The Horseman

by Anna Jeffrey

“What is it you thought I was doing?” He looked up, his blue eyes cold as ice. “Chasing tail?”

  The scorn in his tone wounded her. His reading her thoughts threw her off track. She drew a deep breath, determined not to get into another confrontation with him. “Nothing. Working. What you’re always doing.” She sliced into her pork chop. “All I meant is you sometimes do things that can be dangerous. I was worried that you could be hurt or something. I mean, look at you. You’re covered with blood.”

  For a few beats, his gaze settled on her face, then he lowered his head and continued to eat.

  She slipped the bite of pork she had sliced off into her mouth, chewed methodically and swallowed. “I wanted us to talk about last night, about—”

  “Amanda. Cool it. I am not in the mood to talk about babies and doctors and that. I’ve got a helluva a lot more important stuff on my mind right now.” He picked up his glass and swallowed a long drink.

  Stunned by his words and instantly on the defensive, she sat back, floundering for what to say next. Fewer than a dozen times in their entire history together had he called her by her given name. Last night’s spat took a distant backseat to whatever was going on with him at the moment. “That—that isn’t what ... what I want to talk about. It’s about...” She let her voice trail off, lost for where to begin.

  “About what?”

  Her words rushed out. “I didn’t mean to start a fight yesterday, Pic. What happened was thoughtless of me. I just thought... We seem to get into fights over the least little things. I—I just feel that something is off kilter. Lately, we haven’t been close like we used to be. We don’t talk about...” Words failed her. She let her voice trail off.

  “Mandy, I’m worn out. I’ve—”

  “I know, I know. I can see. ... I just thought—”

  “Okay, what do you want to talk about?” His forearms rested on the table, flanking his plate, He gazed at her for several seconds. “Wanna talk about the ol’ cow that got tore up by a fuckin’ passel of hogs and bled to death? Lost her calf, too. ... Wanna talk about cattle rustling, the couple dozen head missing out of the North Pasture and no idea where they went? Or horses getting shot or barns burning? Or maybe calving season coming up? Or how about a conversation about the fuckin’ lawsuit the Feds filed on us yesterday, disputing our ownership of the alluvial plain along our side of the Brazos River? Or the asshole that threatens every member of this family, including you, and the ranch itself?”

  A dead cow explained the bloodstained clothing. That a cow had been attacked by wild hogs also explained why everyone at the Double-Barrel who could shoot a gun hunted hogs. She ducked her chin and toyed with her food with her fork. “Well, I—”

  “No. You don’t wanna talk about any of that.” He returned to his meal. “What’s going on at fuckin’ Drinkwell High School has got all of your attention. Hell, you never even ask questions about this ranch.”

  He tore open a soft roll as if it were made of leather and slashed with his knife at the sticks of butter in the butter dish.

  Tears burned behind her eyes, but she swallowed them back. “How can I ask questions about something I know little about? You talk about the ranch with your dad and brother. You don’t discuss it with me.”

  “Why would I? Every time I try to talk to you about anything, you’re on your way out the goddamn door, heading for some fuckin’ swimming tournament. Or running back and forth to that fuckin’ schoolhouse five and six, sometimes seven days a week. I’ll bet you don’t even know how many head of cattle the Double-Barrel Ranch owns.”

  Damn. That was true. Pic and his dad threw numbers around all the time and Amanda heard them, but they went in one ear and out the other. She did not know how many cattle lived at the ranch. How could she not know that? How could she live here for more than a year and not know that? How could she be so stupid? “That isn’t fair, Pic. You—”

  “Don’t talk to me about fair.” He threw his buttered roll onto his plate. His glare, hotter than the Texas sun, came at her and he pointed his index finger directly at her nose. “You reneged on your promise, Amanda. I set you up for life. You don’t have to work at that fuckin’ schoolhouse another day. Or any other job. That would be enough for a lot of women I’m acquainted with.”

  The day he proposed flashed in her mind. She well remembered the terms of the generous prenuptial agreement he had presented to her, what he asked of her and what she had agreed to. And an engagement ring with a diamond so large she was embarrassed to wear it and that was so expensive it could only be labeled an investment. She could sell it and buy a house. It now resided in a safe deposit box in a bank in Stephenville.

