The Cowboy and the Hacker (Farthingdale Valley #5)

3. Zeke

Chapter 3

Zeke

W hen sweet-faced Galen Parnell had propositioned him the summer before, Zeke had been a tad surprised. But not shocked. After all, Galen had just lost his dad. His heart must have been aching with loneliness, though why he’d decided to fetch up to Zeke, of all people, was a mystery.

Zeke was not gay. Plus, he knew he’d mentioned his ex-fiance Betty Lou from time to time, though surely the memory of trying on rings with her wasn’t anything he’d ever talked about out loud.

While standing at the jewelry counter, the weight of that gold ring had felt satisfying and full of promise. Maybe by the time he and Betty Lou had gotten married, an uncertain date in the future, he’d have been ready to settle down.

Maybe if he still had someone like Betty Lou to love, he’d be ready to give up his rambling, no-moss-on-his-boots kind of lifestyle, build a frame house with his own two hands in the bend of the river where the cottonwoods grew, to quote John Wayne, and make babies. Lots of babies. Cute, cherry-cheeked babies, who would play in the dust in front of his wooden porch. Maybe there would have been a hound or two under that porch, waiting for handouts from a home-cooked farm supper.

Would it be a farm, then? Or a ranch? And what kind, cattle or horse or mule? And where would that ranch be? Wyoming, where everything was wide, wide open, or New Mexico, where his people were from? The questions made his head spin. Made him rub that area on his left thigh where he sometimes felt the skin was thin enough to let the bone break through.

His skin wasn’t that thin, and the bone hadn’t broken through, even though he could still hear the ring of the crack in his ears when the bone snapped as the bronc he’d been riding had fallen on him.

Rather, half the bronc had fallen on him. Had the whole bronc fallen on him, he would have been busted in too many places for even all the king’s men to mend.

As it was, the angle of the horse’s body had been just right to break his left thigh bone and leave him with a gathering of bruises big enough to twist him into a map of hurt.

He sometimes had dreams about that horse falling on top of him, though when he stiffened his spine enough to watch a video of his last ride, he could easily see that it could have gone a lot worse for him. He’d easily seen that it had been bad enough for the horse, a rangy bay with a long black mane and tail that made for a dashing eight-second ride.

He’d also seen that the horse, when it struggled to its feet, was shook. Trembling. Covered in sweat. Wide-eyed and startled.

From the vantage of his hospital bed, on the eve of his release back into the real world, as he watched that video, rewinding it two times more, Zeke realized that maybe it was a good thing that his bronc riding days were over.

His doctor had told him his leg wouldn’t take it, not even once. There had been hints he was too old anyhow.

More importantly, he was starting to see that the practice of bronc riding seemed rather cruel and outdated. Horses were a wondrous creation, and given modern techniques of horse training, bronc riding was a horrible thing and didn’t actually do anything constructive or helpful. Maybe in the old days, it was a quick way to get a rideable horse. But nowadays?

It had taken the rest of that rodeo season and then some to heal. Physical therapy. Weaning himself off the meds.

By the time he’d been able to get his legs into blue jeans and pull on his cowboy boots, Betty Lou had decided that Zeke’s buckle winning days were over.

If there’d been anything Betty Lou had been clear about was that she wanted to marry a buckle man , as she called it. A ro-de-oh champ-EE-on. And since Zeke was no longer in the running to be such a man, and sometimes he walked with a limp, Betty Lou made it quite clear that she did not want to live in a house that Zeke would make with his hands.

Betty Lou wanted more. She wanted high-tech, remote-controlled, whisper-quiet AC. She wanted white tile floors and fancy Navajo-made hanging rugs. She wanted a fridge with an ice maker that made three different shapes of ice. All of this was more than Zeke could give her.

His own wants were simple. He wanted land that was his and armfuls of babies to raise and love. But most of all, he wanted someone to share the sunset with after cleaning up after that delicious farm supper.

If he’d been surprised at how fast Betty Lou had left him, his own moving on from the rodeo world surprised him as well. Sure, at the start, he’d struggled to figure out how to train himself up for his next eight-second ride. But eventually, he realized that was a mountain too hard to climb and, not only that, he no longer wanted to.

One of the first things he did when he was out of the hospital was to find the horse that had fallen on him. Feller was the horse’s name, and Zeke found him languishing in a kill pen.

He was told that Feller’s spirit was gone, and there wasn’t any point to him except for dog food. Zeke paid the fifty bucks for Feller, then found a lovely woman named Mrs. Tate who took in horses that nobody wanted, and let them live out their days on her spread of ten acres.

Which was how he met Leland Tate, Mrs. Tate’s son. Leland was the firm-handed manager of Farthingdale Guest Ranch, and right after they met, Leland had offered Zeke a place as a ranch hand.

Knowing it was the best offer ever was likely to get, Zeke bid Betty Lou and pretty much everyone in his old life a cheerful goodbye and took the job.

He gritted his teeth a bit, did his PT exercises, rubbed arnica cream on his left thigh, shoveled horse shit, and showed greenhorns how to ride. Led the way on trail rides that were no longer than half a day into the hills, and were usually shorter than that.

Sometimes he was flooded with the uselessness of the activities at the guest ranch. None of it was real. Just some rich city dwellers coming out for fresh air and a change of pace, neither of which was a desire he could fault them for. They had dreams that they wanted him to make come true for them.

