“Is Aunt Kristin coming?” Annie asked.
Joseph’s father scowled. “I invited her to come—alone. But she said she had other plans. So, no. She’s made her choice.”
Crowded into the buggy, they drove back through town and south toward the road that cut off to the Dollarhide Ranch. Joseph’s pulse quickened as they approached the fence on the right-hand side of the road. Would the ribbon be there?
He shaded his eyes. But there was nothing to see. There was no ribbon.
CHAPTER SEVENTEEN
THREE DAYS AFTER THE FUNERAL, WHEN MORNING CHORES WERE done, Joseph rode down to meet his friends. That was when he saw it—the narrow black ribbon, tied to a fence wire, its loose ends fluttering in the wind.
Buck, Cully, and Chase were waiting for him behind the store. Joseph was bursting to tell them the news. As expected, each of them reacted differently.
“Hot dog!” Buck exclaimed. “I’d almost given up. Maybe the boss will let me guide the truck this time, instead of stacking boxes.”
Cully sighed. “I’m in. But I guess I’ll have to bring my dad along. He asks me every day when the next shipment is coming. I’d never get away without him.”
“The boss won’t like it,” Buck said.
“I know. But there’s not much I can do.”
Chase, as always, was worried. “You know, you don’t have to do this. What’s ten dollars if you get caught and sent away? If you’re that desperate for cash, I’ll find a way to get you the damned money.”
None of the other boys took him up on his offer. It wasn’t just about the money—not for any of them, especially not for Joseph. But Chase, who had everything a boy could possibly want, couldn’t be expected to understand that.
They rode their horses up to the mouth of the canyon and hiked to the spring-fed waterfall. They arrived hot and sweaty, anxious to cool off in the spray. But the spring was down to a trickle now. The pool at the base was almost dry, the surrounding rocks hot enough to burn through their jeans when the boys tried to sit on them.
Joseph studied the blazing sky, finding only a useless wisp of cloud in the west. “I’d give ten dollars for rain right now,” he mused aloud.
“My dad would give a thousand,” Chase said. “But it wouldn’t do any good. Rain isn’t for sale.”
“Let’s go home,” Buck said. “We’ll need to rest up for tonight.”
“Are you sure you can get out?” Cully asked.
“Pretty sure,” Buck said. “At least, with your dad along, you won’t have that problem.”
They trooped down the canyon, mounted up, and rode back to town, where they would go their separate ways until late tonight, when they’d rendezvous at the black ribbon.
“It’s not too late to change your mind,” Chase said, as he and Buck prepared to ride back to the Triple C. “I don’t have a good feeling about this.”
“Stop fussing like an old biddy hen, Chase. We’ll be fine,” Joseph said. “The boss won’t let anything happen to us.”
“I wish I had your confidence.” Chase turned his horse. Buck followed him as they headed out of town.
“Maybe Chase will talk Buck out of going with us tonight,” Cully said.
“Maybe,” Joseph answered. “If I know Buck, he’ll show up no matter what Chase says. But even if he doesn’t, we should have enough help with your dad along. I’ll see you tonight.”
* * *
Joseph arrived home early, hoping to hide out in his room and read. But his dad had other ideas. “We’ve got a fence down in the south pasture,” he said. “You’re just in time to come along and help me fix it.”
Joseph suppressed a groan. “Can’t one of the hands fix the fence?”
“They could. But it’s time you started learning to be a man around here. Let’s go, while your horse is still saddled.”
Joseph was hot and tired from the hike up the canyon, but he knew better than to argue. On the ranch, at the sawmill, and with his family, Blake Dollarhide’s word was law.
They mounted their horses and rode single file down the winding trail to the fenced pastureland. The afternoon was hot. Joseph was sweating beneath the band of his straw hat. From the trail, he could see the red and white cattle scattered in the pasture. Most of them were pregnant cows and spring calves. The steers had been sold off early, at a lower weight and price, because of the drought. Maybe that was why Blake had been so gruff and unsmiling lately. And of course, Joseph’s mother was still mourning the loss of her father and sister. And there was Grandma Inga, too, who seemed to have aged ten years overnight. All in all, the Dollarhide household wasn’t a happy place these days.
Lower down, where the trail widened out, Blake slowed his horse, allowing Joseph to catch up. “You know,” he said, “when I was your age, your grandpa taught me every kind of work on the ranch, from mucking the stable to breaking horses and keeping accounts. I mean to do the same with you, so that when you take my place, you’ll know everything about running a ranch. You’re the future of this place, son. You and your children, and their children. And if I seem hard on you, that’s why. My dad was the same with me.”
Joseph nodded. Hearing this kind of talk made him squirm with guilt. He wasn’t really Blake’s son, and sometimes he wasn’t even sure he wanted to run a ranch. It might be more fun to travel and have adventures—maybe even write books.
“I miss Grandpa Joe,” he said, changing the subject.
“I miss him, too, son. And I miss my mother. They went before their time. But sometimes life takes a hard turn. Think about the two people we buried a few days ago. Neither of them deserved to die. And neither of them was ready.”
Joseph was falling behind. Blake gave him a moment to catch up. “I want to share something about your grandfather—something I’ve never told anyone, not even your mother.”
Interest pricking, Joseph reined his horse closer to listen.
“You’ve heard the story about how he joined up with Benteen Calder’s first cattle drive and got lost in a stampede. He got rescued by some outlaws, then ended up living with an old man who taught him how to break horses.”
“I know all that,” Joseph said.
“Here’s something you don’t know. Joe Dollarhide loved wild horses all his life. He told me once about a band of horses that he saw a few times from a distance—a band led by a powerful blue roan stallion. He could never get close before they disappeared. In fact, he was never sure whether they were even real. But every time he saw them, especially that blue roan stallion, he came to understand that something in his life was about to change.”
“That’s spooky,” Joseph said.
“It gets spookier. I asked him when he’d last seen the horses, and he said not for years, not since he was young. But the night he died, I was sitting up, keeping watch. Everyone else had gone to bed. He was resting so I walked out onto the porch for a breath of fresh air.
“It was around midnight, with a full moon. The wind was blowing clouds across the sky, casting shadows on the ground. I stood at the rail, looking down, watching those shadows drift across the hillside when suddenly—so help me—the shadows seemed to become horses, shifting and milling in the dark. And in the middle of them was a big blue roan stallion. I glanced away, and when I looked back, they were gone. I could see nothing but shadows. I ran back to my father’s room to find that he’d passed away, with a peaceful smile on his face. It was as if the horses had come for him and taken him away. Or maybe I’d just imagined it all. What do you think?”