  On top of that, as if her memory were not enough, weekly, someone told her how lucky she was and asked her why she was still working for the school. She didn’t even try to explain that confronted with a choice between real life at the Double-Barrel Ranch and giving up her teaching career, she had choked at the last minute and been unable to hand in her resignation. The guilt that never left her weighed on her shoulders like a heavy cape.

  She pushed his finger away. “It is enough, Pic. Of course, it’s enough. Your money has never been important to me.”

  A ball of tears had gathered in her throat and threatened to choke her. She ducked his eyes and sliced another bite of pork.

  “Look at me, Amanda. I’m telling you something.”

  She flinched at his aggressive tone, but raised her eyes.

  “I want you to know something else I’ve never told you. I know you love swimming. This is an isolated place to live and I know that. I knew you’d be giving up that pool at the school. I never told you the details about that swimming pool out back. I hired one of Drake’s Dallas architects, one of the best in Texas, one of the most expensive, to design you a pool that any Olympic athlete would envy. I paid a hotshot Dallas contractor a premium price plus mileage to bring his crew down here and build it.

  “The ranch pays one of those swimming pool maintenance people to come down here from Fort Worth and take care of it. I doubt if there’s a home swimming pool anywhere in Texas that’s any better. Not one damn person in this family wants or needs a swimming pool. Nobody can swim. It was for you, Amanda. I wanted you to be happy living out here.”

  The swimming pool was a wedding present. True, he had told her only part of that information about it. Indeed, it was an exquisite infinity pool, like having her own private lagoon. Anyone could see that building it in this remote place had been expensive. Only she swam in it. He waded into the shallow end occasionally, joking that he was afraid if he got too far into it he would float over the edge of the canyon.

  Kate joined her sometimes, but she mostly lounged on the side sunbathing in her bikini. If she got into the water, she never left the shallow end. Troy came to swim at times on summer’s hottest days, but he was away from the ranch so much those occasions were rare.

  She had no rebuttal. “I am happy, Pic. I love the pool. I just hoped—”

  “All I asked of you was that you be my partner. But no, you can’t work that into your busy schedule. Between running your ass and two bodyguards all over the fuckin’ state of Texas and part of Oklahoma to swimming contests and running back and forth to that schoolhouse, you’ve yet to be a partner to me or show any loyalty to this ranch.”

  He might as well have slapped her. She had to defend herself. “That isn’t true, Pic. I’ve never failed to support you. But I’m not a—a rural person. You knew that before we got married.”

  That, he couldn’t argue with. When they were kids, he teased her with names like “city girl” and “sissy.” Looking back, the only social events they had shared that were related to his lifestyle were cowboy dancing and going to rodeos.

  He picked up his fork and returned to his meal. “You don’t pay any more attention to what I want than you do the wind,” he said, his voice quiet. She had never been afraid of Pic, but for him to suddenly be speaking more calmly had an ominous tone
. “

  Just like a couple of weeks ago,” he went on. “I asked you not to go up to Fort Worth without me or the bodyguard the ranch has hired to protect you. It’s still stuck in my craw that you ignored me. My God, we’re paying a thousand dollars a day for each one of those people whether you use them or not.”

  No one had ever told her what Redstone Security’s fees were. Her jaw dropped. “I didn’t ask for bodyguards.”

  He looked up at her, his brow arched. “What, you thought you were different from the rest of us? You thought Drake hired ’em because we ran out of places to spend money? You thought getting the shit beat out of your rig and leaving you stranded in an unlit parking lot was fun? The asshole who did that, was his next move against you personally? Do you know?”

  “How could I know that?” she cried, fighting back tears.

  He picked up his glass, swallowed another drink, then set it back on the table quietly. “Even my dad says you’re as disinterested in this ranch and in me as a man as Lucianne was. ... I told him that isn’t true, but I have to say, I’m beginning to wonder if he’s right.”

  At being compared to his former wife and criticized by Bill Junior, Amanda cringed. With Pic’s mother already hating her, the last thing she wanted was for Pic’s father to hate her, too.

