Love, Like Water (2 page)

“Sir,” Jesse acknowledged with a faint nod, his voice low and calm, just as Eli had taught him. He moved slowly toward where the bridle was draped on the fence, never letting his attention stray from the mare. When he picked up the bridle, it jingled softly, and the mare bounced, not so much startled as seeing it as a new game. God, she was so young—she and Jesse would make a good pair once the boy had finished training. The Pueblo didn’t have a tradition of horsemanship, but Jesse—a member of the Isleta Pueblo near Albuquerque—hadn’t let that stop him. He was a natural, only fifteen and already one of Eli’s most promising students.

Jesse began speaking to the mare, very softly. The mare stopped bouncing, flicking her ears forward in interest. He didn’t move but let the horse come to him, and she did, shifting in tiny steps, pretending not to move forward even as she let the boy’s musical voice and nonsense words—or maybe they were Tiwa, Eli didn’t know the difference—lure her to him. When she finally stood snuffling Jesse’s hair, the boy raised his hands slowly and let her sniff and lip the bridle before easing the bit into her mouth. He held it there a moment, then slowly slipped the leather straps over her head, letting her accept it at each stage, until the bit was settled in the gap behind her teeth. The only thing Jesse had to do was fasten the chin strap. He murmured to her softly as he scratched beneath her chin on his way to the buckle, and when he’d fastened it, scratched her cheek beside the leather and steel. “Beautiful girl,” he said, loud enough for Eli to hear it. “Beautiful, beautiful girl.”

She bobbed her head as if in agreement, then bounced away, the moment broken. They watched her carefully, but she didn’t seem to mind the bridle—didn’t try to scrape it off against the fence as some of them did, with damage to both the horse and the bridle. “Good,” Eli told Jesse, who came and leaned against the fence beside where Eli stood. “You’re coming on.”

“She’s a sweetheart,” Jesse said.

“Yep. I think you’re a good pair—I’m going to see if Tucker’ll be willing to assign her to you once you’re done. Give you some time to get used to each other’s quirks before the next NFS mustang roundup.” The Triple C, Tucker Chastain’s ranch, was one of the contractors for the National Forestry Service, which managed the mustang herds on federal land. “You can’t ride in the roundup ’til you’re sixteen, but if I recollect, you’ll have just hit that mark by next spring. In the meantime, though, you’re gonna have to take on a few more projects like Sallee, here.”

“I’m up for it,” Jesse said.

“I know you are,
chico
.” Eli tilted his hat back and scratched his forehead. “Okay, give her another twenty minutes with the bridle, and then I want you to introduce her to neck reins. Loop ’em up so they don’t dangle, but lay ’em across her withers so she gets used to the feel of them.”

“Yessir,” Jesse said.

“Eli!”

Eli shot the kid a grin. “Gotta go—Big Boss is callin’.” Jesse gave him a matching grin, then turned his attention back to the mare. Eli straightened his hat, then turned and headed for the barn where Tucker waited. “Boss.”

“Eli. Kid’s looking good.”

“Yeah, he’s a natural.”

“Seems to have an affinity for that animal.”

“Yessir. Sallee and him are a good match, personality-wise. She’d make a good mount for him—he’s about outgrown Charlie. He’s ready for something a little more lively, more a challenge to him.”

“Yeah.” Tucker indicated the bench beside the barn door. It was in the shade, and Eli settled down on it gratefully. Chastain dropped down beside him, stretched out his long legs, and folded his arms across his chest. They sat that way in silence a moment; Eli didn’t have anything to say, and Tucker, he knew, took his time about saying what he did.

Finally Tucker shifted and said, “What do you think about the men we have on the payroll?”

Eli frowned. “Good men. Can’t say I’ve had a problem with any of them in general. Couple of them a bit mouthy, but since we got rid of that drunk, Leon, I think they’re a good bunch. Why? Thinking of laying someone off?” He didn’t like the idea, but Chastain was the owner, and he knew what the financial situation was better than Eli would.

“No. Bringing someone on, actually.”

