The Cowboy Way: A Creed in Stone Creek / Part Time Cowboy

Matt sat half-turned in his car seat the whole way, keeping an eye on Zeke, who’d stuck his head through the sliding window at the back of the cab.

“I bet Zeke misses his person,” the boy said.

Steven felt a pang at that, figuring there might be some transference going on. It was no trick to connect the dots: Matt missed his people, too.

“Might be,” Steven agreed carefully.

Matt had referred to him as “my new dad” that day, as he sometimes did. It was probably the only way he could think of to differentiate Steven from Zack. And the boy wanted desperately to remember his birth father.

He had slightly more difficulty recalling Jillie, since he’d been younger when his mother died.

“Do you miss anybody?” Matt asked. His voice was slight, like his frame, and a little breathless.

“Yeah,” Steven said. “I miss your mom and dad. I miss my own mom, and my granddad, too.”

“Do you miss Davis and Kim? And your cousins?”

Davis was Steven’s father, Kim his stepmother. They were alive and well, living on the Creed ranch in Colorado, though they’d turned the main house and much of the day-to-day responsibility over to Conner.

Brody, not being the responsible type, had left home years ago, and stayed gone.

“Yes,” Steven answered. They went through this litany of the missing whenever the boy needed to do it. “I miss them a lot.”

“But we can go visit Davis and Kim and Conner. And they can visit us,” Matt said, as the sheepdog panted happily and drooled all over the gearshift. “My mommy and daddy are dead.”

Steven reached across to squeeze Matt’s shoulder lightly. As much as he might have wanted to—the kid wasn’t even old enough to go to school yet, after all, let alone understand death—he never dodged the subject just because it was difficult. If Matt brought up the topic, they talked it over. It was an unwritten rule: tell the truth and things will work out. Steven believed that.

Matt lapsed into his own thoughts, idly patting Zeke’s head as they traveled along that curvy country road, toward the ranch. Toward the borrowed tour bus they’d be calling home for a while.

Steven wondered, certainly not for the first time, what Jillie and Zack would think about the way he was raising their son, their only child. Also not for the first time, he reflected that they must have trusted him. Within a month of Matt’s birth, they’d drafted a will declaring Steven to be their son’s legal guardian, should both of them die or become incapacitated.

It hadn’t seemed likely, to say the least, that the two of them wouldn’t live well into old age, but neither Jillie nor Zack had any other living relatives, besides their infant son, and Jillie had insisted it was better to be safe than sorry.

He’d do his damnedest to keep Matt safe, Steven thought, but he’d always be sorry, too. Much as he loved this little boy, Steven never forgot that the child rightly belonged to his lost parents first.

He slowed for the turn, signaled.

“Will you show me my daddy and mommy’s picture again?” Matt asked, when they reached the top of the driveway and Steven stopped the truck and shut off the engine.

“Sure,” he said. The word came out sounding hoarse.

“I don’t want to forget what they look like,” Matt said. Then, sadly, “I do, sometimes. Forget, I mean. Almost.”

“That’s okay, Tex. It happens to the best of us.” Steven got out of the truck, walked around behind it, dropped the tailgate and hoisted an eager Zeke to the ground before going on to open Matt’s door and unbuckle him from all his gear. “Now that we’re going to stay put, we’ll unpack that picture you like so much, and you can keep it in your room.”

Matt nodded, mercifully distracted by the dog, and the two of them—kid and critter—ran wildly around in the tall grass for a while, letting off steam.

Steven carried the kibble into the tour bus and stowed it in the little room where the stacking washer and dryer kept a hot-water tank company. He spent the next twenty minutes carrying suitcases and dry goods and a few boxes containing pots and pans from the house to the bus, keeping an eye on Matt and Zeke as they explored.

“Stay away from the barn,” Steven ordered. “There are bound to be some rusty nails, and if you step on one, it means a tetanus shot.”

Matt made a face. “No shots!” he decreed, setting his hands on his hips.

Zeke barked happily, as if to back up the assertion.

Without answering, Steven went inside, filled a bowl with water and brought it outside.

Zeke rushed over, drank noisily until he’d had his fill.

That done, he proceeded to lift his leg against one of the bus tires.

“That’s good, isn’t it?” Matt asked, observing. “He’s going outside.”

Steven chuckled. “It’s good,” he confirmed. “How about some supper?”

Matt liked the idea, and he and Zeke followed Steven back into the bus. Steven opened the kibble sack, and Matt filled a saucepan and set it down on the floor for the dog.

While Zeke crunched and munched, Steven scrubbed his hands and forearms at the sink, plucked a tin of beef ravioli from the stash of groceries he and Matt had brought along on the road trip, used a can opener and scooped two portions out onto plates, shoved the first one into the microwave oven.

“Time to wash up,” he told Matt.

“What about the picture of Mommy and Daddy?”

“We’ll find it after supper, Tex. A man’s got to eat, if he’s going to run a ranch.”

Matt rushed off to the bathroom; Steven heard water running. Grinned.

By the time Matt returned and took his place at the booth-type table next to the partition that separated the cab of the bus from the living quarters, Steven was taking the second plate of ravioli out of the oven.

“Ravioli again? Yum!” Matt said, picking up his plastic fork and digging in with obvious relish.

“Yeah,” Steven admitted, joining the boy at the table. “It’s good.”

I might have to expand my culinary repertoire, though, he thought. Couldn’t expect the kid to grow up on processed food, even if it was quick and tasty.

Maybe they’d plant a garden.

Chewing, Steven recalled all the weeding, watering, hoeing and shoveling he’d done every summer when he came home to the ranch in Colorado. Kim, his dad’s wife, always grew a lot of vegetables—tomatoes and corn, lettuce and green beans, onions and spuds and a whole slew of other things—freezing and canning the excess.

The work had been never-ending.

Maybe they wouldn’t plant a garden, he decided.

Zeke, meanwhile, having finished his kibble, curled up on the rug in front of the door with a big canine sigh, rested his muzzle on his forelegs and closed his eyes for a snooze.

Matt eyed the animal fondly. “Thanks,” he said, when he was facing Steven again. “I really wanted a dog.”

“I think I knew that,” Steven teased. “And you’re welcome.”