  “And now, on top of the swimming, the traveling, the staying in town late to tutor high school kids too dumb to read, you’re nagging about having a baby. What would we do with it, Amanda? You don’t have time to take care of it. Is it your idea that we’d hire somebody to raise the kid so you can keep flitting around?”

  He stared at her as if awaiting her answer and she had none. Like a silly ninny, she hadn’t thought that far ahead. Her throat ached, her chin quivered. “Don’t be silly.”

  “All I know is I sure as hell don’t have time to take care of it myself. And I don’t know if I ever will.” He paused, his eyes holding hers.

  A few seconds passed. Heartbeats echoed in Amanda’s ears. He resumed in a soft voice. “I’ll be real honest here, Amanda. I’ve already got all I can say grace over. Every morning when I wake up, I wonder what I’m gonna fuck up next or what some sonofabitch is gonna tear up that I can’t fix. I know Dad and Drake are breathing down my neck.” He turned his gaze to the darkened windows, his head shaking. “I don’t know how my dad ran this place as well as he did and still managed to raise four kids.”

  Memories of the material blessings Bill Junior had bestowed on his wife and children through the years passed through her mind. But tonight, with the man off in locales unknown, doing only God-knew what, Mandy refused to let Pic’s statement stand. “He didn’t raise his four kids,” she said, her voice equally soft. “His wife did. Including one who’s the child of his mistress. For that alone, your mother deserves a medal.”

  “Amanda. Nobody knows better than I do my parents have got their flaws. I’m not gonna let you make this about them.”

  She quailed. “I’m not. But you have to consider that the ranch is different now from when your dad was a young man, Pic. It’s more diverse. More complicated. You have more to deal with than he did.”

  He pushed his chair backward and stood abruptly. “Bullshit. It’s been a long day, Mandy. I gotta get up early tomorrow. I got a lot to do before the weekend gets here. I’m going to bed.”

  She, too, got to her feet. “I understand, Pic. I didn’t mean to start—”

  “I know.” He stepped to her, grasped her shoulder, bent his head and kissed her cheek. “I’ll see you in the morning. Let’s just let all this lie and try to get a good night’s sleep. We can settle it after Christmas.”

  After his boot heels faded into the silence, she stood there for a few seconds in the cavernous kitchen, breathless and paralyzed and gripping the back of a kitchen chair. Settle it? What did that mean?

  From a distance, above the pulsebeat pumping in her ears, the high-pitched howls and barks of coyotes rent the silence. Nearer to the house, the scraping and screeching of the windmill’s fan changing directions accentuated the ranch’s remoteness from the outside world. When she first moved here, those sounds late at night were lonely and sad and even haunting. Now, she was used to them. They had become background noise she tuned out.

  Pic’s words battered her again. She had never been dressed down quite as thoroughly or rendered so speechless. In all the years she had known him, she had never seen such an outburst of anger from easy-going Pic, especially at her.

  “...You don’t have time to take care of it. Would we hire somebody to raise the kid so you can keep flitting around?...”

  “...I sure as hell don’t have time to take care of it. I don’t know if I ever will....”

  “...I don’t know how my dad ran this place as well as he did and still managed to raise four kids....”

  The truth began to sink in. Her husband didn’t want a family. Even if he said he did, it was so far down his list of priorities, he would never get to it.

  She glanced down at the unfinished plates of food on the table, her appetite gone. Why had she told Johnnie Sue she would clean up the kitchen? Now that she had said that, she had to do it. She dared not leave a mess. She walked over to the table and began to clear away what was left of their supper.

  Chapter 13

  Early Wednesday morning, Sarah called Elmer Thompson, her boss at City Grocery, for the third time about being absent from work. For the second time, she asked him if he would permit Tiffany to work in her place. Elmer agreed. Sarah knew he would, but she asked him out of respect.

  The owner of the small mercantile allowed this arrangement because he felt sorry for her. And for Jericho, too, no doubt. Everybody in Roundup was aware of Jericho’s financial situation and why he was in such a bind. Sarah hated that. Surely, Jericho hated it, too. On the other hand, if Elmer’s feeling sorry for her or Jericho allowed her to spend another day with Rudy and Mr. Rattigan, she didn’t hate it enough not to do it.

