“Both,” she weeps. “She’s so fast. And she’s shiny.”
Becky pats her mother’s head. “It’s okay, Mommy. You can be shiny too if you use conditioner.”
Jet wails louder.
“And now,” the announcer yells, “Let’s hear it for Nash McCoy.”
Nash trots his horse out with lazy confidence, tips his hat at the crowd, and immediately receives seventeen marriage proposals from the teenage girls in the top row.
He competes in steer wrestling. Aka voluntarily leaping off a moving horse to grab a running steer by the horns and slam it to the ground.
“People do this forfun,” Charlotte murmurs. “Humanity is doomed.”
The gate opens.
Nash flies.
No, really, he launches off his horse as a human missile, grabs the steer, and wrestles it into the dirt within seconds. Dust explodes around them. Becky screams happily again. Half the town stands up and hollers.
Jet wipes her eyes. “The McCoy genes should be illegal.”
I open my mouth to respond, but don’t get a chance.
“Next up, Boone McCoy.”
And the crowd reacts as if someone just yelled ‘free beer.’
Because Boone is Buckhorn royalty.
Jet elbows me. “Get ready. This one’s the human freight train.”
Boone rides out on a massive sorrel gelding, and the horse’s muscles ripple like it’s been carved from anger and oats. Boone waves lazily, charming half the audience into immediate pregnancy.
“What does Boone compete in again?” Charlotte asks.
“Everything terrifying,” Jet replies.
Today, it’s tie-down roping.
The calf bursts from the chute. Boone hurls his rope with surgical precision, dismounts mid-slide, and closes the distance so fast my brain files a complaint.
He flips the calf, ties three legs, and throws his hands up.
The buzzer dings.
The crowd detonates.
“Oh wow,” Charlotte shrieks. “Is he part machine?”
Boone tips his hat. A gaggle of older ladies in the front row swoons. One fanfare of confetti might as well go off.
“That was… ridiculous,” I breathe.
Jet pats my knee. “The McCoys don’t do things normally. They do them dramatically. It’s genetic.”
But then the announcer says the name I’ve been pretending not to wait for.
“And now, Team Roping. Clay and Dallas McCoy.”
