Rough Stock

by Dahlia West

  Relief flooded Seth, and he clenched his teeth to keep from letting out a whoop of joy at seeing them, both the man and his four-legged charges. No sense in spooking any of them or attracting the curiosity of predators up in the hills.

  Court and Sawyer, at the rear of the herd, were usually trading naughty limericks, but this afternoon they were somber, silent, perfect mirrors of each other with their dour expressions. Though not twins themselves, Court and Sawyer seemed to have an even better bond between them than Austin and Walker. Seth supposed it was because they’d lit out together to join the rodeo a few years ago and hadn’t looked back. Sawyer and Court travelled together, lived in a trailer on the road together, and competed together on a roping team in addition to their individual bronc-riding efforts. Though they’d been back for almost two months, Seth still had trouble adjusting to their presence. Sawyer’s constant jokes were wearing thin, and Court was rather surly these days, apparently preferring the roaring crowds to the relative silence of the open range.

  Sawyer wasn’t cracking jokes now, though, and one look at the cattle they were driving made it all too clear to Seth why.

  Ahead of them, Gabe slowed considerably, crossing the last quarter mile at a slow walk, settling the cows down and preparing them for a stop. When he finally got close enough—and the rest of the head crested the hill—Seth raised his hand in greeting. “Gabe,” he said, nodding, but was unable to keep his eyes off the group of cattle trailing the younger vaquero. “Shit.”

  Gabe made an affirmative grunt. “One third,” he said quietly. “We lost one third.”

  And there was no way that wolves, even multiple packs, could take out that many, so that meant they’d starved during the blizzard when the Barlows and Gabe had been unable to bring food. Just before the mercury dropped and the snow on the ground started to freeze, they’d hauled all their remaining hay bales out to the range with snow cats, hoping it was enough, then had been forced to return to the homestead and wait.

  It had not been enough.

  The storm had hit harder than even Austin could have predicted. The men had been cut off from the herd for too long.

  “Maybe,” said Seth, turning in his saddle and gazing at the trail that led down in the Gulch.

  Gabe said nothing. And that was all right. Seth hated even asking the man to go down there, but there wasn’t much choice. The younger man was so like his father before him, serious minded, responsible, loyal to a fault, even given the circumstances. And Seth hadn’t really noticed before, but Gabe also looked so much like Manny that Seth had to turn away. The guilt was still too overwhelming. He focused, instead, on Court and Sawyer heading toward them. Both the younger Barlows looked exhausted.

  “We have to head down,” said Seth.

  Court frowned. “We could wait. Make camp. Go in the morn—”

  “No,” Seth argued, knowing there was safety in numbers, and knowing, as well, that they couldn’t afford to lose even one more cow. “Wolves’ll be all over this valley come nightfall. We’ve got to keep moving.”

  He took up the lead position in the trail line and headed down into the Gulch, leaving the small number of cattle up top. It was still a half hour’s ride down into the valley where they’d left the other group. They’d split up the cattle in November, based on Austin’s prediction of record-breaking temperature drops. Even knowing what they were in for, they couldn’t predict which side of the spread would get it the worst. They were going to have losses, that much was certain. Hell they’d already lost one third of the eastern plains group. As they headed down the slope, Seth prayed silently that they hadn’t lost any more.

  The future of Snake River Ranch depended entirely on this spring’s head count…and the rest of the year’s weather.

  They made it across the plain, crossing a mile-wide swath of flatlands before they finally arrived at the almost-bottom. There, the rest of the Barlow herd, such as it was these days, stood huddled together, using the trees as protection against the wind.

  Court whooped with glee, but Seth saw that Gabe’s face hadn’t changed. He wore the hard look of watchfulness and worry. Seth, alongside the foreman, did a quick, silent head count…and swore under his breath. The number was too small.

  Gabe spoke first, because he’d no doubt done the sum in his head, as well, and came to the same conclusion. “The Gulch,” he muttered gravely. “They…might have split up on their own, before the last snowfall, and gotten cut off. The rest of them could be down in the Gulch.”

  It was true, of course. The rest of the cattle could be down in the Gulch.

