Billie’s right forearm felt raw, so she knew she’d pulled the skin off it again. She had broken so many falls by putting out that arm that the skin there was puckered and white, and with each new injury, it got lumpier and whiter when it healed.
“You’re bleeding,” Sam said.
“Bit your lip,” Josie added. She gave Billie the bandana from around her neck.
Billie pressed it to her mouth, feeling to see if she had knocked out a tooth. Everything seemed to be in place. But the reek of cigarette smoke on the fabric made her hand the bandana back.
“We’re late for work,” Sam said. They owned an equipment rental place several exits to the west on the highway. “You plannin’ on livin’ or you want I should get a backhoe and bury you?”
“I’ll be fine.” Billie ran her tongue over the swelling on her lip.
“You want a lift to your house?” Josie asked.
That sounded good, but Billie didn’t want to admit it, or to crowd onto the bench seat of their truck, her knees crammed against the overflowing ashtray, to listen to a lecture on their glory days as horsemen up in the Grand Tetons. She shook her head no.
“Guess I’ll go catch my pony.”
Sam climbed back into the pickup, leaned across the seat, and rolled down the crank window. “Out here,” he said, “most of us wear denim and leather when we ride.”
They drove off before Billie realized he was referring to her pajamas. Then she noticed the bottoms had ripped open from knee to hip, showing a lot of scraped leg.
She hobbled after Starship. Whenever she got close to catching him, he trotted off until he was out of reach then dropped his head to lip up whatever bits of weeds he found. Her leg was throbbing before he quit playing games and let her catch him and return him to his corral. When she climbed up the hill to the casita, every step hurt. In the kitchen, she sadly ripped what was left of her favorite pajamas into rags and jammed them under the sink.
The shower stung her scrapes. But when she looked in the bathroom mirror, she didn’t think she had added any new scars to the old ones. Today’s dings would heal up and not leave any stories behind. She pulled on shorts—careful not to rub the scrapes on her leg—and a lilac sleeveless top that showed off her bruised and ropy arms. After slapping a Band-Aid on her peeled elbow, she grabbed the baseball cap with her ranch logo on it—a silhouette of Gulliver leading Starship, reins in his mouth. Very cute.
CHAPTER 4
A HUNDRED AND fifty years ago, the Depot Feed Store had been a stop on the Butterfield stagecoach route. The adobe building had sheltered travelers waiting to be picked up and transported west to San Diego or east to El Paso. Tickets sold from behind an iron grille were passed from ticket agent to passenger over a mesquite counter. The dirt floors had been covered with coarsely woven rugs and horse blankets worn to tatters by filthy boots. Not much had been done to spruce up the Depot since then. Over the years the roof had thickened, layer being added to layer of whatever was available to keep things from blowing off—tiles and shingles, tar paper and tin, and finally, in the last twenty years, tires from cars and trucks heaved up and arranged in rows by size. A half-moon of dirt swept to the edge of a wobbly porch whose splintered stairs sagged under piles of buckets, metal horse troughs, and exhausted potted saplings.
Billie parked beside a silver dually one-ton Dodge truck, a monster with two tires in front and four behind, loaded with bales of alfalfa and Bermuda hay. She imagined she could smell the clean of that brand new dually, see the salesman’s fingerprints still on the side mirrors. The truck wasn’t even dusty. She glanced around, looking for its owner. But all she saw in the yard was the Depot’s trio of antique red gasoline pumps.
She opened her own pockmarked truck’s door to let Gulliver out, propping it with her foot it so it wouldn’t swing shut as the terrier leapt down. She climbed out after him, slammed the door, and left the Chevy unlocked. With its single headlight and missing tailgate, no one would try to steal it anyway.
Inside the old adobe, the iron grill hung in its original place, and what remained of the rugs were nailed to the walls for decoration, along with feed sack covers, antique spurs, and twisted amber curls of flypaper.
“Hot ’nuf for yeh?” the owner, Ty Wilde, son of her neighbors, asked.
Billie was too tired for the tattered cowboy routine. She knew that Ty had graduated magna cum laude from the University of Arizona with a degree in equine studies. She had found his diploma in the Depot bathroom a couple of years before, framed and under glass, tucked into a stack of catalogs advertising chickens and their accoutrements. She hadn’t told him she’d seen it, but she knew damn well that Cow Patty wasn’t his native tongue.
One night last year at DT’s Bar and Grill out on the highway, he had asked her if she’d care to join him. He hadn’t specified where or for what, but she sensed he didn’t want to be alone. She had perched beside him on a barstool and hooked her thumbs
