Montana Blue. Genell Dellin

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      “You got a good eye if you can see it now,” Micah said.

      He used both hands to crank the wheel. The truck veered across the road and onto the gravel trail that followed the low ridge above the floor of the valley.

      “Long time ago, when he seen he couldn’t run me off, Gordon gimme this cabin and barn. Said they was mine as long as I live.”

      Blue looked at Micah’s place as they rattled up into the spot at the edge of the yard where the grass was worn away from years of parking the pickup. Everything there was made of logs a long time ago. Trees sheltered it all and the hill kept it from the north wind. In front of it, the whole West beckoned.

      He tasted bitterness on his tongue.

      Gordon could give a house and a barn to his wrangler but nothing to his family.

      While Micah ground the gears and threw them into reverse, Blue looked again at the Splendid Sky—as much as a man could see of it at one time. There was the headquarters with the house his great-grandfather had built and all its many fine outbuildings dotted here and there, including plenty more nice houses provided for the help. Beneath it all was the land, rolling green and glittering down through the valley like a flung treasure.

      This entire ranch should be theirs. His.

      He had been robbed of his birthright.

      If Gordon had married Tanasi Rose, if he had given his name to her and his children and raised them here, they would be here still. Dannah would never have become a junkie, Rose would never have killed herself, and Blue would not be a murderer.

      His mother and Dannie would be alive.

      His father had robbed him of them, too.

      “You’ve heard of the Splendid Sky, then you’ve heard of Gordon Campbell,” the old man said.

      The name spoken aloud rang strange in Blue’s ears, it had been so long silent in his mind.

      “He ain’t well-liked, that’s nothing but the honest truth,” Micah said, “and I have to admit that he can be one high-handed son of a bitch. But I’ll say somethin’ for ol’ Gordon. He stands by his friends.”

      Oh, yeah. And family. Don’t forget family.

      Blue didn’t even want to hear the name again, it made him so bitter. But he said it anyway.

      “Maybe you’re the only friend of Gordon Campbell.”

      Micah chuckled.

      “I reckon not,” he said, “there’s a few more, here and there.”

      Blue found himself waiting for Micah to say who they might be, but he didn’t. Instead, he cranked the wheel around and started backing up to the gate of the round pen.

      “We’ll run Roanie in there,” he said. “In a good mood, he’ll lead some but we ain’t takin’ no chances. I nearly got mashed to death in a trailer one time.”

      He pulled forward, turned the wheel some more, and backed into exactly the right spot.

      “Well, now, let’s get this roan ridgerunner unloaded ’fore he climbs the wall again and breaks his neck or one of them dainty legs of his,” he said, throwing open his door. “Then I’ll show you around the place.”

      Blue wasn’t sure he wanted that. He wasn’t sure what he wanted to see except for this raunchy colt in all his glory. Anything else was questionable. He wanted to see how the colt moved, wanted to know his natural way of going, and beyond that, he couldn’t think.

      He stepped down. Dainty was a good word for the way his own legs felt. They didn’t quite want to hold him up and he held on to the seat just for a minute. Feelings were his enemies—that had been so for ten years—and he couldn’t give in to them now.

      Maybe he should’ve kept his paints. He’d poured his rage and loneliness into them and slapped it onto the canvas while he held himself completely separate from every person in the prison. That was how he had survived.

      He needed to keep separate from Micah, too. It was a pity the old man had passed his prime but feeling sorry about Micah’s arthritis was what had brought him to the Splendid Sky on this first day out, and now here he was.

      Of course, coming here was giving him a chance at a good horse—and it was putting Gordon in his sights. He had left prison wanting both those things, hadn’t he?

      Both sides of the coin, that was what this world paid human beings for all the blood and sweat that they put into living. Turn over the good and a man could find the bad; turn over the bad and find the good.

      He had already known that when he killed the pond-scum drug pusher who had led Dannah straight to her death. Or had he? Had he just now realized it, which meant it was the good side of the bad ten years in the pen?

      He walked on back to the trailer, keeping step with Micah who was on the other side of it. Hell of a note. End up here at the Splendid Sky, first crack out of the box, when he’d imagined it all his life long.

      Right now, he’d think about the horse. Nothing else.

      He waited on the ground below the horse’s head until Micah had the gate open and had jammed the rusty pin of the trailer door up with his fist. The colt bared his teeth looking down at him.

      Get up here. I’ll take a chunk out of you.

      “Ready?” Micah said.

      “Ready.”

      Blue stepped onto the fender, pulled up on the strap of the halter, freed the tongue of the buckle from its hole and, therefore, the horse from the trailer. Roanie jerked his head away, clattered to the door and leapt out onto the ground of the round pen. Micah pushed the gate shut behind him and then the trailer door.

      The two of them stood together and looked in between the logs of the old-time round pen. The colt reared high, came down with a snort and a fart and went ripping off around the circle again, pausing only to buck and rear some more when the notion struck him. After two of those circles, he settled down into a run and tore around the pen so fast he was a blur.

      “How’d you get the halter on him?” Blue said.

      “I got ’im halter broke,” Micah said. “Sort of. But I never could stay on him.”

      He shook his head, took off his hat and put it back on again. Blue caught the smell of old felt and leather soaked with sweat.

      “He’s a whole lot worse since I sent him over to the Little Creek Division boys,” Micah said. “Gordon oughtta fire every one of them out on his ass. But I found out I’d never be able to stay on him and I was hoping they could get him broke enough for me.”

      Micah shook his head again, turned it, and spat on the ground.

      “Gittin’ old is a hoary bitch,” he said. “Don’t do it.”

      Blue gave a harsh laugh.

      “I СКАЧАТЬ