  Mr. Rattigan...Troy, that is ...

  Last night, she had shampooed and conditioned and dried her hair. This morning, it was a thick silky fall of shiny black layers. She even applied makeup. According to Tiffany, light brown eyeshadow and black mascara on her already-black lashes made her blue-green eyes pop. She stood for a moment looking at herself in the mirror.

  Jesus Christ! The last time she had dressed herself up for some guy had been for Justin Karol. Tears burned the backs of her eyes. Justin drank too much and did stupid stuff, but still, he had loved her and needed her. Not many people had loved her or needed her in her life. Because of that, she loved him back and she put up with a lot of insults from his family.

  Mental sigh. Water over the dam. That episode of her weird life lay buried in a Wyoming cemetery. She fought back those emotions and tears. The emotion bought her nothing and the tears would mess up her newly-applied makeup.

  You can’t un-spill milk, Janie popped up and told her.

  “Yeah, right,” Sarah groused.

  When she walked into the kitchen, Wyatt looked up from his phone. “You look pretty, Mom.”

  Even Jericho gave her a second glance, his fork suspended. “Well, I’ll say, Sarah. You’re looking mighty spiffy.”

  Busted! She had hoped Jericho wouldn’t notice the difference in her appearance. “The other women wear makeup, so I thought I would, too.”

  “Well, you look real nice. Bonnie always thought you were a pretty girl. There’s some sausage and pancakes on the stove.”

  Jericho passed out few compliments and when he did, for some reason, they always embarrassed her. “Thanks, Jericho.”

  “Tiffany working in your place again today?”

  She arranged a couple of sausage patties and a couple of pancakes on her plate. “Yeah. I’m gonna miss another day’s pay, but Tr—Mr. Rattigan made some real progress with Rudy. It was magic the way he got that dumb horse to cooperate with him.”

  She carried her plate to the table and sat down. “I’ve never seen anybo
dy like him, Jericho. The Karols had a lot of horses on their ranch, but they never had any horse trainers like Troy...uh, Mr. Rattigan.” She spread soft butter over her pancakes and added syrup.

  “Uh-huh.”

  Jericho’s indifferent tone compelled her to say more. “I want Rudy to have a chance, Jericho.”

  Jericho gave her a direct look. “Why? He’s just another horse and he ain’t even your horse.”

  Wyatt spoke up. “Tiffany said I can have him.”

  “We got all the horses we need,” Jericho griped. “And we sure don’t need an ornery one.”

  Sarah gave a mental eye roll.

  Wyatt’s little face took on a stricken expression. He looked to be holding back tears. “But Grandpa—”

  “That’s not what Tiffany said, Son,” Sarah said gently, swallowing back the tears that rushed to her eyes.

  “But, Mom. She did say that. You heard her.”

  This was getting out of hand. Jesus Christ. Wyatt was already invested in ownership of Rudy. How was she going to stop this?

  “He’s too much horse for a little boy, Wyatt,” Jericho said, mopping up syrup with a bite of pancake. Another direct look landed on Sarah. “Hope you ain’t forgot what I always told you about horses, Sarah. If you want a good horse, you gotta work with him all the time. Riding him once a month and leaving him to stand around in the pasture the rest of the time won’t cut it. You can’t ride and Clyde and I don’t have time to fool with him.”

  Clyde Gillespie was Jericho’s only hired man. Both he and Jericho worked sunup to sundown every day. Sarah contributed what she could, but her physical ability to do most ranch work was limited. Nobody knew better than she that she was dead weight. Taking an hour or two every day to fool with an untrained horse was a luxury nobody had. No point in even talking about it.

  She said to her son, “We’re gonna work it out, son. I don’t want you to worry about it.”

  While Wyatt found his coat and gathered his backpack, she made herself a lunchmeat sandwich to take with her to the clinic. Yesterday, Lou said the café wouldn’t be bringing out dinner anymore. No telling how much damage Rudy’s break-out had done to Ben’s equipment. Taking a sandwich for dinner was fine with Sarah. Since she was sacrificing her grocery store paycheck, which already made her feel guilty, spending the money for dinner would only make her feel guiltier.