The frown deepened, and Eli sat thinking. He might not know the finances, but as foreman, he sure knew the workload, and it didn’t warrant an extra hand. Unless Chastain was planning on bringing on more work. “You taking on more animals?”

“Not anytime soon. Not ’til the bank and I decide what’s gonna happen with the additional acreage. But that’ll be months yet.”

“Then we probably ain’t got work for another hand. Not so’s it’d be worth what we’d have to pay him.”

“He’s not a hand, exactly.” Tucker blew out a breath. “My nephew’s coming out. I need the help with the business, and I’m thinking of training him up to run the place after I retire.”

“You’re not thinking of retiring yet,” Eli said. He knew that for a fact—Tucker loved the ranch, loved the work, and was only in his late fifties. Far too young to think about retirement.

“No. But I’m spending more and more time on managing the business end, and less and less time training horses. Josh is a smart guy, a city guy, and I figure he’ll know what to do about websites and Facebook and Twitter and all that shit.”

“I thought he was some big shot FBI agent,” Eli said idly.

“He was. I don’t know the facts, but I know this last assignment of his went bad somehow, and he quit. He’s been in the hospital a while, and Hannah wants him out of the city and someplace he can take his time recovering.”

“He get shot or something?”

“Hell if I know. You know those Feds—they don’t tell you nothing you don’t need to know.”

The only Feds Eli knew were the guys at the NFS and the ones at the Bureau of Indian Affairs, and they were all pretty decent fellas, so he didn’t say anything. He just nodded and stared out across the paddock.

“So I figured we’d kill two birds with one stone. Josh can come out here and get his health back, and I can teach him about ranching while he’s doing it. Working in the office probably won’t hurt, either.”

“I don’t think I’ve met him,” Eli mused. “I know your niece and her kids—they were out a couple summers ago—but he ain’t been out here so’s I remember.”

“Not since he was a kid. They used to come out every summer. Hannah’s been living back East since college.” He didn’t say anything more. Eli knew that there wasn’t a Mr. Hannah, and Josh and Cathy had their mother’s last name (though Cathy was married and divorced, from what Tucker had told him), but he didn’t know anything more than that. Wasn’t his business anyway.

“So why d’ja ask about the men? You think they won’t be happy with a Fed living among ’em?”

“Him being a Fed ain’t the issue. I was thinking more about him being my nephew, and him not knowing nothing about ranch life and all. Could be a lot of resentment and such.”

Eli shook his head. “I don’t think that’ll be a problem. As long as he ain’t an asshole, I think he’ll be fine. Can he at least ride?”

“Hell if I know,” Chastain said again. “He did as a kid.”

“Then he’ll probably be fine. There’ll be some jockeyin’, the same way there is whenever we take on a new hand, but it’ll all shake down okay. As long as he ain’t a prissy bitch or an asshole, and seeing as how he was an FBI agent, I kinda doubt he’s a prissy bitch.”

“He better not be an asshole,” Chastain said. “I don’t need the trouble, and I’d really like to know that I’m leaving the ranch in good hands. Of course, I can’t make that decision until I get to know him, right?”

“You sick or something? Talking about retiring, and leaving the ranch in good hands…. Jesus, Tuck, you’re making me nervous.”

“Nah, I’m fine. I’m just…. Shit, Eli, I’m turning fifty-nine next birthday. In another year I’ll be sixty. Out here, sixty is damn old.”

“Yeah, it is,” Eli said, then grinned as Tucker elbowed him.

“Says the guy who’s half my age.”

“No, I’d be half your age if you were sixty-six. Jesus, old man, no wonder you need help with the business end of the ranch, if you can’t even figure right.”

“Hey, I may be old, but I can still fire you.”

“No, you can’t, ’cause you can’t find nobody else that’ll put up with your cranky ass.”

They grinned at each other a moment, then Tucker shook his head. “So. Josh’ll be staying in the house, so you don’t need to find space for him in the bunkhouse. You’re just lucky I ain’t putting him in your place.”

“That’s the foreman’s cottage,” Eli pointed out. “I’m the foreman. That’s non-negotiable.”

“I’m still the boss.”