  Dead in the Gulch.

  Alive in the Gulch.

  It was a toss-up.

  And someone had to go down there and find out. Seth was determined that person not be Gabriel Vasquez. “Let’s go,” he commanded Court and Sawyer, nudging Choctaw toward the farthest edge of the slope. “We need to see if there are others.”

  Gabe nudged his horse, too, and Seth nearly stopped him. But what would he say? What could he say? The man wore the look of cold dread on his sharp features and Seth honestly didn’t know how he could make that better. “Gabe—?” he said tentatively.

  “We need the count,” Gabe replied in a clipped tone.

  Seth decided not to argue.

  Thankfully, the trek down to the lowest point was easier made than discussed, but poor Choctaw’s neck was lathered from the workout back at the river, and Seth vowed to give the stallion a few days off when they got home. Seth would ride one of Dakota’s half breeds instead. Despite the ease of the trip ahead of them, Sawyer’s shoulders slumped, and he’d let his reins go slack.

  “You don’t have to come,” Court told him as they headed down. “You can stay with those heifers up top. You look like you’re about to fall out of the saddle.”

  In truth, both younger Barlows seemed to have lost their stamina for herd work these days.

  Sawyer snorted. “If I didn’t, you’d get lost and never find your way out.”

  A silence nearly as frigid as the air whipping around them settled around their small group.

  “Fuck,” Sawyer muttered. “Fuck me.”

  It was hard to be angry with Sawyer’s ill-timed remark. After all, it hadn’t been that long since the funerals.

  The heavy silence remained as they approached Riley’s Ridge, where the remains of old Kit Barlow’s original cabin still stood. The roof had partially collapsed in the back, and the barn adjacent to the living quarters was leaning precariously these days, but no one had the heart to tear it down. It was part of their heritage, where it all began, actually. It comforted Seth to see it whenever he was on the range.

  They descended into the true bottom of Star Valley, Goodman’s Gulch. Every part of their spread had been named after a Barlow, stretching back almost to the beginning of time, or so it felt like sometimes. Seth set his heels into his stirrups and leaned back as far as he could in the saddle to make it as easier for his horse.

  Choctaw reached bottom and both horse and rider leveled out. Seth was glad the slope wasn’t steep. No one wanted to risk a fall way out here.

  “It was there,” Court said suddenly, nodding his head at the stripped trees clumped up ahead of them. “That’s where they were.” He said it like he knew, like he’d even been in Wyoming at the time. Court and Sawyer had been in Oklahoma, taking second place in a team roping exhibition.

  Seth squinted anyway, through the sunlight, looking for a shimmer, looking for a ghost.

  Why? That was all Seth Barlow really wanted to know. Why the hell would Dad saddle up a horse, just hours before a storm, and head out alone to check on the herd? He’d left behind Manny, their ranch foreman and Dad’s right hand. Manny had had a cold, but it wasn’t exactly pneumonia. Dad hadn’t even asked Walker or Austin or Seth himself to come instead. He’d left early, without waking anyone. As though he could ride out, do a count, and beat the goddamn storm back to the house.

  Dad had gotten too complacen
t, Seth figured. He’d lived on this land for so long that he thought he knew everything about it. The Barlow patriarch made a fatal mistake, and they were all paying for it now. Walker and Gabe had paid the highest price of all.

  Manny Vasquez had awoken, presumably, to find his employer gone, tacked up his own horse, and headed out after him. Not telling his son or daughter, either.

  Two men who’d been too old, too independent, too used to doing things their own way.

  Upon discovery that the two men were gone, Seth, Austin, and Dakota had set off west, one half of a search party. Walker and Gabe had headed in this direction, east toward the mountains, where the terrain was tougher.

  It had been six of one, half a dozen of the other. Either direction could’ve been the right one. In the end, it was Walker and Gabe who’d found them. Dad had stopped, hunkered down to try and weather the storm. Manny had apparently never found him in the whiteout. Their bodies had been less than a quarter mile apart. It was Walker and Gabe who’d brought them back, each man packing his own father’s body on his horse then loading them into silent, somber ambulances later.

