Part 5
Dean backed away in two careful steps.
Flint stood beside Caleb with the lead taut and his eyes still on him. June lowered her face for a moment before Grant could see her expression.
Mara hadn’t moved from the gate.
“Another meeting requires a call,” she told Grant. “A survey requires a written request through our lawyer. Today is over.”
Grant looked from Caleb to the dog.
“You think this makes the ranch pay its bills?”
“A decision here still belongs to us.”
He turned on Caleb. “And who are you in this arrangement?”
Caleb’s jaw tightened.
“I run winter operations.”
June saw Mara glance at him. Grant saw it, too.
“That worked out neatly,” he said.
Caleb didn’t answer the suggestion. “Let your lawyer ask.”
Grant pulled his gloves on. “We’ll revisit this.”
“Try a morning appointment,” Caleb said. “Fresher coffee.”
June covered a laugh with her hand. Dean gave Flint a wide berth on the way to the pickup.
Caleb waited until both vehicles had reached the road before loosening the lead.
“Down.”
Flint lay in the snow. His ears relaxed, and he turned his head toward the open shop, where the tractor still waited with its fitting removed.
Mara looked at the dog, then at Caleb.
“You run winter operations?”
He knew from her voice that he had made a mistake.
“I wanted him to stop pushing.”
“So did I.” She came closer. “His disrespect doesn’t make you my boss.”
June remained by the porch.
“Mara—”
“Stand with us. That’s fine. And I’m not losing sleep over Dean getting a warning.” Her eyes stayed on Caleb. “But you don’t appoint yourself to speak for this place.”
He looked toward the empty road, then back at her.
“I overstepped.”
“Yes.”
“It won’t happen again.”
She waited a second, as if there ought to be an argument attached. Then she turned toward the barn.
Caleb picked up the tools he had left outside the shop and went back to the tractor.
That night, he took the duffel off the bunkhouse shelf.
There was no particular plan behind it. His pickup worked. There were places to go. A man could finish a job, settle what he owed, and remove himself before a difficult conversation required another one.
He folded a shirt and laid it inside the bag.
Flint watched from the doorway. When Caleb reached for another shirt, the dog got up.
Caleb expected him to come to the bed. Instead, Flint nosed through the partly open door and crossed the yard.
From the bunkhouse, Caleb could see June open the mudroom. The shepherd went past her and disappeared inside.
Caleb stood holding the shirt until the farmhouse door closed.
He was outside before sunrise, looking at the pickup, when Mara found him.
“I corrected you,” she said. “I didn’t fire you.”
He turned toward her.
“I know how to say both.”
For a moment, all he could hear was a horse shifting in the barn.
Mara nodded toward the feeders. “North one’s plugged again.”
“Already?”
“It likes attention.”
He pulled his gloves from his pocket.
The mudroom door opened. Flint came down the steps and joined him, brushing once against his knee before heading toward the barn.
Later that morning, Caleb put the shirts away and lifted the duffel back onto the shelf.
By the time January arrived, June had renewed the weekly arrangement while they worked out the winter budget. The bag stayed where Caleb had put it.
A storm in the second week filled the yard with drifts and sealed the lower gate behind a bank of snow. They spent a day feeding, opening paths, and making sure water still reached the troughs. Clear weather followed, so bright that June pulled the kitchen shade down against the reflected glare.
Then a warm wind stripped snow off the exposed slopes. Mud clung to everything for a day. Two nights later, the same tracks had frozen hard enough to jar a person’s teeth.
Mara changed the feeding plan as the weather changed. Older cows needed watching. A thin animal couldn’t wait for the calendar to say it deserved more hay. When the wind drifted snow against one fence, she shifted pasture access before cattle began leaning on it.
June worked through the accounts. Comparing a stack of old feed bills to the contract, she found a delivery surcharge that should have stopped months earlier.
The supplier didn’t refund it after the first call. She made another, then sent copies with the relevant lines marked. The credit that finally appeared wasn’t enormous, but she entered it into the budget before calling Mara in to look.
Caleb worked down the maintenance sheet. Water fittings, hinges, a broken tractor light, wire stretched under snow. In the green notebook, he kept his additions below the old entries or in open margins. He never erased the older handwriting.
He also managed to suggest the eastern shortcut again.
They had been below twenty degrees for days. Standing beside the older tractor, he looked toward the irrigation cut.
“Surely that’s frozen through now.”
Mara stared at him.
He walked a few paces and tested the crust with his heel.
“You’re thinking about getting stuck in a new place?” she asked.
“It’s been cold.”
“It was cold the last time, too.”
He glanced toward the cottonwoods. The notebook’s warning came back to him.
“All right. Existing route.”
“Good choice.”
Later, a little sunlight opened a dark patch near the cut. Water shone underneath.
Caleb pointed as they passed. “That would have been quite a hole.”
“With a tractor in it,” Mara said.
“Would’ve helped identify it.”
She shook her head and kept driving.
Flint went on fence checks where there were no cattle to disturb. In the pickup, he sat with his muzzle turned toward the warm air until Caleb opened the door. Near livestock, he waited in the cab or outside a gate.
Flint still watched the cat go by. It no longer occupied his entire morning.
June put a worn towel beside the mudroom after finding a third set of muddy prints across the floor.
“For your assistant,” she told Caleb.
“I’ll explain the benefit package.”
“It’s for my floor.”
Flint came in behind him, sat squarely on the towel, and looked up.
June folded her arms. Caleb became very interested in hanging up his coat.
Mara’s rule about furniture remained unchanged. Then a folded wool blanket appeared near the stove, tucked halfway beneath the bench where Flint liked to sleep during supper.
Caleb looked from it to Mara.
“Eat,” she said.
“I am.”
“Then stop looking at me.”
He picked up his fork. Flint turned once on the blanket and lay down.
Grant’s next message came in the middle of January. June returned it after speaking with their attorney.
She put the phone down and found Mara at the kitchen sink.
“Thursday,” she said. “And he agreed to come alone…”
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