“Yeah, and you live in the boss’s house. You gonna make your FBI nephew who ain’t been on a ranch in dunno-many years the foreman?”

Tucker shuddered. “Oh, hell no. Okay. You’re safe. Anyway, Hannah didn’t know when he’d be coming out—she needed to talk to him yet and arrange things. I’ll let you know as soon as I do. There’s not much you need to do, at any rate. Just your job.”

“And I do that anyway. But thanks for the heads up. You want me to pass the word among the
vaqueros
?”

“Sure. Might as well keep them in the loop.” Chastain sighed. “I suppose there’ll be all kinds of speculation about my health after this.”

Eli grinned. “You bet your ass, old man. Better make sure you git out here and show ’em you’re still alive, or they’ll be taking bets on your life expectancy.”

“Smartass.” Tucker got up, kicked him lightly in the boot, and sauntered off back towards the house.

Chapter 2

T
HE
flight from Chicago had coincided with a meeting of ranchers in Colorado Springs, so his uncle wasn’t able to pick Joshua up at the airport as he’d originally planned. He’d offered to send his foreman into Albuquerque to pick him up, but Joshua didn’t want to take the man from his work for the four-hour round trip. Instead, he’d found a Greyhound bus route that would take him to Miller, the town closest to the ranch, and his uncle would have someone pick him up there.

It was fine with Joshua; the long ride on the bus gave him a chance to mentally adjust to being away from the city streets that had been the borders of his life for the last three years, and to see the country he would be living in for the foreseeable future. The high desert was an interesting mix of dry, sere vegetation, a lot of pointless little shrubs scattered like lint balls on the blanket of yellow dust, and rare larger plants and even trees along riverbanks. The occasional dark distant splotch of forestland showed black against the sunlit flanks of mountains. There were hours and miles between sight of people or even other cars. Joshua, used to the constant barrage of visual input from the crowded streets he’d just left, found the empty road and the equally empty vistas wonderfully restful.

The others on the bus didn’t bother him, either. There seemed to be a high percentage of Native Americans and Hispanics, tired-looking mothers with restless children and a few working men in denim shirts and ball caps with the logos of earthmoving machinery and crop companies. Some of them glanced questioningly at the black denim jacket hiding his stick-thin arms, but the air conditioning was turned up high, and he was always cold these days.

Most of the passengers got off at dusty, isolated stops along the highway, and a few had gotten on along the way, but the bus was more than half empty when it pulled up to a stop just outside a dusty little town. “Miller,” the driver called back to him, and Joshua got up, pulled his backpack off the overhead rack, and climbed down the steps and out into the hot, dry air. It felt good after the chill of the bus. The driver had gotten off first, opened the luggage storage bin, and pulled out the duffel with Joshua’s tags. Joshua gave him a ten-dollar tip and shouldered the duffel, looking around wearily as he did for the ride his uncle had promised him. The only person waiting there was a real live cowboy lounging on the dropped tailgate of a huge, battered pickup truck, his head against one side of the truck bed, his gray hat tipped over his eyes. Despite the heat, he had on a long-sleeved shirt, sleeves all the way down, beat-up gloves on his hands, and boots over jeans so dusty it was hard to tell where the boots ended and the jeans began. He apparently was used to the heat—he looked cool and relaxed. Joshua regarded him a moment, then started toward the truck.

O
NLY
one guy got off the bus at the Miller bus stop. Eli eyed him from beneath the brim of his old Resistol and thought, “Can’t be him.” He knew his expectations were based on the portrayals of FBI agents on TV and in the movies, and it wasn’t likely that Tuck’s nephew would be wearing a black suit and tie over a standard white shirt, but he’d still sort of expected it. But this guy—no. No way was he the government sort.

Well, he was in black, anyway—black jeans, black T-shirt, black denim jacket despite the heat (Eli was used to it. He figured a guy from back East wouldn’t be, but he seemed to be wrong). His buzz-cut hair was black too. His skin was the sort of washed-out yellowish color Mexicans got when they were sick, but his features weren’t Mexican. Hispanic, yeah, but something further east—Puerto Rican or Cuban, maybe.