Blood Land Read Online Free PDF Page B

the lower piece. Rory's two brothers had died early in life; young, in their twenties. Rory’s father found the pair, trapped and frozen in a surprise fall blizzard while moving the last of the cattle down from the upper McIntyre place.
    Rory married and Honey gave him four sons in a row before he drew a daughter. Ty was the youngest of the boys and a year older than Bethy. Still, he was the best ranch hand, as well as the toughest and the meanest. Ty easily wrestled calves for branding when he was eight and could buck a bale of hay faster than some adult men could when he was ten or eleven.
    When he was thirteen, a man named Sketch Borland made a wisecrack about Ty's cereal bowl haircut. The boy lit into Borland like a small bobcat tearing into a grizzly ten times its size. Borland was no fighter, and a bit of a drunkard, but he had at least a hundred pounds on the young boy. The rest of the crew had to pull little Ty off the older man.
    Ty's brothers—Rance, Cort, and Dirk—were tough too, in that order and according to age. But Ty could handle them all. One at a time or together.
    Like Ty, Rance and Cort had parcels of the ranch. The two of them rode saddle bronc and bareback almost every summer weekend at the rodeo grounds in Wind River. Dirk did not ranch. He worked as a crack rider for an outfitting business that caravanned tourists and hunters in and out of the Wind River Mountains.
    Ty considered them all pussies. Dirk because he rode soft horses for a living and never did rodeo. The other two because Ty had never really considered it rodeo to ride any animal less angry or dangerous than a bull.
    Bulls bloodied and broke Ty into pieces throughout his life. Doctors pinned together and replaced parts of him so many times that against the gloaming light you could see his spine make two distinct turns, like an S-curve on a mountain road. His face had been stomped so magnificently one Friday night that his head swelled to double its size, his face grape-colored and horrifying. It healed mostly, but stayed as cratered and uneven as the surface of the moon.
    Over the years, hardship took several inches off Ty’s stature, but those same years added twenty pounds of mass, too. A thin layer of wintering fat hid fresh, sinewy muscle, and more than a few pounds of angst.
    Ty McIntyre was getting old, but he was still a man most would rather see on the other side of the street.
     

    Returning to Rory McIntyre’s ranch was something Pruett had been putting off. There were many reasons. He wanted to think that the fear of seeing the spot where his wife died wasn’t one of them, but the old sheriff knew better.
    As Pruett stepped down from the truck, Rory opened the screen on the front door and stepped out, a cup of coffee in his left hand.
    “James,” Rory said.
    “Rory. How’re you holdin’ up?”
    “Life don’t allow for men to spend much time mournin’. Work needs to git done.”
    “One way to look at it,” the sheriff said.
    “Ain’t no two ways about it. You comin’ in or can we do this while I git the wagon rigged up to the tractor?”
    “Wagon is fine,” Pruett said.
    He followed the old bowlegged cowboy toward the barn where Rory started throwing spools of baling wire and boxes of staples onto the hay wagon.
    “Shoulda offered you a coffee,” Rory said. “Honey’s in the house. I can yell for her.”
    “I’m good. Not planning to stay here long.”
    “Looks like you wintered okay,” Rory said, gesturing to the sheriff’s stomach.
    “I did all right.”
    “I was rememberin’ all the times you and your family came out here for brandins.”
    “Never missed one that I can recall,” said Pruett.
    “You got knocked on your ass more than a few times,” Rory said.
    “Sure did.”
    “You liked my little Bethy, even back then. Always lookin’ after her more ’n yourself.”
    “Been fond of her long as I’ve lived and breathed, I reckon,” Pruett said.
    “You’ve always knowed my mind on