performed a few expert maneuvers and the loving crowd cheered loudly enough to raise the big sky arching over all their heads by at least an inch.
“I want to do that someday,” Madison, having watched every move the girls and their horses made, said with more certainty than a four-year-old should have been capable of mustering up. “Can I do that when I’m bigger, Mommy?”
Kendra smiled, touched her daughter’s cheek. For all the disposable wipes Kendra had used on that little face today, it was still smudged with the remains of a cotton candy binge. “Sure you can,” she said. “When you’re older.”
“How much older?” Madison pressed.
Hutch chuckled and turned Madison’s pink cowgirl hat 360 degrees until it came to rest on the bridge of her nose. “Those girls out there,” he told her, “have been riding since they were your size, or even smaller. It takes a lot of practice to handle a horse the way they do, so you’ll want to be on Ruffles’s back as often as possible.”
Kendra gave him a look over Madison’s head and a light nudge with her elbow, but he just grinned at her.
The rodeo began and Madison was enthralled with every event that followed—except for the calf-roping. That made her cry, and even Hutch couldn’t convince her that calves weren’t being hurt or frightened. Calves were routinely roped, thrown down and tied on ranches, he’d explained, so they could be inoculated against diseases and treated for sickness or injury. Privately, though Kendra knew Hutch was right, from an intellectual standpoint anyway, she agreed with Madison; the event wasn’t her favorite, and she was glad when it was over.
They watched the sequence of competitions. The barrel racing—since all the competitors were female—cheered Madison up considerably. She wanted to know if she and Ruffles could start practicing that right away, along with flag carrying.
All too soon, it was time for the bull-riding. Hutch took his leave from them and headed for the area behind the chutes.
Like the other livestock in the rodeo, the bulls were provided by Walker Parrish’s outfit, and they looked mythically large to Kendra, milling around in the big pen on the opposite side of the arena.
Her heartbeat quickened a little as she saw Hutch join the other cowboys waiting to risk their fool necks, and her stomach, containing too much carnival food, did a slow, backward roll. Saliva flooded her mouth and she swallowed, willing herself not to throw up right there in the bleachers.
The first cowboy wore a helmet instead of a Western hat, a choice Kendra considered eminently practical, and he was thrown before the sports clock reached the three-second mark.
The second cowboy made it all the way to six seconds before the bull he was riding went into a dizzying spin, tossed the man to the sawdust and very nearly trampled him.
Madison looked on, spellbound, huddled close against Kendra’s side. Once or twice, her thumb crept into her mouth—a habit she’d long since left behind as babyish.
Another helmeted rider followed, and lasted just two and a half seconds before his bull sent him flying.
Then it was Hutch’s turn.
The whole universe seemed to recede from Kendra like an outgoing tide. There was only herself, Madison, Hutch and that bull he was already lowering himself onto over there in the chute. He wore his hat, not a helmet, and Kendra saw him laugh as he adjusted it, saw his lips move as he spoke to the gate man.
Then the gate swung open and the bull—the thing was the size of a Volkswagen, Kendra thought anxiously—plunged out into the very center of the arena, putting on a real show.
The announcer said something about Hutch’s well-known skills as a bull-rider, but to Kendra the voice seemed to be coming from somewhere far away and through a narrow pipe.
The big red numbers on the arena clock flicked from one to the next.
Hutch remained on the back of that bull through a whole series of violent gyrations, and then, blessedly, the buzzer sounded and one of the pickup men rode up alongside the furious critter. Hutch, triumphant, switched smoothly to the other horse, behind the rider, and got off when they’d put just a few yards of distance between them and the bull.
Eight seconds.
Until today, Kendra had never dreamed how long eight seconds could seem.
The crowd went crazy, clapping and whistling and stomping booted feet on old floorboards in the bleachers, and the announcer prattled happily about how Hutch would be hard to