Handful of Sky

by Cates, Tory

  They drove down Central Avenue, passing turquoise-jewelry outlets, motels named for Indian spirits, and X-rated bookstores. Low-slung cars sporting tiny steering wheels of welded chain and upholstered in crushed velvet splendor prowled the street. Above the tackiness of Albuquerque’s main street loomed the eternals in Shallie’s life—the granite blue Sandia Mountains and the boundless sky.

  As they covered the miles between Albuquerque and the Double L, against her will Shallie’s thoughts drifted back to the Circle M. Such a short amount of time had passed there, yet what an upheaval it had created in her life. She was so absorbed that she didn’t notice that Uncle Walter was uncharacteristically quiet. He had to clear his throat twice to capture her attention.

  “Petey, he . . . uh . . . well, he told me what happened with Hoskins.” He spat the name out as if it had a vile taste. “I wanted to flay that man alive when I found out he’d laid a hand on you. I never should have sent the two of you off together.”

  Shallie watched her sweet old bachelor uncle color with anger and embarrassment. “Petey also told me about McIver’s little bronc rider charade. I owe that young man a debt of gratitude. Makes me shudder to think what might have happened if he hadn’t come along.” Anxious to change the subject, he went on. “That Petey is about the best hand we’ve ever had working the place. And, without that Hoskins around, even Cahill is starting to put in a full day’s work.”

  Her uncle’s voice blended in with the scenery as he recited the contracts that had come in while she’d been gone. What grain rations he had the horses on. Which of the bucking bulls he’d decided to breed. The new rodeo clown he’d heard of. They ascended smoothly into the Sandias along a wide, sweeping highway past a sign indicating the turnoff for a nearby ski area and continued on until they crested the mountains and descended into the high plains that were home for the Double L. The gritty wind was still blowing when they pulled up outside the ramshackle adobe house. Shallie thought longingly of the soft breezes along the Colorado River. She quickly shooed the traitorous thoughts from her mind. She had more important matters to occupy her.

  Shallie spent the rest of the day, with Petey at her side, working through the Double L’s string of bucking horses, doctoring the high-strung animals for all the myriad ailments that horseflesh is heir to. Petey was a bright and able helper, so eager to be useful that he seemed to anticipate Shallie’s every need, handing her the pressurized can of antiseptic powder or a syringe of antitetanus vaccine before she even requested them. It was a delightful experience after working with the sullen Hoskins.

  By the time they dragged wearily into the house that evening, Walter already had a hot meal on the table waiting for them. Shallie was famished and silence reigned as she and Petey concentrated on the steaming bowls.

  “It’s funny.” Shallie laughed after taking the edge off her hunger. “After a day like we just put in pampering those nags, to think about the so-called animal lovers who are so worried that rodeo stock is mistreated.”

  “It is a little crazy,” Uncle Walter agreed. “Most of those horses would have ended up at the glue factory if it hadn’t been for rodeo. Instead they get a lifetime of good pasture and grain with maybe five minutes of work a year.”

  “Right,” Shallie agreed. “And that ‘work’ is doing what they love best—throwing cowboys into the dirt.”

  Though Petey smiled along with Shallie and her uncle, Shallie felt she’d unintentionally excluded him and reached for the notepad that had been the vehicle for their communication all day.

  “Petey,” she wrote in her strong, forthright hand, “were you raised on a ranch?”

  The ruddy-cheeked boy nodded his head in a vigorous “yes.” Taking the paper and pen, he wrote, “Got the switch a thousand times for riding my daddy’s milking cows.”

  “A true rodeo cowboy,” Shallie wrote, laughing along with Petey. “How did you end up at the Circle M?” Shallie wished she could have thought of a topic of conversation unrelated to Hunt McIver, but she couldn’t come up with one.

  “Went to rodeo school there. Want to be a bull rider. Didn’t have tuition. Hunt let me work it off.” Petey, a veteran note writer, cut out as many superfluous words as he could pare away.

  “You ride bulls?” Her initial assessment of Petey’s physique had been accurate.

  Petey nodded his head wearily as if he’d answered the same question a thousand times. “YES!” he wrote, grinding the pen into the paper. “Hunt only one who believes a deaf cowboy can ride in rodeos. PRCA won’t give me permit. Afraid I’ll ride forever if I can’t hear the eight-second buzzer.” Petey’s short burst of laughter sounded as if it had come from an amused robot.

