Page 2 of Rainbow Rodeo

“We ought to pull out the cards, huh? I got some quarters and pennies in a jar.” Ben did love his penny-ante poker on a Friday night.

“You sure you can remember what all the cards are?” Dalton teased. “You rang your bell but good.”

“Fuck off, man. You still owe me five bucks from our last round.”

He snorted and nodded. “True that. We can play some cards.”

The circle of trailers was starting to warm up—different grills and lights coming on, music playing from all directions. It was a little like a cowboy caravan, with everything from POS trailers with cots to Airstreams to eighty-thousand-dollar homes on wheels. There was room for all of them—from holey boots to 1000X Stetsons. Dalton had grown up surrounded by this, and now it was theirs, theirs to love, to protect, to—

“Fucking dyke!” The snarl was followed by the sound of flesh hitting flesh, and Dalton was up and moving before the echo faded.

“Let go of me, you asshole!” Cheri Stevens stumbled into his path, clutching at her right arm with her left hand.

“Cheri?”

“I’m okay. He’s drunk and stupid.” The barrel racer was pale, her dark braid all pulled askew. “It’s cool.”

“Cheri? Baby? I heard you yell….” Cheri’s wife, Missy, was heading toward them like a large blonde freight train.

“Fucking dick tease.” A lanky bronc rider, who was new to the tour, staggered out of the shadows behind Cheri.

“I didn’t. Boss. You know.”

“Sure I do, lady. Breathe.” He turned on the cowboy who’d left marks on Cheri. “Back off, cowboy. You head on out of here.”

Missy grabbed Cheri and glared. “You okay, baby?”

“Fine.”

“You cunt. You ever fucked a real man, you’d turn normal.”

Dalton looked at the guy for half a second. Maybe two-thirds of one. Then he swung. No monologuing. Just bam. One to the breadbasket, right to the jaw, uppercut to the chin.

No one fucked with his people.

The guy stumbled back, like his bones had forgotten how to work, and then he surged up, whiskey and bravado making the son of a bitch stupid. His breath liked to knock Dalton down, but the wild punch the guy threw didn’t even graze him.

The day he couldn’t wipe the floor with a drunken cowboy was the day they could hang up his spurs.

Dalton ducked, then bopped the asshole on the nose.

“You’ll just piss him off like that, Dee,” Dustin pointed out.

“Makes it more fun, though,” Ben added. “His buddies are coming.”

“Oh good. We’ll clean house all at once.”

Ben grinned and nodded, lining up next to Dalton and Dustin. Oh, this was more fun than color TV. “You sure you want to get into this, boys? We’re loaded for bear.”

One of the first asshole’s buddies took a shot at Dustin and went down. He didn’t get back up.

The sound of his pops’s boot steps on the dirt were more familiar than anything but Dustin’s heartbeat. “What’s going on here?”

“Mr. Jakoby! Thank God.” One of the riders stepped forward, hat in hand. “Your sons are beatin’ on my friends.”

“Are they, now? Dalton?”

“The man in question grabbed ahold of Cheri, cussed her, and questioned her honor, Pops.”

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