“About?”
“Whether hitting hired boys improves horsemanship.”
Lou looked at him.
“I assume you lost.”
“Job, yes.”
“What did he lose?”
“Two teeth.”
Lou laughed despite herself.
Emmett continued.
“Sixth outfit moved north.”
“Seventh?”
“Bank.”
“Eighth?”
“Woman married a man who brought his own crew.”
“And ninth?”
He was quiet longer.
“Sold.”
Lou watched him.
“Every time,” he said, “I thought maybe that was it.”
“What?”
“The place.”
She understood.
Home.
He rubbed a hand over his beard.
“Then winter comes. Or debt. Or somebody dies. Or somebody marries.”
His smile held no humor.
“And I’m standing in another yard with my saddle.”
Lou looked down at her hands.
“Why Bitter Brush?”
Emmett glanced toward her.
“You were hiring.”
“That simple?”
“No.”
“What’s the complicated answer?”
“Ask me when I’m less tired.”
“Coward.”
“Yes.”
They slept in the barn that night.
Lou on a folded horse blanket.
Emmett ten feet away against the wall.
When she woke at dawn, his coat had somehow ended up over her.
She did not ask.
He did not mention it.
That was somehow more intimate than if he had.
Ash approached Emmett alone three days later.
Lou did not learn about it from Emmett.
She learned because Roy saw the conversation from the tack room.
“Ash offered him work.”
Lou kept sorting invoices.
“So?”
Roy frowned.
“So?”
“Yes.”
“Forty-five.”
“I know.”
“Foreman’s house.”
Lou’s hand stopped.
That was new.
Roy continued.
“Three horses.”
“People own too many horses.”
“And winter guarantee.”
Lou looked up.
Roy’s expression became cautious.
“He didn’t say yes.”
“Did he say no?”
“I left.”
“Helpful.”
“I thought spying was wrong.”
“Then why were you spying?”
“I wasn’t until it got interesting.”
Lou returned to the invoices.
Emmett did not mention the offer that evening.
Or the next morning.
The silence grew.
Lou hated herself for noticing.
She hated Ash more for knowing she would.
By the second night she nearly asked.
Pride stopped her.
If Emmett wanted Circle P, she would not beg.
He was hired help.
Nothing more.
That was what she told herself while watching him across the supper table.
Nothing more.
Perch watched both of them.
The old man smiled into his beans.
Lou considered poisoning him.
The hailstorm came without warning.
September weather could turn vicious in minutes.
One moment the sky above Cutbank Draw was pale and empty.
Twenty minutes later clouds rolled across the western ridge like smoke.
Perch saw them first.
“That’s ugly.”
Lou stepped outside.
Wind struck the yard.
Cattle bawled from the south pasture.
Emmett emerged from the barn.
“Where’s the lower bunch?”
“Draw.”
His expression sharpened.
“How many?”
“Fifty-three.”
Thunder cracked.
They were already moving.
Rain became hail before Lou reached the first ridge.
The ground whitened.
Water poured down every dry cut.
Cutbank Draw transformed from dust to a brown rushing channel.
The cattle clustered in panic below.
Lou and Emmett rode into it.
There was no time to think about forty-five dollars.
Or foreman houses.
Or silence.
Only animals.