He let the horse pick its way down the ridge, into the darkness. A good horse; he'd had Mosey a long time now and the big, dark animal knew his work as well as Carter did. Better, sometimes. It was a warm enough night that the work didn't seem too bad. In the moonless darkness the slow, careful movements of the horse were comfortable and reassuring.
But this was a perfect night for dirty-work and so, while he'd prefer to be in bed, snuggled up to his wife, he was out riding nightguard on a herd of cattle.
Seven. They'd taken the seventh one just last night, after the sickly sliver of the moon had set. He'd missed them, thinking that they wouldn't dare, but, he'd been wrong. Seventh one this summer. At this rate, he wouldn't even break even. Couldn't have that. He wondered if it had been a mistake to report the theft....
He'd come back inside from talking to the cops, his face sour enough to curdle milk still in the cow. He snatched the mug of coffee off the table and downed a gulp hot enough to scald his tongue and throat. He slammed the mug back down with an oath, splashing hot, black coffee all around the tabletop.
Allison looked startled and backed up against the sink with the coffee pot in her hand, reaching down to put one arm around their son's tiny shoulders. The toddler leaned against her and held on to her skirts.
"So?" she asked. "What are they going to do?"
"Nothing," Carter barked. "They say there's nothing they can do but take a report. They say they think they know who's doing it, but they've got no proof and without proof, they can't do fuck-all.
"Damn it! I don't give a damn about their report. I want my God-damned steer back. If they know who stole that damned thing, you'd think they could get the damned thing back."
"Carter...," Allison chided.
He glanced at her and then sighed. "I'm sorry." He shook his head in disgust. "Cattle rustlers. Like this was the Old West. Ought to string 'em up just the same way, too. We're not the only ones, you know. Cattle go missing all over Alberta, now. Most of 'em with a little help from a truck with blacked-out headlights. Bastards."
Allison shook her head indulgently and didn't chew him out for swearing again. "Did you finish repairing the fence?"
"No, I haven't."
"Well, maybe you'd better before a few more of those stupid bovines decide to help themselves out of the property. Doubt you want to be chasing strays all day."
"Hell-- I mean heck, no. All right, all right, I'm going."
"You're gonna come back up here for lunch, right?"
"You bet," Carter replied, walking over to her. "Got a date with a sexy lady." He pulled her into his arms and the baby clung to both their knees. She seemed so tiny compared to his beaten-up old bulk. He squeezed her gently and kissed her, then leaned his cheek against her hair and breathed in the scent of it. "I don't know what I did to deserve you, sugar, but it must have been a hell of a good thing."
"Oh, heck no," she teased. "I only married you for your money and this glamorous life you brought me to. I'm just a sucker for the smell of cow plop."
He laughed. Damn, but it was always hard to step away. But he did. "Then I'd better get out there and get my perfume on, eh? Or you'll be leaving me for some shit-shoveler from a dairy farm."
He jumped back with a grin as she swiped at him with a towel, laughing. He picked up the thermos of coffee she'd poured out for him and took the Winchester down from the hooks over the door.
"Carter, I wish you didn't have to take that thing."
"Never know when a little game is going to run across the grazing. With the way things are going, we might need to eat those deer and rabbits. Aren't you sick of beef by now, anyway?" he added with a wink.
She shook her head and shooed him out the door....
The rifle touched his knee as he rode in the dark. It hadn't been cheap, but he felt better having the gun on the saddle. He didn't like the fact that he'd lied to Allison about it, but he knew she wouldn't have been very receptive to the idea of teaching rustlers to dance to the tune the Winnie called. And he would, if that's what it took.
Whatever it took to make sure Allison and the baby were safe and sound and never wanted for anything in his power to provide. It was such a close thing. This herd was all that stood between them and foreclosure. If he lost more cattle, there'd be no profit this year, too many and he wouldn't even be able to pay off the loans on the car and the house.
He couldn't let it happen. He'd had a hot time of it down in the bank, earlier, and he meant to keep his promise there, because it was the same as his unspoken promises to Allison and the kid: I won't fail you....
Allison's brow had been creased into wrinkles when he entered the kitchen for lunch.
"What's the matter, Honey?" he asked, his stomach plunging.
"The bank called about fifteen minutes ago. Peter Harkin wants to talk to you. In person, right away."
Carter frowned and felt a twist in his guts. She shrugged with a look of dread on her face and handed him a sandwich. "You want to go right away?"
"I guess I'd better," he mumbled, looking at the sandwich. He turned back around and went out to the car. He drove into town, grinding his teeth the entire way. The sandwich sat untouched on the seat beside him, looking sadder by the minute.
Peter Harkin hadn't left him pacing in the lobby, at least. He'd been shown straight to the manager's office. The sinking feeling only got worse as he looked at the banker's face. This was going to be bad.
