Page 8 of Ash on the Range (Red Hart Ranch #6)
WILL
It didn’t take long to settle into a routine of eat-work-sleep-repeat that my body remembered in true Red Hart fashion, nor did it take long for the comments to start in the bunk house.
Without Gage present—he had carved himself a place of his own out somewhere beyond the back field and walked in each morning, it was tough laughing off the constant barrage that targeted my girl and what wasn’t happening between us.
Jude often was the first out in the mornings, or last in at night.
I carried the weight of the comments alone with my usual grin that faded the moment the lights went out and my smile slipped.
I couldn’t even bring myself to draw my hand to my cock when the memory of Cassie’s mouth on mine slipped through my mind, the touch of her tongue, soft and hot and wet still so fresh.
Hell, I could barely think for the excess company I couldn't help but share a living space with.
Maybe Gage had it right, but I had a hell of a lot of saving up to do in order to get to where he and Brit were right now.
Not to mention the ex-soldier turned cowboy had a good twenty years on me in terms of both life experience and savings.
My shoulder twinged as I collected my kit of drenching equipment. I thought I’d be helping Travis with worming the deer herd for parasites, but apparently I’d been sent out to head up the operation this time around. Usually I helped out. This time, the onus was on me to get it right.
I stood in the barn yard, surrounded by a squad of first timer ranch hands who wore far too clean shirts and cheap boots that wouldn’t last the season—if they were lucky at best, but probably couldn’t afford much better—and a small group of deer who snuffled curiously at my jeans.
Pushing gently at a white male fawn who had attached himself to me earlier in the week, I started my run down on the procedure that I’d been giving myself a pep talk on while I gathered my kit from the barn, but the little guy insisted on coming back.
Not that I minded too much, but right now he'd end up being my guinea pig if he kept on bumming my hand and checking for snacks if he remained within reaching range.
“Not now, Snowball,” I muttered when the fawn nudged me yet again.
“Alright. Are you ready?” A few murmurs that didn’t convince themselves, let alone me, rang around the group in a muted wave.
“I want to get this done before the week’s end, and the herd is bigger than you think.
We’ll have to roundup the remainder from the top end later on, but right now let's concentrate on getting this group done to start with.” I grabbed a bucket of feed and led the small herd segment into the crush without looking back.
The fawn followed me and that seemed to lead a mini migration.
“Looks like you’re up, little man,” I muttered. “Sorry about this.” We got started, and I learned names of the new hands—Noah, Luke, Reggie, and Whalan—as we went. The work went faster than I expected and we busted through the first small herd and moved onto the next before lunch.
I stepped back after round two, stinking of deer scent, chemicals I couldn't pronounce, spit and who knew what else, but proud of what we had started to achieve.
“Still a long way to go,” Gage murmured from where he banged a gate together, starting to set up for Red Hart’s apparently impromptu rodeo in the coming week.
I leaned my shoulders against a nearby fence post, using the upright wooden edge to scratch my spine without removing my gloves. “Yeah, they’re getting the hang of it, but we’re doing okay.”
“How are you holding up without her?” Gage never stopped working as he talked, a skill some of the younger men hadn’t yet acquired.
I shrugged when he nudged a cooler box my way. So much for not taking the gloves off. I stuffed them into my back pocket, and guzzled water. “Hell. That's all it is. Nothing more.”
“Yeah? You want space of your own yet?” He flipped a large metal panel like it weighed nothing at all and slammed it into place, jiggling the whole enclosure.
I grabbed it all before the lot toppled over on him.
That’s exactly what I want . But I wasn't saying that. “Sure. I’d love a place of my own sometime. And a steady job. Then a divorce because staying in one place leaves my feet itchy.” Lie.
I could imagine settling down for Cassie just fine.
Anywhere she liked, as long as it wasn't in the middle of a city, and I was with her.
Actually, screw that. As long as I was with her, I’d make it work.
“Uh huh. Get that other gate—yeah, that one.” We worked in silence for a while as I helped him out on my break for a bit.
Gage didn’t stop but I knew he was turning it all over in his head, working out what he wanted to say.
“If she’s worth waiting for, then she’s worth it,” he said finally. “You have to make that choice, kid.”
The old nickname that usually stung fit the situation too well.
I did feel like a kid, well out of my depth in every possible way.
