7. Jake
Jake
Iwas waiting and watching from the round pen near the main barn when I saw a flurry of dust, the first sign of the trail ride coming back.
Then an array of manes, fluttering up. Horses’ heads.
The eager toss now that the main barn was in sight.
All of this cut against a sky so clear it looked like it had been drawn by a very sharp pencil and colored with the brightest blue ink.
One of the horses jumped to the front of the line and came cantering down the trail along the hill at a very fast pace. Too fast. Dust came up from its hooves.
It was Buddy. He wasn’t a headstrong horse by any means, but it looked like he’d seen the barn and was calling the trail ride over. Why wasn’t Dalton pulling back on the reins?
He wasn’t. He was curled over the saddle horn, and one of Buddy’s reins was flapping.
It was a quick quarter mile from the hill to the barn, and in a heartbeat Buddy was going to be on top of me, circling around to the barn doors in only a few seconds. Then Buddy stumbled, or actually bucked, and Dalton flew off, landed, and rolled onto his back in the dusty grass.
I let Buddy race past me. He could get to the barn doors and go in; nothing would hurt him there. Colt and the others were coming down the hill at a trot that I would normally have considered too fast, but something had upset the horses and their riders.
My heart pounded as I came up to Dalton and knelt next to him. He was so still. The straw cowboy hat that I’d loaned him was a mashed mess, but what did that matter.
I touched his gray face, felt for a pulse, and just about jumped when he clasped my forearm with a hot curl of fingers.
“Hey,” I said. “Anything broken? Does it hurt anywhere?”
I wanted to ask him what had happened to get everyone in such a state, but the important thing was to make sure he was okay. A tenderfoot from the city in borrowed boots.
“Everywhere.” He blinked at me, his eyes mere slits. “It hurts everywhere.”
There was a gash on his forehead. Fair hair stuck to the cut, and blood slid into his shirt collar. Into the dust. I pushed my panic down. I knew first aid. He was breathing and he could talk. He’d moved his arm.
“Can you sit up?” I asked. “Let me help. Slowly, now.”
The rest of the trail ride trotted past, again too fast, going around the barn. Horses whinnied and tossed their heads, and I knew Colt would have his hands full getting them settled down.
Maybe Malcolm or one of the others would see and come to help. Meanwhile, I was kneeling in the middle of a short-grassed summer field, brown and gold beneath that blue sky.
I helped Dalton sit up. We did this slowly. I watched him move his legs, shift his torso. Nothing broken.
Then, before I could take another breath to encourage him to stand up, Dalton slid into my arms. Into the shadow of my body. He was shaking, pressing his forehead against my chest. Smearing blood onto my cotton shirt.
“Easy, easy,” I said, circling my arm around him. “What happened up there?”
I put my hand beneath his chin to lift his head up, making sure he could breathe, wanting my answer. Dust had scattered over his face, showing tracks of silver tears. I wiped those away with the edge of my pinky; nobody needed to know about them but him and me.
“Mountain lion,” he said after a hard swallow. “It was tracking the trail ride all along, I guess. Parallel, beneath the line of trees. When it came out, the kids shouted, and Buddy reared. I didn’t know what to do. I couldn’t stop him.”
“Nobody could,” I said. “Not with a lost rein like that.”
An experienced rider would have leaned down to gather up the loose rein, but Dalton had been clinging to the saddle like a cat on a high branch. He hadn’t known what to do.
Helping Dalton to his feet was easy, now that I knew what had happened.
A mountain lion, unusual in the low foothills midsummer, but not unheard of, had startled the trail ride.
The kids, all from the city, had no doubt overreacted.
Colt had been on his own, guiding them back down.
And Dalton—he hadn’t had the skills to deal with the unexpected situation.
Cameron came up, flushed and wide-eyed, scraping his hair back and exposing that ducktail awash with pink dye that I’d noticed before. “Is he okay?” he asked. “Is Mr. Dalton okay?”
“He’s going to be fine,” I said, scooping my arm around Dalton’s back. “We’ll get him patched up and riding again in no time.” That’s what you did. You got bucked off and got back on again, as quick as you could.
“Oh, no,” Cameron said with a slow shake of his head, his eyes very serious. “Mr. Dalton’s afraid of horses. He told me so.”
Dalton looked at me and then flicked his gaze away. He’d not wanted anyone to know he was afraid. He’d voiced his protests, it sounded like, and still had been forced into joining the trail ride. By the offer of Lucas’ boots. My hat. Everyone’s expectation that of course he’d go.
