One Cowboy, One Christmas. Kathleen Eagle

really.” She lifted a shoulder, avoided his eyes. “I was in college when Sally got into the stock contractor business.”

      “You never went along for the ride?”

      She could feel him studying her while she studied the tiny oil beads in her coffee. “You’ve seen one rodeo, you’ve seen ‘em all, pretty much.”

      “Ouch.”

      “People get hurt. Animals get hurt.” She looked up, suddenly brightening. “I do like to watch the barrel racing.”

      “Me, too. Pretty girls on great horses—can’t beat a combination like that.” He set his cup down and went after the last of his eggs. “What do you do, Ann? Besides take care of your sister and keep this place going?”

      “I teach high school English and history. Sally’s the one who really keeps this place going. I help her as much as I can.”

      “I like history. English, not so much. You gotta write. I don’t mind reading, but I can’t spell worth a damn.” He took a bite of eggs, a bite of toast, chewed, watched her. “I figured you for a teacher. You got a familiar way about you. Patient.” Without taking his eyes off her, he flicked the tip of his tongue over his lower lip and caught a crumb. “Forgiving.”

      “That’s an odd thing to say. Most people don’t—”

      “Sally needs a ride,” Hoolie announced at their backs, causing Ann a bit of a jolt. “She wants to take a turn around that northeast section while she’s feeling up to it, and I got work to do.”

      “I’ll drive her.” Ann slid down from the stool, taking her coffee with her.

      “I’ll make a deal with you,” Hoolie told Zach. “You drive the ladies, and I’ll work on your pickup when you get back.”

      “I can take care of it, Hoolie,” Ann insisted.

      “Go on and show the man around. Show him what we’ve got goin’ here. He’d enjoy the tour.” Hoolie clapped a hand on his new buddy’s shoulder. “Right, Zach?”

      “Sure would.”

      Ann credited him with sounding interested. It was limited credit, considering his options were even more limited.

      It felt good to be behind the wheel of a fully operational pickup. Good to be moving, especially when his body was dragging its tail. Zach hated it when his body acted pitiful. He was a firm believer in mind over matter, and believing had served him well for a good long time. Then along came the bad time, starting with a couple of cracked ribs. But taped ribs were all in a day’s work. He was breathing normally by the time a plunging hoof had landed on his left foot. Bones too small to worry about hadn’t been allowed to mend properly. Then came torn ligaments in his knee, broken fingers, fractured collarbone and horn-skewered hip. His buddies had comforted him cowboy style, telling him how he’d looked when Red Bull tossed him in the air “like a short-order cook flipping a pancake.” He hadn’t seen it that way himself, but that was what he was told. Cowboy humor. When it hurts too much to laugh, your friends’ll do it for you.

      The damn bull had used an ice pick on him instead of a spatula. But it would be a cold day in hell before he’d let a bull have the final say on Zach Beaudry. He’d come close again, but it turned out he hadn’t hit bottom. He hadn’t landed in hell or anywhere near death’s door.

      And a cold day in South Dakota was hardly unusual, unless you weren’t used to a high, wide, handsome sky the color of a bird’s egg and air so pure you could smell God’s fresh-hung laundry. The rolling hills and jagged buttes were swathed in a dull patchwork of brown-andtan stubble. Frost feathers clung to the drooping heads of tall prairie grass, and silver-gray sage was the closest kin to anything evergreen poking out of the sod. There was no road to follow—only cow paths, tire tracks and Sally’s orders.

      “Head for high ground,” she sang out from the far side of the pickup cab. Zach noticed a slight tremor in the gloved hand directing the way.

      Straddling the gearbox hump, Ann must have noticed, too. Without a word she laid a solicitous hand on her sister’s knee as Zach arced the steering wheel and tipped the two women in his direction. Sally brushed the hand away. It was a subtle but telling exchange, and Zach had no trouble reading the “tell.” It’s my hand, my play. He reached across Ann’s knee, downshifted and put the pickup on an uphill course, following two parallel ribbons worn in the sod. He let his jacketed forearm linger a moment past necessary. His tell, for whatever it might be worth. Tenderness noted, Angel Ann.

      They topped a rise and stopped, silently surveying roughly twenty horses strung out along the draw below. Their coats were thick and dull, their manes shaggy and tangled, their bodies clad in prairie camouflage—dun and grullo and palomino, spots the colors of rocks and ridges, tails like grass.

      “Good,” Sally said after a moment. “We’re downwind. But they’ll sense our presence soon enough. See that bay stallion?” She pointed to a stout, thick-necked standout. “He’s a Spanish Sulphur Mustang. We just sold some of his colts. Got some good money for them even though horse prices are down. He’s getting a reputation for himself, which helps pay the bills.”

      “How many acres you got here?” Zach asked.

      “Five thousand, but we’re bidding on a lease for fifteen hundred more.”

      Ann stiffened. “We are?”

      “I told you, didn’t I? I can’t believe it’s available. Along the river on the north side.” It was Sally’s turn to pat a knee. “It’s water, Annie.”

      “We’d have to get more domestic livestock, and we can’t handle that. We don’t have enough help, Sally.”

      “More rodeo stock?” Zach asked.

      “More cattle,” Ann said. “We’re a balancing act these days, running steers and just enough of a cow-calf operation to call ourselves a ranch. Horses don’t qualify as farm animals in this state. Without the domestic stock we’d pay much higher property taxes.”

      “So we’ll get a few more,” Sally said. “We’re officially nonprofit now.”

      Ann sighed. “That’s for sure.”

      “Which means we’re satisfying the federal side. I’ve got the balancing act under control, Annie. And I have a few new ideas in the incubator.” Sally leaned for a look at her driver. “Aren’t they beautiful?”

      “No doubt.” Zach scanned the jagged horizon. “Pretty piece of land they’ve got here. They fit right in.”

      “They belong here as much as we do. More than we do, but they have to depend on us these days.”

      “Can’t tell by lookin’ at ‘em.”

      “Which is the way it should be,” Sally said. “Have you ever seen the holding pens the culls end up in when there’s no place else for them to go?”

      Zach nodded. “I’ve seen pictures. They’re well fed.”

      “They’re sad,” Ann said quietly.

      “Horses are born to run.” Sally gave a sweeping gesture across the dashboard. “That’s who they are, and they know it. The wild ones do, anyway.”

      “So you’re just giving them a place to live free. They don’t have to do anything but be themselves.”

      “Pretty much. We sell as many of the colts as we can. I wish we could afford to put more training into them. I know our sales would improve.” Sally leaned forward again, peering past her sister. “How much horse sense do you have, Zach?”

      “He’s a cowboy, Sally. Of course he knows horses.”

      “Do you, Zach?”

      “Been around ‘em most of my life, one way or another.