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Page 18 of Small Town Hero

B irdie Lennox was no stranger to a bad time. In fact it wouldn’t be out of line to say that she was downright cozy with hardship.

But Birdie had also decided something crucial at a very early age. Once she had realized that life had filled her welcome basket full of lemons, she had also decided that she was going to throw those lemons right back.

Lemonade was for optimists. Chucking that citrus right back at fate was for fighters.

Birdie had always been a fighter.

And what she really wanted at this point, more than anything, was to get the hell out of Dodge. She had a plan on how to do that.

She had given up trying to get any help from her dad years ago—he was a terrible human being, so there was no point. She also didn’t have any friends she could count on in this boring, godforsaken wasteland in the central part of the state of Oregon.

She was tired of listening to the empty words of ridiculous men—who were always happy to promise the world before a woman shared their bed, but delivered crumbs after.

She was self-reliant, but she also knew how to make the best of a bad situation, and make it work for her.

Sometimes self-reliance only got you so far. But right now, she had no one else to help her get off somewhere else. Anywhere else.

And she’d hit on the perfect way to escape—a massive cattle drive out in Texas that paid dream money. The only issue was it was a bring-your-own-horse situation. She did not have a horse.

There was one other person leaving this area and going to the cattle drive—that was where she had found out about it in the first place. And she wasn’t blind to the fact that Jamison Holiday was probably expecting payment in the form of sex for the ride.

She would deal with that later. Before she even needed to use his truck and trailer, she had to get a hold of a horse.

And she knew exactly where to get one.

The Lennox family ranch—such as it was—abutted Parsons land.

Gunnar Parsons was, and always had been, a giant hunk of granite. Immovable, unbreakable, implacable. And entirely unfriendly to her.

Their families had a lot of years of bad blood between them. Mostly because the Parsons clan was always accusing the Lennox family of rustling cattle from their property, stealing ranching equipment, animals, and basically anything that wasn’t nailed down.

And the Lennox family had a bad habit of doing all those things they were accused of. Made the rift a little bit hard to heal.

It wasn’t that Birdie thought stealing was a moral neutral. She didn’t. It was just that she couldn’t afford to care.

Morality was expensive. And in this economy? She would rather have a horse.

She might not see eye to eye with her old man, but she could respect some of his methods of getting by.

And he had taught her well. Which was how she found herself scrabbling onto Parsons land in the middle of the night with an eye to nabbing one of Gunnar’s chestnut mares.

The thing was, the guy had a whole slew of horses.

He couldn’t ride them all at once. And the one Birdie was eyeing wasn’t one she’d ever seen the taciturn cowboy ride. Not even once.

You couldn’t leave a horse unused. It would go to seed. Go fallow, even. A fate worse than death. Birdie was just moving the animal so that it could have a better quality of life. On the range. Doing actual work.

And Birdie felt her motivation put her several notches above her own father, who stole things to get around work, not to gain admittance to a job.

Birdie took her boots off, and left them standing upright at the edge of the fence.

She climbed over the top of it and landed silently on the other side.

It was about a hundred paces to the stable from this point.

She’d gotten a visual on all of the points where security lights might turn on.

She also knew that Gunnar went to bed at like nine o’clock every night, because he was a rancher and he did get up with the sunrise.

The dude was as predictable as he was rigid.

She’d lived next door to him all her childhood, so she was familiar.

He was a couple of years older than she, but he wouldn’t have been her friend even if they’d been the same age. They were like oil and water. Peanut butter and motor oil. Not a good match. Not even the same kind of thing.

But then, Gunnar didn’t know about struggle. Or the kinds of things that you would be willing to do to get out of a fix.

His family always had money. His dad had always worked hard, worked the land and done it well.

Birdie’s dad was a bum from way back.

A man who loved whiskey more than he loved his wife and daughter.

And then there was her mom, who had loved her freedom more than she had loved her husband or her daughter.

Not that Birdie could totally blame her.

Living with her dad sucked. Of course, Birdie hadn’t signed on for it. She had just been born into it.

Welcome. Basket. Of. Lemons.

