Page 27 of Forever Finds Us
I hadn’t gone for a walk just to walk and enjoy my time maybe ever when I was up in Sheridan. I jogged. I worked outside, but I never took the time to look around.
It felt good. The blood pumping through my lungs and legs got my brain working again. Thoughts of Dixon tucked themselves neatly away where they couldn’t hurt or cause me shame, and then I heard some kind of commotion near the barn over by Bax’s house, so I headed that way, completely forgetting my original intention of checking on the inn project.
When I got there, the barn and the exercise paddock were empty of humans, as was the mostly unoccupied new bunkhouse Bea and Clay had thrown up over the summer. Next year, it would be full of cowboys.
I said hello to a couple horses, a group of cows loitering near the fence gate, and one lone, black goat, Pekoe. I thought it was what Athena had named him. I wasn’t one hundred percent on that, but the name was weird, so it fit my darling niece and the quirky need she seemed to have to name every living thing she met.
The sound of the barking dog I’d heard on my walk over carried through the gate that led to a grazing field. Rye’s horse, Blue, wasn’t in the barn, nor Bax’s, but Athena’s mare, Tulsa, munched hay in her stall, so I saddled her, hoping I remembered how to do it properly, and set out slowly to investigate.
When I approached them, Rye, Bax, and their lead cowboy, Presley, all sat in their saddles in a line in the field, looking past a grouping of trees in the distance.
Tulsa and I sneaked up beside Rye and Blue and stopped. When Tulsa chuffed, Rye turned his head and stared at me for a beat, a look of confusion tugging his eyebrows low over his eyes.
He adjusted the hat on his head and clicked his tongue. “Well, if this ain’t the curious case of Brand Lee. I didn’t know you could tell a cow from a horse, let alone saddle one.”
“Ha. It’s been a while,” I said, “but it’s all comin’ back to me now.”
“Bax tells us y’all found that girl last night. Good on you, man.”
“Thanks. It wasn’t just us. There were teams of people searchin’.”
“Still, I’m glad she’s safe.”
“Me too. What’s goin’ on here?” I asked.
“It’s Bea’s bison,” my brother said, pointing to a dark dot on the horizon. “Seems he came to say hello.”
“What? None of the words you just said go together.”
Bax handed a pair of binoculars to Rye, who handed them to me, and I looked through the lenses carefully, still not understanding until I saw a humungous buffalo staring back at me. He was alone. His herd had to be further past the trees to the east. Or maybe he’d wandered this far west on his own?
“Bison don’t usually travel solo, do they?” I asked. “And why do you call him Bea’s bison?”
“She met him last year on her way into Wisper, when she came to finish the houses and cabins for you.”
“This bison? How can you know it’s the same animal?”
Out of the corner of my eye, I saw Bax’s shoulders lift. “Guess I can’t, but it’s intuition. We’ve seen him a few times now. You can just look in his eyes to know it’s him. Bea calls him Wally.”
“Okay, but why are y’all sittin’ here starin’ at him? Is he on our property? Should we call Game and Fish?”
“Naw,” Rye drawled. “He was, but Fig chased him off. His herd is further east. We must have a breach in the east fence. We heard Fig barkin’ like a madman, so we came to see what the fuss was all about.”
The German Shepherd in question, Figaro, who lay at Blue’s front hooves, rolled on his back in the grass at the mention of his name, his long tongue lolling, like he wanted belly scratches for his good deeds.
“That still doesn’t tell me why you’re not doin’ somethin’.”
“Bison are majestic animals,” Presley uttered. “He knows this land better than any of us. It was his before we stole it. We’re just takin’ the moment in.” He leaned forward on his bay mare and looked past Bax and Rye, his coal-black eyes narrowing at me. “You still can’t relax, can you? Same as when you were a kid. Gotta control everything.”
I’d known Elvis Decker since I was probably thirteen, but not once had I heard anyone refer to him as Elvis. He had always been just Presley. He’d come to the area from Texas to work on Rye’s dad’s ranch but had followed Rye when he set out on his own last year and we’d all gone in together to start up Spitfire Ranch at Lee Valley.
Crude tattoos covered his arms and chest, and they showed now because he’d ripped the sleeves off his button-down. A blade of wheat or dried field grass jutted from the side of his mouth, and his black hat shrouded his eyes in shade. The man rarely spoke. He was a mystery, and he was the absolute epitome of what people probably thought of when they pictured a cowboy in the Wild West.
Pursing my lips, feeling annoyed my latent anxiety was so obvious to Presley, I said, “I’m workin’ on it.”
Chapter Eleven
Roxanne
