Page 41 of On the Land, We Shoot Straight

I

t did hail. It hailed something fierce that very night. Cole said he’d keep Grady’s mind off it. Grady raised an eyebrow at that, but when Cole sunk to his knees and made that just the start of the night, well, Grady sure as hell forgot about his fears for the crop.

Once the weather settled and they rode out in a light morning drizzle and surveyed the first field, then the next one, and the next, and Cole looked back over his shoulder from where he was riding Chloe a little ways ahead, Grady had a moment to hope. Cole smiled.

Yeah.

The hail had come and gone, and the crop had yet to sprout grain. The stalks had withstood the barrage and now it could make their final push, wet and nourished from all that rain. It was sprouting more perfect than if Grady had been God himself and planned it.

“Reckon you’re gonna get a good yield,” Cole said as he rode around behind Red and pulled up alongside him.

“Reckon we don’t count ’til they hatch.”

But Grady’s smile belied his words. Cole grinned, nudged Chloe and shouted, “Ya!” turning her loose into a gallop and tearing up the road for no other reason than he could.

Grady shook his head around his smile. He nudged Red to follow with a shout of his own that came from somewhere so deep he’d never felt it before.

They got a lull after that. Animals got plenty of feed on account of the rain, the storms eased off to a steady drizzle that’d graduate to a downpour but nothing to get excited about, and the harvesting didn’t need to start for a while.

Cole asked Grady if he minded if he set up some obstacle course for Chloe and practiced some riding. Grady said he could suit himself.

So that’s how Grady found his bed long cold every morning for the fifth day in a row.

Cole was already up and riding Chloe in intricate circles and doing jumps.

Grady had expected rodeo drills. But Cole was doing the fancy riding—show jumping, dressage, cross country.

This was the queer riding they did in the north.

The stuff the girls did up at the school along with their barrel racing.

And if Grady had thought being the youngest and getting accelerated at school would’ve gotten Cole bullied, he could now add this to the list.

Grady got his coffee, went out and saw Cole at it, turning Chloe in a sharp sweep and grabbing a towel off the top of a pole, yelling for her to charge for the other end.

Mounted games. It would’ve been better if he had someone to ride it with him, and Grady was probably going to offer, but as he stopped at the fence and settled in to watch, he thought he wasn’t in too much of a hurry about it. Cole was damn good.

Cole finished the course and rode over.

“You just getting up?”

Grady swung his empty mug loosely in his hand over the fence and looked up into Cole’s exhilarated face.

“It ain’t yet seven,” Grady said.

Cole laughed. “Whaddya think?”

“About?”

“The course? You wanna try it?”

Grady swung his mug back and forth and looked at the fifty-five-gallon drums strategically placed inside the perimeter made of the old railroad ties Grady had stacked up behind the shed.

Fencing poles dotted an intricate track creating the course, some ready to have towels attached; small crates were scattered at deliberate distances with an apple on top of each; and sacks filled with straw accompanied by a length of rope sat waiting just inside the far boundary.

And this was in addition to the jumps and arena he’d built at the front of the pasture.

Grady reckoned this whole thing must’ve taken a lot to rig up.

“I reckon I might need a practice run first.”

“I reckon you might be right.”

Cole was grinning as he said it. Little shit.

“Where’d you learn to ride that way?”

“Whaddya mean? Back home, where else?”

“You don’t look out of practice.”

Cole shook his head, a little blush staining his cheeks over the exhilarated flush, and took his meaning. “I stayed on, did the distance program to finish school, didn’t want to give up riding.”

Grady hid his surprise. He’d been toying with the theory something must’ve happened to Cole at boarding school.

Grady’d heard the stories. No one was stupid enough to pull that shit on him in the dorms, but he wasn’t as pretty and slight as Cole.

And, as Grady had come to know, underneath the moody exterior, Cole was clever in a way that’d piss off a lot of boys, and kind in a way that meant before he developed the asshole bit, he might’ve been na?ve. He wasn’t now.

Grady realized he hadn’t said anything for a while, which wasn’t unusual with anyone else, but it was with Cole.

“It shows,” he said.

“Thanks.” Cole smiled, relieved, the tinge of embarrassment disappearing.

“You comin’ in to eat?”

“In a bit. Gonna make another pass. She’s not turning quick enough at the top corner…”

And he was off, explaining how Chloe could improve. Grady looked at Chloe, her head high, ears pricked up at attention and nostrils flaring, and reckoned she’d pull it together for Cole. Damn horse looked like she was having the time of her life.

