Tracker's Sin

“Sí.”

The barn fell quiet, the only sounds being the hound scratching and milk splashing into the bucket. Vincente broke the silence.

“The job does not pay much. A room here in the barn and supper.”

Tracker cocked his head so he could see the man. “Your wife a good cook?”

Vincente patted his rounded belly. “Very.”

Tracker bent his head and hid his smile. He could see Caine saying the same thing about Desi forty years down the road. Then he chuckled. It’d be worth living that long to see Caine with a belly. “That’ll do.”

The cow was about dry. She stomped a hoof, signaling the end of her patience. Tucker squirted the last of the milk into the bucket and leaned back. Too late he remembered the other reason he hated cows. Her tail whapped him in the face, the bristly hairs stinging, adding insult to injury.

“Son of a bitch.” He jumped to his feet, barely missing spilling the milk. The cow turned her head and stared at him reproachfully, as if he’d done something wrong.

“Don’t look at me like that!” He rubbed his cheek. “I’m not the one swinging wildly.”

He grabbed the bucket in case she was one of those cows that delighted in making a waste of an unpleasant task by kicking over the container.

Vincente laughed outright and handed him the lid. “There will be danger for you here.”

Tracker laid it in place, fitting the notches between the bucket’s handles. “From the unneighborly sort?”

“No.”

Grabbing his hat, he settled it back on his head. “Nothing new in that.”

“Why do you want this job?”

“My reasons are personal.” Tracker straightened. “Why are you offering it?”

“Who says I am?”

“Me.”

“And who are you that I should care what you say?”

He took a stab in the dark. A sick man with two women to protect had to be nervous. “A man you can trust.”

“I do not know this.”

Tracker shrugged. “Doesn’t change the truth of it.”

Vincente stared at him, squinting to see in the low light of the barn. “But you expect I will learn?”

He shrugged. “Most people find me a right handy man to have around.”

The old man studied him for a few more seconds and then nodded. “Yes. I think I will, too.” He motioned to the door. “We will try you today. You may put that by the back door of the house.” He patted the cow’s flank. “I will get Abuelita settled.”

“Will do.”

“Come right back.”

Tracker nodded, used to men not wanting him around their womenfolk.

He made it to the barn door before Vincente called out, “I tell you not to linger because my wife has been nervous of late, and she is not such a good shot.”

“She the shoot-to-kill type?” Tracker respected that. No one should pick up a gun without being prepared to kill.

“It would be better that she was, but she has a soft heart and bad aim.” Vincente smiled. There was a world of love in that smile. “I am afraid she would aim for your foot and hit your heart. I do not want to be in church so much as it would take for her to repent.”

Tracker chuckled. “I’ll keep that in mind.”

“Gracias.” The lightness left Vincente’s expression. “Later, if I decide you can stay, I will introduce you.”

“Then I guess I’ll have to work today to impress you.”

“Because you don’t want a bullet in your heart?”

Tracker shook his head and called back, “Because it’s been a long time since I had a home-cooked meal.”

The old man shook his head and gathered up Abuelita’s lead rope. “It is lonely for a man as he gets older, sí?”

Not for Tracker. He couldn’t let life get lonely. “For some.”

Vincente slapped the cow’s rope against his boot, punctuating his mocking tone when he said, “For some, huh!”

The last thing Tracker needed was an old man playing matchmaker. It was bad enough that Tia wouldn’t accept reality. “Yes,” he retorted. “For some.”

“But not you?” Vincente asked as he led the placid cow out of the barn.

“No. Not for me.”

“Huh!” Vincente’s snort carried clearly as he led the cow to the fenced pasture. “Drop off the milk and we will get to work.”

The old man might be arthritic, he might be going blind, but he was a man on a mission, and that mission seemed to be to get as much work out of Tracker as he could. The first job of the day was to get a sizable new garden area ready for his wife, which involved plowing up the hard-packed earth. It’d been a dry spring, and the ground was full of rocks. The only tool the old man had was a weighted plow. With no horse to pull it, the only option was for Tracker to do the pulling. Apparently, judging from the cut-down harness, this had been the system for years.

After one brutal trip down the length of the marked-off area, Tracker was seriously considering hooking Buster’s temperamental ass up to the makeshift harness. But the gelding had a fierce reaction when it came to pulling things, and since Tracker wasn’t going to be around long enough to replace the plow, he grudgingly slid the harness over his shoulder and dragged the blade back down the next row.

“You sure your wife needs a garden this big?” he asked as he passed Vincente, who was hauling rocks out of the area with a net spread between two sticks tied together. It was an ingenious device that took the stress off the old man’s hands.

“Sí. Absolutely.”

“Going to be an awful lot of canning.”

“Yes. She will be pleased.”

Was she going to be pleased or was Vincente? Tracker wasn’t certain. But one thing a garden this big would ensure was that a woman would have enough goods to eat or trade, whether there was fresh meat or not. He watched as Vincente again missed a rock with the net. Just how bad was the man’s vision?