"Afternoon, Lavelle," the man said, offering his hand to Carter with an unhappy twist to his mouth. "I heard you had a... a loss this morning." He waved at a chair, but Carter didn't sit down.
"Yeah. News travels fast around here, don't it?"
Harkin had the decency to look uncomfortable, at least, as he sat down behind his heavy, antique walnut desk. "I'm really sorry, Carter. You understand that I'm concerned. I don't want to sound heartless, but the bank is concerned. I know the margins are tight for cattle ranchers these days and I'm worried...."
"Worried I'm not going to be able to pay off my loans?"
"Yes. We do have the right to recall the loan at any time, you know. Especially if it looks like there might be a default that we could avoid. If you can't give me some kind of reassurance, we'll have to foreclose on something. Better the car than the house, though, eh?"
"There's not going to be any default. I'm going to keep my herd and I'm going to meet my loans."
"How many head have you lost this season? Eight, nine?"
"Seven. Still got plenty left. And I'm not going to lose 'em. You don't have to worry about it. Nothing is going to stop me from meeting those loans, even if I have to hunt those cattle down and steal 'em back myself."
"You wouldn't do something like that, Carter."
Carter scowled and stuffed his hands in his pockets. "You know me, Harkin. I don't quit. I didn't quit in eighteen years of being trampled by bulls and smacked up against fences by half a ton of pissed-off pot roast. I'm not going to quit now. If it takes sittin' out in the north forty every night, all night, for the rest of the season, I'll do it. Whatever it takes, I'm not going to fail. I'm not going to fail you; I'm not going to fail my wife and kid. Get it?"
Harkin nodded and looked both relieved and frightened anew. "I get it." The banker took a deep breath and sat back in his chair. "All right. I'll let it ride a little longer. The loan's still got a while to go before the first payment is due and... I'm going to trust you."
Carter nodded, turned on his heel and marched out of the bank. He drove home with fury simmering like a kettle in his heart. Sons of bitches....
He wasn't going to let these sons of bitches beat him. Eighteen years riding bulls on the rodeo circuit hadn't knocked him out. Waking up in pain every morning, scraping every penny... it wasn't going to go to waste because of a bunch of spineless, dark-night sneak thieves.
He looked out into the darkness, seeing the black humps of the cattle asleep on their feet and on their knees, spreading like the ripples of a brook over stones. They would come here. He would, if he were they, in the moonless dark, so close to the road and deep into the night.
Mosey walked along the fence line, picking his footing with care and Carter wished he'd had more to eat than that damned, sad, stale sandwich hours ago. He hoped the growling of his stomach wouldn't alert the rustlers to his presence if they came. When they came.
He prayed he wouldn't do the wrong thing, lose his temper, finally go too far. This long, dark night wasn't just to serve his pride. He put thoughts of Allison in the front of his mind. Allison....
He never could understand it: what did a cute young thing like Allison see in a battered old cowboy like him? Back when he was young and brash and not too damned bright, he'd at least been kind of dashing, maybe, in a cigarette-ad sort of way. But he was on the downhill side of his 30s when they'd met. He'd thought his heart was going to stop the first time he laid eyes on her. Not beautiful, no, but like a key inserted in a lock on his heart that he hadn't known was there. Awe: that was the word. He'd had to go and ask one of the college boys, his brain was so sloppy that he couldn't come up with it.
Long ago he'd realized that he had two choices in his career: die or find a way to retire before that last, harsh bull came out of the chute. He didn't much like the idea of dying, so he'd saved up most of his winnings, sitting out the drinking bouts and being branded a kill-joy. But he'd never quit, never ducked or jumped. Took a lot of damage, broken bones, hospital stays, rude comments from doctors, but kept going.
Allison didn't like the broken bones, the smell of antiseptic and injury. He'd asked her to marry him half a dozen times, but she always said she wanted more out of life than trophies and pain. Whose pain, she hadn't specified. Carter always expected her to simply not show up, sometime, cut her losses and find a decent, steady guy who didn't do something crazy for a living.
But she kept coming around when he was in town, taking his phone calls when he wasn't. She didn't mind when he turned forty, she didn't mind when he said he still had a couple of years to go. But she also never said she'd be around. She just was.
That last day, that last time ever, he'd pulled on his gloves, tightened the cinches at the wrist and banished everything but the bull. Even Allison. Oh, she tried to slip in, but he couldn't let her. Not today. Couldn't let wondering about Allison make him sweat, let his hand slip on the rope, his concentration stray from the furious Brahma snorting in the chute below him. He touched the papers folded and stuffed into his pocket and stopped thinking.
