The Last True Cowboy by Kathleen Eagle

Author:Kathleen Eagle [Eagle, Kathleen]
Language: eng
Format: epub, mobi
ISBN: 978-0-06-203476-2
Publisher: HarperCollins
Published: 1998-06-06T16:00:00+00:00

She did walk away. He lay there in the grass and watched her.

Then he went back to the bunkhouse, took the pint bottle from the inside pocket of his jacket and started drinking for serious. He got up a few hours later, just as morning was breaking over the top of the ridge across the creek. He felt like hell, which was exactly what he’d been looking for in the whiskey he’d drunk straight from the bottle. Filling the hole in his gut. It was an old hole, one he should have learned to live with by now, but at times like this, times when he could imagine home being just over the next hill, he didn’t much like feeling empty. There was only one way to deal with emptiness, and that was to fill it up with something. If hellfire was all that was handy, well, the heat was better than an empty hole.

He went out to the corral just as the golden sun peeked over the red bluffs. It wasn’t long before he had the mare and one of the stud colts haltered and tied to posts at opposite corners of the pen. The mare was standing quietly, but the stud was still pawing the ground, tugging on the rope and testing the will of the post. He wasn’t ready for the next step yet.

Close by in the round pen, K.C. had the little sorrel with the blaze face working pretty well on the longe line. K.C. wasn’t singing to anybody this morning, wasn’t even in much of a talking mood. “Get up, boy,” was the extent of the conversation. A cluck of the tongue, a tap on the rump, and the horse was beginning to circle him willingly at the end of the long nylon line. Soon he’d simply pop the whip in the air, and eventually all he’d have to do was cluck to him.

Wild horses were so much easier to deal with than women.

He skipped breakfast. He’d already talked to Sally about his plans to ride the summer pasture for a couple of days, told her he wanted to get acquainted with the mountains. That was always Ross’s favorite chore, too, she’d said. “Just don’t get lost up there,” she warned him, and he wondered if she thought he might ride south. He figured he was in for more of the same when Shep came down to the corral looking for him.

The old man didn’t say much until after they’d turned the horses back into the pasture, and then it was, “Rough night?”

“Rowdy night, rough morning,” K.C. admitted as he watched the two bachelors trot through the grass toward the rest of their little band. He kept the mare and her foal apart from the others.

“Were they servin’ a snake with every drink?”

“Hell, I’ve developed an educated thirst. I like to see a label on the bottle.” He smiled as he folded the longe line into a coil of even loops. “I don’t have to read what’s on it.

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