The Cowboy's Baby: Devlin Brothers Ranch

by Joanna Bell

  There wasn't much conversation, because the wind was blowing too hard to hear each other and Jackson was busy keeping Trigger extra calm so I didn't freak out.

  After what seemed like hours of slow progress, though, we finally came to a stop.

  "The river valley!" Jackson shouted over his shoulder, gesturing to the inky blackness that lay below and in front of us.

  I loosened my grip on him just enough to lean out and peer into the dark, but I couldn't see a thing.

  "What am I supposed to be looking –"

  "Shhhh!"

  Confused, I stopped talking. What the hell were we doing out there on such a cold night? The narrow strip of exposed skin between where the knit hat I was wearing hit my eyebrows and the scarf came up to just under my eyes was frozen almost to numbness.

  "Jack–" I started a few moments later but he held his hand up instantly, signaling for me to be quiet.

  That was when I noticed that the wind had taken on a creepy new note, howling out of the valley below and down through the foothills to town. I cocked my head a little, fascinated by the new sound. Was it the wind?

  "Do you hear them? Listen!"

  I pushed the hat up, uncovering my ears just in time for another howl to fill the night. A cold thrill passed through my body, making me stiffen and sit up higher in the saddle behind Jackson. It wasn't the winter winds howling out of the valley. It was wolves.

  "Can you hear them now?" Jackson asked and I nodded, awed. I'd never heard wolves before, only coyotes. I knew they were around, though. Every now and again the squabble between ranchers and biologists about how many wolves were too many would flare up again and make the news.

  Before I could protest, Jackson dismounted the horse and lifted me down after him.

  "Is – is it OK?" I asked, pretty sure my shivering wasn't entirely about how cold it was.

  "It's fine. They're on the other side. They couldn't get over here even if they wanted to – and believe me, they don't. Wolves aren't any danger to us."

  I turned towards it as the howling began again, a chorus that time, one that filled me with an emotion I could not describe.

  "They sound so...wild." I commented inadequately. "And lonely."

  "You've never heard them before?"

  I shook my head. "No. Only coyotes."

  "Check this out."

  Jackson cupped both his hands around his mouth and, to my utter surprise, let out a surprisingly accurate howl of his own. At first I thought he was trying to make me laugh, but you could have knocked me over with a damn feather a few seconds later when more howls, from a different location across the valley, rang out in response.

  "Wait," I said, not quite believing what I was hearing. "Are they –?"

  "They're howling back. They do this every night, the different packs howling at each other like this. It's just communication."

  "And now they think you're one of them? Do you do this all the time?"

  "Not every night. And as much as I want you to think I'm some magical wolf whisperer the truth is anyone can do this. All you have to do is howl at them and they're happy to howl back. You should try it."

  "No," I shook my head, smiling nervously. "I can't. I don't know how."

  Jackson held his hands up to his mouth and let out another howl of his own before looking back at me as the wolves answered from across the dark, frozen waters of the Yellowhead River.

  "I can't," I repeated. "Well, maybe I could – but if you think I'm going to start howling at wolves in front of you, you're wrong."

  He laughed and then went quiet for a few seconds before asking if I was still drawing.

  "Uh-huh," I replied. "I'm actually trying to put a portfolio together, even though there's probably no point."

  "A portfolio?"

  We were from such different worlds. "Yeah. You need a portfolio of your work if you're going to apply to art school."

  The wolves on the other side of the river let out another chorus of howls.

  "What do you mean about there being no point?" Jackson asked.

  We were standing really close to each other. I wanted to lean against him, hold his hand, touch him somehow. But I didn't.

  "It's really expensive," I told him, trying to keep the sadness out of my voice. "Even the smaller programs. If I don't get a scholarship I probably won't be able to go, even if I do get in. Especially if I get into Fischer."

  "Fischer? What's that?"

  "The Fischer Institute of the Arts. It's the best art school in America – but it costs a whole lot to go there."

