Montana Red. Genell Dellin

always been good with young animals. She’s the rescuer of the family.”

      They ignored him.

      “She’s Jake’s all right, but I aim t’ trade for her,” Buck said.

      “Trade what? You ain’t got no horses but Topper and you need him.”

      “I seen Jake throw a jealous glance or two at my old pickup.”

      Teddy chuckled and said, “You’ll play hell gittin’ that trade done. And even if you did, then you wouldn’t have no way to git around.”

      “You don’t understand me, Ted,” Buck said. “I’m only tradin’ him the right to drive my truck some.”

      That made them laugh. Jake, too.

      Sometimes it wasn’t so bad having the old guys around all the time.

      “Forget Celeste,” Jake said. “She knows the filly can’t keep up with the wild bands. Even if she could, there’d be no wet mares to feed her—if they would. This is a freak deal, that mare foaling so late in the year.”

      “Yeah, but remember it’s Montana Red that’s the sire,” Teddy said wisely. “That old devil breeds as he pleases. He probably stole that mare and bred her at the wrong time just so’s she’d lose the other stud’s baby.”

      “Surprises me Celeste knows that much,” Buck said, ignoring Teddy entirely. “Reckon she knows that white devil we just now hauled to her Cal-i-forn-y man will drive them young bachelor studs outta his band pretty soon and the family won’t all be together anymore?”

      He and Teddy chuckled over that and shook their heads.

      “Them old-time mustangers would laugh their heads off at this whole deal,” Buck said. “Whoever heard of tryin’ to keep wild-horse families together? Can’t even do that for people.”

      Teddy nodded. “Plus out there on the range, sometimes the mares switch bands. Them old-timers could tell Celeste that, too.”

      Jake smiled to himself. Teddy and Buck themselves were old-time mustangers.

      “I don’t care if they put ‘em in houses and buy ‘em a bed,” Buck said. “Long as they keep on payin’ us the big money.”

       That’s where you made your mistake, Jake. You shouldn’t have started paying them so much. If they were making less, maybe they’d go away.

      No, they wouldn’t. They didn’t care any more about money than he used to. They were helping him for the adventure of it. If he cut off their wages right now, they’d still hang around and help him for nothing until the work was all done. They would finish what they’d started because that was one of the rules of the code they’d lived by for fifty years or more.

      “There,” Teddy said. “There’s our turn up ahead, Jake.”

      The backseat driving got on Jake’s nerves as much or more than anything else about being with the old boys all day.

      “Comin’ right up, too,” Teddy said. “Jake. You just as well to start to shuttin’ ‘er down.”

      Sometimes it was so bad having the old guys around all the time.

      “I’ve got a handle on it, Ted,” he said.

      “Cain’t tell it from how fast you’re drivin’. You gotta slow down now. Ain’t that right, Buck?”

      Jake clamped his jaw shut. Complaining had never shut Teddy up, so he might as well save his breath and the hurt feelings that were bound to result if he said what he wanted to say.

      “Put a lid on it, Ted,” Buck said. “You talk too much anyhow.”

      “You’re runnin’ your mouth right now,” Ted snapped back.

      Jake slowed the truck and turned up Firecreek Mountain Road.

      “What was I thinking when I let you two hook up with me?” he asked, just to break the cycle of petty sniping. “You sound like a couple of magpies.”

      “You mean to say ‘what was you thinking when you killed that cat that was only doing what comes naturally so’s you could pick up that little broomtail scrub for me to raise?’” Theodore’s tone sounded so dignified and righteously offended that Jake and Buck laughed again.

      “Just hang in there, Ted,” Jake said. “It won’t be long ‘til she’ll be on grain and grass. Besides, Buck just told you—broomtail or not—she’s gonna make a helluva usin’ horse.”

      He made the turn and pulled the full length of the trailer onto the graveled road before he stepped on the accelerator again and started up the hill.

      “I’m gonna stop at my house to pick up some more clean clothes,” he said. “Might as well take some of that food in the fridge, too, so it won’t go to waste.”

      “Well, don’t think you can stay at yore house,” Teddy said. “You’re gonna take your turn on them foal feedings just like the rest of us.”

      “Jake’s got colts to ride,” Buck said.

      “And they’re over at the big barn, too, ain’t they?” Teddy said. “You jist as well get all your gear, Jake, and move in with us because you already brought us all your responsibilities.”

      Jake tuned them out and looked at the mountains as the rig pulled the grade and wound its way up the hill. This was a pretty area all right, but to his eye not as beautiful as it was up in the Garnet Range where he was buying his place. If….

      No. Not if. When. He was in this now and he had the land half paid for. He could finish paying it off in a couple more years if he stayed hitched and worked as hard as he’d been working. He wanted that place like he’d never wanted anything. Well…anything that could be bought with money.

      But the thought of settling down in one place scared the hell out of him, too. What else would he do? He’d lost his yearning to roam.

      Tori was gone for good and he was not making a landowner out of himself to acquire “something to offer her and her boys.”

      He didn’t want her back anyhow, unless he could turn back time to the way things were when she and the boys first moved in with him. He could never take her back now, even if she wanted to come back, because he’d never be able to trust her again. She’d chosen a remarriage with no passion and no love—she’d gone back to the very opposite of Jake—for the sake of security. “He has something to offer me and my boys” was what she’d said when she broke the news.

      No, he was not buying his own place so that next time he’d have something to offer a woman. There wasn’t going to be a next time. He would never live with a woman again. The remote, beautiful land he’d bought was going to be a place for himself, a place where he could live alone and raise some horses that would support him so he wouldn’t have to drive all over creation shut up in a truck with two garrulous, bossy old men.

      He began slowing for the turn as Teddy was still urging him to do, clamping his jaw shut as he took the road into the ranch and then, soon after, the driveway that led to the little cabin he’d added to the rental deal after the old guys had showed up and moved into the big one with him. He’d had to have a private hideout or lose his mind. He just wasn’t made to live with other people.

      His eyes widened as they neared the house. “Hey, what’s this? Looks like I got company.”

      “Company pullin’ a trailer,” Buck said. “Reckon it’s thieves? Good thing your horses ain’t here.”

      “I’ll block ‘em in, just in case,” Jake said, and pulled up to park so his trailer would be across the driveway.

      The front door flew open and a beautiful woman with a shotgun in her hands strode out onto the porch. The surprise of it made all three men draw in