In his mind, if they wanted to experience ranch life, they should actually get hired at a ranch. Which was foolish of him to think, to imagine they would be the slightest bit interested in real ranch life. They wanted photograph worthy events, colorful images they could show to their friends back home: I’m wearing a hat! Now look. I’m on a horse! Like that old Old Spice commercial.

Midway through that season at the guest ranch was when Galen had come on to him. Casual and friendly, gifting Zeke with gray-eyed flashes of want amidst blush-cheeked smiles.

Could a man be pretty? Zeke had never thought so, but Galen made him think so, though it did take Zeke a few encounters before he realized what was going on. Before he could figure out how to respond to those broadly aimed comments and hints that Galen wanted him, wanted him. Like a man might want a woman.

Galen wanted kisses and intimacy and seemed to imply that he might not be put off by the fact that Zeke’s left leg ached after a hard day’s work and that he might not be as nimble as Galen might like. Or that Zeke himself might like.

Zeke hadn’t been with anyone since Betty Lou over a year before, so in a blank, Galen-induced, passion-colored mindset, Zeke was just about able to imagine being in bed with Galen. Could almost feel how it would feel as he corded his fingers in that soft-looking hair. How his body might respond as his mouth pressed against the plushness of Galen’s mouth.

In the midst of all those images, he could imagine—maybe—what it would feel like to bring another man to pleasure. With his hands. His mouth?—

The thing of it was, Zeke was not gay and besides, Galen deserved to be with someone who truly cared about him. Who shared his desires and dreams.

Zeke was not a one-night stand kind of guy, whether with a man or a woman, and Galen didn’t seem like he was either. Galen was just lonely, as far as Zeke could see.

Perhaps Galen had thought Zeke was like him, lonely, alone, and gay—or maybe because he was truly interested—and so he’d come on to Zeke.

Zeke couldn’t figure it out, so in a cloud of confusion, being as polite as he could, he’d turned Galen down.

You’re a good man, Galen, Zeke had said, crossing his arms over his chest as a kind of shield. But I’m straight. Why, I dated Betty Lou for three years before I busted my leg. She only wanted a buckle-winning kind of man. Not a broken one. Hence, I am on the shelf, on the lookout for a nice woman to settle down with.

Not that Zeke had any idea how to find that nice woman to settle down with, since he figured most, if not all, of them would not want someone who was so broken. Not with the kind of work he had done. Not with the life he wanted to lead, even if the idea of what that life would be seemed to keep shifting.

The following season, when Galen had gone off to help with the Farthingdale Valley Fresh Start program intended to rehabilitate ex-cons, Zeke had breathed a sigh of relief.

Feeling like a coward, he was grateful he had some breathing room from the puzzling feelings he’d had after Galen’s nuanced come-hither suggestions. Except then Leland Tate once again offered Zeke a job, this time helping ex-cons learn how to ride. Down in the valley. The same valley where Galen worked.

Leland’s offer had come at the end of a successful sunset trail ride, which had consisted of an hour of placid walking along the low hills below the shadow of Iron Mountain. A ride easy enough for grandma or anyone. All of which left Zeke more bored than he cared to admit.

Zeke had quelled his urge to gallop along and force the city dwellers into something real and exciting. Something that would coat their bodies with dust so they’d have a real reason to shower, and not just perform another ritual with fancy and overpriced soap.

But rules were rules, and the website clearly described the ride as peaceful and soul-fulfilling, rather than anything harum- scarum that Zeke might enjoy harkening back to his rodeo days. So he’d restrained himself.

“Don’t you already have Galen down there?” asked Zeke as he leaned against the top rail in the picturesque paddock.

He and Leland, in the long shadows of a late-summer dusk, had been watching high paying guests stomping their expensive boots in the dust and laughing as they cleaned hooves and brushed out manes and tails, pretending all the while that getting horseshit on their boots was exciting.

“Galen’s a good man. Good at teaching.”

“Galen is a good man,” said Leland, echoing Zeke’s pose, pushing up the brim of his hat with his thumb as he kept an eye on the activity in the paddock. “And he’s good at teaching, but what he’s really, really good at is wrangling ex-cons.”

Leland paused to chuckle low, as if the discovery about Galen was a surprise to him. Then he said, “He received the roughest set of parolees we’ve gotten so far this summer. Now those ex-cons wear matching hats. They’re tidy and industrious. They brainstorm solutions and execute the plan like they’ve been sitting in a conference room together for years. That Galen, he sweet-talked them into turning over new leaves. Doesn’t even realize how good he is at it, which might be a good thing. Hate for him to become self-conscious.”

“But he’s not much good in the ring,” said Zeke, figuring out what Leland didn’t seem to want to say.

“He was here,” said Leland, with a nod at the paddock. “These folks are pretty well-behaved and good at following directions. But ex-cons on horseback are another thing altogether. Things get out of hand, and accidents will happen.”

When Leland cast his clear-eyed gaze in Zeke’s direction, Zeke heard the unspoken words quite clearly: He might be in over his head and I don’t want anyone getting hurt .

Zeke knew he, personally, would be more worried about any horses getting hurt than ex-cons. It was for that reason that he slowly nodded and said yes.

He would go because of the horses, and he would learn to rebuild a relationship with a good man who had only asked for what he wanted and had never pushed Zeke into anything.

So he packed his bags and got a ride to Torrington, there to take part in the two-week training at Wyoming Correctional.