  It was too cold to stay out for very long, so within 20 minutes we were headed back. I was glad of the inability to converse while we were riding because I didn't have the first clue how I was going to put into words what I was feeling – or if I even wanted to put it into words at all.

  Jackson was different. Anyone could see that by looking at him, but I'm not talking about the physical differences between a boy and a man. I'm talking about the less tangible ways in which manhood imposes itself on cocky, puppyish teenagers. I'm talking about how totally safe I felt that night, in spite of the bitter cold and the horse and the wolves. I'm talking about how deeply and secretly impressed I was. He was so capable, so strong and confident. His confidence was that of a grown man, no longer in need of the showy antics of the teenage boy he so recently was. And he was still only 22.

  I swear to God I was three-quarters in love with Jackson Devlin all over again by the time we got back to the barn. And I don't mean the kind of childish crush I once harbored for him in my youthful innocence. I mean he wasn't the only one who had left childhood behind. Warmth stirred deep in my belly the whole drive back to my place, and I found myself acutely, almost painfully aware of his physical presence, of the specific distance between his warm, strong body and my own.

  "Well," he said when he pulled up outside the condo. "You might as well slam the door for old time's sake."

  I didn't laugh, because I didn't feel like laughing. I felt serious, and without knowing it I was still too young and naive to understand quite why.

  "What's wrong?" He asked, catching the expression on my face. "Are you upset the wolves didn't eat me?"

  "Nothing's wrong," I replied, declining to take up his jokey tone. "In fact things are so not-wrong right now I don't even know what to say."

  "Really?"

  He actually sounded surprised. As if any woman in Sweetgrass Ridge wouldn't have been thrilled down to the ends of her toes to have taken a night-time ride with Jackson Devlin.

  "I wasn't sure if you'd like it or not. I thought maybe you would think it was stupid."

  I don't think I'm capable of thinking anything you do it stupid.

  Of course that's not what I actually said. I told him the wolves howling was the most amazing thing I ever heard – and it was.

  Just before I got out of the truck there was a moment when I thought – or maybe just hoped? – that he was going to kiss me. A brief stillness, fraught with anticipation, fell between us as I perched on the edge of the passenger seat. It passed almost immediately.

  "Hailey!"

  I was just about to shut the door behind me. I stuck my head back into the truck. "Yeah?"

  "You should apply to art school. You're good. You were always good. You know I don't know jack shit about art, but I'd say there's a good chance you'll get offered a scholarship."

  ***

  That night, after I fell asleep, my dreams were full of the sound of hooves crunching on frozen snow and the blissful feeling of being safe and warm with Jackson even as a pack of dream-wolves filled my mind with their wild cries.

  Chapter 7: Jackson

  Before I took Hailey out to hear the wolves on a frigid winter's night, I dumped my girlfriend.

  I know what you're thinking and yeah, you're not wrong. I was a young man, with all the appetites and needs that come with being a young man. I should never have let Katia think I was serious in the first place.
r />   But mostly, I dumped her because of something my uncle Dave said.

  "She's just a placeholder girl."

  We talked as we rode out in the freezing mist to make sure the creeks and sloughs of the range weren't frozen solid – the cattle might have to be brought into the smaller pasture with the heated troughs if they were. My uncle Dave is my dad's brother, 10 months younger than him – classic Irish twins. We weren't too close when I was growing up but as my relationship with my father got rougher, my uncle did me the kindness of stepping into the spaces where he saw I might need guidance or just an encouraging word.

  "A placeholder girl?" I asked, not sure I'd heard him right over the sound of our horses snorting their displeasure at being asked to ride out so early in the day.

  "Yeah, you know. One of those girls who's just there."

  One of those girls who's just there. I'd never heard anyone put it quite like that before but as soon as he said it I knew exactly what he meant. Katia was one of those girls. It made me feel guilty just to think it.

  "Now don't get to thinking I'm saying it's right to treat 'em bad, Jackson Devlin." Uncle Dave always used my full name when he was giving me advice. "The thing that makes a placeholder girl is her man, not her."