  Seth had held Dakota while she cried.

  There was nothing good about Walker taking a fall into the icy river, but the silver lining was that he did not have to journey back down here so soon after having had to pull Dad’s body out. As they passed through the copse of trees now, Seth thought they should put up a marker, or something, once the snow melted. He might do it himself to give his brothers some space. As they passed, a black-and-white magpie fluttered onto a branch right at Seth’s eye level. It didn’t make a sound. Even the birds knew that this winter had been particularly brutal for everyone.

  When they broke through the trees, Court gave another holler, as much to celebrate as to sweep away the tension, Seth supposed. The rest of the herd was there, minus several dozen by Seth’s count. Not great numbers, but not catastrophic, either.

  “I’ve got close to two hundred,” Seth said to Gabe.

  The foreman nodded. “I’ve got the same.”

  “With that other hundred up top,” Seth reminded him. He slid the radio off his belt and relayed the final count to the others back at camp.

  “Got it,” came Austin’s voice over the line. It was impossible to tell whether or not the man was as relieved as Seth felt. “Camp’s ready.” He made no commentary on their numbers. He hadn’t really said much of anything since the double funeral.

  Seth looked out over what was left of their once-great herd and to the Tetons that lay beyond. “We made it, Dad,” he whispered. His voice evaporated on the air like his breath, so that neither Court, Sawyer, nor Gabe could hear. “We just scraped by, but we made it one more winter.”

  The only answer was the wind.

  When Seth leaned forward in the saddle, he could see that some wild mustangs had joined the cows to drink from the small tributary that broke off from the Snake. Sights like this could be found nowhere else but in the West, that great untamed expanse that Kit Barlow had fallen in love with and carved out a sliver for himself more than a hundred years ago.

  A buckskin mare stood out at the front, gold dappled body, black legs, long black mane and tail. She was a vision of rugged Wyoming wilderness with her strong hocks and long, slender neck. She looked young, but it was hard to tell from here.

  Behind them, there was an explosion from the tree line that startled Choctaw. Seth turned, reaching for his rifle, prepared for a bear or a cat. But Court burst out from the tangled brush, whooping the way he did when he was hamming it up. He sped past them, spurring on BlackJack and thundering toward the herd.

  “Christ,” Sawyer muttered and nudged Cash to the right to cut off the cattle if they decided to stampede.

  “Least they’ve got a second wind,” Gabe grumbled as he and Seth watched them go.

  Seth looked at the man sideways, feeling guilty about sticking him with the babysitting duties. “I owe you a beer,” he offered in supplication.

  Gabe snorted. “And I’ll take it. Two,” he said with a nod. “One for each of them.”

  Court and Sawyer raced each other, though they were headed in different directions. Court blazed a lightning-fast trail straight toward the group at the watering hole while Sawyer took the long way around. The cattle looked up, spooked at the sound, and started to turn sharply to get away from perceived danger. Court paid them no mind, cutting around them, now chasing the herd of mustangs that had turned tail and run.

  Seth saw his younger brother going for his rope and tried not to roll his eyes.

  Court always had a good eye for female flesh, equine or otherwise, and he was all too easily distracted from his work whenever one was around. He gathered his rope and threw it but missed entirely.

  Seth groaned.

  “Mierda,” Gabe muttered. “Make that two shots of Añjeo.”

  The buckskin mare pivoted and began to sprint in the opposite direction. BlackJack, a horse more talented than his hothead rider, spun immediately and renewed the chase.

  Seth helped Sawyer turn the herd back toward the pass, and the two older brothers calmly drove them back up Riley’s Ridge, leaving Court behind.

  Seth took the lead as Sawyer fell back to take the rear.

  Court was trailing behind them by almost a half mile. It took half a dozen tries before he’d managed to lasso that buckskin mare. He gave her a long line once he did, so she didn’t attack BlackJack. Wrangling the wild female didn’t look easy. Sawyer would’ve been better at it—he was the header on their roping team after all, the first to land the rope over a steer’s horns. But Sawyer was ignoring the dog and pony show in order to bring the herd closer to camp, which was their actual job.