No man wanted to be seen as a coward. Dalton was no different. It had taken guts to do what he’d done.
“Cameron,” I said, “go find someone to help Colt. Those horses need settling, and then they need to be unsaddled and groomed. Do what you can to calm everyone the fuck down. Understand? But, like I said, first find another ranch hand to help. Two would be better.”
“Yes, sir,” Cameron said, wide-eyed but willing.
He trotted off, and I followed, guiding Dalton, my arm around his shoulders. He walked well enough, but he still had the shakes. His mouth was shut firmly, and he wiped at the blood on the side of his face, smearing it.
“We’ll get you taken care of,” I said.
I wanted to pet him to soothe him, the way I would a horse. He was a man, though, and most likely wouldn’t like such tender treatment.
But at the barn door, which was flung open, inviting us into the cool shade, I bent my head and said, quietly, “That was fucking brave, what you did.”
For a moment, his eyes widened in those shadows, as if he was astonished that anyone would think well of him after what happened.
I knew that feeling. After my arrival at Snow Creek, it had taken me a while to accept any praise as genuine. That my company was welcome was a constant surprise. I was better used to it now, but that didn’t mean I’d forgotten what it felt like to be considered an afterthought.
“Over here,” I said, guiding him through the low gloom of the barn to the dusty little office where Walter Barrett had sometimes gone over accounts, far from the ranch house and its many distractions.
It wasn’t much of an office, and there was a bigger one in the staff building, but it still held the ghost of Walter’s casual welcome.
I sat Dalton in the spindle-backed chair and reached to a high shelf where the first-aid kit was: an old metal box, its paint long faded, that was always stocked with fresh bandages and gauze. Ointment. Finger splints. Anything someone might need when working around horses and livestock.
When I placed it on the desk, on the green felt blotter, he said, “I don’t need that.”
“You do,” I said. “You’ve got a mighty impressive cut along here.” I traced a line across my own forehead. “I’ll clean you up, get you a bandage. You might need stitches. We’ll see.”
I pulled over a three-legged wooden stool and sat on it, my knees weaving with his.
I started by pulling out several packets of antiseptic wipes.
A soft, damp cloth might have been better for cleanup, but this was what I had to hand, and I was reluctant to leave him at that moment, not for any errand.
Had he been any ranch hand, I would have gone about the task quickly: Clean up. Ointment, not too much. Bandage. Done. But in his tattered state, the shakes still evident in his shoulders, I wanted to be slow and careful.
His breath was warm on my wrists as I cleaned his face, learning the contours of it along the way.
The bones beneath his skin seemed sturdy; the curve of his mouth sweet. I cleared my throat and focused on the task before me. Pushed his hair, sticky with drying blood, back from his forehead.
I spread ointment along the cut, which was long but not too deep. Then I grabbed two butterfly bandages and took my time putting them in place.
All the while, he watched me with those sky-blue eyes of his. He winced when my finger flicked across the cut.
“Sorry,” I said. “Almost done.”
“Will I live?” he asked, making a little joke. Making light of the fact that he’d been scared out of his mind the entire time.
“Yes,” I said. “You’ve gone through the worst of it. Astride a startled horse. Out of control. Getting bucked off. If you can survive all that, you can survive anything.”
I didn’t quite know what was running through his mind. But he was looking at me like I was his lifeline. Maybe I was.
More surprising was that only the day before, I’d considered him soft and not altogether useful. He’d looked at me with some disdain as well. Now that gaze of his said something different, but what, I didn’t know.
“You’re going to be sore,” I said. “Maybe you should take some Tylenol and go lie down.”
“Not yet,” he said. “I want to make sure Buddy’s okay. He was pretty scared by the mountain lion. There was white stuff on his neck, and I think I kicked him someplace tender. That’s why he bucked me off, I bet.”
There were a million reasons a horse might buck, and yes, with Dalton leaning over Buddy’s neck the way he had been, it was likely that the heel of his borrowed boots had struck Buddy on his flank, a very tender spot for any horse.
The fact that Dalton wanted to check on a horse he hadn’t wanted to ride in the first place impressed me, and I had never been impressed easily.
“Okay,” I said, helping him stand. “Let’s do that.”
