No Ordinary Cowboy

“Ride? On a horse?” She placed a hand against her chest, then dropped it the second she realized it drew his eyes to her body.

“I’ll drive over,” she said, “and meet you there.”

“No need. We can take the pickup truck if you don’t want to ride.”

“No,” she said, her voice shaky. “I’d rather not ride.” Not on your life.

Half an hour later, Amy sat in Hank’s dusty black pickup, checking out the details of this man’s life. A crack in the upholstery had been repaired with duct tape, gray against the black. In contrast, a top-of-the-line CD player shone through a coat of dust on the dashboard.

Amy noticed the cover of an audio book on the dashboard: Stephen Hawking’s A Brief History of Time. Wow, heavy reading. Amy had tried it once and hadn’t had the patience for it.

A rancher listening to Hawking? Hank?

Okay, Amy, back off on the prejudices.

As the truck bumped along, Amy felt like a sack of turnips, tossed around by the ruts of Hungry Hollow’s driveway.

Hank’s hand on the gearshift brushed her knee. The man radiated heat like an oven. Her fingers hurt from gripping the door handle to stay on her side of the truck, and still she could feel his heat.

It felt too good.

“I need to apologize to you for yelling,” Hank said above the noise of the truck as he geared down. “I don’t normally do that.”

“So Willie led me to believe.” Amy knew she sounded cool but didn’t care. The man had been unreasonable.

Hank nodded.

A bag of candy in the cup holder caught her eye and she picked it up. “Humbugs,” she cried.

“Yep. They’re my favorite.” Hank looked her way. “You like them?”

“I love them, but I don’t see them very often.”

“Help yourself. I get them in Ordinary, in a shop called Sweet Talk.” Hank steered the truck onto a dirt road with a house in the distance.

“You should take a drive into Ordinary,” he said. “It’s a real sweet little town, the lifeline for all of us ranchers in the district.”

Amy doubted she’d make it into town during this short visit. It had nothing to do with her job here.

After circling into the yard of a big old brick farmhouse, they pulled up in front of a corral teeming with men, horses and dust.

Amy felt the truck dip and lift as Hank stepped out, yelling, “Hey, Angus. What’s up?”

Angus, a dark-haired, fortysomething man with enough character in his face to make it more than handsome, shook Hank’s hand and swatted him on the arm loudly enough for Amy to hear from the open passenger window. Hank didn’t budge an inch. He tapped Angus on the shoulder, raising a cloud of dust from his shirt.

“The boys are practicing for the rodeo,” Angus said. “You here to do some bronc-bustin’?”

“Naw, not today. I’m just showing my guest around.”

Amy stepped out of the truck with her notebook in hand.

“Amy,” Hank said, “this is my neighbor, Angus Kinsey, from the Circle K on the other side of the Sheltering Arms. Angus, this is Amy Graves.”

Angus had a good, strong handshake, and a set of admiring eyes. They felt good on her. Amy smiled.

She wandered with the two men to the corral fence.

Hank leaned his arms across the top as more men congregated outside the corral, leaving a couple of men inside standing beside a small horse. None of them seemed to notice Amy, which was fine with her. She was here to observe them and the way things were done around here.

“So,” she asked, “you raise horses at Hungry Hollow?”

Hank turned her way. “Everyone around here owns and raises horses.” He shrugged. “They’re part of the ranching life.”

“Are they like cows? You raise them for their meat?”

Both Angus and Hank looked at her strangely. Amy wondered about the crafty gleam in Hank’s eye.

“No, we don’t sell horses for meat—” Angus would have said more, but Hank cut him off.

“We raise them for glue.”

Glue, my rear end, she thought. You’re making fun of the city slicker. Two can play that game. She flipped open her notebook and retrieved a pen from her pocket.

“How much do you get per horse? Do you sell them by the pound? What part produces glue?” She shivered—it was a gory subject—but if Hank wanted to make a mockery of this visit, she’d accommodate him.

It was Hank’s turn to stare at her with his jaw gaping. His dark brown eyes widened.

She grinned, meanly, and said, “Gotcha.”

Angus laughed and slapped Hank’s back.

“Seriously,” she said, glad to have rattled him, “do you raise the horses to sell?”

“The truth is,” Hank said in a chagrined voice, “we raise most of our horses to work, but we also keep a special set for rodeo.”

The horse in the center of the corral whickered and tried to pull away from the cowboy who was restraining him, but the man held on tight.

Hank nodded toward the horse. “That looks like the Circle K’s Rusty.”

“It is,” Angus said.

“He’s a mean one.” Hank sounded anything but stern. He sounded proud. “Who’s getting up on him first?”

“Heel.”

“That the new guy?”

“Yup.”