22. Willy
CHAPTER TWENTY-TWO
Willy
I’ve discovered there are only so many disasters a man can joke my way through before people stop laughing, which is unfortunate because joking is pretty much my entire personality.
I walk into the kitchen and find Red nursing a mug of coffee like sunrise insulted his family. Arizona’s already at the table, and the moment I step inside, we both remember exactly how yesterday ended.
Heat creeps into her smile when she looks at me, and I grin back before Red catches the exchange and squints at us over the rim of his mug.
“Morning.”
Silence.
“Well… that’s encouraging.” I wave a hand between them. “You’ve somehow managed to make this awkward for me.”
Arizona coughs into her coffee to hide a laugh while Red mutters into his mug. “Good.”
“I’d like it officially recorded that accidentally interrupting people is emotionally exhausting.”
“You didn’t look exhausted yesterday.”
“I was professionally embarrassed.”
She smiles. “You were laughing.”
“I deal with embarrassment by making jokes.”
“You deal with everything by making jokes.”
“See? You get me.”
Arizona lets out a real laugh, and I’ll happily count that as my first win of the day.
Emmett walks in with Sadie balanced on his hip, and she stretches both arms toward Arizona before she’s even through the doorway. “There she is!”
Arizona’s smile softens as she takes her. “Morning, troublemaker.”
“I’m hungry.”
Emmett snorts. “She ate enough yesterday to bankrupt a buffet.”
“I’m becoming a cowgirl.”
“That’s a solid career plan,” I tell her. “The hat alone makes it worthwhile.”
She accepts my approval with complete seriousness before grabbing Arizona’s hand and hauling her toward the table to admire a drawing she apparently started before dawn.
Arizona drops beside her without hesitation, asking questions about every scribbled horse and crooked fence while Sadie explains each one like she’s presenting artwork at a fancy gallery.
Watching them together twists my chest in a way I’d rather ignore because I know Arizona’s leaving soon, yet every day she slips a little deeper into life here until I can’t picture this ranch without her.
An hour later we’re back to work, and the ranch settles into its usual routine of horses, dust, coffee, and Red finding fresh reasons to complain.
Emmett hands me two water buckets with the confidence of a man who hasn’t learned from experience. “Carry both. You’ll spill less.”
“I appreciate your faith.”
“You shouldn’t.”
He’s right. I manage to splash half a bucket before I reach the bronc pens, and one of the horses leans over for a drink like I planned the whole thing.
“You’re welcome.”
Red’s saddling one of our best broncs when the gelding stumbles just enough to catch his attention. He rests a hand on the horse’s neck. “Easy.”
The gelding blinks and sways before bracing himself again.
Every conversation around us dies.
Emmett steps closer. “You okay, buddy?”
Red checks the horse’s eyes, then runs his hand along its neck. His jaw tightens. “Get Wyatt. We need a vet to check him over.”
Arizona hurries over from the porch. “What happened?”
“We don’t know yet,” Emmett says.
The gelding lowers his head again, and Red studies him with a frown that tells me he already knows this isn’t good. “Damn.”
“What is it?” I ask.
Red looks toward the ranch hands. “Has he eaten anything different?”
One of them shakes his head. “Not that I’ve seen.”
Red drops to a crouch beside the feed bucket and scoops a handful into his palm. He brings it to his nose, and the change in his expression drains every bit of color from the morning. “This wasn’t an accident.”
Nobody moves. Every eye fixes on him as he sifts through the grain again before letting it spill back into the bucket.
“Someone drugged him.”
The words punch straight through my chest.
Arizona freezes beside the fence, her hand still resting against the rail, while Emmett shifts back a pace and stares at the horse like he’s hoping Red’s wrong.
I look from the gelding to the bucket. “You’re certain?”
Red gives a single nod. “I’ve seen this before.”
Nobody asks where because nobody needs to. His face answers the question well enough.
A stranger walked onto our ranch, tampered with the feed, and walked away believing nobody would notice until one of us climbed into the saddle.
I look around at everyone standing in complete silence, and my skin starts crawling because fear always fills empty space faster than words ever can.
“So…” I clear my throat and force a crooked grin that feels much weaker than usual. “If we’re handing out performance enhancers, I’d like to file a complaint about the side effects.”
Every head turns toward me.
Nobody smiles. Nobody rolls their eyes.
Red watches me with an expression that tells me I’ve missed the mark by a country mile, Arizona’s shoulders sink, and Emmett pinches the bridge of his nose.
“Yeah,” I mutter, rubbing the back of my neck. “That one deserved better.”
“I don’t think jokes are helping today,” Red says.
I let out a breath through my nose and give him a small nod.
“No… I don’t think they are.”
Wyatt’s pickup tears into the yard less than ten minutes later, throwing gravel behind it before he climbs out with his battered leather medical bag already in one hand. “Red.”
“We’re over here.”
