Reclaiming Nick (4 page)

The sound of nervous mooing came from a tangle of cottonwoods that sheltered the still-frozen creek.

“C’mon,” CJ said to Coyote, breaking out in front of Maggy.

For a second, she heard Cole’s words:
“CJ’s cowboy enough to handle a .22. It’s men who kill, not weapons.”
Still, Maggy couldn’t help wanting to hold CJ close, especially now. He’d have to fill Cole’s shoes soon enough.

She urged her horse to a canter. Overhead, a hawk screamed, slicing through the brisk air, right into her soul.

CJ disappeared over the edge of the wash.

Spotting Maggy’s horse, a cow ran from her path, its eyes bulging in fear.

“Mom! Come quick!” CJ’s voice carried the edge of panic she’d come to fear. A tone that drove their hopes and dreams one more step out of reach.

No, Lord, please—

Maggy topped the ridge and her heart caught.

Along the shore of the creek, in a pocket of mud and trampled cheat grass, his hat lost and his leg crumpled beneath him at an ugly angle, Cole St. John lay unmoving, bleeding into the earth.

CHAPTER 2

N
ICK TAPPED HIS BRAKES
to take his pickup off cruise and turned off Highway 59, heading west toward Phillips and the Silver Buckle Ranch. The low sun glimmered through the shaggy protective bluffs of Custer National Forest that rimmed the small town.

Nick decided that a decade hadn’t diminished the charm of Phillips, Montana, population 1,847. The town still resembled an Old West Hollywood mock-up, with the false fronts and a wooden boardwalk separating the now-paved street. Part of some John Wayne Western had even been shot here—which had given the town enough funds to add the streetlights, spruce up the old community center, build the football stands, and install a stoplight at the main intersection.

He drove past the dime store and noticed an updated carved wooden sign for Claire’s Gifts and Books. Beside it, the Red Rooster grocery store had updated its coin-operated rides with a truck and a race car. Across the street, on the corner by the light, Big John’s pickup still sat in the shade in front of Lolly’s Diner, an old dining
car she’d picked up from the Northern Railroad and turned into a novelty establishment. In high school, Nick had spent nearly every Friday night at Lolly’s, dropping quarters into the jukebox and hanging out with Maggy and Cole. He wondered if Big John had popped the question to Lolly yet and if Lolly still served coffee that could curl a person’s hair.

Across from Lolly’s, a few cars were parked in the dirt lot beside the Buffalo Saloon. The false front had been repainted, along with the plate-glass window that for too long had been covered by plywood after an unnamed someone had driven his truck through the front window. Thankfully, Nick had been able to wheedle his brother, Rafe, out of that trouble before their father caught wind. Nick bet that Rafe still owed the saloon owner money. He smiled at the memory. Rafe had since become the local hero. How far they’d both wandered from their roots.

Next to the Buffalo, the appearance of spring garden supplies—rakes, hoses, fertilizer—advertised a sale at Phillips’s redbrick hardware store. Nick well remembered the smell of dust and the creak of the floor as he had searched through bins for nuts and bolts to match machinery parts. The building next to the hardware store advertised Custer Travel on one side and Hal’s Barbershop on the other. The barbershop’s candy-cane light, long since defunct, collected dust, but Nick spotted old Hal in the window, doctoring a patron in an old-fashioned shave.

Nick felt suddenly eighteen again, sucked back in time. He couldn’t help but glance at the school—all twelve grades housed in a one-story brick building—situated north of Main Street across from the small neighborhood of modular homes. Behind the school, the afternoon sun glinted off the goalposts of the foot
ball field. Despite Phillips’s meager population, summers spent on the range lifting hay bales and punching cows made for the best defensive line in the county. One that had cut off the blitz and allowed Nick to bring their team to a triple-A victory two seasons running.

A momentary smile and the image of Cole meeting him in the air with a victory clap sent a shard of pain through him. Evidently some things had lost their charm. Soured, even.

