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THE BARN was as quiet as it ever got, the workhorses standing idle in their stalls, straw on the floor absorbing the shifting of their hooves except for a whispery rustle. I was welcomed with some snorts and a neigh or two as I picked up the pitchfork, shiny as new from Herman’s sharpening of everything that would hold an edge, and climbed to the haymow to fork alfalfa into the manger in front of each horse. That chore done, I shinnied down and played favorites as I felt entitled with Queen and Brandy, after the distances we had covered together, stacker path upon stacker path, and treated them to a half pan of oats apiece. As they munched there in the stall, I stroked the gray expanse of Queen’s neck and shoulder, reluctant to start yet another good-bye. Smartly the big mare flicked an ear. Laying my head against her in full confusion of emotions, I clung there with my cheek to the warm smooth hide, unable to do more than sob, “Queen, what am I gonna do?”
“I’m curious to hear how she answers that.”
I jerked away from Queen’s side, startled out of my wits by the tall figure shadowed in the doorway from the horse corral. At first I thought it must be Harv, at that size, but no. The unmistakable saunter and lanky presence told me even before the easygoing drawl. “Anything wrong we can fix with something besides spit and iodine?”
“Rags!” As he materialized out of the shadowed end of the barn, I saw he was in regular ranch wear except for the conspicuous belt buckle. In everyday getup or not, he carried himself like a champion, and I had to gulp hard to speak up adequately as he moseyed toward me. “Sorry, I—I didn’t know you were here, didn’t see your car.”
“Aw, that weather last night will teach me about having a convertible,” he said ruefully while he came and joined me in the stall. “It was raining like a cow taking a whiz on a flat rock when I pulled in from the Billings fair, so I stuck the Caddy in the equipment shed.” He patted his way along Queen’s side, softly chanting, “Steady, hoss, stand still, old girl,” until he was alongside me and could reach up and fondly tug at her mane. “A horse and a half, isn’t she. Seems like she just naturally lives up to her name. Pretty good listener, too, I gather.” He looked down at me with a long-jawed grin, but his eyes a lot more serious than that. “Maybe I ought to lend an ear, too—Snag, do I remember you go by?”
“Uh-huh, when I’m not Scotty,” I broke out of being tongue-tied. “You know how the ho—the crew—does with names.”
“A little of that got on me ever since I dressed up to ride.” Rodeo’s leading fashion plate acknowledged the way of such things with an amused nod. He murmured something as he scratched behind the mare’s ear that made her nicker and try to nudge him gently with her nose, an intelligent blue eye seeing into us, I swear. Casual but to the point, Rags glanced down at me standing at his side as if I were glued there. “Better let it out. What’s got you talking to the Queen here?”
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HOW MANY CHANCES in a lifetime does a person have to bare his soul to a Rags Rasmussen? If confession was good for the soul, mine was being reformed with every word that tumbled out of me. “I’m sort of caught between things. See, I’m supposed to go back to my grandmother, she’s better after her operation and can be a cook again like she’s always been, except it’d be in dumb Glasgow, and we’d live together with Letty, she’s a waitress but a lady, too, and you’d really like her, everybody does, Harv especially, and I thought that’s what I wanted most in the world. But I’m a handful for her, Gram I mean, she’d be the first to tell you, and I haven’t exactly done what she thinks I was doing, all summer. She’ll think I got too redheaded, as she calls it.”
I faltered, but had to put the next part together to my intent listener.
“What happened was, I met up with, uh, Gramps I call him, although he’s a sort of uncle.” I sent a despairing look out the line of barn windows to where Herman could be seen joining the horseshoe players, still receiving slaps on the back for his triumph over Waltzing Matilda. “And now I don’t want to leave him, he needs me too much.”
“The new choreboy, while Smiley follows other pursuits.” Rags made sure he was tracking the dramas of the ranch correctly. “What makes you think this gramps of yours needs you more than your granny does?”
There was a whole list of that all the way back to Fingerspitzengehfühl, but I made myself stick to the simple sum. “Bad stuff happens to him when he’s on his own. And to me when I am, too. But when it’s both of us, we sort of think our way out of things.”
Not in a wiseguy way but just prodding me a little, he pursued that with “That’s a pretty good trick. The two of you together amount to more than one and one, you figure? Like Queen and Brandy here?”