  "Uh..." I started to respond, suddenly not so sure I knew what he was talking about.

  "It's you that makes her a placeholder," he continued. "She's just one of those girls who wants a husband and some babies, ain't she? Are you going to put that ring on her finger? Is it you who's gonna give her a baby?"

  I breathed in deeply and looked out over the frost-tipped grasses of the foothills. "No," I answered, a few seconds later. "No, it definitely won't be me who gives her either of those things."

  "There ya go. Placeholder girl."

  My uncle wasn't judging me. He'd freely told me enough about his own wild youth to know he wasn't doing that. But I couldn't shake what he said. I also, truth be told, couldn't shake thoughts of Hailey Nickerson or how it might feel to reach out, put my hand on her waist and slide it down, slowly, over the curve of her hip...

  But I couldn't do that with her. I could do it with any other girl, but not her. I was pretty sure she was still a virgin, for one thing. Not that a girl's virginity ever stopped me in the past.

  I dismounted my horse, tied the reins to a dead tree next to one of the little creeks the cattle liked to drink from and made my way down the bank to check the ice thickness. Just what exactly was it about Hailey would stop me reaching for her? Was I worried she would push me away? Maybe. She always did play a good game of I like you/I hate you.

  I pried a rock out of the frozen mud and dropped it onto the ice. It cracked a little and I spotted water rushing beneath. Not frozen solid yet but it would be real soon. I had to get the cattle back into the enclosed pasture. That was going take the rest of the day.

  I paid Katia a visit at her apartment before driving to the Super Mart to try and persuade Hailey to go on a midnight – well, close enough – ride with me.

  "Jack!" She squealed when she opened the door and saw me standing there. She always called me Jack. I didn't like it much, but I never took the time to tell her.

  "Uh, hey."

  She knew something was wrong right away. Girls always do. I kept it short, because there was no reason to torture her – but admittedly mostly because I wanted to see Hailey. When she asked what she'd done wrong I told her nothing, because it was true. I stayed for as short a time as possible without looking like a total asshole and watched Katia weep into one of her embroidered "Live, Love, Laugh" throw pillows.

  And then I drove to the Super Mart.

  Cold? Yeah. But staying wouldn't have done anyone any favors. Now she was free to find the man who would give her the big wedding and the babies she wanted so much. She was young and sweet-natured, she wasn't going to have any difficulty finding him.

  With each mile I got from her apartment she faded from my mind a little more, and then a little more and a little more until I don't know that I ever really thought about her again.

  I thought about Hailey, though. I thought about her all day every day as I herded the cattle and humped bales of organic silage from the barn because my dad seemed to think letting me use one of the tractors would turn me soft. It didn't turn him soft, but I'd long since given up on trying to reason with Jack Devlin.

  And that day, after talking to Dave, I took Hailey out to listen to the wolves. She loved it, and the feeling of her clinging to me as we rode out made me feel like more of a man than any giggling cheerleader ever did.

  ***

  "What the fuck?!"

  A few weeks later I woke up to find my brother Connor yanking a saucepan off the crappy old stove in my trailer and the room filled with smoke.

  "Fuck!" I yelled, jumping up and turning the water on so he could hold the flaming pot underneath.

  "You trying to burn the whole place down?" My brother asked, eying me. "I could smell the smoke from the barn. It won't convince Dad to let you move back into the house, if that's your plan."

  Connor was 17, almost as cocky and sure of himself as I was at that age.

  "Nothing's going to convince Dad to let me do anything," I replied, shaking my head and swearing at the ruined pot. That was another thing that was going to need replacing.

  "Oh boo-hoo," Connor shot back. "Daddy's gonna give me the whole damn ranch, poor little me!"

  "You still think that's happening?" I asked, throwing the pan into the sink too hard and sending little bits of blackened chili everywhere.

  My brother sat down on the brown sofa that wouldn't have looked out of place in a 1970s porno and looked up at me, as if to try to ascertain if I was bullshitting him or not. "You think it isn't?"