Nick turned south on County Road 73 right by the auction barn, a steel gray building with pens out back. Glancing at the cattle prices, Nick shook his head. Feed and gas costs rose with the economy, but the price of beef never seemed to keep up. Especially with the mad-cow scares.

Beyond the auction barn, the rodeo ring looked hard and barren. Still, he could hear the roar of the crowd in the back of his mind, smell the animal sweat, taste his own fear. Football had only been a pastime—rodeo had been his breath and his blood.

Nick drove past the rodeo stands, where the landscape turned to tract housing and mobile homes, the occasional shiny truck parked outside. Remnants of black snow edged the dirt roads snaking off to each side. Nick lifted his hand to Egger, the town salvage collector, who stopped and watched him drive by. His hound dogs lit out after the truck. Egger didn’t bother to call them back.

Nick wondered if Stefanie knew of his return. If Saul hadn’t already told her, the news would follow Nick like a prairie gust. Nick didn’t know if his little sister would load her Winchester or put out the yellow ribbon. After his behavior, he didn’t expect any favors from God, but deep in his heart he hoped for the ribbon.

“I’ll leave first thing tomorrow,” he’d told Saul, but it had taken
nearly a week to pack his gear, quit his job, and summon the courage to head south and back to his mistakes.

“Nick! Come back!”
His father’s voice, which had dogged him nearly every day since that night over a decade ago, seemed to mock him now. How he longed to turn back time and utter the words that burned in his throat:
I’m sorry.

Time had gradually allowed him to face the truth. In spite of his father’s betrayal, Nick should have shown him the respect he deserved. Bishop Noble had raised him, had molded him to be a man, had wanted to give him everything.

And Nick had blindly, arrogantly spat in his face.

His hands tightened on the steering wheel as he drove past the massive Kincaid spread, the Big K. He wondered if Big John Kincaid had taken over for his father, running the place. Brock-faced, half-black, half-white Angus/Hereford lounged in the pasture, along with a smattering of purebreds. Bishop had always been a purist—only Black Angus ran on Silver Buckle land. Nick fleetingly wondered if Maggy’s father still ran the herd as the Big K’s cow boss.

Maggy. He should probably keep his thoughts clear of his high school sweetheart. Most likely she hadn’t thought of him in years.

But wouldn’t it be nice if—?

No. He’d walked out on her too.

He noticed a new sign for the Breckenridge Bulls as he drove by the ranch, aptly named the Double B, toward Silver Buckle land. While Nick surveyed their property on either side of the road, he found himself looking for signs of trouble—prairie-dog cities, broken windmills that had stopped pumping water, an errant cow. The
habit tightened his jaw, and he forced his eyes back on the road. Maybe he had no right to think about ranching anymore. . . .

But he was returning, the prodigal son aware of his sins, ready to make restitution.

He turned into the Silver Buckle drive, passing under the swinging oval sign, freshly painted in green and white, and memory nearly engulfed him.
“Someday, Son, you’ll run the Silver Buckle.”

Then why did you hand it off to Cole, Dad? To punish me?

Nick tasted the answer in the back of his throat. Memories crested over him as he drove into the yard—swinging on the main gates, eating apples on the front steps, practicing his roping on Pecos in the corral, or feeding the orphaned calves, the bums—in one of the other corrals. He wondered if time had yet worn off his grandfather’s initials from the foundation of the main house or if the weather had collapsed his great-grandfather’s 1900-era homestead in the pasture over the hill. Nick had helped build the dining hall—expanding the bunkhouse during the height of the Silver Buckle’s prosperity, etching his own initials into that foundation.

On the far side of the yard, three barns held the livestock—one for heifers, the other for the calves or bums, and a third for horses. Beyond those, the late-afternoon sun glinted off the tin machinery shed and the airplane hangar. Farther up the road the modular home owned by their foreman, Dutch Johnson, boasted a new roof. And overlooking the entire affair from the top of the hill, a log hunting lodge brought to mind raucous wrestling matches with Rafe and Cole.

Admittedly, Nick couldn’t pinpoint exactly how he felt about returning home.

