Chapter 7 Bastien — Day 15
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The rain woke him before the wind did. He'd learned the difference in two weeks. Rain on the bunkhouse tin was steady, a working sound. Wind on the mesquite outside was warning.
Tonight it was both. The west-pasture move had ended at sundown — four hundred and thirty head through five gates, no losses — and his two-week trial had ended with it.
Mara had put him on weekly pay, pressed his wages into his hand, and said, “See you at six,” as if there had never been a question.
Bastien sat up on the narrow bunk and set his bare feet on the cold plank floor.
The dark inside the bunkhouse smelled of coffee grounds and wet wool and the small good char of the stove Thayer had banked before he'd gone out.
Rafe was asleep in the top bunk across from him, breath long and even.
Orin was curled toward the wall like a boy still, one arm folded under his cheek.
Thayer's bunk was empty, the blanket squared off the way the foreman always left it.
The clock above the little stove said 4:12 a.m.
He pulled on his jeans in the dark and reached for his boots.
In another life he'd have been awake at this hour for a different reason.
Long-haul flight in from Zurich. A car waiting downstairs on Wellington.
A boardroom that smelled of citrus polish and other men's cologne.
He didn't miss it. He hadn't yet finished being surprised by how much he didn't miss it.
Outside, the porch light of the main house was on.
Through the sheeting rain it looked like the only warm thing in a hundred miles.
He crossed the yard with his coat over his head.
Water was already running in braids over the gravel.
By the time he got up onto the porch of the adobe, his shirt was stuck to his shoulders and his hat brim was pouring at both corners.
Mara opened the door before he knocked.
“Wash below the south fence,” she said. She didn't say good morning.
Her braid was fresh. She'd been up long enough to redo it, or she'd never really slept.
“Young heifer, the one with the torn ear tag.
She went in for shelter and the water's coming up.
Thayer just called it from the truck. He's out on the north line with the trailer stuck in a rut.”
“How high?”
“Knee, when he saw her. Rising.”
“Roman and Vespers?”
“Already saddled. I did them while I was on the phone with Thayer.”
Something in him warmed at that. She'd trusted him to keep up before she'd even opened the door.
“Coats,” she said, and turned back into the mudroom. “Both of ours. The good rope's on Roman. My father's slicker's the long one — you take it. You're taller than he was.”
“Mara —”
“Don't. Put it on.”
He put it on.
The slicker still smelled faintly of another man's tobacco four years after him. He didn't say so. He buttoned it up to the throat and reached for his hat.
She was already out the door and down the steps into the rain, boots ringing off the porch boards, no wasted step in any of it.
They walked to the barn heads down against the rain.
The lamp above the tack room was on — she must have lit it before she came to fetch him.
Vespers stood at the crossties with her ears back, unhappy about the noise but standing.
Roman stood beside her, dark against the tack room lamp, saddled and steady.
The two horses knew a job when they saw one.
“You ever handled a heifer in water?” Mara asked, pulling Vespers's cinch a hole tighter.
“Cattle in current, once. Cold country.”
“Explain later.”
“Yes, ma'am.”
She glanced up at him from under the brim of her hat. He'd said it dry. Her eyes warmed before she looked away.
They swung up. The rain went from loud to punishing the moment they cleared the barn. He'd never ridden in weather this hard. The world narrowed to the top line of Mara's shoulders in front of him and the sheet of water between them and everything else.
The trail down to the south pasture had already gone to mud.
Roman took it careful, back feet placing themselves like he'd walked it a hundred times because he had.
Bastien let the reins go long and trusted the horse.
He'd learned it his first week: on this ground, in this weather, the horse knew more than he did.
He heard Vespers ahead and to his left, and Mara's low steady murmur — not to him, to her mare — words he couldn't catch through the rain.
The mare's ears kept flicking back toward the sound of her voice, then forward again into the wet dark.
She was afraid and she was working anyway. It ran in the family.
“How wide's the wash where she is?” he called forward.
“Fifteen feet. Twenty by now.”
“Depth in the middle?”
“Two feet. Maybe three if it's kept coming.”
“Current?”
