“Which way?” David called over his shoulder as he skidded around the corner.
“Out there,” she said.
When he saw where she pointed, his guts twisted into a knot of barbed wire. Even as he pushed into a sprint, he knew he’d never get there in time.
He couldn’t beat Muddy to the highway.
* * *
Eighteen hours later, David slumped onto the fender of his horse trailer, exhausted and sick to his soul. The sheriff’s deputy who’d been his companion and search partner for most of the night scrubbed a hand over bloodshot eyes.
“Well, the good news is we haven’t had a report of a horse being hit on any of the highways,” the deputy said.
David nodded. He’d started out terrified Muddy would run through a fence or in front of a car, or step in a hole in the dark and break a leg. But that was hours ago. There hadn’t been so much as a glimpse of a stray horse since Muddy cleared the parking lot. David swallowed hard, choking on dread and guilt. How could he have let this happen?
“Damnedest thing,” the deputy said, shaking his head. “It’s like he just dropped off the face of the earth.”
David slumped, burying his face in his hands, exhaustion crashing down on him as he faced the awful truth. Muddy was gone, and he had no one to blame but himself.
Chapter 2
Sisters, Oregon. Four years later.
David unhooked the strap of his hard fiberglass rope can from his saddle horn and heaved the can as hard as he could at the nearest tire of his horse trailer. It missed, skidding like an oversize hockey puck and landing under the trailer instead.
Shit. He couldn’t even throw a decent tantrum.
“Trashy little bastard,” a cowboy at the next horse trailer said, referring to the calf David had just roped and tied in two seconds too long to win a check.
“Yeah.” But not that bad. If his horse had stopped a little quicker, got back a little faster to take out the slack, the calf wouldn’t have had time to come up the rope and get his head past David’s thigh. He gave the horse in question a disgusted glare, then immediately kicked himself when Frosty gazed back, his eyes soft and uncomprehending.
Frosty was doing his best. He couldn’t change the tendency to pedal his front feet and slide a little extra when he stopped. Considering David’s uncle had loaned him the horse and refused to accept more than half of the usual twenty-five percent of his winnings for mount money, Frosty was a steal.
He just wasn’t Muddy. No horse was…or ever would be. After all this time, David could still feel the slam-bang power of Muddy’s stop. Still caught himself looking for that ugly little bastard around every corner, in every roadside pasture.
The official search had been called off after two days, when the sheriff’s department had concluded someone had picked him up and hauled him off. It was the only logical explanation, supported by testimony from a woman living a couple miles from the rodeo grounds in the direction Muddy was last seen running. She’d noticed a horse trailer stopped on the road for a few minutes while she was watching the fireworks in the distance. She’d thought nothing of it until she’d seen one of the missing-horse posters David had distributed around town.
Mystery solved. Muddy hadn’t vaporized. Some jerk had caught him out of the road ditch, jumped him in his horse trailer, and driven away.
Three months later, a friend had recognized David’s saddle at a pawnshop in Billings, Montana. The owner vaguely recalled a Native American woman bringing it in with a story about how her boyfriend had left it to her when he died, which David assumed was a line of bull. The jerk had probably been waiting out in the pickup.
David had papered every sale barn, feed store, and gas station in five states with posters offering a reward for Muddy’s safe return. He’d posted messages on Facebook, taken out ads in every horse-related newspaper and magazine in the country. Trouble was, Muddy was a plain brown horse with no distinguishing marks, not even a decent brand, thanks to a wire cut when he was six years old that had mangled the Circle P on his shoulder.
The offer of five grand for information leading to Muddy’s return had netted David dozens of calls, but none of the horses had turned out to be the right ugly brown gelding.
David uncinched that same saddle with hard, quick jerks. Stop moping, dammit. He’d vowed to look forward, make the best of what he had now. Let go of the fantasy that Muddy would reappear and all would be right with the world, the way it hadn’t been since that night in Cody.
“You’ve sure had shit for luck the past few weeks,” the cowboy at the next trailer said as he coiled his ropes and stowed them away. “Starts to make a guy wonder if he oughta go to church more or something.”
“Yeah. Or something.”
The lanky cowboy grinned over at David. “Come on home to Louisiana with me. I’ll take you out in the bayou, introduce you to an old lady who knows all kinds of somethin’.”
David huffed out a laugh. “If I keep going like this, I might have to take you up on that.”
He wasn’t sure even voodoo could lift this hex. After all, he’d broken the cardinal rule of roping. Take care of your horse first, then yourself. Christian or not, every cowboy knew the rodeo gods could be harsh bastards, and they would have their payback.
In his more fanciful moments, David imagined them somewhere up above, grizzled buckaroos kicked back on a sagging wooden porch, spitting tobacco between what was left of their teeth and boring each other with old rodeo stories while they rendered judgment. Shaking their heads in disgust at his foolishness.
“We gave you a great gift, a horse above all horses, and that’s how you took care of him? Five years of bad luck for you, sonny. And if we hear you bitchin’ about it, we’ll make it ten.”
