Chapter 12 #2
Cinch—I run my thumb along the topside, feel the leather. Tight. Whole.
I don't check the underside.
Nobody checks the underside of a cinch they tightened themselves an hour ago.
While I'm working the topside, a man in a baseball cap walks past the trailer pad.
Doesn't make eye contact. Doesn't slow down.
Uncle Holt watches him go from his spot at the F-250.
A different man calls Spur over to the front of the trailer pad—a photographer, no credentials, trying to get back-lot access. But Spur deals with him.
His back is to the trailer for maybe a minute or two.
At three-forty-five I tack Jaeger back up and walk him to the arena entrance.
Spur falls in beside me. Uncle Holt maybe ten feet behind.
"You ride your own run, Dakota," Spur tells me. "The man's not in the arena."
"I know."
Uncle Holt comes up alongside me on Jaeger's other side. "Baby girl."
"Uncle Holt."
"Your mama would've watched this run."
I close my eyes for a second. "She used to pop the cap on a Crown and Coke before every one of my runs."
"Yeah she did. I'm doing it for her tonight."
I open my eyes.
"Ride it for her, Dakota. You always do."
Somewhere deep in my belly, I’m pissed. I’m angry she hasn’t said anything. That she vanished off the face of the Earth.
Where the fuck is she?
I nod. He squeezes my knee through my jeans once and steps back.
Spur is at the rail. Holt is at the rail beside him. Rogue at the rail ten feet down.
I'm at the gate. The announcer's voice comes over the loudspeaker.
"Up next, from Sharp, Texas—Dakota Lyle on Jaeger."
The buzzer goes off and Jaeger comes out of the gate hot.
The first barrel is clean.
Wide entry. Tight pocket. Kick out fast. Jaeger's stride right under me.
Coming out of the first I'm fourteen seconds for it.
On the second barrel, the saddle moves on the entry.
An inch. Maybe two. My body realizes it before my brain does.
Something's wrong.
I think it's the dirt, my balance, something.
I round the second anyway because I'm three feet from the barrel and there's no time to think.
Coming out of the second barrel, I know it's the saddle.
Three lengths of stride between the second and third.
Fuck, the cinch is going.
I kick my feet out of the stirrups and don't grab the horn.
I slide my weight back onto Jaeger's hindquarters and let him run.
The saddle comes loose halfway between the second and third.
It hangs off his left side by the breast collar, dragging at his ribs, and Jaeger keeps running because Jaeger trusts me.
Pops used to say a barrel horse runs the pattern not the rider.
I round the third bareback.
My thighs do the work my stirrups can't. My seat does the rest. My hands stay loose on the reins. Jaeger doesn't break stride.
Coming out of the third, I let him run for the gate.
The crowd is on its feet.
The clock stops at 17.4, and I breathe.
I trot Jaeger out of the arena to the hand-off pen with the saddle hanging off his side, my hat somehow still on my head, and my thighs shaking under me.
I slide off him onto my own boots in the dirt.
Unbuckle the breast collar, set the broken saddle on the rail, and look the whole thing over. Then I see it. The fucking cinch.
The cut is on the underside.
Three-quarters through. A clean cut.
The kind someone would make with a sharp knife because he wanted me to take the third barrel and come down with the horse on top of me.
I don't move.
I stand there in the hand-off pen with my hand on Jaeger's neck and look at the cut.
* * *
Spur reaches me first.
I see him cross the dirt—running—with his cut flapping behind him and his hat in his fist.
Holt is two steps behind him.
Spur gets to me. Both hands on my face. "Are you hurt?"
"No."
"Are you sure?"
"I'm sure, Spur."
He pulls me into him. My face goes into his shoulder.
His shirt smells like coffee and the soap from his shower last night.
His hand is on the back of my neck, and somewhere there are photographers and a crowd, but none of it matters.
Uncle Holt is at the rail of the hand-off pen. He sees the cut on the cinch.
His face does what his grandpa’s face used to do when something on the ranch went wrong, which is the same face Pops' does, which is the face of a Lyle man going somewhere quiet inside himself before he blows a gasket.
"Dakota," Holt says.
I pull back from Spur and look at my uncle. "Yeah?"
"Come here, baby girl."
I let go of Spur and step over to the rail.
Uncle Holt reaches across it and pulls me into a one-armed hug, his other hand on the back of my head, holding me there.
He smells like cedar soap and the cab of his F-250 and twenty-five years of being the uncle who shows up when his niece needs him.
"I'm sorry, Uncle Holt."
"For what?"
"You drove from Lubbock in the middle of the night to watch me almost get killed."
"You didn't almost get killed. You finished a run on a saddle a man cut. That’s pretty badass if you ask me."
I close my eyes against his shoulder. "Pops needs to know."
"I’m sure he’ll be calling Spur soon. That was televised, and you know your father—he’s watchin’."
"He could be busy. You don’t know that."
Spur's phone rings, and he answers, walking ten feet away from us.
After thirty seconds he holds the phone out to me. "Your father wants to hear you."
I take it. "Pops."
"Baby girl."
"I'm okay."
"You practically rode that bareback."
"I sure did."
"That's my girl."