  "When, then? I've been out here since the summer I graduated high school. He won't even let me use the tractor to transport feed anymore. It's getting worse, not better."

  "He just needs to know he can trust you," Connor replied, not even bothering to try understanding how it might have been for me in the shitty, badly insulated trailer for the past 4 years.

  "Oh well that's easy then isn't it? I just slave away for nothing for the next – how long? Has he told you? Because he sure as hell hasn't told me. 5 years? 10? 20? And then one day in the future he'll be able to 'trust' me enough to run the ranch as a full partner?"

  My brother shrugged. "Yeah. Something like that. Don't act like it's for nothing. At the end of it, you get the whole ranch. Did you forget that part? The part where you get everything and we get nothing?"

  He was dead wrong if he thought I'd forgotten any of it. The part that mattered, though, was the part where I was starting to lose my certainty that the Devlin Ranch was something worth sticking around to wait for. Jack Devlin had 5 sons, the ranch was safe if I decided to skip town and join the circus.

  What Connor wasn't wrong about, though, was the unfairness of it all. Our great-great-grandfather Seán Devlin came to America from a small village in County Cork, Ireland in 1895. He was 16 years old and within ten years he'd acquired a wife, 3 sons, a daughter, 150 head of beef cattle and 1000 acres at the foot of the Rocky Mountains in the wild heart of Montana. And he didn't stop there. 4 children turned into 10 and those thousand acres turned into two thousand and then ten thousand and then more than a hundred thousand acres of some of the best rangeland in the country.

  When he died, my great-great-grandpappy left the entirety of the Devlin lands and fortune to his oldest son, establishing a tradition that none of the firstborn sons had yet seen fit to defy.

  The other children were provided for, of course. Those who came into the world without the advantage of being first and male had houses built for them, bank accounts opened with a lump sum and, eventually, educations paid for. But the real wealth and power that comes with owning so much land and cattle stayed solely with the firstborn son.

  So part of me could understand my brother's irritation at having to listen to me whine. Another part, a
s I said, was starting to feel iffy about whether all the thankless work and shitty treatment at the hands of my dad was going to be anything like worth it. The Devlin men were long-lived. Only one had failed to see his 90th birthday, and that was only due to an accident. My dad was 46 when I had that conversation with Connor in the trailer. If the Devlin longevity streak continued, I was looking at being almost 70 before I inherited. And all that talk of wealth and power can start to feel theoretical real quick to a 22 year old looking at old age before any of it kicks in.

  "Do you even want it?" I asked, sitting back down at the kitchen table. "The ranch – the whole thing – do you want it?"

  Connor narrowed his eyes, assuming he was being tricked. "Doesn't matter what I want, does it? There's what I want and there's how things are, and not much I can do about either."

  "Yeah but if you could. If me and Cillian and Patrick and Seán are all eaten by an angry grizzly bear tomorrow, do you want the ranch? Is that something you actually want? Or is it just something you enjoy using as a reason to throw yourself pity parties?"

  Connor defiantly met my gaze for a few seconds before jumping to his feet and heading for the door. "You can be a real asshole sometimes Jackson, you know that?"

  "Why not answer the question?" I shot back.

  "Oh, and you're welcome for saving you from a fiery death."

  He pulled the heavy inner door closed behind him and then slammed the screen door against it as I sat drumming my fingers against the tabletop in frustration.

  My first instinct? Call Hailey. We had each other's contact info by then, I could text her or call her whenever I wanted. Hailey was smart. Smarter than me. She would know what to do about my dire living circumstances.

  But I didn't call her. Even as young and dumb as I was then there was still some part of me that knew I couldn't go asking her to make it all better. Within a few minutes I'd cooled off anyway. It's always so much easier to see someone else's side when they're not right there yelling in your face.

  My brother was wrong if he thought I was joking when I asked him if he would even want Devlin Ranch. I hadn't talked about it with anyone – even uncle Dave – but I'd started thinking about it a whole lot. The ranch, that is, and whether or not I even wanted it badly enough to waste the best years of my life groveling to my dad.