Well, she was about to throw those things right back.

She could feel the dirt sticking to the bottom of her socks, and she grimaced slightly. But it didn’t deter her. She made a beeline through the part of the pasture where she knew she wouldn’t be picked up by any light sensors and managed to press herself up against the side of the barn.

The horses would be in the stable for the night, and she was going to have to hunt around until she found the one she wanted.

She had been watching her. Observing her temperament while the animals grazed out in the field.

Birdie had a great sense for horses. She always had.

Whenever she had honest jobs, they tended to be around horses.

But the problem was, it was hard for her to find those jobs, and harder still for her to keep them.

It was difficult for her to do anything locally because of her dad’s reputation.

And her own. If she were honest.

Whatever. She wasn’t going to overthink this.

Keeping her back pressed against the wall, she sidled to the back door and took her lock-picking kit out of her pocket.

With deft ease, she opened the door like a can of sardines and slipped right inside.

She let out a sigh of relief. And kind of wished that she had bothered to carry her boots with her, because all the gunk sticking to the bottom of her socks was starting to really gross her out.

And now there were bits of hay stuck there along with dirt.

She pressed the tips of her teeth together, holding her mouth in a grimace as she moved quickly through the stables. She didn’t flick the lights on; instead she used the flashlight on her phone to get a visual on the different horses.

There she was.

The mare was at the end of the long row of stalls, with a nameplate on the door that said: Alfalfa Sprout.

“God Almighty,” she whispered. “What a terrible name. If you were mine, I would’ve given you a much more romantic name than that.

I think names matter,” she said sagely. “I’m Birdie because I was always meant to fly away.

And you should be Pegasus. Because you’re mythical, and you’re going to grow wings and fly with me. ”

She moved away from the stall, and looked around until she found the tack room, which was also locked.

She jimmied that lock too, then rustled up a halter.

She crept into the stall, and put her hand on Pegasus’s forehead.

She let the horse sniff her other hand. And once she was certain that she and the animal had an accord, she led the mare out of the stall and over to the tack room.

She felt vaguely nervous about the end part of this scheme, which would include riding out of here without being heard.

And snagging her boots.

She took a hoof pick and a few other items that she could easily fit into her pockets, then grabbed a bridle, a horse blanket and a saddle.

She moved quickly, thankful for the years of experience she had, and kept hold of the halter and lead rope, because she might need them later, and she didn’t have any money right now to buy a damn thing.

She led the mare out of the barn as quietly as possible, and then, holding her breath, she slung herself up into the saddle. She had led the animal right into another dead zone where they wouldn’t set off any lights.

“Are you ready, Pegasus? Because we’ve got to fly now.”

She urged the horse into a fast trot and rode her up and over the fence, a rush of adrenaline spiking in her veins.

Then she paused, leapt off and pulled her boots on, grimacing at the crunchy feeling of dirty socks inside her boots.

She mounted again and took off down the gravel driveway at a rapid pace.

And suddenly, she heard the sound of a roaring engine and saw bright headlights.

“Oh no,” she moaned.

The truck’s engine revved, but it didn’t move.

And the road was so closed in by foliage on either side that Birdie couldn’t just go around.

She debated ditching the horse, but if she did that, she was never getting out of here.

She would never, ever get out of here. She would be stuck.

Sisyphus pushing a boulder up the hill, only to have to do it again. Never ending. Never, ever.

She was close to despairing, which was something she never did.

Despair was as expensive as morality, and she didn’t have that kind of wealth.

When the truck door opened, her chest seized up tight.

“Well, well. If it isn’t Birdie Lennox. Stealing from my land.”

She bristled, his voice automatically raising her hackles. “Well, well. If it isn’t Gunnar Parsons, out of bed past ten p.m. on a weeknight.”

“See, the thing is,” Gunnar said, closing the truck door behind him, gravel crunching under his boots as he began to walk toward her, “only one of those things is a surprise.”

She blinked. She wasn’t exactly sure what he was getting at. Whether he was agreeing that he was totally lame, or calling her a two-bit thief.