10. Navarro Only #3
They packed lunch and rode higher. Beyond the north ridge, the trail narrowed across loose rock and steep timber. Jay put the camera away and allowed Red to make most executive decisions.
Harris stayed closer now. When Red slipped half a step in the loose ground, Harris had already turned in the saddle.
“Stay with him. Give him his head.”
Jay loosened his hands instead of grabbing for the reins. Red dropped his neck, found his footing, and climbed on as though nothing remotely dramatic had happened.
Harris remained alongside them until the gelding settled, then faced forward again. The distance between the horses stayed reduced afterward.
Jay chose not to assign emotional significance to this.
He was a documentarian, not a conspiracy theorist. Harris riding six feet closer than necessary could mean any number of things, including terrain, safety, or a sudden and entirely professional interest in whether Jay remained attached to his horse.
His nervous system remained unconvinced.
By late afternoon, the line cabin appeared beneath a stand of firs, its boards weathered gray and its rusted metal roof sagging slightly toward one corner of the porch. Beside it, a small pole corral enclosed enough grass for the horses, with a spring-fed trough and a covered rack of old hay.
Jay looked toward the structure. “Luxury accommodations.”
“For the horses.”
“I understood that, thanks.”
“Did you?”
“I’m starting to think I should just keep my mouth shut.”
“Wouldn’t last five minutes.”
Harris’s eyes met his for a second, the faintest trace of amusement there, then he went back to unloading.
That was going to require some strategic ignore-at-all-costs.
Inside, the cabin contained two narrow bunks, a small table, a woodstove, shelves of battered cookware, and exactly enough floor space to make avoiding another adult man a conscious logistical decision.
Two bunks.
Fine. Jay had slept in smaller rooms with crews and once a Peruvian epidemiologist who spoke in his sleep exclusively about municipal budgets. This was not intimate.
His body, which had already become unhelpfully alert to Harris’s proximity, appeared to disagree.
Harris dropped the saddlebags onto the table and gestured toward one of the bunks. “You take that one.”
The bunks looked completely identical. “Why?”
“Better mattress.”
“You tested them?”
“Nope.”
“So this is instinct. Wonderful.”
Jay set his bag beside the bunk nearest the window and stretched out experimentally. The mattress was thin enough that Harris’s assessment of the alternative became mildly alarming, but after a day in the saddle even horizontal plywood would have had its charms.
He folded one arm behind his head. A wooden shelf had been built into the wall above the bunk, and from this angle four faded words were visible on its underside in black marker.
NELL WAS RIGHT — 2004
Jay smiled. “Harris.”
“What?”
“Come here.”
Harris gave him a suspicious look from the table.
“I promise this is not an elaborate attempt to lure you toward my bed.”
“That wasn’t my concern.”
“Well, now I’m offended.”
Harris rolled his eyes, but came over anyway. Jay pointed upward. “Look under the shelf.”
Harris bent, couldn’t find the angle, then crouched beside the bunk and leaned farther in, bracing one hand on the mattress beside Jay’s shoulder.
Oh.
This was considerably more Harris than Jay had anticipated joining him on the mattress.
His forearm was inches from Jay’s chest, one knee nearly against the side of the bunk, and Jay could smell sun-warmed cotton and leather. His heart gave one hard, deeply unhelpful beat.
Straight man. Very straight man. Currently half on your bed.
Jay fixed his eyes on the ceiling.
Do not get a fucking erection because a straight cowboy is bed-adjacent.
Harris shifted closer to see beneath the shelf.
Excellent. Extremely helpful.
“There,” Jay said, with what he felt was admirable vocal stability.
Harris read the words. For a second his face changed completely, the guardedness giving way to something softer and younger.
Then he pushed himself upright, at which point Jay’s nervous system could resume pretending it had standards.
“What was she right about?”
“Dad wanted to tear the cabin down. She said the roof was fine.”
Jay glanced overhead. “Was it?”
“Was after she climbed up there and patched it herself.”
“At what age?”
“Sixteen, maybe. Nearly broke her neck. Dad was so pissed he didn’t speak to her through dinner.”
“But she was right.”
“Technically.”
“Hence the historical record.”
Harris went back to the food bags. “She wrote that every damn place she won an argument.”
Jay looked up at the faded marker again.
That was better than another photograph.
More alive. A teenage girl climbing onto a roof because somebody had told her she was wrong, then crawling back down and making sure the building itself remembered the outcome.
Not Eleanor Shaw, tragic sister and visionary ranch daughter.
Not Saint Eleanor of the Guest Operation.
Nell.
“How many are there?” Jay asked.
Harris glanced over. “What?”
“Declarations of victory.”
A small pause.
“Lot of ranch.”
Jay smiled. “So that’s a lot.”
Harris turned back to the food. “She was right a lot.”