  Court, always the heeler, neither as accurate nor as steady as Sawyer and Seth winced, when he realized that Court was using a synthetic, piece-of-shit rope, too—no doubt a holdover from his rodeo days.

  Seth sighed heavily. Court would be Court, and there was nothing anyone could do. The youngest Barlow didn’t help at all as Seth, Sawyer, and Gabe trailed as fast as they could to race the twilight and get to camp before the sun set. Court preferred, instead, to wrestle with the mare.

  It was dark when they arrived back at the river bend. The jovial mood of the herding party dissipated, though, as they rejoined the others. Walker’s face was drawn tightly, in that way Seth had come to expect these days. The promising numbers didn’t seem to have lifted the man’s spirits at all. He and Austin had the tents out, though, four-season, heavy nylon ones, low to the ground to stand against the wind. Two to a tent, except Walker had the last one to himself. Was it the privilege of being the oldest, Seth wondered, or was Walker just not ready for company?

  Probably both.

  Ropes had been strung up between some trees for a makeshift horse pen, and Seth, Sawyer, and Court untacked their horses before setting them loose inside. Court fought with the mare to tie her to a third tree, away from the others, especially Choctaw, who wasn’t gelded and might try to mount the new, pretty female. She fought against the rope but finally tuckered out and stopped resisting, though that wild look in her eye never went away.

  Court hooted triumphantly as he gaze at his prize, chest puffing out and grinning from ear to ear.

  Walker looked pissed, jaws clenching, eyes narrowing into slits. In fact, he stood up, grunted loudly, and stomped toward the mustang.

  “Hey!” Court protested. “You can’t let her go! I was going to give her to Dakota!”

  Walker paused, glaring at Court. Everyone watched as he turned, snatched up a reata, and stalked back toward the horse, fingering the braided rawhide rope in his hands.

  Court opened his mouth to argue then wisely snapped it shut again.

  The mare balked as Walker approached. He lifted his arm high, swinging it in a lazy, counterclockwise loop. At the apex, with a flick of his wrist, he let the rope fly. It snagged the mare over her head, and Walker tightened it gently. Approaching with caution, and drawin
g out a long blade from the sheath on his hip, Walker cut the synthetic rope and loosened it, dropping it to the ground. He re-tied the horse around the same tree, bent to gather Court’s shitty rope, and tossed it into the campfire.

  Nobody moved as they watched it catch and burn.

  “I think it’s about time you remember who you are.” Walker was looking at the fire, but there was no doubt to whom he was speaking.

  The silence was heavy and dry around them, like it too might catch a spark and burst into flames.

  The brothers were of Mexican descent; all of them were, though only Gabe and Dakota spoke Spanish now. The Barlows weren’t just cowboys, but half-vaqueros, ever since Kit Barlow had first laid eyes on Rafaela, an immigrant girl who’d come to the wild lands of Wyoming with her family in the late 1800s. He’d taken her as his bride, adopted her culture, her family’s ranching ways, and the Barlows had carried on the old traditions, even into modern times, many of them intermarrying with Vaquero girls from old families who’d settled the area.

  In one hundred years, the Barlows had never lost sight of their past. Even their late father, Rafe, was named after their fiery grandmother, Rafaela.

  Watching Court leave Snake River to join the rodeo circuit had been difficult for all of them. To see him return with a synthetic rope, like some kind of…Texas cowboy…and no more mature now at twenty-six than he’d been when he’d left at twenty, well…

  “If he could see you now,” Walker said in a near-whisper.

  Seth watched Court’s eyes widen. “Okay!” Sawyer said, cutting through the tension. He grabbed Court’s arm and pulled him toward his tent. “It’s late. We’re all tired. Hit the sack.”

  Court flung Seth’s arm off, looking like he was going to spit nails or take a run at Walker.

  Seth shoved him, hard, in the direction of the tent. “Not tonight,” he growled in his younger brother’s ear. “Not tonight.”

  Court’s nostrils flared, but finally he turned and ducked into his tent.