They’d taken everything that mattered. His confidence. His girl. He might’ve even blamed them for torturing the land he loved, the ranch his family had worked for four generations, but all the neighbors were suffering just as bad, and even David wasn’t superstitious enough to think it was his fault.
Year by year, the rains had become more scarce, until the lush grass of the Colorado plains withered away and the earth cracked into a mosaic of despair. With every passing cloudless day, the chances of keeping their herd intact withered, too.
His cell rang, snapping him out of his pity party. He glanced at the number before answering. “Hey, Dad. What’s up?”
“Just wondering how it went out there.”
David swallowed a sigh, wishing he had better news. Anything to lift some of the weight from his dad’s shoulders, if only for a few minutes. “No good. Drew a pig, couldn’t get him flanked clean.”
“Ah. Well. That’s how it goes.”
“Yeah.” But it had been going like that for close to a month. David had run through his entire collection of lucky shirts without a trip to the pay window. Even the one his grandma had given him for Christmas hadn’t done the trick, and it used to be damn near foolproof.
“Anything new down there?” he asked. Like a couple inches of rain? Except he knew better, because he checked his hometown weather every morning.
“There’s showers in the forecast later in the week. Doesn’t look like it’ll amount to much. But I found a place in South Dakota to get some hay for a decent price.”
Feeding cattle in June. Geezus. David pushed his hat back on his head and wiped away sweat with a shirtsleeve as he stared over Frosty’s back at the trio of snowcapped volcanic peaks that gave the town of Sisters its name. If he could only scoop up all that moisture and take it home with him.
His dad cleared his throat. “Your mother thought you should know… Emily has been home visiting. She’s expecting a baby in November.”
The news was a sucker punch to the gut, even though David had known it was only a matter of time. She’d been married for over two years, and she’d always wanted
kids. Preferably with a man she could count on to keep them in diapers from one year to the next, like the doctor she’d met while doing her nursing practicum a few months after Muddy went missing.
“Deceitful, gold-digging bitch,” his sister had said of her former close friend. His mother had been kinder, saying not every woman was cut out to be a professional cowboy’s wife, and wasn’t it better they’d found out before they were married?
David would rather not have found out at all.
“I bet her parents are thrilled,” he choked out.
“Over the moon,” his dad said, and changed the subject. “Are you heading to Hermiston tonight?”
“Yeah. I’m not up at Reno until Friday afternoon.” Which gave him five days to hunker at a friend’s place near Hermiston, Oregon, tuning himself and Frosty up in the practice pen and shoeing a few horses to pad his very thin wallet.
He rotated his shoulders, wincing at the twinge in his back. The longer this dry spell went on, the more he had to count on his skill as a farrier to keep him going. The bending and lifting took a toll on his body, but he’d squirreled away enough cash to get through until the middle of July, assuming nothing unexpected jumped up and bit him in the wallet.
Lord, he was tired of skating this razor-thin edge. He couldn’t remember the last time he’d had more than a lungful of breathing room in his budget. When he’d been able to ride in the arena and rope without the added pressure of knowing he really, really needed the money.
The wad of cash he’d accumulated in the months before he’d lost Muddy had disappeared almost as fast as the horse. He’d spent hundreds on ads and flyers, then he’d had to lease a mount to finish out the season. They’d never really clicked, but David had pushed on, sure his luck would turn—if not during the regular season, at least at the National Finals.
Wrong. His debut at the big show had been a disaster. In ten rounds, running at over twenty thousand dollars every time he nodded his head, he’d won zilch. Nada. Skunked.
His parents patted his back and said, “Don’t worry, you’ll get ’em next time.”
His sister said he’d never be competitive again if he couldn’t get over believing in his so-called curse. David said nothing.
But he didn’t quit. He kept pushing, even when he didn’t have a dollar left in his checking account. Sooner or later, he’d break loose. Hit it right at a couple of big rodeos, be back in the green. He kept entering, like a gambler shoving one more dollar into the slot machine until he’d maxed out every credit card and gas card he owned.
When the collection agencies started pestering his parents, he’d had to admit he was in completely over his head. The local banker in his hometown had helped him work out a debt repayment plan, but they wanted to see proof of a steady income, so he took a job at the feed store. Two years of peddling cattle mineral and feed supplements, shoeing and training horses on the side, earning his keep at home by helping out when they needed an extra hand, and he’d dug himself out of the hole.
Financially, anyway. Emotionally, he couldn’t pull out of the tailspin. The days stacked up, one on top of the other, the sameness and the drudgery weighing down his soul, pushing him farther under until his dreams were nothing but a distant speck of light. He took to stopping at the bar after work, sipping a beer or two, sometimes more, so it would be late enough when he got home that he could go straight to the bunkhouse and avoid his mother’s concerned gaze.
Sometimes, if the right woman made the right offer, he didn’t make it home at all.
As the drought worsened, so did the market for his skills. Everyone was cutting back. There were fewer horses to shoe and ride, fewer ranchers able to afford the goods he was peddling. The night the feed-store manager laid him off, he hit bottom, and he led with his face. He woke up the next morning with a black eye, a killer hangover, and no real recollection of why he’d taken a swing at a former high-school classmate, other than an overwhelming urge to punch something. Anything.
