Chapter 18
My daddy used to dump yesterday's taco meat into a bag of Fritos and call it Frito pie.
Sierra's was a casserole with beans, green chile and cheese over the top, served with a sideboard of pico and sour cream and onions.
The ranch hands lined up buffet style and loaded their plates.
A few tried to wander outside, but Sierra herded them back to the table.
Fenix sat in the chair furthest from Joe. He wasn't eating. He was sneaking plain corn chips to Pearl under the table when he thought nobody was looking.
Joe ate with his head down, hunched over his food like he was afraid someone might steal it.
He looked older than he was. Prison did that.
The boys around him were younger than him by a few years and looked younger than that by a decade.
Pae Saco had been the difference. The boys had landed here. Joe had landed inside.
The phone rang just as I got to the table to sit beside Ransom. Sierra glared at it like it'd tracked mud onto his clean floor.
"I'll get it," Rafe said, and started to stand.
"Rafe Fernando Lujan, if you touch that phone, you'd best find yourself a spot to sleep out with the horses," Sierra snapped.
The whole dining room went quiet except for the ringing phone. Rafe sank into his seat and went back to eating. The rest of us resumed our dinner like it'd never happened.
"So," Linc started, fork halfway to his mouth, "Doc Olivier flushed Aspen this afternoon. She's still throwing debris, but the culture came back light. He wants to flush her again Wednesday and breed her Thursday if she's clean."
"How much debris?" Rafe said.
"Tablespoon. Mostly old. He pulled a clot the size of my thumb out of the catch pan, said it'd been sitting up against the cervix."
"Color?"
"Brown. Nothing pink."
I wrinkled my nose, but kept eating. Being on a working horse ranch meant talking shop at the table, I guess.
"Good." Rafe nodded. "Tell him I want eyes on the cervix Wednesday before we commit to Thursday. If it's still angry, I'd rather skip and try her in the spring."
The phone started up again.
Sierra's jaw tightened. He set his fork down and pushed back from the table.
"Pinche teléfono."
He crossed to the kitchen with a hand towel still tucked into the front of his jeans and snatched the receiver off the wall mid-ring.
"Whoever this is, you better have a damn good reason for interrupting my dinner."
A pause. Sierra's posture changed.
"Yes, sir, he's here." His eyes landed on me. "Ranger. It's for you."
Shit. My phone had died the night before, and I hadn't bothered to charge it.
I set my fork down and walked to the kitchen. Sierra handed me the receiver without a word and stepped back to give me space he didn't owe me.
"Valverde."
"Where you been, Winston?" Fuck. Of course it was my captain.
"Phone died last night, Cap. Hadn't charged it."
"Mm." A pause. His breath came through the line. "Got a call this afternoon from a sheriff out of Sierra County. Wanted to know where to send paperwork on a homicide case. Said one of my men signed off on the autopsy."
Rafe got up from the table, handed in his empty plate and headed for the back of the house, stopping to give Sierra a peck on the cheek and a pat on the rear end.
I closed my eyes.
"Couldn't help him much," Cap said, "seein' as I don't have a file. Don't have an authorization. Don't have a Ranger I sent to New Mexico, much less one working a homicide that's been signed and dated."
"Cap—"
"Don't say it on the phone, son."
I didn't.
"Drive on down tomorrow," he said. "Be in my office by ten. We'll have a talk. Just you and me. No paperwork yet. We'll figure out what kind of paperwork there's gonna be after you look me in the eye."
"Yes, sir."
"And charge your damn phone."
The line went dead.
I held the receiver for a second longer. The kitchen had stilled behind me. Sierra stood at the stove, wiping a burner that didn't need wiping. He'd heard the whole thing. Probably understood most of it. The man missed nothing and said less.
I hung up.
The receiver sat heavy in my hand. Cap had been a Ranger longer than I'd been alive.
He could look at a man's face and read the last three weeks off it.
He'd read Rex on me. He'd probably read Ransom, too.