  “Hunt’s the best,” Petey scribbled on. “When I showed up at his school last year, he learned sign language so he could tell me what bull-riding teacher was saying. Helps me all the time. Lets me ride his bulls. Everybody else thinks deaf means cripple. Not Hunt.”

  Shallie had difficulty reconciling a Hunt McIver who would learn sign language to help out a deaf bull rider with the compassionless sort of man it would take to live with Jake McIver. But Shallie knew that there were two standards of behavior in rodeo, one for women, in which nothing other than the conquest mattered. And another one for men. Within the second, deep friendship and awesome acts of loyalty blossomed. Lucky for Petey he was covered by that standard. Besides, Shallie decided, it probably puffed up Hunt’s ego to have such an appealing fellow idolize him.

  The next hour passed quickly, with Petey scratching out his life story as fast as he could get the words down. His powerful need to communicate made Shallie suspect that, gifted with speech, Petey would have been among the most garrulous of people. He told about growing up on a small ranch in West Texas where “tarantulas big as poodle dogs” would creep across the sunbaked highways, about his three older sisters who had “babied” him to death, how he’d ridden in every podunk rodeo in his half of the state and won at bull riding in most of them.

  Hunt McIver’s rodeo school had become his goal three years ago and he’d worked toward it ever since. It was a stepping stone to an even bigger goal—becoming a PRCA member. And that’s how he had wound up on Hunt’s doorstep, broke and dying to ride every bull on the place.

  Shallie was admiring the irrepressible zest for life that shone on Petey’s face when her uncle’s landline rang. Her uncle rose shakily on creaking knees.

  “I’ll get it. It’s probably Morgan Hendrix about those roping calves he wants to borrow.”

  Not until she’d heard the phone ring did Shallie admit to the hope she’d been harboring all day—that, in spite of the fact that he didn’t have her cell number, Hunt would call. That somehow her instincts about him were wrong. She watched her uncle’s slow progress toward the living room and strained to hear his words as he spoke into the receiver. When he didn’t turn and call out, “Shallie, it’s for you,” she slumped into her chair. That slight motion and general deflation that accompanied it were not lost on Petey.

  “Not Hunt?” he wrote.

  Shallie felt exposed, her stupid adolescent crush laid bare for all to see. Of course, it probably wasn’t the first time that Petey had seen a female acting like a moony cow over his employer. She pursed her lips and shook her head, not wanting to reveal any more than could be divined from a tight nod.

  Uncle Walter returned to the dining room, scratching a spot above his ear. “That’s puzzling.”

  “What’s that?” Shallie asked, forcing herself to act interested.

  “That was Hunt McIver.”

  “What did he want?” Shallie managed to ask the question with an unconcerned coolness while squelching the question burning on her lips—Why didn’t he ask for me?

  “Seems Jake’s got the contract, as usual, to put on the rodeo in Albuquerque next month and they don’t have enough roping calves to fill it. So Hunt wants us to haul up a load of calves and one bucking horse. Pegasus. He wants us to bring that horse you just trad
ed them for. Now, isn’t that curious?”

  Shallie didn’t answer. Her uncle was already absorbed in transmitting Hunt’s message and his greetings to Petey. Suddenly the small house seemed close and overheated. She grabbed her parka from a peg by the front door.

  “Going to check the stock,” she called out behind her as she shut the door. The air, calm now and with just the slightest cool reminder of winter, was a relief. A ruff of clouds hugged the Sandias. The brittle husks of chamisa plants, their gay yellow flowers long since turned to dust, rattled drily in the wind. A breeze ruffled the pasture full of dark-headed blue grama grass.

  Shallie stalked off toward the barn, the hurried beat of her boots across the pebbled drive matching the accelerated beat of her thoughts. Did Hunt want to see her again?

  In the barn she peeked into Pegasus’s stall and confronted the real reason Hunt had called. If ever there was an animal to challenge a bronc rider, to call forth his best, it was Pegasus. As much as cowboys feared and cursed a rank horse, they prayed with an equal fervor that they would draw one. Only on a mount with “try” to match their own, did they have a chance of marking a money-winning score. And no horse had more of that elusive quality than Pegasus.