Two days later, his uncle offered him Frosty. When David tried to decline, his mother sat him down and set him straight. “It’s time, David. Roping is your heart and soul, and you’ve put it aside long enough. Being here, moping around…it isn’t good for you.”
His face was still throbbing like an exposed nerve, so he couldn’t exactly argue. He did as he was told. Got back in shape. Got back on the road. Managed to win enough to keep himself and Frosty fed. Last season, he’d clawed his way into the top twenty-five in the standings, but not the magical top fifteen and another trip to the National Finals.
So far this year, he’d been scraping along, picking up checks on a steady basis, but no major paydays. He made good runs when he got the chance, but for every decent calf he drew, there were two running, ducking, kicking pieces of crap, and he didn’t have the horse power to level the playing field. Still, he was within striking distance. He could close the gap in a hurry if he got on a hot streak during the run of big rodeos around the Fourth of July, known as Cowboy Christmas because there was so much prize money being handed out.
With a little luck…
“Well,” his dad said again into a silence that had stretched too long. “I’d better let you go. Call us when you get to Hermiston.”
“I will. Give Mom a hug.”
They hung up, ending another in a string of pained conversations. David knew they worried, and he wished he had the words to convince them he was better now, if nowhere near his best. His dad knew David worried about the ranch, the drought, but he didn’t believe in complaining. Between the two, it didn’t leave a whole lot to talk about.
Even David’s sister didn’t have the nerve to suggest he should try to get on with his love life. They all understood that Emily had broken more than his heart. She’d shattered his most closely held convictions about the meaning of love and commitment, left him without the will to gather up the pieces and cobble them together again. Why bother? So someone else could come along and destroy him all over again?
He stowed his gear in the tack compartment at the rear of the trailer and filled a bucket of water from the built-in tank. While Frosty drank, David sat on the fender of the trailer and gazed out at the mountains. He had to focus on the positive. Frosty had some flaws, but he was still a better horse than what eighty percent of the guys were riding.
Late at night, when the road was long and the paychecks hard to come by, David couldn’t help but wonder if the horse was really the problem. What if it was true, what he’d said to that little blond gal in Cody? That without Muddy, he was just one more guy with a rope. A guy who didn’t quite have what it took when push came to shove.
His phone rang again, an unfamiliar number. “’Lo?”
“David? Hey, it’s Shane Colston. Where are you?”
“Sisters. Why?”
“Listen, you’re not going to believe this…”
His heart sank. Not again. How many times had he gotten this call from a well-meaning friend? Every single one had been a false alarm, but his pulse still jumped and that wiggle of hope squirmed in his gut.
“I’m at the Montana State High School Rodeo Finals in Kalispell. My brother’s girl is competing,” Shane was saying. “And I swear to God, David, I’m standing here looking at Muddy.”
David made a noise that was supposed to pass for an answer, but it didn’t matter because Shane kept going.
“There’s an Indian kid from Browning, name’s Kylan Runningbird. When he rode in the arena, I thought, ‘Damn, that horse is almost as ugly as old Muddy.’ Then the kid threw his rope, and holy hell, David. Nothin’ can stop like that.”
David felt his heartbeat pick up and was disgusted by his response. Why was he doing this to himself again? It’d been four years. Muddy wasn’t going to pop up out of nowhere.
“You can see for yourself,” Shane insisted. “I videoed the kid’s next run on my phone. I
’m sending it right now.”
When the message came through, David hesitated, his finger poised over the button. This was stupid. It would be another brown horse with a hammer head and a better-than-average stop, and all he’d get out of it was a chill when one more tiny flare of hope died.
He pushed the button. Shane had managed to get close enough for a decent shot, but on the puny, scratched screen of David’s not-so-smart phone, he could only see that the horse was the right size and color. He watched the kid ride into the box, turn, and start to back into the corner.
The horse shoved hard into the bit and kicked up both hind feet.
David dropped the phone. It bounced off his boot and under the trailer, and by the time he fell to his knees and fished it out, the video was over. He played it again, squinting so close to the screen his nose touched the keys. There was the kick in the box. And that stop. Wham! Numbness swept over him, starting at his feet and crawling upward like he was having a stroke. The phone fell on the ground again.
Holy hell was right. It really was Muddy.
Chapter 3
The Sunday afternoon performance was well under way when David pulled into the Kalispell fairgrounds. He’d left Sisters as quick as he could get his rig rolling, but it had been an eleven-hour drive, and he’d had to stop a couple times to give Frosty a break.
His hands fumbled with latches and ropes as he unloaded the horse, hung a bucket of water and a hay bag on the side of the trailer, and then took off for the arena. His instinct was to rush straight to the roping box and find the horse that almost had to be Muddy, but he forced himself to steer clear. The middle of a high school rodeo was not the time or place to make a scene.
He worked his way through the warm-up area, the mob of kids trotting circles, double-and triple-checking ropes and cinches, but there was no sight of Muddy. Around the infield side of the arena, he found a spot to lean in the shade of the bleachers. Just in time. The calf roping had started.
Last Chance Rodeo Page 2