Page 35 of Cowboy Dreams

Morse moved as if he was getting up and I channeled all my fear and anger. “You move another inch and I will shoot you in the gut. I don’t like guns but my granddad taught me to shoot right here on this ranch you tried to burn.”

“I didn’t try—”

“Shut up!” I held the gun steady, aimed nicely on center of mass.

Joe dashed back around the corner of the barn, water arcing from a spraying hose in his hands. He reached the fire and aimed the spray at its base, dousing the flames, starting at the edges as if driving the fire back to its start. “There’s a fucking torch!” he called to me. Water hissed in the heat but the dancing flames of red and gold faded and shrank down. Joe kept at it, steady sweeps, high on the wall and lower along the base where dry weeds ignited in little puffs of yellow-white. With each pass, the flames lessened, shrank, died, until they turned to flickers of embers and then were gone.

Joe kept on soaking the area, long after the last of the fire seemed out. He expanded his sweeps, watering a wide swath of grass and gravel and the whole of the wall.

Morse tried to take advantage of my distraction, getting his feet under him, but I gestured with the gun muzzle. “I can aim lower. I hear getting shot in the balls really smarts.”

“You don’t have the guts.” He stood up, glaring at me.

“I grew up gay in the nineties. Try me.”

“Huh?”

“You think you’re the first bully to try to take what’s mine?” I fixed my hardest stare on him. “I’m on my land and standing my ground. Make my day.” I had no clue if Colorado even had stand-your-ground laws, but it sounded good.

“I’m acop! You can’t shoot me.”

Joe left the hose spilling water along the wall and came up beside me. “Where’s your uniform, then? Where’s your patrol car? Fuck you!” The note of fury in his voice made me rethink handing him the gun.

I said, “You’re faster than me, Joe. Run and get your phone and call 9-1-1.”

“You sure—?”

“Go,” I told Joe, before he could help Morse decide to doubt me. Because if push came to shove, Iwasn’tsure I would shoot him.

Joe sprinted across the barnyard, took the porch steps in two bounds, and was gone only a moment before running back, phone in hand. “Yes,” he said into the phone. “Tried to burn our barn. I think I put it out but you’d better send the fire department too.”

“You should let me go,” Morse said. “Before my fellow officers get here and see you holding a gun on me.”

“And when they see you tried to burn a barn?” Joe snarled. “Folks don’t take kindly to that around here.”

“That wasn’t me.” Morse scoffed loudly. “I was trying to stop the guy. You let him get away.”

I managednotto glance up at where the new cameras sat unobtrusively under the eaves. “You can tell it to the sheriff.”

We stood there waiting. The smell of smoke hung thick in the air. Over in the pasture, Donner paced up and down the fence, not bugling anymore but making loud huffs and nickers, pawing at the ground. I shuddered, the chill of the November night seeping into my bare shoulders and naked feet on the gravel. Joe stood planted beside me, arms crossed in a way that emphasized his biceps lined in shades of tan, and glared at Morse.

“Joe,” I murmured. “Could you grab us coats and then settle Donner down a bit. I’m worried he might hurt himself.”

Joe shook himself as if coming back from a nightmare, then turned my way. “You okay to watch this guy?”

“My grandfather called me his little sharpshooter.” Not long before he called me the spawn of Satan and a whore’s nasty offspring, but hey, partial truth works. “I plugged a lot of cans off posts. I can hit a belly the size of Morse’s.”

“That’smygun!” Morse complained.

“Mine now,” I said, partly to watch him fume.

Joe murmured against my ear, “Don’t provoke him. We don’t want anyone ending up dead and if he hurts you, I’ll kill him.”

I kissed his cheek, partly to wind Morse up. “Go get my coat, honey.”

As Joe hurried across the yard, Morse shouted after him, “You’re pussy-whipped, McNeil.”

Joe turned, walking backward, a big grin on his face. “That’s dick-whipped, you sorry son-of-a-bitch, and I love it.”

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