  The roan, his blue dappling like a saddle of melting snowflakes on his white back, rolled a magnificently disdainful eye toward his visitor and whinnied softly. He looked as haughty and proud, as untamable, as he had that first night in the Texas moonlight. Shallie struggled against the thought but couldn’t keep herself from making an equation between the invincible animal and Hunt’s own adventuring spirit. The very quality that made them the best, the most desirable, was exactly what rendered them so totally unsuitable for ordinary life.

  “It’s a curse,” she whispered to the horse. A thoroughly uninterested Pegasus went on chomping hay.

  Chapter 10

  Shallie looked over her shoulder into the full-length mirror. The tailored black gabardine slacks fit perfectly, emphasizing the pert curve of her buttocks, then falling straight down the length of her slender legs to the tops of her boots. A cowl-necked top of soft lilac jersey was tucked into the waistband, which she’d cinched closed with the Contractor of the Year buckle presented to her the previous spring by the Little Britches Rodeo Association, in appreciation for the fine quality stock she’d supplied their competitions. Her freshly washed hair shone with a fragrant golden patina. A delicate plum gloss slicked her lips. She was just settling her new teal-blue Resistol hat on her head when she tore it off. The pants and top followed.

  How ridiculously obvious! she berated herself. For years I’ve worn jeans and old boots to rodeos. Now, suddenly, after one meaningless night with Hunt McIver, I start primping like I’m going to be walking down a ramp with a tiara on my head, holding an armful of roses instead of herding steers. She reminded herself again that one solid month had passed without so much as a postcard. It had been a month in which all her chilliest assessments of Hunt McIver had been borne out.

  “What’s the holdup, Shallie?” her uncle called out. “The steers and that horse of yours are loaded up and waiting. Performance starts at eight. That only gives us a couple hours to get out there and set up.”

  Before he had a chance to finish, Shallie burst through the door, wearing her standard uniform of jeans and a leather jacket. She’d even scrubbed off the lip gloss. “Let’s go,” she glowered, her annoyance with herself peppering her words.

  * * *

  The rodeo coliseum was a huge turquoise oval. As they approached it, Petey nudged Shallie, pointing to a huge banner that flapped over the entrance. It read “Welcome Rodeo Fans” and featured a movie screen–sized close-up of Hunt squinting into a setting sun beneath a Jameson hat, the sponsor of the ad. His eyes were narrowed to smoldering slits, glittering a crystalline blue against the mahogany of his tan. His mouth was set in a hard line that suggested sensuousness, a hint of cruelty, and absolute dominance over all he surveyed. The effect was heart-stopping, in spite of the fact that Shallie fully realized Hunt had been posed, lighted, and coached to produce that precise reaction. The exuberant smile faded from Petey’s mute lips when he saw the scowl on Shallie’s.

  They pulled around to the far side of the coliseum, where the stock pens were located, and began unloading.

  “Go on and take that horse of yours around to the bucking chutes,” her uncle told Shallie. “Petey and I’ll get the calves sorted and penned.”

  Shallie felt like an escaped criminal on the run as she made her way inside the coliseum leading Pegasus. From the moment she entered the brightly lit arena, Shallie felt she was being watched, that Hunt’s eyes were tracking her every move. She could sense his presence. The inevitability of their meeting both tantalized and terrified her. Only the familiar animal smells comforted her as she approached the chutes.

  “Hey, Shallie, how’s it going?” Soft-spoken greetings welcomed her from cowboys who had come to know and accept her as Walt Larkin’s “little niece.” She slipped past the barrier that prevented anyone who was not a member of the exclusive rodeo fraternity from entering the area behind the chutes, where the cowboys prepared for their events.

  “Heard you was bringing the calves tonight,” said a beefy man with arms as long as a gorilla’s. “Glad to see it’s true.”

  “Thanks, Ty.” Shallie smiled at the calf roper.

  “Ty Weatherby!” Her uncle’s voice echoed down the concrete corridor leading into the arena. Petey trailed behind him. Shallie stepped away as the men shook hands and pounded each other’s upper arms. A crowd of ropers gathered to visit with their favorite contractor, Walter Larkin. It cheered Shallie to see her uncle brighten in the company of his old roping buddies.