“All right, well, I’m cookin’ up when you ready.”

“Then you’ll ride it with me?”

Grady spat, twisted his lips and looked up into Cole’s hopeful face and said, “Yeah, I reckon I might.”

Grady hadn’t had his ass handed to him that thoroughly in a long time.

Probably not since he was a boy and his daddy and granddaddy taught him to ride by telling him to get on up on the barely broken-in gelding they’d bought for him.

They figured teaching him to ride was watching him fall on his ass constantly while they laughed.

He didn’t fall this time, but he was beat on the games without a point.

Cole was impossible to beat in getting to the obstacles, in stealing the towel; in speed and focus and agility.

Grady was sitting Red and laughing to himself, sweat pouring down his hairline, when Cole rode up, absolutely beaming.

“Ain’t no contest!”

“That it ain’t,” Grady agreed.

“Wanna try again?”

Grady laughed and shook his head at Cole. “I reckon I’ll get some practice in.”

“It won’t help.”

Cole circled Chloe behind Red in trotting arcs, smiling and taunting.

The sound of a car in the distance had Cole and Grady and Chloe and Red all turning to the sound as one.

“What does he want?” Grady said when he recognized the white sedan.

Cole turned Chloe at too sharp an angle to ride off, and she knocked her rump into Red’s and reared up. Red skittered to the side, and Grady held the saddle to steady himself. He looked over at Cole holding on as he went perpendicular to Chloe’s neck while she cut the air with her hooves.

“Easy girl, easy,” Cole was saying, a panicked edge to it. Chloe was picking up on the panic and wasn’t settling.

Grady heard the car door slam at the same time as Chloe’s hooves hit the ground with a thud and Cole reined her in.

“Morning, Grady,” Tom shouted over to them, but Grady was looking at Cole and couldn’t have missed the shudder that went through him at Tom’s voice, the flash of terror in his eyes before he was shutting it down.

“Well, I’ll be,” Tom said. “Is that Jesse Cole?”

Cole looked directly at Tom, another flash of fear contorting his face before he glanced at Grady, eyes wide. He skittered his gaze away, fixed his stare on Chloe’s mane.

“I didn’t know you were in a position to be hiring, Grady,” Tom said, and Grady finally looked over at him. “And he’s got a nice ride too.”

“She ain’t mine!” Cole shouted, the words bursting across the pasture. Grady started; he had never heard him sound like that—furious, but scared too.

Red wasn’t settling—shifting his hooves and moving sideways, tossing his head against the rein—disturbed by Chloe’s frantic energy behind him. Grady reined him in, looked away from Cole to Tom.

“What’re you doin’ here, Tom,” Grady said. He always wanted the man off his land, but this time it felt damn right imperative.

Tom stretched his arms wide as if to indicate said land before coming to rest them on the fence.

“Well, I was seein’ if maybe you’d be reconsidering my offer, especially on account of that hailstorm, but now I see I get to make the acquaintance of an old friend as well.

” Tom looked past Grady to Cole as he said it, and something about the words, the look on his face, put Grady at an unease so profound he found himself moving Red forward to where Tom was at the fence and blocking his view of Cole and Chloe.

“I reckon I done told you my answer,” Grady said.

Tom was looking past Grady, a smile on his face that wasn’t a happy thing, it was delighted in a way that was grotesque, and he was looking as if he could still see what Red’s body was blocking from view.

“And I reckon things be changing,” Tom said and finally looked up at him. “When did you get that one out here?” He nodded past Grady.

“I reckon that ain’t none of your business.”

Tom smiled, slow and indulgent. “Maybe it ain’t right now. But I got some work, and I can pay. You payin’ him?”

Grady knew Cole was listening, and he could feel his anxiety in the tapping of Chloe’s hooves in the dirt behind him. Grady wasn’t normally one to lie, but something told him he better be lying now, though he couldn’t have said why.

“It ain’t your business, but yeah, my hand gets paid.”

Tom sized him up and then looked past him again as if he’d developed X-ray vision and could see Cole through the horse.

“I bet he does,” he said after a while and that was definitely off, but before Grady could answer, Tom was calling out to Cole, “You come on into town when you done here, Jesse. I got some real good work for you.”

Cole didn’t answer. Tom grinned.

He glanced back at Grady, smirked, winked, and said, “You might wanna think about my offer. Reckon this stormin’ not done yet, and then you ain’t gonna have money for hands, never mind anything else.”

Grady stared at him. He spat. Then he stared some more.