“I’ll have one.”
Leland pulled two brown glass bottles out of his little fridge and opened them with some ceremony. Both men drank and then sighed as they clinked their bottles together, a little laugh shared between them.
“What brings you in?” asked Leland. “Or is the trail ride back already?”
“It is, just in,” said Jamie. “Quint told me he saw a mountain lion, and so we brought the ride back early.”
“How close was it?”
“Close enough to see, not close enough to see if it had tags.” Jamie pushed his curls back from his forehead. “iI Quint had his rifle with him, I think he would have shot it.”
“Well, we better go take care of it,” said Leland. He polished off his root beer, recycled the bottle, and reached for his hat. “Get Clay, would you? Then get my rifle and scope from the storeroom.”
Austin watched as Jamie dashed off, and stood up, as Leland’s energy seemed to pull him to his feet.
“You’re not going to shoot it are you?” asked Austin, even as he considered he didn’t know very much about wildlife, let alone rifles and bullets. Didn’t know whether a mountain lion was a threat to cattle or horses, though it might be scary for someone to encounter one on a trail ride.
“No,” said Leland, shaking his head as he reached into his desk to pull out two pairs of binoculars.
“Then why the rifle?”
“To scare it,” said Leland. “That’s why I’m bringing Clay for this. If I brought Quint, he’d want to shoot it. We’ll find it, and then Clay will scare it by shootingaroundit. And if we see it has tags, we’ll alert Wildlife Management. Or maybe alert BLM and let them deal with it. Want to come?”
“Yes,” said Austin, his mind automatically going to the fact that he’d get to spend time with Clay. As to what kind of time that might be, he didn’t know, but still. The day turned brighter inside of a heartbeat, and he pushed thoughts of Bill’s sloppy record keeping aside.
Jamie soon came back with a rifle in a rifle-bag, a box of bullets, or whatever it was that the rifle used, and Clay in tow.
Clay was flushed from his work, cheeks pink and warm, eyes bright. A single line of sweat trailed behind his ear and down his neck, and from the damp circles beneath his arms, to the hay speckling his blue jeans, he looked exactly like what he was: a ranch hand, bursting with muscles to do the work, and to keep doing it, sunup to sundown. Energy radiated from him like a pulse from a heartbeat, reaching Austin and echoing inside of him.
“Hey,” said Clay, smiling at Austin, and it was like being gobsmacked with pleasure and joy and energy, all at once. “I hear we’re off on a hunting trip.”
“That we are,” said Leland.
“Well, it beats the heck out of shoveling horse shit.” Clay’s voice curled around the words in a twang and he crooked his mouth, like he must have thought a good Southern boy would do, and then laughed, bringing up the laughter in Austin’s chest like a gift.
“I hear you’re a good shot,” said Austin, doing his best to rein in his galloping emotions racing around inside of him as he watched Clay take the rifle bag and the bullets from Jamie, hefting them as though he’d done it many times before.
“Well,” said Clay, with a shrug, wiping the sweat from his jawline with the heel of his palm. “I’m good, but Quint’s better.”
“Don’t be fooled by his modesty, Austin,” said Leland, giving Clay a hearty clap on his shoulder. “I’ve never seen such steady hands. Besides, Quint might be better overall, but Clay is top-notch in long-distance shooting.”
This Austin was about to see, making him quite glad he’d said yes when Leland had asked him. Watching accountants at work was the most boring thing ever. Watching Clay do pretty much anything had been, from the beginning, quite the opposite. Watching him on the hunt was completely out of Austin’s realm of experience and despite doing his best to stay calm, his heartbeat had picked up, even as he borrowed a spare hat from the barn and followed the other men out to Leland’s truck.
For a moment the four of them stood there beneath the bright sun to discuss how their efforts would go. Austin did his best not to stare, but if he tipped his hat low, he could look at Clay from beneath the brim of his hat, and maybe Clay wouldn’t notice him staring. And it was hard not to stare as Clay adjusted the long canvas strap over his shoulder, muscles bunching beneath his cotton shirt.
“We’ll drive out, following the ridge,” said Leland. “Isn’t that where the trail ride went?”
“Yes,” said Jamie. “I can direct us to where we saw the cat.”
Leland nodded and handed one pair of binoculars to Jamie and the other to Austin.
“You two ride in the back. Jamie will be with me.”
Feeling rather like a kid on his way to a drive-in movie on a summer’s evening, Austin climbed into the truck bed of Leland’s silver F150 and was very glad of the hat inside of one second, as the sun poured into the truck bed like hot gold. It was better when the truck started moving, as the breeze moved over them like a cooling blanket.
The truck bed had a liner, but it was still bumpy going till Clay showed him how to prop himself on the wheel well. Clay kept the rifle tucked behind his boot heels so it wouldn’t slide around, and held the box in his hands, which, now that Austin could read the label, contained some kind of cartridges.
They rode like that, hunched on wheel humps opposite each other. Clay smiled as Leland drove, looking pleased to be where he was, and Austin found himself smiling back for the pure joy of joining in.
