it was for other things. There’s a dozen reasons why certain cows go.”
“If you think you’re weak, maybe it’s because your mom and I have let you down,” Abel said.
“You know that’s not what I was trying to say. I’m an adult. You’re not responsible for my poor judgments, Dad.”
“Most parents I know feel like they are, on some level. Doesn’t matter how universally imperfect kids are—or how good. You’re one of the good ones, honey.”
“You feel responsible because my mistakes have affected the whole family, the whole ranch.”
Her father smiled at her, his unforced, unconditional smile that brought some light back to his tired eyes.
“So my cull-the-calf metaphor breaks down,” she said, “but I still think there’s got to be a way to spare the family from my mess.”
The truck glided by bright green circular fields watered by central-pivot irrigation systems. In some fields, hay that was cut but not yet baled lay fading under the sun in wide swaths. Fresh rectangular bales the color of peas sat waiting collection. Older bales, cut and dried earlier in the summertime, stood in tall yellow stacks under shelters.
“Hot one today,” Abel observed. He sounded more exhausted than she felt.
Small herds of cows not sent to the public lands to graze nibbled on fields that were rotated with the crops for this purpose. Everything in this valley was dependent on something else for survival. The ranchers on their cows; cows on the grass; the grass on the water; the water on the mountain snow. In this part of the country, every cow-calf pair needed roughly twenty acres of property to survive, and the ranchers needed enough cows to breed and to sell to keep their acreage financially afloat. They had to have enough water and soil to grow food to keep herds through the winter with a minimum of supplementation, and ideally with a little extra to sell. Permits to graze herds on public lands, which prevented valuable croplands from becoming overgrazed, ran tens of thousands of dollars.
There was almost never enough money to prosper, just barely enough to get by. In the valley, the balance between survival and ruin teetered on fragile scales. It was life-giving, life-taking work that families out here did for love, not for cash. A rancher’s worth was hardly ever liquid, and most of it was tied up in the land, beautiful but demanding. Parting with assets was nearly the same as parting with water in a desert.
Anthony Darling and the courts expected the Blazing B to hand over every canteen it possessed.
They passed a field recently cut, and a man bent over the open engine of his baler, greasy parts spread out on the ground and glistening with black oil under the sun.
Worse than the judgment itself would be turning it loose on her family. The news they were carrying back to their home was a fanged rattlesnake, coiled and hostile.
“What am I going to tell Mom?” she murmured.
In answer the Ford lurched, and Beth’s attention snapped to her father as the truck began to drift across the center line. Her left hand reached out for the wheel to pull them back before her mind had processed what was happening.
Her father was gripping his shirt, a fisted wad of court-worthy clean and pressed cotton directly over his heart. Pain deepened all the lines of his face, squinting around his eyes and yanking on the corners of his mouth.
“Dad?”
The weight of his own hand dragged the steering wheel in the direction opposite her efforts, with the net effect of keeping the truck square in the wrong lane.
Abel’s body slouched toward the support of his door, away from her, away from life. On the short horizon, an oncoming car was swiftly closing the distance.
“Dad, I need you to let go of the wheel.”
Her voice sounded disembodied, the confident authoritative voice of someone who knew exactly what to do, someone whose heart was not thrashing about, someone whose muscles weren’t shaking uncontrollably.
“Let go, Dad.”
Either he couldn’t hear her or he couldn’t will his fingers to obey.
His body stiffened in a spasm, and his legs tried to straighten. His foot floored the accelerator and the truck surged for an electric second, straining against the stick-shift gears. Then his shoe slipped off the pedal and the car lurched again, decelerating like a sky diver caught up by his chute, stalling the engine.
Beth’s fight against her father’s body weight became a futile competition against the entire heavy-duty vehicle. Even if her seat