His father’s cherry red ’68 Ford Ranger pickup sat in the shadow of
the garage, its windows permanently half open, the tailgate crooked, the license plate missing. He remembered the smells of dust and oil and his father at the wheel, his hat shading his eyes as he manhandled the truck over the pastures.

Nick pulled up in front of the house, right behind a newer model black pickup. As he got out and slammed the door, four horses in the nearby corral lifted their heads, one pushing his nose between the crossbars.

He stopped to pet the animal, get his bearings, and take in the smells—the musty sharpness of sagebrush, the occasional whiff of fertilizer. He recognized the roan as his father’s old cutting horse, but the two new horses—a paint and a sorrel—he couldn’t place. And Pecos’s absence gave him a moment’s pause.

A door slammed behind him.

Nick stood quietly, rubbing the quarter horse’s nose, listening, suddenly unable to move, feeling as if he were a thief or an interloper. Maybe he should leave now before . . .

“I s’pose you got lost, huh? Sorry, I tried to give you good directions. Anyway, welcome to the Silver Buckle Ranch.”

When Nick looked over his shoulder, words left him. Stefanie had been thirteen the last time he saw her, with long, stringy, black hair; gangly legs; and freckles.

Clearly some things had aged over the decade, starting with his little—er, not so little anymore—sister. Although she’d written to him over the years, especially during his stint in the army, sending him news clippings of Rafe’s bull-riding exploits and occasional tidbits from town, she’d neglected to mention that she’d, well . . . grown up.

Stefanie still wore her favorite battered brown Stetson, but the
freckles had vanished along with the stringy hair and any sense of awkwardness. She strode toward him, pulling on her work gloves, wearing a fur-lined coat, jeans, and boots. In her bearing he saw grace and strength that bespoke the responsibility of eighty thousand acres and three thousand head of cattle.

It was a good thing he’d come home, because from his big-brother vantage point, the ranch wasn’t the only thing that needed protecting.

“Stef?”

She stopped, frowned, gaped at him. “Nick?”

He shrugged, finding a half smile.

“Oh, Nick!” Stefanie launched herself into his arms, knocking off her hat, no holds barred in her welcome. “I can’t believe it’s you!”

Nick crushed her to his chest, giving over to the feelings he’d stuffed away for way too long. He held her tight, closing his eyes. “Hey, Stef.”

He heard his own emotion in her voice when she said, “Thank God He finally brought you home.”

Please, God, let me live long enough to see CJ win.
Cole barely listened to Maggy as she spoke in low tones with his doctor. She had her back to him, her hand over the mouthpiece, as if he couldn’t figure out what she might be talking about.

“When do you think the tests will be in?”

He didn’t need any more tests to tell him what he already knew. His body had given up. Simply worn out. Just like his mother’s. He remembered her symptoms—low white-cell blood count, her soft
bones that seemed so easily broken. The tremors in her hands and arms. The feeling she had that she would die.

That, more than anything, told Cole the truth. They hadn’t found a cure then . . . and he felt sure they wouldn’t now. Regardless of how many tests they did.

Cole readjusted his cast, turning in the old recliner to watch CJ circle the corral, riding round and round on his roping horse, chasing a bum.
Shift your weight more, CJ.
CJ had beautiful form, not sloppy like his. Cole had preferred steer wrestling to roping—it had less finesse, more muscle power. He’d only been wrangled into roping because of his friendship with Nick.

Nick had been the one with pizzazz and style. And the fact that CJ possessed the same easy throw rankled Cole more than he could ever voice. A constant reminder that he would always be second best.

Maggy hung up, and Cole heard her sigh. He didn’t look at her. She was still so beautiful that sometimes it took his breath away. He loved the way she took care of the bums and the times she’d met him in the pasture in the truck, his lunch in a box on the seat. He watched her at night as the hours stretched long, her reddish hair turning to copper in the moonlight, the soft lines around her eyes relaxing. He loved her eyes, loved that once upon a time they shone with hope and desire.