  “Shalimar Larkin.” Shallie stiffened. There was only one man who used her full name. “You pretty little thing, who’s that ugly fellow with you?” Jake McIver’s voice ricocheted off the arena walls.

  “Jake McIver. How have you been?” Her uncle pumped McIver’s hand.

  “Pretty fair. How about yourself? How’s half of the best head-and-heels team to ever get down the road doing?”

  “Can’t complain, other than a bad deal some slick horse trader pulled on my niece.”

  McIver held up his hands as if to defend himself. “Now, I told Shallie to tell you that that trade was strictly her idea. She talked me into it.”

  “Don’t worry, Jake,” Walter said, his smile belying the teasing anger in his voice, “Shallie told me.”

  “Walter, I’d like you to meet Miss Trish Stephans.” Trish stepped forward, preceded by a thick jasmine-scented cloud. “Trish, I believe you and Shallie know each other already.”

  “How have you been?” Shallie asked.

  “Never better, actually,” Trish answered, looking at Jake with a gleam in her eye. “As a matter of fact, you might say that this is one of the best nights of my life.”

  Shallie decided not to rise to the bait and inquire about her cryptic comment.

  “You better run along, Sugar,” Jake advised, kissing her on the cheek. Trish whirled and left.

  “How about joining me in my box?” McIver asked expansively. “We’ll have a better view than Slick Bridgers up there.” McIver gestured toward the rodeo announcer, a Western dandy dressed in a shimmering lime-green suit, accented by white boots and tie, perched on a platform above the bucking chutes. “And,” McIver added with a twinkle, “if you’d care to join me, I can offer you an abundance of liquid refreshment.”

  Ordinarily Shallie would have refused the invitation, preferring to be a part of the drama behind the chutes. But not tonight. Tonight she wanted to hide as far from the center of action as possible, because that is precisely where Hunt would be. Fortunately she and her uncle didn’t have to work tonight. Once they had deposited the stock Hunt had requested, Circle M’s professional crew took over.

  Shallie settled into the plush private box and took advantage of the rare opportunity to really observe the folksy pageantry of a prof
essional rodeo. An Indian man entered, his black hair pulled back and wrapped tightly with a red bandanna, followed by his wife, a squat woman in a purple velveteen blouse and voluminous print skirt. Chunks of turquoise studded their silver bracelets, belts, and squash-blossom necklaces.

  The couple was trailed by a gaggle of junior high girls giggling behind the outsized combs they held to their mouths. The girls were the object of some intense scrutiny from a gang of teenage boys wearing crumpled straw hats and T-shirts cut off just below their armpits.

  The clink of glass caught Shallie’s attention and she turned to see Jake and her uncle hoisting a toast. Slick Bridgers announced the Grand Entry. The whirling tapestry of gleaming horses and costumed riders was doubly spectacular from the vantage point afforded by a private box.

  “And now, ladies and gentlemen”—Slick Bridgers called for attention as dozens of riders pulled their mounts aside to form one long entryway—“it gives me great pleasure to present to you this year’s Rodeo Sweetheart.” The lights dimmed and a spotlight focused on the cleared pathway. Slick Bridgers continued his introduction. “Each year at this time we have the privilege of announcing the winner of this most coveted title. The holder of the Rodeo Sweetheart title is selected by a committee composed of contractors, contestants, sponsors, and rodeo aficionados. The committee makes its choice on the basis of beauty, personality, and rodeo spirit.

  “And here she is, America’s Rodeo Sweetheart, Trish Stephans.”

  Shallie felt her stomach drop as Trish rode into the spotlight on a glistening palomino. She was dressed from head to toe, hat to boots, in black velvet. The crowd broke into an appreciative roar of applause. At the same moment Jake McIver unloosed a deep, rolling belly laugh, as if he’d just pulled off the practical joke of a lifetime. Trish looked like a fairy princess mounted on her golden steed.

  How perfect she and Hunt would be together, Shallie thought bitterly. Now that Trish had gotten what she’d wanted from McIver Senior—the introductions to the people who had given her her crown—she could indulge herself by going after McIver Junior. They would be rodeo’s sweetheart couple, a matched pair of dark beauties.