The question for the morning wasn't whether he was firing me.
The question was whether I'd be escorted out in cuffs or not.
When I turned around, Ransom was watching me with no expression at all.
I walked back to my seat and sat down.
"I have to drive to El Paso in the morning," I said, low, just to him. "Ten o'clock meeting with my captain. He found out I'm not where I told him I was."
Ransom set his fork down. He pushed his chair back and stood. "Eat your dinner. I'll be back."
Ransom went up to Sierra, who was elbow deep in dishwater, and said something low to him.
Sierra dried his hands on the towel at his hip.
He asked Ransom a question in a voice that didn't carry.
Ransom answered with a single, quiet word.
Sierra nodded once, set the towel on the counter, and walked Ransom out of the kitchen.
As they passed the dining room, he said, loud enough for the rest of the table to hear, "Take that hat off before you knock on his door, aguijón. "
Ransom went after him with his hat in his hand.
Joe was scraping the last of his Frito pie. Mateo was watching me from across the table. None of them looked toward the back hallway where Sierra had taken Ransom. None of them needed to. They all knew what was happening back there, and they were giving him the room to do it.
The boys had cleared half their plates by the time Sierra came back. He went to the sink without a glance at the table, hands back in the water like he'd never left. Rafe came in behind him, crossed to the head of the table, and looked at me.
"Winston."
"Yes, sir."
"Ransom's going with you tomorrow. He'll drive."
"Yes, sir. Appreciate it."
"Bring him back in one piece, Ranger."
"Yes, sir."
"That wasn't a request."
"No, sir. I heard you."
Ransom came in last, hat back on his head, and dropped into the chair beside me. He picked up his fork. He didn't look at me.
"Five o'clock," he said. "I'm driving."
"Yes, sir."
He narrowed his eyes at me. "Don't start."
We finished dinner. Or they did. I pushed the Frito pie around my plate and waited for the meal to be over.
The boys cleared their own places, stacked them on the counter without being told.
Sierra accepted the help with grunts that meant he was still mad, but it wasn't their fault. Rafe retreated to his office.
After, I followed Ransom out to the barn.
"Saddle up, Ranger."
"I thought we said tomorrow."
"We did. Saddle up."
I didn't ask where we were going and saddled Faye.
Ransom worked Galahad on the other side of the rail.
The horse stood for him without fussing, which I'd seen Galahad refuse to do for two of the ranch hands and one of the vets in the few days I'd been there.
The big bay let Ransom tighten a girth that any other horse on the property would have argued about. They had an arrangement, those two.
"He bite you yet?" Ransom said without looking up.
"Faye? She's an angel."
"I meant Galahad."
"I haven't gotten close enough."
"Smart."
We led the horses out into the yard and mounted up.
"Where we going?"
"Up."
He clicked his tongue at Galahad, and the horse moved out. Faye fell in behind without me having to ask her to.
The track climbed through caliche, then dirt. Galahad knew the way and Ransom didn't have to do anything to him. Faye didn't either. The horses walked single file, hooves clean against the dry caliche.
After fifteen minutes, Ransom reined Galahad up on a flat shelf of rock at the top of a rise. He swung down, and I swung down after him.
The night was warm and dry, the air full of sage and dust and something animal that had passed through earlier in the day. The sky overhead was black, deep enough that the Milky Way ran right up the middle of it.
Ransom let Galahad's reins fall. Faye dropped her head and started cropping at something I couldn't see in the dark. Galahad didn't move.
"He won't wander?"
"Not without me."
Ransom walked to the edge of the shelf and looked out over the land. I came up beside him. The wind moved over the top of the ridge. The dark stretched out for fifty miles in front of us with not a single light in it.
"Rafe give you any trouble about leaving?" I asked.
"No, but I cheated a bit," he admitted, looking over at me. "I told him someone needed to make sure this didn't come back on the ranch. I told him I'd make sure it didn't. Don't you go making a liar out of me tomorrow, Ranger."