I close my eyes and lean against Holt's shoulder over the rail.
"Holt's there, yeah?"
"He's standing right next to me."
"Put him on after you."
"All right."
"Dakota."
"Yeah?"
"Come home, baby."
"I'm coming home, Pops."
"I love you, baby girl."
"I love you too."
I hand the phone to Holt.
He walks the other direction with it, away from me, away from Spur.
I don't hear what they say.
I stand at the rail with my hand on Jaeger and look at my left wrist.
The cuff has ridden up during the run. The gauze is showing.
I look at the white wrap on my pulse and think about my name underneath it written in the man's handwriting that means the world to me.
I let myself feel what the run took out of me for the first time since I came out of the gate.
My thighs are shaking. I let them.
Spur comes back to me, puts his arm around my shoulders, and pulls me into his side. "You okay, baby?"
"Not really."
"Yeah, I figured."
"I will be."
"I know."
Uncle Holt comes back and slips Spur's phone into his hand. "My brother wants you home tonight. I'm rolling behind you to Brownwood. Wells and Tread are staying back to make sure nobody follows your trailer out of the lot."
"Thank you, Holt."
"I'm not doing it for you, son. I'm doing it for her."
Spur nods.
Holt looks at me. "You okay to ride home, baby girl?"
"Yeah."
"I'll be in Sharp tomorrow. Your pops asked me to come."
"You're staying?"
"As long as it takes."
I almost cry, but I don’t.
The one thing I love about being a Lyle is that when you need your family, they show up.
He kisses my forehead. "Get in the truck. Spur, drive careful. Rogue, watch the road behind you and keep a close eye out. I got a bad feelin’, and I don’t like that shit. "
* * *
We pull out of the fairgrounds at five-thirty.
Holt's F-250 behind us. Wells and Tread are still at the back lot.
Rogue’s in the back seat with his laptop open, watching the highway behind us through some traffic feed I don't ask about.
I'm in the passenger seat with my hat on the dash and my hand on Spur's thigh.
The brush country goes dark around us before we hit Brownwood.
Holt's headlights stay in the rearview the whole way.
When we cross into Mills County, Holt flashes his brights once and peels off at the Goldthwaite exit to a Phillips 66—he'll stop for gas, call Pops, and follow us the rest of the way home in a few hours.
The headlights disappear from the rearview and the highway gets dark again.
I start to talk around the second hour.
"Spur?"
"Yeah."
"Brynn told me at the warm-up pen about this. An older guy, around forties or fifties. Smoked through the whole conversation. He was asking around for my schedule."
He goes still in the driver's seat. "Forties or fifties?"
"Yeah."
"Smokes?"
"That's what she said."
He doesn't answer for a long stretch of road.
His thumb moves across the back of my hand on his thigh, slowly, and his face has gone into the look it goes into when his mind is somewhere I can't follow.
"What is it, Spur?"
"Nothing yet, baby. I'll tell you when I know something."
I let him have it.
I fall asleep on the back stretch of the drive with my head against the window and his hand on top of mine.
When I wake up, the gate at the front of the ranch is in the headlights.
It's open. Pops on the porch of the main house.
Banshee’s at the round pen rail. Marlena’s in the kitchen window.
The whole property has been waiting up for us.
Spur pulls past the main house and drives to his cabin.
"Pops will want to see me."
"Respectfully, your pops can come over here. If we need to get out fast, we have a better advantage at my place."
I look at him. He looks at me. He's right.
He carries my bag in, carries the broken saddle to his porch, and sets it on the boards.
He even walks Jaeger to the round pen for water and rest. Comes back to the cabin with the dust of the day still on his boots.
I'm on his couch with my hat in my hand and the cuff of his shirt back down over the gauze on my wrist.
He kneels in front of me, hands on my knees and looks up at me. "Spur..."
"Yeah."
"He's going to come for us at home."
"I know."
"He's going to come back to the property."
"I know."
"I want him dead."
"Yeah, baby. I know."
There's a knock at the cabin door. Spur stands and crosses to the door to open it.
Pops is on the porch. Banshee behind him.
Both of their faces have the serious expression like when church is about to be called, and Pops looks past Spur at me on the couch.
He doesn't speak for a long second. "Baby girl."
"Pops."
"I’m calling church. You wanna come to the main house and sit with the ladies?"
"Yeah, Pops.” I close my eyes.
Spur looks at me.
"Go," I tell him. "I'm not going anywhere. I can head over and sit with Marlena and Grace."
Pops nods once. "And the prospects I have watchin’ all of you."
Spur kisses the top of my head and walks out behind Banshee.
I walk to the main house with two prospects ten feet behind me.
Marlena's at the front door before I reach the porch.
She doesn't ask if I'm okay. She knows I'm not.
She holds the door open. "Come on, baby. Grace put coffee on."
I let myself walk into the kitchen of the house I grew up in.
Grace is at the table with two mugs already poured and a third one going.
Cal asleep on a quilt on the floor. Waylon asleep on the couch with his thumb in his mouth.
The Lyle women at one table. The Lyle men in church.
The man who tried to kill me somewhere in the state of Texas.
He doesn't know what he just walked into.