Three honks. Short. Clean.
The compound opens up in front of me.
The main barn. The clubhouse. The bunkhouse. The round pen beyond the barn where the mustang's been for six weeks.
Andhim.
On the bunkhouse porch.
Hat down. Cut on. Coffee in his hand.
Spur.
He looks up.
Our eyes meet across forty feet of Texas dirt at two minutes till eight in the morning.
He doesn't smile. Neither do I.
He looks at me the way he did eight years ago in the clubhouse doorway.
A moment too long, then he turns and walks inside.
I sit in my truck, both hands on the wheel.
The engine is ticking as it cools.
"I'm done waiting, Spur," I say.
CHAPTER THREE
Spur
The fire pit is going by sundown.
Somebody, probably Thunder, built a fire because there’s a pit and a free evening.
He stacked mesquite in the iron ring behind the clubhouse and lit it around six.
The smoke went straight up for about ten minutes and then the wind shifted. Now it’s drifting south across the compound in a low haze that smells like Texas, my childhood, and every cookout I’ve been to since I patched years ago.
I’m at the edge of it. Back against a fence post. Beer in my hand.
It’s my second one, but I won’t dare have a third.
The long table is full.
Phantom at the head, the way Phantom is always at the head—not because he sits down first but because the table arranges itself around him like iron filings around a magnet.
Shadow and Grace at the far end.
Waylon on the move—fourteen months old, dark-haired, his father's serious face on a body that has just discovered walking and now considers sitting a personal insult.
Grace keeps catching him by the back of his overalls every time he tries to launch off the bench.
Marlena beside Phantom with Cal on her lap.
Five months old, with Phantom's jaw and Marlena's red hair, and a body the size of a football.