The gate opened at his signal and the bull exploded out, the broad, hard back heaving to unseat him. He twisted, pounded, rushed and bolted and leapt. Carter held on. Just held on hand and and heels. Held on and held on, until the raucous buzzer roared. He slipped his hand out from under the rope halter and kicked away from the bull.
He hit the dirt of the ring and smashed to his knees, rolling. The crowd screamed and he rolled to his knees facing the bull. The maddened animal rushed forward and Carter dove to the side, rolling fast and hard over shoulders that ached with bruises and improperly healed injuries. He opened his mouth to yell and swallowed dirt. He stopped against a barrel and scrambled to his feet.
The bull wasn't paying attention to Carter anymore. He was dancing impatiently in front of another barrel behind which the painted face of fearlessness called and teased: a rodeo clown distracting the bull. Carter dusted off his clothes and picked up his trampled hat and limped out as the loudspeaker congratulated him and told them all this was the last time. Carter Lavelle: retired. The crowd roared and howled and he walked away from them with a wave. Good bye, folks.
God, his knees hurt; even more than his shoulders or his back. Forty-four sucked. He headed for the pay office. All he wanted to do was go home and lie down.
Allison ran around the corner of the horse boxes, waving at him. He stopped and drank her in: cotton dress, funny little shoes, hair flying all around. She skittered to a stop two feet away.
"Really?" she panted. "You're really quitting?"
"Quit. All done."
"What are you going to do for the rest of your life, then?"
"Raise cattle. Marry you. Got half the paperwork right here." He pulled the deed papers out of his pocket and unfolded them.
She stared. "What's that for?"
"Says I own a ranch out there," he said waving his hand northeast. "More damned land than you can look at all at once. And a bunch of ugly cattle. Gonna be a big, empty place for a man all by himself.... Want to come out and keep me company?"
She shouted and jumped into his arms. "Let's start that other paperwork right away."
He kissed her until he didn't know the world was spinning separately from his own head....
He still got dizzy every time.
The pop of taut wire parting brought his head around toward the road. He squeezed Mosey's ribs gently with his legs and the horse backed up, into a pocket of darkness.
The darkened transport van eased into the meadow below, jouncing and bumping a bit as it crossed the rough near the cut fence wires. It crept backward until the gate was within a few feet of the nearest steer.
The steer snorted and moved restlessly. He didn't like to be disturbed from his sleep. Black-clothed figures emerged from the cab and walked back, quiet as dew over the grass. One let down the ramp while the other walked a little closer to the sleepy bovine.
Carter reached for the Winchester.
The man near the steer looped a rope around the dopey thing's neck and waved a bit of sweet hay under it's nose. The steer grunted and walked forward, always hungry. Right up the ramp and into the van it went, peaceful and quiet.
The bastards, Carter thought, and brought the Winchester to his shoulder.
The bastards enticed a second sleepwalking steer into their transport and shut the gate ramp. Laughing, they got back into the cab. If they'd taken two whole minutes to do it, Carter would be surprised. He'd stuck to bulls longer than those two.
Proof lay before him. It might be the worst thing he could do, but Carter sighted in on the front of the van and squeezed gently on the trigger. The first shot sent the rustlers into a scramble as the bullet smacked into the hood. The second cracked a glass as the cattle began to stir around and panic at being so rudely awakened. At the third shot, the cattle rushed around the truck, packing in close and butting at it impatiently to get out of the way. The men trapped inside by the angry and confused cattle shrieked as the vehicle was buffeted by the massive animals outside.
Chuckling, Carter slipped the rifle back into the saddle scabbard and pulled the cell phone from his pack...
The sun was bleeding into the Eastern sky and Carter sipped his coffee and leaned against the kitchen table. Eric Millard, from the local RCMP office, looked up from his notebook and picked up his coffee mug.
"Well, Carter, you were on the money. We caught 'em just a couple miles down the road from your place. No doubt about it, this time. They're already talking about making some kind of deal, so you might could get a couple of those other animals back, if you're lucky. Funny thing: couple, three bullet holes in that truck-cab. Looked... oh, about .30 cal would be my guess. About like that Winchester of yours, I imagine," the cop speculated, nodding at the weapon mounted over the kitchen door.
It's a .303," Carter replied, "and, so far as I know, it's perfectly legal for a land owner to frighten off trespassers."
"Perfectly legal, yep it is. So long as you weren't shooting to hurt those boys."
"Would I do that?"
Millard smiled, stood up and drained his coffee. He didn't say anything more than, "I'd better get going, now."
Carter showed him out and stood on the back stoop, watching the police car raise dust as it drove away.
A light touch on his back made him turn.
Allison looked up at him with a lopsided grin. "You said you bought it for the game."
"Well, Ok, you got me... varmint shootin'."
She laughed and he kissed her hard and they sat down together, on the stoop, to watch the sunrise.
Author's note: This story was inspired by a song by Stan Rogers.
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