stream of buyers who looked over his excellent horses, nodded and reached for their wallets. Delia, a great entertainer, was in her element, giving parties and overseeing the stock of cowboy clothes and memorabilia for the stall she would set up.
There was a strict dress code. Riders must wear a western hat, long-sleeved shirt and cowboy boots. Leo, who had none of these things, went to town among Delia’s stock, kitting himself out both for now and for Grosseto when he returned home.
‘They’re going to think you’re so fine,’ Carrie said, regarding him admiringly in his new stetson and decorated boots.
‘Nothing like a new hat to make an impression,’ Leo said cheerfully. ‘Let’s see one on you.’
He settled a stetson on Carrie’s head, then one on Billie’s and finally on Selena’s, nodded with satisfaction and took out his credit card.
‘Delia, I’ll have those three as well.’
In this way he contrived to buy Selena a present without offending her. He’d spent a lot of time working out how to do that.
Sometimes they practised together. If he did nothing else in his life he was determined to ride that bull.
On the face of it, it was simple. To stay eight seconds on the back of a heaving, thrashing mountain of furious bull. And live. That was the target.
‘Think you’ll do it?’ she asked him one evening as they limped stiffly home.
‘Do
‘Nope.’
‘Me neither. I don’t care. I’m just doing it for fun. I’m no threat to anyone trying to earn a living.’
She grinned. ‘That’s true.’
‘OK, OK, no need to rub it in.’
Leo had graduated from the bucking machine to Old Jim, a real live bull. The problem was that Jim had mellowed with age. He liked people, and he took an immediate shine to Leo, which was pleasant in its way but made him useless for practical purposes. Leo could manage eight seconds on Old Jim’s back, but so could Selena. So, for that matter, could Delia, Billie and Carrie. And Jack.
Selena practised fiercely, racing around the barrels on Jeepers, aiming to keep their time down to fourteen seconds, or even under.
‘Is that the “gold standard”?’ Leo asked her.
‘It is for here,’ she said, indicating the barrels that Barton had set up. ‘They’re not the same in every rodeo. Sometimes they’re further apart and that can be a seventeen-second circuit. But barrels at this distance should be fourteen seconds. Jeepers can do it. We’re just not quite used to each other yet. I still make mistakes on him.’
As if to prove it she tried to take a corner too tightly and landed in the dust.
Leo, watching from a fence rail, started to race towards her, but she was up at once, leaping back into the saddle to try again, more carefully this time. Leo retreated.
‘I thought you might have hurt yourself,’ he said when she dismounted.
‘Me?’ she asked hilariously. ‘With that little fall? I’ve had worse. I’ve probably got worse to come in the future. It’s no big deal.’
He sighed. ‘Couldn’t you be frail and vulnerable sometimes, like other women?’
She hooted with laughter. ‘Leo, what planet have you been living on? Women aren’t frail and vulnerable these days.’ She slapped him on the shoulder and every bone in his bruised body seemed to clang.
What could you do with a woman like this? he wondered. You couldn’t say consoling things like ‘Let me make it better,’ because she’d think you were nuts and probably step on your toe, by way of bringing you to your senses.
You could only wait and hope, certain that the sweet kernel was in there, however well hidden by the prickly skin, knowing that what happened would be in her own good time, or not at all.
‘Let’s go and rub ourselves down with liniment,’ she said.
‘I’ll do you if you’ll do me,’ he said hopefully.
She chuckled and thumped him again.
Barton was in his study that evening, watching for their return, and at his signal Leo halted Selena with the words, ‘Come back outside, there’s something I want you to see.’
In the yard stood a Mini Motor Home, functional rather than luxurious, but a palace compared to what Selena had originally driven. Attached to it was a horse trailer, plain but of good design.
‘They’re yours,’ Barton said. ‘To replace the ones you lost.’
‘The insurers came through?’ she breathed.
‘The fact is,’ Barton said with a hint of awkwardness, ‘I don’t really want to go to my insurers about this. I haven’t had a claim in years, and if I make one now-well it would be cheaper if I just replace what I wrecked.’
‘But-I don’t get that,’ Selena said. ‘The damage to your car-it can’t be cheaper than-’
‘You just leave that to me,’ Barton interrupted. ‘It’s cheaper because-that’s how it works out.’
‘But Barton-’
‘Women don’t understand these things,’ Barton said desperately.
‘I understand-’
‘No, you don’t, you don’t understand anything. I’ve gone into it and-I don’t want any more argument. You take Jeepers, you take the vehicles, and we call it quits.’
‘You’re-giving me these?’ Selena asked, dazed. ‘But I can’t accept. My things weren’t nearly as good-’
‘But they got you from place to place OK,’ Barton said. ‘Well, this will get you from place to place as well.’
‘I-’
‘It’s no more than your right,’ Barton finished with a hunted look. He was running out of inspiration.
‘But Jeepers-’
‘He likes you. He works well for you. And the trailer will take two horses, so when Elliot’s recovered you can take them both.’
‘That won’t be long now,’ Selena said firmly.
‘Sure it won’t. But until then, Jeepers will keep you going.’
Leo watched them in silence. One thing they all knew, although she wasn’t ready to admit it. Elliot’s rodeo days were over.
He left Selena looking over her new home, and pounced on Barton halfway to the house.
‘I thought you were going to blow everything,’ he muttered.
‘Not my fault. She was bound to be suspicious. I had to improvise.’
“‘Women don’t understand these things,”’ Leo scoffed. ‘No man dares say that these days, not if he wants to live.’
Barton turned on him.
‘All right, you do better. Try telling her the truth. Tell her you’re paying for everything, and see how she takes it.’
‘Sssshh!’ Leo said frantically. ‘She mustn’t know that. She’d skin me alive.’
‘Great! Then we know where we are. Now are you gonna stand here yakking all night, or are you coming in the house for a whisky?’
‘I’m coming in the house for a whisky.’
Everyone was up early on the first day of the rodeo. Delia and her daughters loaded piles of new stock into the truck. Barton checked off a list of contacts he was planning to do business with in a convivial atmosphere. Jeepers was groomed until he shone, and led out into the horse trailer.
Instinct sent Leo into the stables in search of Selena. He found her, as he’d expected, in Elliot’s stall, caressing the horse’s nose, murmuring tenderly.
‘This isn’t for good, you’ve got to understand that. Jeepers is a fine horse, but he’s not you. It’ll never be with him like it was with you and me. We’re going to be together again. That’s a promise.’
She rested her cheek against his nose. ‘I love you, you ramshackle old brute. More than anyone in the world. Do you hear that?’
Leo tried to back out quietly, but he didn’t quite manage it, and Selena looked up.
‘Now who’s being sentimental?’ he asked kindly.
