17. Dalton
Dalton
Jake had gotten up before dawn. He’d answered a knock at the door, washed briefly at the sink in the little kitchen, and pulled on yesterday’s clothes. He must have thought I was sleeping, for out he went with only a soft kiss to my forehead.
I’d lain in his bed, watching the whole thing. Or at least portions of it, as he tiptoed around getting ready for the day. But where had he gone so early?
By the time I made my way to the dining hall, the sun was warm and bright, and it was already a beautiful day.
Such a nice change from the rainy days we’d had.
The sky was blue, the fluttering leaves on the cottonwood trees glossy.
I heard birdsong and, not too far away, the low rush of Snow Creek, still receding from its rain-clogged heights.
I kept my eye out for Jake as I ate breakfast with Lucas, though with was an exaggeration, since I was mostly looking at his back while he chatted with Jesse. When I was just about done, I spotted Dillon and Cameron and went to intercept them.
“How you guys doing?” I asked as nonchalantly as I could. “Everything all right in bunkhouse number four?”
I was wearing yesterday’s everything, including my ripped boxer briefs, held together with a safety pin I’d found in Jake’s bathroom. So it was obvious that I’d not been home the night before.
“Sure, Mr. Dalton,” Dillon said with a smile I could only describe as sly. “We’re not telling anybody where you are nights.”
“But if you needed something,” I said, not sure why I was clinging to the idea that I was somehow responsible for them.
There was a coordinator for the LGBT kids, Beau Rawlings, and he was the one making lists and giving those kids chores to do.
Duties that would make adults out of them and set them up for better opportunities in their lives.
“In an emergency, you’d know where I am, right? ”
“Mr. Dalton,” Cameron said in his matter-of-fact way, “everybody on this ranch knows where you were last night. That’s why we didn’t tell them. No need to.” Snickering together, they went on out of the dining hall, and I bused my tray.
I’d not been setting a very good example with my trysts with Jake. But I wasn’t going to stop, because there was nothing to be ashamed of. I had feelings for Jake. Complicated, passionate feelings that had an end date. Didn’t they?
Friday would be my last day at the ranch. My PTO would be up, and I would have to head home. Except I wanted to stay because this place was beautiful and relaxing and the work was meaningful.
And mostly because of Jake. The way he made me feel. The way he looked at me. Touched me. I felt good when I was around him, impatient to see him when I was not. That hadn’t happened to me in a long while. I couldn’t even remember the last time.
But the workday had started, and Jake was out in the foothills or wherever, doing what, I really didn’t know. So I pulled some more files from the office in the staff building, grabbed a charger for the laptop I’d forgotten to plug in the night before, and headed for the barn.
As I reached the door to go out, Lucas was at my side. “Hey,” he said. “Just wanted you to know you guys haven’t been as subtle as you probably thought you were. Neither one of you.”
“This all was my idea,” I said quickly, a hot panic seizing me. “Don’t take it out on Jake. Don’t fire him or anything.”
“Fire Jake?” His eyebrows rose to his hairline, just about, as he looked at me like I was some kind of idiot.
“Jake is Jesse’s left arm. He knows stuff.
He gets stuff done. Sure, some of the other hands might have more education and, dare I say it, ambition, but Jake? This place couldn’t run without him.”
I wasn’t really surprised to hear this praise, but it was nice to have it confirmed. Jake deserved it. He worked so hard, was so devoted to the ranch.
“But here’s the thing.” Lucas circled his fingers around my arm to draw me closer, like he was about to whisper a secret. Which wasn’t like him. Bold and loud, that’s how he communicated. With me, with everyone.
“What?” I didn’t pull away, because if Lucas had something to tell me, I was going to stay and listen.
“Inside, he’s honey and butter mixed together,” Lucas said. “He’s the sweetest guy. Also one of the toughest, but if you break his heart—”
He paused, and there was a flush to his cheeks that I wasn’t used to seeing.
“Since I inherited the ranch, I’ve stumbled, made bad decisions.
Haven’t been able to get one project started before another fence breaks or the river overflows its banks.
And these guys? Never once have they asked What the fuck are you doing?
Well, okay, maybe Jesse has, but he’s the foreman.
He gets to. The rest of them, they put their heads down and work, and they keep their opinions to themselves.
Anyway, my point is, if you hurt Jake, these fellows will have something to say about it.