I didn’t know how to care for myself, let alone for a girl who wasn’t out of college yet and grew up expecting a certain level of extravagance that I’d never be able to provide her, regardless of how many bulls I stayed on until the bell or not.
“Might not be my choice to make,” I muttered, staring down at hands already scarred and chapped from work at the ranch and rodeos around the country.
Who the hell was I kidding? I had a beat up truck that took my five solid years to save up and buy for myself.
No trailer, no place to live. I slept out of bunk houses and in borrowed beds.
The only money I had left I’d spent on motels on the drive here, trying to look after the only girl I'd cared about for more than one night.
I didn't do anything to my name to show for my twenty five years more than a handful of hard earned calluses and another day’s promised work come sunrise tomorrow.
“Are you gonna look like that all day, or are you going to get some work done?” Jude’s raspy voice brought my head up and me out of my self-imposed sulk in less than a heartbeat.
“No, sir.” I yanked my gloves back on in record time. “Got the first part of the herd done that you left me, and we’re ready to roundup the next.”
I waved toward the boys milling around behind me, wasted and shaded as well as the herd. Both were bound to cause trouble, the younger ranch hands more if I didn’t get them working again soon. I knew that would have been what my crew did a few years back, and this group didn’t appear so dissimilar.
Shit, I left them on their own for too long. I officially needed a WWJD bracelet —the JD part had nothing to do with our maker, and a whole lot more with the man who’d put a boot up my ass if I didn’t move it in short order.
“You’ve done that, huh?” Jude didn’t bother to conceal the surprise in his voice. He cast a sideways glance at Gage, who lifted his next fence panel. “Does he do a good job?”
“Decent.” Gage placed the panel down and kicked the next one in my direction so it fell toward me. I caught it with both hands, realizing how not light the damn thing was. “You fuckers gonna help, or just stand and watch me work on my lonesome?”
“Yeah, right.” I grabbed the next panel and pinned it in place, with Jude’s steadying hand. Then their chatter clicked into place. “Wait, you left me with a babysitter?"
Gage leaned over the railing he just set up and fixed me with a hard stare. “He left you with a watch dog to make sure that you didn’t get in over your head on your first time out, didn’t fuck up and to make sure you get the kudos when it’s due, alright?”
My jaw set, but I held his unflinching gaze in a way that me of two seasons ago wouldn’t have been able to, still unsure if I just got handed a load of deer shit or a complement covered in the stuff. “Alright.”
“Good.” Gage put his head down and kept working.
I glanced at Jude, knowing better than to look for praise from the usually silent foreman. “Which part of the herd do you want me to start on next?”
Long shadows followed me by the time we finished the next roundup. Snowball insisted on hovering around my ankles.
“You’re not gonna leave me alone, are ya?
” I reached down to pet the lil guy’s head.
He scampered off like I’d committed the worst crime in the world, daring to touch him.
Apparently our relationship was a one way door.
Who knew? But my shadow left me while I packed some of my kit for the day, at least.
“Not bad, kid.” Gage hammered nails into fence posts I swore he’d done earlier in the week.
I sighed. “Shadow one, meets shadow number two.”
He grinned at me from beneath his hat. “Did you think we’d cut you loose and let you roam free around the ranch with your own little team of misfits?”
“The thought had crossed my mind.” To be fair, I’d been kind of unsettled at the thought of running my own team alone with no pep talk from Jude or a word from Travis at daybreak, and now I knew why. “Am I getting shipped out tomorrow?”
“Maybe tonight.” Gage tossed me a cup of parrot clips.
“Hold the top wire for me? Someone managed to cut this earlier with a misfire of clippers. Don’t ask,” he groused, throwing a dirty look over his shoulder at where a group of ranch hands I didn’t know well roughhoused in the dirt behind him.
“Even if you think you know what you’re doing, most of the time you don’t.
I’ll have words later, when I’m not ready to hand him his ass.
But if shit like this happens again, he won't get an invite back next season.”
“Who was it?”
“Jackson. In the white shirt."
I winced. “No one wears a white shirt on a ranch." I looped the parrot clasp around the wires while Gage clamped them together. “How far are we doing? Ah, fuck.” I shook my head as he pointed well along the yard and up the drive. “Man, I was done for the day.”