The pungent scent of spruce filled the air and seeped into James’s nose, making his shoulders drop, his rigid spine bend and flex. He felt pummeled, his muscles tender and worn out the way he liked best. This was the right kind of tired, the type that followed a long, honest day’s work. It sometimes let him escape his worries about the ranch, his siblings and his grieving mother by falling into oblivious sleep.
The world dimmed further as the sun, buried underneath heavy-bellied clouds, slipped behind Mount Sopris’s craggy top. The valley floor billowed away, raw and untamed, growing gray in the dawning dusk. Walls of ice on stone, gleaming with the last of the light, enclosed the valley, stretching away toward the long, low Elk Mountain range.
The place was wild, beautiful and open with something nameless that made the highland spaces different from any other country to James. That made it home. The isolation, the vast, untouched stretches of valley and bluffs, soothed his restless spirit, lowered his guard and gave him peace.
He felt a bone-deep kinship with the land. It configured his DNA. His ancestors had labored, sacrificed and fought to protect it, to claim it as their own. It was his responsibility to maintain that legacy and pass it on to the next generation. No threats would cross its border again, not so long as he drew breath, he vowed, his own personal cowboy’s prayer.
The horses nickered as they clomped past barren aspen clumps, tails swishing. “That was fun,” Jewel drawled. She swayed in perfect rhythm with her enormous steed. It was the ranch’s largest mount, which, of course, made it the only one the petite roughrider would mount.
“Then you don’t get out much,” Jared said, then flinched to avoid Jewel’s trademark shoulder jab.
“Just wait till we get home. We’ll see how tough you are,” Jewel huffed. She rammed her misshapen hat on her head and pulled the brim low over her braids.
“I’m a lover, not a fighter,” Jared protested, riding with the easy grace born of years in the saddle. His perfect white teeth flashed in his lady-killer grin.
The family’s Romeo had left a swath of broken hearts across the valley. Jared’s ease at meeting women, at achieving anything in life, was downright irritating. Opportunities like college football scholarships and a starting NFL position seemed to fall into the small-town hero’s lap.
“That’s your excuse? Pathetic.” Jewel rolled her eyes and brushed snow from her horse’s forelock. “Don’t know why girls throw themselves at you.”
“Must be desperate,” Justin said through a yawn, looking ready to fall asleep despite today’s excitement. A thick belt of snow encircled his hat brim.
“Who is it this time?” teased Jewel, wagging a finger. “Mandy? Mindy? Mona?”
“It’s Melanie,” Jared clarified. He rubbed the back of his neck, then gave a rueful laugh. “Nope. It’s Melody.”
“See.” Jewel snapped her fingers. “They’re all starting to blur together. Even for you.”
She burst out laughing and Justin joined her. “Seriously, dude. Pick a girl. Any girl.”
“They pick me, bro.”
A wild howl pealed down the slope and Trigger’s ears shot up. It was loud and harsh, then softened to a mourn, lonely and haunting. The hair on the back of James’s neck rose. Wolf.
A pack of coyotes barked in answer, a sharp, staccato yelping chorus, the piercing notes biting on the chilly early-evening air. Trigger sidestepped, nickering, and James swiftly brought him under control on the slippery terrain.
“You’re so full of yourself,” scoffed Jewel once they’d settled their jittery horses. Their hooves clattered against the frigid slope.
“And you’re so full of—”
“Knock it off.” James’s fingers tightened around the leather straps in his left hand. “We’ve got more important things to worry about than Jared’s love life.”
Had his mother gotten out of bed this morning? Eaten? Dressed?
“At least I’ve got one, big bro.”
James opened his mouth but the denial dissolved, bitter on his tongue. Jared was right. Since Jesse’s murder, he’d worked nonstop to shore up the ranch and didn’t have time for anything, or anyone, else. He loved his family. That was enough.
So why did he sometimes wish for a confidante? A hand in his? A person to hold...someone to share a bag of peanuts with at a football game. The pelting snow slackened.
“Let’s pick up the pace or Ma’s meat loaf will be cold,” he said, needing to deflect, hoping that by saying those words they might be true and she’d had a good day.
“If Ma’s cooking... Didn’t see her up this morning.” A line appeared, bisecting Justin’s brow.
“Yesterday wasn’t one of her good days.” Jewel patted her horse’s sweat-streaked neck. “She was going through Jesse’s phone again. She still thinks those pictures are his son.”
James shook his head. “If that was true, Jesse would have told us.” Jesse had messed up a lot, but James didn’t believe his brother capable of turning his back on his own child. Besides, Jesse loved kids, all living things, in fact... Jesse keeping his child a secret made no sense. There had to be another explanation for the photo.
“I don’t like Ma getting her hopes up,” Jewel fretted.
“Obsessing is more like it,” James worried out loud. “Like when Jesse was alive.”
A collective moan rose from his siblings. Their mother’s fixation on healing their brother had taken a horrible toll on her physical and emotional health.
James’s hands tightened on the reins. He’d convince her to put away the phone and stop torturing herself. With the holidays approaching, this false hope came at an already painful time.
Jared deftly guided his horse away from a depression in the snowy field. “Should we get Ma help?”
“No. She’s getting stronger,” James insisted. They didn’t need outsiders poking through their business. Once they got through Christmas, Ma would improve. He’d make sure of it. “She’s been mostly keeping up with routines.”
“And that’s all that counts, right?” Justin asked out of the side of his mouth. “That she follows your schedules?”
“They keep things running smoothly,” James protested. A night wind hummed softly through the gnarled, stunted cedars they passed.
Yes. He was a micromanager. No denying it. But if he’d been more vigilant, he would have spotted the threats to Jesse, like his connections to the Denver-based drug group who’d tracked him to Carbondale, then killed for unpaid debt.
And then there was his own, more direct role in the tragedy—a failure he’d never forget—or forgive. “I’m protecting us. Plus, the schedules help Ma.”
He closed his eyes against the sudden vision of Jesse, pale and still in his coffin. They’d all struggled to make it through that day and every day since, especially around the holidays when he’d passed away.
Giving his mother direction, a routine, gave her a purpose, something positive to focus on. Seeing her wander the house, or worse, staying in bed, with that empty look in her eye as if her heart had been scraped right out, broke him in two.
“Meat loaf,” Justin said solemnly. “Yeah. That right there is a real lifesaver.”
James nudged Trigger and trotted ahead, leaving his siblings behind in the gathering darkness. They meant well, and he wouldn’t trade them for anything. But they didn’t understand the need to keep a tight rein on the ranch, the family and especially Ma. He didn’t give two hoots if they ate meat loaf. They’d lost too many Cades