Dropping The Hammer. Joanna Wayne

be Ace, the golden retriever he’d raised from a pup. Ace had died from a rattlesnake bite when he jumped between Luke and the striking snake.

      Luke had been fourteen then. His dad had scorned him for shedding a few tears. Nothing new. Luke had never measured up in his dad’s mind. Just one of the many reasons Luke had never looked back once he left Arrowhead Hills Ranch.

      A crow scolded Luke from high in the branches of a nearby live oak. A horse neighed.

      Luke looked to the left and spotted a couple of chestnut mares giving him the once-over. So his dad still kept horses. Good to know.

      It had been years since Luke was in the saddle. His consecutive tours in the Middle East hadn’t allowed much time for revisiting the cowboy lifestyle.

      It was shirtsleeve weather, warm for late January, but a bracing breeze rustled the tall yellow strands of grass and the leaves in a persimmon tree that hugged the fence.

      Luke closed the gate, climbed back into his truck and drove toward the old house. He had no idea what to expect or what kind of health his father had been in before he suffered the stroke that had led to his being placed in a rehab facility.

      Significantly weakened on the left side of his body now and with difficulty putting his thoughts into coherent sentences, he was unable to take care of himself, much less the ranch.

      Not that Luke had originally gotten that information firsthand. It was Esther Kavanaugh, a longtime neighbor who’d been his mother’s best friend before her death, who’d called with the SOS. Luke had followed up with Alfred’s doctor and the rehab center.

      So here he was, back in Winding Creek.

      The brown roof appeared as he rounded a curve in the dirt ranch road. Trees hid the rest of the clapboard house until he was closer.

      It looked smaller than he remembered it. A bungalow with two bedrooms, two baths, a family den, a large kitchen downstairs and an upstairs dormer with another bedroom and bath that had been his hideaway.

      Luke parked in a gravel drive in front of the carport that covered what he assumed was his dad’s scratched and dented Chevy pickup truck. Alfred had always been a Chevy man and always hard on the finish of the vehicle. He’d never let bushes or shrubs get in the way of his getting where he wanted to go on the ranch.

      The wide, covered porch that his mother had always filled with huge clay pots of colorful blooms was bare except for one old pottery planter full of dirt and dead flowers, a weathered wooden rocker and what looked to be a fairly new porch swing that dangled from the ceiling by only one chain.

      Luke’s mother’s once prized flower beds that had bordered the porch were choked with weeds. The paint on the house was faded and peeling. A dark brown shutter on one of the windows hung askew.

      Luke climbed out of the truck and took the cracked concrete walk from the driveway to the porch steps. A sense of foreboding rattled his mood. Stepping back into the house with its bittersweet memories of his mother would have been depressing in an ideal situation. This was far from ideal.

      He had no idea what Alfred or the neighbors expected of him. He didn’t mind the work, but it wasn’t as if he had any authority to make decisions about the ranch. More than likely his father hadn’t even named him in the will even though Luke had no siblings.

      The door was unlocked. Luke swung it open, but before he could step inside, he heard approaching hoofbeats. He turned as the horseman rode into view, pulled on the reins and stopped in the shade a few yards from the porch.

      The black mare snorted and tossed her head as the rider climbed from the saddle and looped the reins around a low-lying branch of a scraggly ash tree.

      The rider acknowledged Luke with a smile and a nod.

      Luke tipped his Stetson.

      “You must be Luke,” the cowboy said as he approached the porch steps. “Esther Kavanaugh said you’d be here sometime this weekend. She wasn’t sure when, so I was just coming by to see if you made it yet.”

      “Yep. Luke Dawkins. Just drove up. Haven’t even made it inside.” He met the guy on the edge of the porch and offered his hand.

      “Buck Stalling,” the guy said. “I’m a wrangler for Pierce Lawrence over at the Double K Ranch. He sends me over here twice a day to take care of the horses.”

      “Is Pierce running the ranch for Esther Kavanaugh now?” Luke asked.

      “He owns it. Mrs. Kavanaugh sold it to him a few months back.”

      “Interesting. She didn’t mention that she’d moved when I talked to her.”

      “She didn’t move. She lives right there in the big house like she always has, close to her beloved chickens and garden.”

      “Does Pierce live there, too?”

      “He did before he built himself, his pregnant wife, Grace, and his young daughter a house of their own no more than a good stone’s throw away from Esther. Right nice setup.”

      “Sounds like a good deal for all of them. I just didn’t realize Pierce was back in Winding Creek.”

      “Then you know Pierce,” Buck said. “I’m surprised he never mentioned knowing you.”

      “No reason he should. Last time I saw him we were in high school, and he moved away before we graduated.”

      “Yeah. Tough on him and his brothers losing their parents so early. Lucky for them that the Kavanaughs took them in until their uncle moved them to Kansas.”

      Tough on anyone that young to lose a parent. No one knew that any better than Luke.

      “If you’re taking care of the horses, who’s looking after the critters?” Luke asked.

      “Dudley Miles assigned a couple of his cowboys to help out with the herd until Alfred is functioning enough to hire on some new hands. That’s how it is in Winding Creek. Neighbors take care of neighbors.”

      “Certainly seems that way,” Luke agreed.

      “I’m real sorry about your father’s stroke,” Buck said. “I didn’t really know him very well, but all the same I sure feel bad for him and you.”

      “I appreciate that.”

      “I heard a dog barking when I came up. Is that Alfred’s dog?”

      “Nope. You probably heard Marley. He belongs to one of the cowboys who’s working the critters. He brings him with him some days.”

      “That’s a nice-looking horse you’re riding,” Luke said.

      “Yep. Wish Lucky was mine. She’s one hell of a cow pony.”

      “How many horses does Albert have?”

      “Eight quarter horses that he keeps in his new fancy horse barn. Those are his pride and joy. Gonna be tough on your dad if he can’t ride anymore.”

      “Hopefully that won’t be the case.”

      “He also has three other cow ponies and one good cutter. They have stalls at the back of the old barn when they’re not loose in the pasture.”

      “What’s the size of the cattle herd?”

      “I don’t have the exact numbers, but I s’pect your dad has a hundred or so Black Angus and damn near that many Santa Gertrudis. That’s just an estimate. Numbers change, of course, depending on when he takes the beef to market and how many calves are born in the spring.”

      “That sounds like a lot of work for a man who’s almost seventy to manage,” Luke said.

      “He always kept a few hired hands around until he got mad about something and ran them off. He had two hired hands when he had the stroke. They weren’t from around here. Just showed up from somewhere in Oklahoma around Thanksgiving looking for work. They disappeared when Albert