Page 107 of Dusty Spur Ranch Cowboys

“They didn’t get along?”

“They competed at everything,” Willy says. “Rodeos, poker, who could finish a fence line quicker, who could annoy the other the most. Half the county figured one of them would eventually throw the other into a horse trough.”

“They never did,” Emmett says. “But they came close.”

Willy nods. “Close enough that I stopped betting on ’em.”

I scrape my brush across another patch of timber. “So what changed?”

“The ride,” Willy says, and the humor slips away.

Emmett drops his rag into the bucket and wipes his hands on his jeans. “Red blames himself for it, more than anyone else can.”

Willy rests both hands on the top of his brush. “He still figures Travis would’ve gone home if he’d said the right thing.”

“You don’t believe that?”

His eyes lift to mine. “I watched the whole damn thing.”

My brush hangs in my hand. “What happened?”

Willy rubs the back of his neck. “Two stubborn cowboys spent years trying to beat each other.” He looks across the ranch toward the distant corrals where Red disappeared hours ago. “Then one of them climbed onto a horse he never should’ve ridden.”

Willy drags the wire brush through another streak of paint until black flakes scatter across the dirt, then bends to rinse it in the bucket.

Beside him, Emmett works thinner into the timber with a rag, his attention fixed on the wall.

I scrub at a stubborn patch that refuses to disappear. “You both keep saying Red blames himself, but neither of you talks like he deserves it.”

Willy glances over. “That’s because he doesn’t.”

Emmett nods without looking up. “He never did.”

I shift closer, brushing paint dust from my jeans. “Then why does he act like the accident was his fault?”

“Others do too.” Emmett sighs as he wrings out the rag. “Because people like easy answers. Red and Travis were rivals, Travis got hurt, and folks decided they’d already worked out the rest.”

Willy shakes his head before dipping his brush into the bucket again. “Red’s spent years trying to own a decision another man made.”

My brush stops halfway across the timber.

We finish the wall in silence, scrubbing until the last traces of black fade into the weathered wood. By the time I rinse my hands and gather my things, night has settled over Dusty Spur, but the conversation keeps circling through my head.

I cut across the yard toward my truck, already fishing my keys from my jacket pocket, when I spot Red making his usual circuit around the pasture.

His hands are buried deep in his pockets, his head tipped toward the ground as though the gravel might finally offer an answer after all these years.

He notices me before I reach him. “Couldn’t sleep?” he asks, keeping the same pace.

I fall in beside him and tuck my keys away again. “I was about to ask you that.”

A dry chuckle slips out of him. “Sleep quit returning my calls a long time ago.”

“I’d say you should file a complaint, but I don’t reckon it’d listen.”

“It hasn’t so far.”

We follow the fence line together while horses graze beyond the rails, their occasional snorts breaking the stillness between us.