“Fast enough. Not fast enough to move a cow if she'll stand. She won't stand much longer.”
“Understood.”
The rain smelled of stone and creosote and cold. His hands on the reins had given up feeling and moved on to the harder honesty of gripping. He was cold in his ribs. He'd been colder in his life. He hadn't been more awake in years.
“There,” Mara called back.
He followed her hand.
The heifer was down in the wash where the bank had softened out. She was in past her hocks, her back end shivering, her head up and her eyes white all around. She wasn't hurt, not that he could tell. She was stuck, and the water was climbing an inch every few minutes.
“Rope her from the bank,” Mara said. “You throw. I'll dally.”
“You want the shot?”
“You've got the longer reach. Do it.”
He nodded. He shook out the loop while Roman held steady under him.
His hands were cold enough that the rope felt like a stranger's.
He hadn't roped a live animal in twelve years.
He'd roped bales, dummies, a fence post as a joke with Rafe last week.
Nothing that could look back at him and try to swim.
He threw.
The loop hit the water short. The heifer flinched sideways and lost another two inches of ground under her back hooves.
“Coil it,” Mara said, calm as a schoolteacher. “Don't rush the second one. She's not going anywhere fast.”
He pulled the rope back hand over hand. Water sprayed off the wet coils.
The heifer bawled and pulled backward, sinking herself deeper, and the sound of her went through the middle of him.
He felt the shape of the throw now — the weight of the rope, the distance, the drag of the wind he had to throw across, the way his shoulder had to lead instead of his wrist.
He threw again. The loop dropped clean over her head.
“Set it,” Mara said.
He set it. Roman took the tension without shifting his feet, the great muscle of his hindquarters going hard under the wet saddle.
Mara dallied her own end around her horn on Vespers and backed her mare two long, steady steps into the mud.
The heifer came free with a great sucking noise and staggered up onto the bank, coughing water out of her nose.
“Easy,” Mara said, low. “Easy, girl.”
She swung down before he could tell her not to. She landed in mud to her ankles and moved to the heifer's shoulder to check her over. Her braid was already soaked through. Her hat had gone dark with rain, the brim collapsing under the weight of it.
Lightning cracked overhead.
He saw her face in the white light.
Jaw set. Wet hair plastered to her temple where the braid had loosened. Mouth in the shape of don't-you-dare-pity-me, aimed at the cow, at the sky, at anything that thought a woman couldn't handle her own wash in her own storm.
Something in him went quiet.
Not the quiet of being tired. Not the quiet of being far from Toronto.
The old quiet, the one he hadn't felt since he was maybe fourteen and his brother had taken him out on the lake at Mont-Tremblant and said, look, watch this, you can walk out on the black ice if you know where to step. The quiet of being shown a true thing.
He sat on Roman with the rope still coiling under his hand.
He watched Mara run her palm down the heifer's neck.
He watched her murmur to the animal and check her front left leg for wire cuts and set her own hat brim against the wind without thinking about it.
He didn't move for one long breath. He couldn't have said, if she'd asked him then, whether he was looking at a woman or a piece of weather. He suspected they were the same thing.
“You getting off that horse?” she called up, not looking at him.
“Yes.”
He got off the horse.
The mud came halfway up his shins. He led Roman around behind them so the gelding was between them and the wash edge. He undid the rope from around the heifer's neck and coiled it as he walked back. His fingers were slow with cold. Every knot took twice as long as it should have.
“She limp?” he asked.
“No. Just scared. Look at her breathing. She'll walk.”
“You want me to take her lead.”
“No. I want you to lead Vespers. She's twitchy with lightning. I've got the cow.”
“Yes, ma'am.”
“Beau.”
“Yes.”
“Stop yes-ma'aming me. It's four in the morning.”
“Yes.”
She snorted. He kept his face straight.
They started back.
The rain didn't slack. If anything it got worse the last quarter mile up out of the pasture.
He led Roman with the reins in his fist and Vespers on his off side by her lead.
Mara led the heifer on her side, walking her slow, one hand on the animal's shoulder the whole time so the cow could feel the weight of a person and know she wasn't alone.