I shook my head. "This is my cross to bear, and I mean to bear it. Wouldn't throw you or them under the bus like that."
A long pause. The wind kept moving.
"Ransom."
"Yeah."
"What are we doing up here?"
Ransom removed his hat and sat down. I joined him on the ledge, our legs dangling over a hundred foot drop.
"I used to come out here to talk to God," he said quietly. "Back when I believed in that shit." He let his hat rest on his knee and leaned back, both hands flat against the rock. "My dad was a real piece of work. My mom… she tried. Had us in church about as often as she could. But after she left…"
He trailed off, and I let the silence sit between us because I didn't know what to say.
Ransom kicked the heel of his boot against the rock face.
"Anyway, she had this prayer. Made us pray for guidance and blessings and all that shit, like normal people do.
But she also had us prayin' for whoever God made for us.
My mom believed in soulmates. It's why she stuck with my dad for so long.
She believed that when you're born, God puts the other half of you in someone else and they're just out there, waiting for you to find 'em. "
"Do you believe that?" I asked carefully.
He pressed his lips into a thin line, then picked up his hat and put it back on his head.
"I believe in sunrise and sunset, and the smell of the rain on the rock face in the afternoon during monsoon season.
I believe a scorpion'll sting you 'cause it can and 'cause it don't know better.
I believe things act according to their nature, that to everything there is a season, and a time for each and everything in nature.
Whether some magical, all-knowing being made all that and set down a bunch of rules…
That's another matter." He looked over at me.
"I believe in it because I've seen it. Mother Nature's a bitch and this land we're living on'll chew you up and spit you out if you don't belong.
And Ranger… I'm starting to think you might belong out here in the dust with us. "
My pulse picked up. "Ransom—"
"I'm not asking, Ranger." He took a step toward me. "I rode you up here so I could tell you that without anybody listening. This place looks good on you." He paused. "And I want you to stay for me."
I went still. The wind kept moving and I couldn't.
"Say that again."
"You heard me."
"Say it again anyway."
He didn't look away. "I want you to stay. For me."
I didn't have an answer for him. Not one I could say out loud, not with El Paso waiting for me at ten and my badge maybe sitting in Cap's drawer by noon. I had nothing to promise him with.
So I leaned over and closed the distance between us.
He kissed me hard enough to taste blood at the back of it. His hand threaded through my hair and pulled. My mouth opened for him, and he took it like he'd already decided. The wind moved between us and around us. I had his shirt fisted at the ribs, hands moving on their own.
Galahad's nose hit me square in the shoulder hard enough to scoot me an inch forward on the rock, and an inch closer to falling a hundred feet to my death.
Ransom caught me and held me. The big bay had his head down between us, ears forward, nostrils working at the side of my face.
Ransom froze.
"Ransom, I think your horse just tried to kill me," I said carefully.
Galahad shoved his nose at me again. I put my hand on his muzzle, and he pushed into it, this time without trying to assassinate me.
"I think he likes you," Ransom said.
"You New Mexicans sure got a funny way of showing affection. You know, I never courted a man whose horse tried to kill me."
"First time for everything," Ransom said, standing and offering me a hand. I took it and let him pull me up into another kiss, shorter this time.
"All right," he said when he was done with me. "Get on your horse, Ranger."
We mounted up. Ransom turned Galahad and started him down the slope. Faye followed without my having to ask her to.
"Why's your horse named Galahad?"
"Wasn't my idea. Rafe names them. And he's not my horse so much as I'm his person."
I smiled to myself. "I like that way of thinking about it."
The track widened on the way down. I pushed Faye up alongside Galahad. Ransom didn't look at me. He kept his eyes on the track.
"Ransom."
"Yeah."
"Whatever Cap says tomorrow, I'm coming back."
He didn't answer right away. The horses' hooves struck the caliche. Somewhere down the slope a coyote opened up. Another one answered, and the answer ended on a high note that hung a second longer than it should have.
"All right," he said.
And we rode down from the ridge.