They’ll be pissed—at you, and probably at me, too, for bringing you here. You see?”
It was a lot for Lucas to say all at once.
Usually, he was a minimum words, maximum effect kind of guy.
That I’d gotten such a speech told me how much he was coming to care about the ranch and its people.
That he was protective of them. And that Jake had friends, good friends, even though he never seemed to talk to them much, or talk about them at all.
“I see,” I said. “I don’t know how it started, and I’m doing my best to figure things out.”
“I know you are.” Lucas was trusting me, the way he always had. “Better get to work, then,” he said, waving me off. “Those books won’t audit themselves.”
I was smiling when I went into the barn.
I worked all morning, my ear cocked for the sound of hooves that I imagined I could identify as Buddy’s. I’d seen Snowball in her stall, giving me the stink eye because I didn’t bring her a cookie. So Jake had to be riding Buddy.
I was standing in the doorway to the office, stretching my back and wondering if I should go get some coffee, when Jake, astride Buddy, and two other ranch hands, Malcolm and Gunner, rode into the barn. The horses had foam on their necks and were tossing their heads.
When Jake dismounted, I went up to him but stood back while he unsaddled Buddy. The horse came first, I knew that much.
“Get me a brush?” Jake asked, turning to me. “Hoof pick? Comb?”
I was aghast at the way he looked, dust from head to toe. Sweat streaked his neck, and his face was a mask of dirt with lines around his mouth where he’d drunk from his canteen. He smelled of sweat, and his lips were chapped.
I raced to get the things he needed, filled my pockets with horse cookies, and hurried back to Jake’s side, just wanting to be of use.
He’d carried Buddy’s saddle and blanket to one of the racks on the wall and was running his fingers through Buddy’s dark mane, untangling it.
Soothing the foam of sweat along Buddy’s neck.
“You did good, my friend,” he told the horse. “Real good. Real good.”
“Where did you go?” I took the comb back from Jake and started in on Buddy’s mane so Jake could start brushing him down. “Can I ask? You look like hell.”
His eyes were bloodshot. He’d not shaved before leaving the bunkhouse that morning. He was clearly exhausted, and still he kept going.
“A mountain lion killed one of the cows last night,” he said. “Or early this morning.” He shook his head, and his hands stilled on Buddy’s back. “We went after it.”
“Did you get it?” I asked, imagining Jake firing a rifle from his saddle like a hero in some old Western movie. I wondered if it was the same mountain lion that had followed us on our trail ride that first day. “Did you shoot it?”
He looked over Buddy’s back at Gunner, who, I now saw, was taking a long rifle out of some kind of leather sling. He opened it with a loud snap and removed two shells.
“Yes, but probably not the way you mean,” Jake said.
“Gunner is a crack shot, but we don’t want to kill a creature like that if we don’t have to, so he missed on purpose.
Fired two warning shots to scare the cat.
We chased him into a little box canyon. Cornered him there.
Then we built a fence out of logs. Threw a chunk of dead cow in to keep him a while. ”
My eyes were wide. They must have ridden miles to look like they did. Like they’d been dragged through the dust.
“Animal control will come,” Jake added. “They’ll tag him and haul him out west where there are no cattle to tempt him. He’ll be able to hunt wild animals as he was meant to do.”
This all was so shockingly real, almost brutal. And very, very knee-weakeningly manly. Not that Jake would have thought so. The matter-of-fact way he described his day was like a bucket of cold water all over me. This wasn’t a story or a Western movie. This was his life.
I opened my mouth. To say what, I hardly knew.
But something to let him know how he affected me.
Moved me to the core. Made me want to prove myself to him.
Or, at the very least, to push myself more instead of continuing to poke along in my life, complaining about my boss.
Wishing things were different while sucking back an iced latte and calling my life hard.
“Get a bucket of water for him?” he asked. “Something to drink while I finish up?”
I walked fast and grabbed a rubber bucket from a peg on the wall, then filled it from the spigot. I brought it back and held it out to Buddy.
“Just place it in front of him,” Jake said with a shake of his head. “He’s still breathing.” At my puzzled expression, he added, “I walked him the last half mile, but his breath is still slowing down. I’ll give him a sip, and then I’ll walk him. Then give him another sip.”
They must have galloped a long way, and it made my head spin. I had bits and pieces of fairy-tale Westerns dancing in my head, as hard as I tried to fight it.