LITMIR.BIZ

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he said, speeding up a little, “from where I sit, looks like the best any of us can ever do is just go ahead and hook up and hope for the best.”

      Hope for the best wasn’t going to cut it for Shane.

      Blue raised his voice to carry over the rattling of the rig.

      “What could I do for him, anyhow?”

      “For starters, let him ride with you,” Micah said. “That roan colt could teach him as much as he’s teaching you and you could teach Shane more, too.”

      Blue’s stomach tied into a hard knot.

      “You heard Gordon,” he said. “The kid could be gone a long time—maybe he’ll use his influence to get him sent to reform school.”

      “He’ll bring him home in a day or two,” Micah said. “Gordon aims to be the one that gets him off the dope for Andie Lee. Gordon likes to prove he can do what nobody else can.”

      “The way he’s going about it, he’ll drive him to it instead.”

      “How would you go about it?” Micah asked.

      Blue sensed the trap. “I wouldn’t.”

      “Horses heal a lot of wounds,” Micah said, completely undeterred. “Shane likes horses but he never has stayed with ’em because he likes them drugs more.”

      He drove on out to the main ranch road, then stopped and looked both ways as if the traffic was terrible instead of nonexistent.

      “You still want to go down to the arena?”

      “No,” Blue said. “Let’s go see about using the fairgrounds.”

      “That haulin’ is a waste,” Micah said. “And you won’t spite Gordon any by not usin’ his facilities, if spite’s what you’re after.”

      Blue shrugged. “I’ll get my own rig soon.’ Til then, I’ll pay you mileage.”

      “Gas money ain’t what I’m talkin’ about and you know it,” Micah said, wheeling out onto the road. “They’ll never let the boy off the place to go up there to ride with you.”

      To find my dad.

      Blue could still hear the crack in the boy’s voice. Shane had been lost in those same fatherless feelings Blue had felt at that age—although he had been too proud to ever try to go to his dad.

      That had been Dannie, always wanting to go find Gordon. And then, when she had finally ridden all the way to Montana on the back of a drug dealer’s motorcycle, she had ended up dead before she ever saw the Splendid Sky.

      Micah glanced in his rearview mirror.

      “Looks like we’re leadin’ the parade,” he said.

      Blue turned but the roan colt filled his vision.

      “Who is it?”

      “Patrolman with Shane. Follered by Gordon’s truck. Andie Lee’s talked him into bringing her to be with her boy as long as she can.”

      The patrolman passed them. Shane still had his head down. But when the car pulled directly in front of them, he twisted around and looked back. Straight at Blue. Their eyes met.

       I’m so scared. I don’t know what to do. What can I do?

      Then Gordon’s truck passed them and whipped in between the trailer and the patrolman. Andie Lee sat in the passenger seat, staring straight ahead, looking at Shane.

      “Boys fifteen, sixteen, twenty years old think they’ve got the bit in their teeth,” Micah said. “They don’t know they can get hurt bad or die.”

      Blue could remember how that felt, too. He’d been immortal. He could do anything.

      And he had done a lot of it—he’d ridden the worst ones in all the rodeos, he’d fought the biggest bullies out behind the chutes, he’d driven the old trucks the fastest and dived off the highest bluff into the river. He’d danced with the wildest girls in the honky-tonks and made the best love to them in the grass.

      But he had never fought the demon of drugs that had hold of Dannah. If he had gotten into dope back then, he might’ve proved to be mortal, too.

      That same demon had hold of Shane.

      Blue hadn’t been there for Dannah, not when she’d needed him the most. Because she wouldn’t let him. Would Shane let him?

      If he could make a difference for Shane, it would be for Dannie’s sake. All he’d been able to do for her was avenge her death.

      Andie Lee’s truck came in sight, its nose buried in the soft earth like an ostrich trying to hide its head in the sand.

      Rose had been in such despair that she’d driven her car off the road, too. Into a tree.

      If Shane went to prison, Andie Lee would share another great grief with Tanasi Rose. And if the boy got hold of another gun, he, too, could very well be in there for murder.

      The roan whinnied and ran from one end of the twenty-foot trailer to the other. That rocked the truck and it pulled to one side. Blue turned to look through the back window just in time to see the colt brace himself and kick the side with a cracking blow.

      “Onery sucker,” Micah said. “You’ll play hell trying to ride him out in public.”

      “What was that saying of yours about all we can do is hook up and hope for the best?” Blue said.

      “Huh,” Micah said, “I’m jist glad you remember what I tell you.”

      “It’s not easy,” Blue said. “You talk so much it wears out my ears trying to sift for nuggets of wisdom.”

      “Here’s another one,” Micah said. “Look off down there at that valley. Then let your eyes drift up and up over them mountains. You won’t ever see as handsome a place anywhere—not on this wicked old world, you won’t.”

      Blue looked.

      They drove on in silence. There, to the right, stood the old round pen, the house and the barn that belonged to Micah because he was the one who put them to use.

      Straight ahead lay the highway.

      The rig slowed on the uphill grade.

      “Which way?” Micah said.

      Blue threw him a slant-eyed look.

      “Fairgrounds,” he said.

      Micah drove all the way on out to the highway and turned toward town in silence. A miracle.

      Blue was thankful for it. He pushed back his hat and leaned into the open window to feel the wind on his face. Ahead, the highway stretched empty.

      But he kept seeing the patrolman’s car and Shane looking back at him.

      They’ll never let the boy off the place to go ride with you.

      Good. He didn’t want to get involved with the kid. And he hadn’t been free long enough yet to choose to do something he hated—like seeing Gordon humiliate Shane.

      The irony of it struck him in a hard revelation. All Blue’s life he’d wanted Gordon to be his daddy, yet he’d probably been better off without him.

      Micah slowed, then pulled off the road into a wide gravel parking lot filled with trucks and trailers of every kind and size, some empty, some full of bawling cattle. An auctioneer’s voice echoed from inside one of the barns.

      Micah cut the motor and folded his arms on the wheel to wait.

      “Secretary in the sale office is who you need to see.”

      Blue got out and closed the door, his boot heels crunching on the gravel. But after he’d stepped away, he turned back.

      “Micah.

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