We found Buddy easily in the line of horses that had been tied by their reins along the box stalls and single stalls. Cameron had done his job well, because there were two ranch hands in addition to Colt working with the kids, keeping them calm and focused on the task of taking care of the horses.
Buddy was closest to the open barn doors on the far side of the barn, half in sunshine, half in shadow. He whinnied at us as we approached. He was a little wide-eyed still, and that white lather on his neck was only just drying.
“Easy, boy,” I said, patting Buddy’s neck, showing Dalton how it was done. He hung back, but then the next horse over started dancing and pulling on its reins. I tugged on Dalton’s arm to move him near Buddy’s head, where he wouldn’t get stepped on.
“Just pet him,” I said. “Gentle. On his nose. Behind his ears. Stroke his neck. I’ll unsaddle him, and you watch. You can learn that way. And when I start to groom him, you can join in. Or not.”
It took balls to do something that scared you, and we’d thrown Dalton on the back of a giant beast that he was already afraid of. Those city-soft hands trembled as he reached out to touch Buddy’s nose. But he was doing it.
Dalton’s head was bent close to Buddy’s, and he was fully focused on his task. He touched Buddy’s neck, forehead wrinkling with dismay at the white lather. A good soft brush would take care of that in no time once it was fully dried.
In the meantime, as I loosened the two cinches, front and back, I made shh-shh-shh noises, both to Buddy and to Dalton.
I handed the saddle off to Colt and grabbed two body brushes from the grooming bin.
I gave one to Dalton and began to brush Buddy, front to back, front to back, in a slow, silent rhythm.
Dalton followed, sliding the brush over Buddy’s neck, then jumped back when Buddy slid his nose along Dalton’s arm, lipping at him, tugging on his sleeve.
“He wants sugar,” I said. “Horses get given sugar when they’re good. As a treat. That or a horse cookie. It’s like a dog biscuit, but for horses,” I added in response to his raised eyebrows.
“His nose is very soft,” Dalton said, fingers gently trailing over Buddy’s muzzle.
“That it is,” I agreed as I pretended to focus on taking the brush over Buddy’s hip and hindquarters.
I moved around his tail to his other side, kicking up a bit of hay with my boots. The sun was on my back, and a cool breeze drifted around my neck.
All of this—my normal routine, regular chores, focusing on the horse—did little to settle me.
As I looked over Buddy’s withers and untangled a bit of his dark mane with my fingers, Dalton met my gaze with those blue eyes and his sunrise smile.
A purple-and-green bruise was growing around the cut on his forehead. He’d hit pretty hard when he’d landed.
I’d need to look out for him. I’d do that for anyone, just anyone, who’d come to the ranch and found themselves overwhelmed. But this was more than that. He was so brave and so pretty, all at the same time, a combination damn near impossible for me to resist.
“I’m a banker, not a cowboy,” he said, watching me over the top of Buddy’s neck.
“I’m not a cowboy,” I objected. “Just a ranch hand. Just an average blue-collar man.”
I didn’t know why I’d said that. Maybe it was because he wanted to clarify where he stood, so I did the same. Who was I to him, anyway? Just someone who worked at a ranch he happened to come to.
We had no connection, he and I, not one of any consequence, anyway. The only thing we shared, could possibly share, was that moment and my acknowledgment of his bravery.
He wrinkled his forehead and squinted at me, as though the sunshine behind me was too bright to bear.
“Headache?” I asked. When he nodded, I said, “That’ll happen. If Tylenol doesn’t cut it, I’ll run you to urgent care. There’s one in town.”
His expression told me he didn’t want to look weak or be singled out. That he wanted to work with the rest of us, as if he needed to prove his worth.
He was a guest, though. He didn’t need to prove anything. But I did empathize. I knew what it was like to feel you had to keep marching in spite of wanting to quit.
“Maybe I will sit down,” he said.
“Fine by me,” I said. “Any man would after a fall like that.”
As I groomed Buddy, then Milkweed, then Pancho, I kept my eye on Dalton. He sat on the feed bin for a good ten minutes, watching the melee in the barn settle into something more civilized.
After a bit, he spoke to Lucas, who’d come by to help and supervise. Then, at Jesse’s direction, Dalton took a bucket and filled it with horse cookies. He went around to each horse and offered up a cookie on his flat palm.
He must have learned what to do from Jesse, and though he looked half-startled each time a horse lipped at his palm, he kept very still.
And though I couldn’t have admitted it to anyone, I dearly wished I’d been the one to teach him that.