He crosses the yard without another word, dropping beside the gelding as though every horse on the ranch belongs to him. His hand settles against its neck before he runs careful fingers along the jaw and lifts one eyelid.
“Easy, fella.”
The horse flicks an ear but doesn’t fight him.
Wyatt checks its pulse, presses a thumb against its gums, then watches the way it shifts its weight before turning toward the feed bucket.
He scoops a handful of grain into his palm, rubs it between his fingers, brings it to his nose, and lets it fall back into the bucket.
“How long have you noticed him like this?”
Red folds his arms. “Five minutes, maybe ten.”
“Any vomiting?”
“No.”
Wyatt nods. “Tremors?”
“A little.”
Wyatt reaches into his bag, pulls out a plastic sample pouch, and fills it with a handful of feed before sealing it shut.
“I’ll send this off,” he says, tucking it safely away. “I doubt the lab’s going to tell us anything we don’t already know.”
Nobody interrupts him.
He studies the gelding again before resting his hand against its shoulder. “I’d put money on somebody mixing a sedative into the grain.”
Emmett drags a hand across the back of his neck while Arizona stares at the bucket like she expects it to explain itself.
Red nods once. “That’s what I figured.”
Wyatt gives the horse another careful look. “They didn’t use enough to kill him.” He reaches into his bag for a syringe and starts preparing the medication. “They used enough to make him dangerous.”
The picture forms all by itself.
One of us saddles him.
One ride.
One bad landing.
Wyatt injects the medication into the gelding’s neck before rubbing the spot with the flat of his hand.
“I’ve caught it early enough that I like his chances,” he says. “He’ll be watched the rest of today, and I don’t want anybody riding him until I say otherwise.”
Emmett exhales. “So he’ll recover?”
“I expect he will.”
By the time the gelding starts looking more like himself, the ranch has settled into the sort of silence that usually follows bad news.
Red heads for the barn with Emmett to check every feed barrel on the property, Arizona disappears toward the house to keep Sadie occupied, and I help Wyatt carry his kit back to the truck.
He shuts the tailgate before looking at me. “You alright?”
I shrug. “Never better.”
He gives me the same look he’s been giving me since we were teenagers and I tried convincing him I broke my wrist wrestling a fence instead of falling out of a tree. “That good, huh?”
I sigh. “Was I that obvious?”
“You’ve been cracking jokes all morning.”
“That’s hardly suspicious.”
“It is when none of them are funny.”
I clutch my chest. “You wound me.”
“I’ve been trying to figure out what happened to your standards.”
I smirk. “They’ve always been low.”
“They’ve never been this low.”
“I hate how well you know me.” I look back toward the barn where Red and Emmett have disappeared. “I keep thinking if I can make everybody laugh, maybe things won’t feel quite so bad.”
Wyatt follows my gaze. “Maybe.”
I scratch the back of my neck. “I don’t feel like I’m helping.”
“You showed up.”
“That doesn’t sound like much.”
“It is when people know you’ll keep showing up.”
I blow out a breath. “You’re annoyingly good at this.”
He grins as he climbs into the truck. “I’m two years older. That’s where wisdom comes from.”
“That’s funny,” I say, stepping away from the door. “I always thought it was the receding hairline.”
He laughs, shakes his head, and starts the engine. “I’ll check on him again this evening.”
“You’ll mostly be checking on me.”
“I know.”
He pulls through the gates, leaving me standing in the yard with the smell of horses and fresh hay hanging around the barns.
I head back toward the house because Wyatt’s right. I don’t have to fix everybody, I just have to keep showing up.
Red’s already put people to work. Ranch hands split into pairs and fan out toward the barns while Emmett starts checking feed bins with a couple of the younger guys.
Arizona stays close to Sadie, answering the same worried questions over and over while Red works his way through the tack room with the focus of a man determined to find answers if he tears the whole place apart doing it.
Nobody’s talking much anymore.
I can’t stand it.
Dusty Spur’s supposed to be noisy. Red grumbles before breakfast, Emmett worries over everybody, Sadie fills every silence with another impossible question, and I spend most of my day giving people reasons to roll their eyes.
Watching everyone move around without any of that feels wrong.
I clap my hands together. “I’ll check the outer barns.”
Red glances my way and gives a distracted nod before going back to the saddles spread across the tack room floor.
That’ll have to do.
I shove my hands into my pockets and cut across the yard, whistling an old country song that deserves a better singer than me.
A couple of horses lift their heads as I pass before dropping back to their hay, and the farther I walk from the house, the quieter the ranch becomes until it’s just my boots crunching over the dirt.
The western barn sits beyond the practice pens where we keep older equipment and spare tack. I round the corner, already thinking about what needs checking first, then my boots grind to a stop.
Fresh black paint stretches across the weathered timber in letters so large I can read every one of them from where I’m standing.
RED brONSON PAYS HIS DEBTS.