LITMIR.BIZ

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toward the patrol car, but Gordon turned and started back for Jason, his sardonic voice lashing out like a whip.

      “Don’t worry your pretty little head about it, Jason. You’re gone, too. Hit the road.”

      Jason’s head turned around fast. He stared at Gordon and backed up a couple of steps.

      “Mr. Campbell, it isn’t my fault that Shane…”

      Gordon grabbed hold of his collar at the back of his neck and shoved him forward into a stumbling stagger.

      “Make tracks off this place and don’t ever let me see you again,” he yelled. “If you can’t keep drugs out of here you can’t get these kids off of ’em.”

      He pointed at the office building with GORDON CAMPBELL TREATMENT CENTER written above the door.

      “Get your stuff and get out. Ten minutes.”

      Jason flushed bright red. He whirled around to face Gordon but he didn’t stop moving, walking backwards, glaring and pouting like a kid. He looked nearly as young as Shane, but Blue judged him to be in his late twenties, maybe.

      Only six or eight years younger than Blue, but it might as well be a hundred—one glance and a man could see that Jason’d had it soft all his life.

      “You’re just angry,” he said, “because I called the police. That’s it, isn’t it, Mr. Campbell? You want to be the law and the judge and the jury all by yourself. But kidnapping and threatening someone with a gun is a serious matter, one for the authorities, and—”

      “On this ranch I am the goddamned law,” Gordon roared. “And no judge or jury on earth can save your job, so shut your trap and do what I tell you, boy, before I stick my boot up your worthless ass and kick you into the next county.”

      Jason was scared but he was as stubborn as Gordon. He, too, was accustomed to being the boss. He’d probably grown up a spoiled brat.

      “There’s no need for you to use abusive language,” he said, his eyes blazing, his cheeks even redder with fury and embarrassment. “I’m afraid I’ll have to report this to the board and…”

      Gordon went after him.

      “I’ve been paying you big bucks and this kid’s still an addict, just like he was the first day you saw him,” Gordon yelled, pointing at Shane. “You’re worthless. Not get the hell out of here while you’re still able to walk.”

      Jason turned around, fast, and started toward his office at a jog trot. Finally, everybody else moved, too.

      The lawman opened the door to the back seat of his car and didn’t even bother to put his hand on Shane’s head, it was already bent so low. Shane got in and Andie Lee moved as if to get into the front seat, but the highway patrolman shook his head and Gordon went to talk to her. The other authorities started back up the hill to the recreation center.

      Micah turned and walked slowly to Blue, heavily favoring his bad knee.

      Once there, he stood looking back at Andie Lee. Blue looked at her, too.

      She stood with her hand on the door handle, still trying to get a grip on the situation by talking to the patrolman across the top of his car. Gordon, scornful and fierce, was bent over to look in at Shane and berate him again.

      “Damn shame,” Micah said. “It’s nothin’ but a goddamn shame. Andie Lee was the sweetest girl ever lived and she’s growed up to be a good, hardworking woman. She don’t deserve such hell.”

      “Not many people do,” Blue said.

      “No, and them that does don’t seem to catch it,” Micah said. “Leastways, not on this earth.”

      Blue stared at Gordon. “Once in awhile they do,” he said.

      “I figure we orter help each other through the rough patches,” Micah said. “No tellin’ when we’ll hit one of our own.”

      Blue whipped his head around. Micah had him locked in his sharp sights.

      “Helpin’ somebody else can take a man’s mind off his own trouble.”

      “What’re you talking about?” Blue said. “I can’t help Andie Lee, if that’s what you mean.”

      He tasted her name on his tongue.

      “You can help that boy,” Micah said. “You seen that look he give you, and don’t try to tell me you didn’t. Shane has some respect for you when he don’t have none for nobody else.”

      “You heard him,” Blue said. “He hates my guts for getting in his way.”

      “Yeah, but he admires you for it, too,” Micah said. “Ever’body else chasin’ around like a bunch of chickens with their heads cut off and you put the kibosh on the whole deal in a heartbeat. He’s glad you done it, he just won’t admit it.”

      Blue turned toward the truck.

      Micah came along behind him. Blue could hear his boot-heel scrape against the dirt.

      “Your horse is loose,” Micah said. “You know that?”

      “I untied him to keep him from hanging himself again,” Blue said. He strode to the truck, jerked open the door, got in and slammed it shut.

      Micah stopped at his window. “You’d do that fer a horse but not fer a boy?”

      Blue ignored him.

      Micah went around and got in on the driver’s side. He closed his door, reached for the key and fired up the old truck. Then he just sat there.

      The roan kicked the tailgate of the trailer hard enough to knock it down.

      “The horse is mine,” Blue said.

      “Because you’re the one can handle him,” Micah said.

      “Because I paid money for him.”

      “No,” the old man said, shaking his head to lament Blue’s willful blindness, “it’s because you can bring him along to be all the horse he’s made to be. You’re the one he can connect with, so he is your horse.”

      Blue turned and glared at him.

      Micah met his look with one just as unyielding, shifted gears, and put the truck in motion.

      “Ownership,” Micah said. “It’s a funny deal. Is it who holds the papers or who’s got the know-how to put a thing to use? Gordon holds the papers on this ranch. He uses a lot of it and he’s a top hand at breeding and raising cattle and horses and feed. Lots of jobs connected with them things he can do better than any other man on this place.”

      He swung the truck around to head back to the road, pausing in his sermon only long enough to spit out the window.

      “But there’s parts of this ranch Gordon don’t even know how to use. So who’s the real owners then? Jemmy in the machine shop. Toby in the show barn. Me in my wranglin’ pen and my garden spot.”

      “I don’t own Shane just because I stopped him from running away,” Blue said. “He belongs to Andie Lee.”

      Micah shook his head.

      “She holds the papers on him,” he said. “But you’re the man with the juice when it comes to that boy.”

      Blue snorted. “You’re smoking something besides tobacco,” he said.

      Micah shook his head. “Nope.”

      Amazingly enough, for another minute, he didn’t say a word. He just looked at Blue, his hands loose on the wheel while the old truck followed the road.

      “I may never get another thing out of that colt,” Blue said. “As far as we are now may be as far as we go.”

      Micah nodded and broke into a grin that made his eyes crinkle at the

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