I licked dust off my bottom lip. “Neds have reminded me that you are not on our side, Mr. House Gray. The deal was for you to answer my questions, not the other way around.”
“Neds don’t know me.”
“Neither do I.”
He said something under his breath in that language I didn’t understand, pushed open the door, and started pacing.
I walked over to the fence attached to the barn and let myself into the pen.
“Do you want my help?” he finally asked.
“Will it mean I owe you a favor?”
“It means I can buy your friends some time.”
“They don’t want time. They want their homes.”
He leaned his elbows against the top of the fence, his boot hooked up on the lowest rail, as he stared at the chickens running around at my feet. He looked comfortable in that pose, natural to this kind of life, and handsome enough that needful fire spread out through me again.
What was wrong with me? We had just been arguing. I shouldn’t be thinking about what his touch would feel like, about what his lips would feel like against my skin.
Irritated. That’s how he made me feel. I ignored him and my own body and everything else about today that was driving me mad, and checked the automatic grain feeder instead.
“Those aren’t chickens,” he said after a bit.
“They’re part chicken.”
“And part lizard?”
“Lizard neck and tail. Bat wings.” I tested the water trough, and then shooed away the hissing flock so I could unlatch the gate.
“Mythology would call them cockatrice,” he noted.
“Fancy. We call them chickens.”
“It’s the Fesslers’ place, is it?” he said.
That stopped my breathing for a second.
“How do you know the Fesslers?”
“As you pointed out, the galvanized began House Brown. I knew old Gertie Fessler. She claimed a patch of desert around those parts. If her descendants are anything like her, they are pigheaded and devil-tempered. And you’re right. They’d rather stand ground and die.”
“That’s nice to hear,” I said.
“What?”
“That I’m right.”
A smile crept up the corners of his mouth. “About the Fesslers.”
“About everything.”
“Odds are against you there.”
“I’ve never been afraid of playing the odds, Mr. House Gray. Now let’s go get some dinner.”
9
