Page 26 of Wyoming True

His eyes were wounded before he averted them. “She had a horse that she loved dearly. She was an expert rider. But it had been raining the day she went out on her favorite mount. The horse missed its footing on a hill and rolled on her.” He winced. “She loved Clydesdales.”

“One of the biggest breeds of horses,” she realized.

“Yes. I wanted to have the horse put down. I was grieving, raging, drunk as a skunk. My foreman hid the horse until I calmed down enough to listen to reason. He was a lay minister in his spare time.” He smiled. “He sat me down and explained life to me. Things happen for a reason. We all die. Nobody gets out alive. We have a purpose. When it’s our time, it’s our time. Things like that.” He shrugged. “I finally listened. He was a good man.”

“Is he still your foreman?”

He shook his head. “He was like me. Patriotic. We enlisted together. I came home. He didn’t.”

She winced. “I’m so sorry.”

“So was I.”

She frowned, watching him. “You enlisted after you lost your mother,” she guessed.

He nodded.

“Didn’t your father object?”

His face hardened. “I don’t speak of my father. Not ever.”

“Oh. Sorry.”

He drew in a long breath. “It was all a long time ago. Except for the war wounds that ache when it rains, I’m pretty much over it.”

She smiled sadly. “I wish I could say that.” Her hand went involuntarily to her hip.

He saw that. “Painful?”

She nodded.

“Do you have something to take for it?”

“Ibuprofen,” she replied. “But it makes me drowsy, and I’d prefer not to try to eat while I’m sleeping.”

He chuckled. “Idiot. How can you enjoy food when you’re in pain?”

“I don’t have much appetite as a rule anyway.”

“Do you have the ibuprofen in your purse?”

She made a face.

He reached into a compartment beside him and came out with a soft drink. “Take the pill.”

She sighed. “I would, but I don’t dare take it except with food.”

“I forgot.”

“I’ll take the soft drink, though,” she added with a smile. “I’m thirsty.”

He chuckled. “Me, too.” He handed her the can and got another out for himself.

“You don’t drink beer?” she asked, noting that what he chose for himself wasn’t alcoholic.

“I hate alcohol,” he said, and his eyes reflected it.

She wondered at the violence in his tone as he said it and she wondered if he had an alcoholic parent in his background. It couldn’t be his mother; he’d loved her dearly. It had to be the father that he wouldn’t talk about.