LITMIR.BIZ

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aisle, he saw him.

      Gordon.

      Blue knew it the way a horse knew a storm was coming. He knew it, even though all he could see was his back as he strode toward the house.

      Walking away, Gordon gave off the feeling that he was advancing instead. He wore ordinary clothes. A battered Resistol, faded jeans, and a plain white shirt made him look like a thousand other men, but every line of his substantial body gave that the lie. Tall, broad-shouldered, with hair as white as his shirt curling at his neck, he walked with a rare authority. The way his feet touched the ground told anybody with eyes to see that these acres belonged to him.

      It was an easy arrogance he wore, simple as his clothes, one that never expected to be challenged.

      Blue’s gut stretched, then tightened like a guitar string. His hands were trembling. Gordon had looked in on him as he would a horse in a stall, and had walked away without a word.

      Which was one step up from the way he’d treated him his whole life.

      It wasn’t until Gordon had reached the porch, walked up on it and shouted for Micah that Blue realized how shaken he was and how tangled his thinking. Gordon didn’t know him. Gordon had no clue that his son was there.

      Or that now it was Blue watching him.

      THE ROAN COLT KICKED the trailer just as they were pulling out of the yard with him. Kicked it so hard it sounded like the metal split in two.

      Micah shook his head and flashed a grin at Blue.

      “Just like old times,” he said.

      Blue moved on over against the door and sat sideways so he could look through the back window at the colt.

      “Aw, now, cut us some slack,” he said. “We’ve not had our hauling lesson yet.”

      “That’s what you get for babyin’ him along,” Micah said. “Seven or eight days of playin’ games and pettin’ and such carryings on. That’s liable to ruin any horse. Why don’t you just tote him around on a pillow?”

      “Yeah,” Blue said. “Reckon I ought to tie his nose to his tail or whatever it was that the Little Creek boys did to him. That’s the way to get control of this outlaw.”

      “On second thought, take your time,” Micah said.

      Blue chuckled, too, as the old rig straightened out on the gravel road and headed for the asphalt one that ran between the highway and the valley. Then his stomach clutched.

      He might see Gordon today. Face to face. The big indoor arena wasn’t very far from the main house. It was Gordon’s arena.

      It galled him to use anything of Gordon’s. Yet it had occurred to him that he was entitled, after all—as the son and heir.

      Yeah. Right.

      “Micah,” he said, “do we pay a fee to use the indoor? You said your operation’s separate from Gordon’s.”

      Micah shot him a narrow-eyed glance while he shifted gears.

      “It is,” he said. “But I done paid that rent. Years ago. Workin’ for nothin’ but grub and bed them first coupla years and short pay for five or six more.”

      “That’s you,” Blue said. “This is my horse.”

      Micah shrugged. “Then you can pay the same way,” he said.

      “Hell’ll freeze over before I work for Gordon.”

      Micah gave him a look. “I meant pay me.”

      “With which? Working for only grub and bed? Or short pay?”

      The old man grinned and mashed his foot down on the accelerator.

      “Ain’t my cookin’ worth every dusty, bone-jarring minute of every ride?”

      Blue squinted back at him. “I wouldn’t go so far as to say that.”

      Micah raised one scraggly eyebrow. “Think about my biscuits,” he said. “They’re better’n any canned biscuit you ever did eat.”

      “Canned biscuits don’t set the bar too high,” Blue said.

      “Stubborn man,” Micah muttered to himself. “Hardheaded as a mule.”

      He shook his head sorrowfully, then turned and fixed Blue with one of his piercing looks.

      “Why’re you in a fret about using that arena?”

      “No way will I be beholden to Gordon.”

      “How come?”

      “I don’t like him.”

      “How do you know that? You ain’t even met the man.”

      “I despised him the minute I laid eyes on him.”

      “You didn’t even know who that was the minute you seen him. Not ’til I told you.”

      “I knew him. Who else would step up on your porch and holler for you like you’d damn well better appear right then and be all ears when you got there?”

      Micah clicked his teeth and looked out across the valley. “Sounds like prejudging to me. Or jumping to conclusions, I’d say.”

      “I knew I didn’t like him the same way you’d know a horse you didn’t like.”

      “Lotsa times, a man has to get close to a horse to know that.”

      “If there’s gonna be any question at all about me bringing my horse into that arena, I’d rather haul out to the fairgrounds,” Blue said. “I saw we passed them that day on the way in.”

      “Look, son,” Micah said. “You can set your mind to rest. Every horse in my barn and in my pastures is my deal. I ain’t started a horse for Gordon for right at ten years and he ain’t got a dime in anything I own.”

      He gunned the motor and pushed it up to sixty, but when they got close to turning onto the road that ran out to the highway, he sucked in his breath and started pumping the brakes. “Hey, what the hell?”

      Blue turned toward the noise of another vehicle coming. Another pickup, a big white one, was roaring downhill into the valley.

      Micah got their rig stopped just before the dually reached the intersection. It swerved to the right as it passed them, as if they were still moving into its path.

      Blue caught a glimpse of long blond hair beneath a cowboy hat and a woman’s slender hand on the wheel, then all he could see was the rear end of the truck fishtailing. Ahead of it, he saw why.

      A fawn, with the doe too far ahead, flashed across the road in a blur of tan and white and away into the trees in the blink of an eye, the truck missing it by a hair. The woman ran off the asphalt onto the shoulder of the road and corrected too fast back up over the edge of the pavement.

      “That’s Andie Lee,” Micah said. “God damn it, that girl’s gonna kill herself to save a fawn and I’ll have to set right here and see it.”

      The big pickup spun around in a full circle twice, ran astraddle of the right-hand edge of the pavement for a hundred yards or so and then left the road for good, headed south in its original direction. The woman managed to run it down the ditch awhile, then it took a jump or two and hit a bank of earth, slowed, finally jarred to a stop, lurched, lifted on one side and rocked as it threatened to roll. Finally, it landed and stayed upright on all six tires.

      Micah started shifting gears. “Maybe she ain’t hurt, after all,” he said.

      He didn’t take his eyes from the white truck as he sawed on the steering wheel, gunned the motor and started toward it.

      Blue stared at it, too, hoping that the woman wasn’t hurt—for her own sake but also, selfishly, for his. He didn’t need to get involved in anybody’s upset. He didn’t even want

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