around her arm again. “They saw me arrive alone. I want them to see that you’re with me now.”
This time Natalie didn’t argue. She walked beside her husband across the muddy yard, her back ramrod straight, her small chin thrust forward, her dark curls ruffled by the breeze as he marched her toward the ranch house.
Beau watched them, his hands crumbling a piece of straw that had clung to his jacket. He hadn’t planned to stir up old memories or cause trouble between Natalie and her husband. Yet coming to the barn with her had done just that.
Turning away, Beau gazed westward, to the escarpment that rose in rusty white buttresses above the rolling bed of the canyon. A golden eagle, riding an updraft, soared above the Caprock where the high plain began. The scene was one of peace and beauty. But the tension in Beau’s gut wouldn’t go away. Holding Natalie in his arms had reawakened all the old emotions—emotions he no longer had the right to feel.
Inside the barn, Lute Fletcher smiled to himself and pushed the shovel under the last bit of dirty straw and manure. A man would have to be damned near deaf not to overhear every word of the confrontation that had just taken place right outside the barn door—just as he would have to be damned near blind not to see the near embrace between Beau Tyler and Slade Haskell’s wife. And Lute Fletcher was far from being deaf or blind.
As he tossed the shovelful of debris onto the mound already in the wheelbarrow, he wondered if that little scene he had witnessed between Beau and Natalie might prove useful to him. Maybe he’d get himself into Haskell’s good graces, because he sure as hell was tired of mucking out stalls. To emphasize his disgust with the job at hand, Lute let go of the shovel, letting it fall against the stall’s wooden partition instead of propping it up. It clattered onto the cement floor about the same time he heard the creaking hinges of the barn door opening again.
Figuring it was Beau Tyler coming back in, Lute reached for the wheelbarrow handles. It wasn’t Beau who walked in, but Lute’s older cousin Sky Fletcher. Lute ran a skimming glance over Sky, noting the crisp white shirt he wore tucked into a pair of dark, belted jeans, a silver and turquoise bolo tie around his neck. A dressy, tan Stetson covered most of his midnight-black hair.
Sharp blue eyes briefly locked their attention on Lute. “I thought you’d be finished in here by now,” Sky stated even as he angled toward the stall with the pregnant mare inside it.
“Almost.” Lute couldn’t keep the bitterness out of his voice over being stuck with such a menial task. “That lady vet was just here checkin’ on the mare.”
“I know. I spoke to her outside.”
The longer he looked at Sky in his clean clothes, knowing how much his own smelled like shit and sweat, the hotter his resentment grew—until it spilled out. “Don’t see why I gotta work on the day the big boss got buried.”
Unfazed by the heat in Lute’s voice, Sky slipped into the stall, moving to the buckskin’s side. “Bull would have been the first to tell you that there’s never a day off from doing chores.”
“Maybe not, but it seems like I’m always the one shoveling shit,” he grumbled. “When you hired me on last month, this sure as hell wasn’t the kind of work I figured I’d be doing. I figured I’d be out working cattle, learning the ranch business. Dammit, you’re my cousin, Sky. You know this isn’t fit work for a Comanche.”
“It’s how I started,” Sky replied, never losing his air of calm. “Eventually I worked my way up to wrangler, and now assistant foreman.”
“And how long did that take?” Lute challenged.
“Does it matter?” Sky countered.
“Hell, yes! I’m twenty-one and I don’t plan on spending the next however many years it will take pushing this shovel.”
“That’s your job for now.” Sky gave the mare a final pat on the neck and let himself out of the stall. “Don’t forget to clean the stallion barn when you finish up here.”
“Yeah, and after I finish that, I’ll be taking a shower and headin’ into town, so don’t be looking for me around here,” Lute shouted at Sky’s back as he exited the barn.
With the closing of the barn door, Lute resumed his grip of the wheelbarrow handles and used the built-up anger inside to propel the wheelbarrow out the back of the barn, where he dumped the reeking mass into a shallow pit. For a moment he glared at the growing mound piled there, knowing that his next job was likely to be loading it up and hauling it off to be spread over the lower pastures for fertilizer while the cattle were grazing up on the caprock.
He wondered what the chances were that Slade Haskell would be at the Blue Coyote tonight. Lute had heard some talk that Haskell might be looking for drivers for his trucking company. But when he’d cornered Haskell about a job a couple weeks ago, Haskell hadn’t been hiring.
Rig
ht now there was nothing that would give Lute more pleasure than to find work somewhere else and tell Sky where he could put this shovel.
By the time the last of the guests had left, the spring night had turned chilly. A blaze crackled in the parlor’s great stone fireplace, casting its warmth out to the room’s massive leather chairs and letting it rise to the open-beamed ceiling.
Will lounged in one of the four overstuffed chairs and let his gaze slide to the occupants of the other three—his brother Beau, the ranch’s aging foreman Jasper Platt, and Sky Fletcher. He watched as his brother took a swig from the bottle of Mexican beer in his hand.
“It was a fine service, Will,” Beau said with a nod, and absently used the back of his hand to wipe away the bit of foam on his upper lip. “But there’s one thing I’ve wondered about all afternoon. Why in hell’s name did you have Garn Prescott give the eulogy? Dad hated Ferguson Prescott his whole life, and I can’t imagine that he felt much different about Prescott’s son. I could almost picture Dad turning over in his coffin when the esteemed congressman took the pulpit.”
