Page 105 of Dusty Spur Ranch Cowboys

By the time the gelding starts looking more like himself, the ranch has settled into the sort of silence that usually follows bad news.

Red heads for the barn with Emmett to check every feed barrel on the property, Arizona disappears toward the house to keep Sadie occupied, and I help Wyatt carry his kit back to the truck.

He shuts the tailgate before looking at me. “You alright?”

I shrug. “Never better.”

He gives me the same look he’s been giving me since we were teenagers and I tried convincing him I broke my wrist wrestling a fence instead of falling out of a tree. “That good, huh?”

I sigh. “Was I that obvious?”

“You’ve been cracking jokes all morning.”

“That’s hardly suspicious.”

“It is when none of them are funny.”

I clutch my chest. “You wound me.”

“I’ve been trying to figure out what happened to your standards.”

I smirk. “They’ve always been low.”

“They’ve never been this low.”

“I hate how well you know me.” I look back toward the barn where Red and Emmett have disappeared. “I keep thinking if I can make everybody laugh, maybe things won’t feel quite so bad.”

Wyatt follows my gaze. “Maybe.”

I scratch the back of my neck. “I don’t feel like I’m helping.”

“You showed up.”

“That doesn’t sound like much.”

“It is when people know you’ll keep showing up.”

I blow out a breath. “You’re annoyingly good at this.”

He grins as he climbs into the truck. “I’m two years older. That’s where wisdom comes from.”

“That’s funny,” I say, stepping away from the door. “I always thought it was the receding hairline.”

He laughs, shakes his head, and starts the engine. “I’ll check on him again this evening.”

“You’ll mostly be checking on me.”

“I know.”

He pulls through the gates, leaving me standing in the yard with the smell of horses and fresh hay hanging around the barns.

I head back toward the house because Wyatt’s right. I don’t have to fix everybody, I just have to keep showing up.

Red’s already put people to work. Ranch hands split into pairs and fan out toward the barns while Emmett starts checking feed bins with a couple of the younger guys.

Arizona stays close to Sadie, answering the same worried questions over and over while Red works his way through the tack room with the focus of a man determined to find answers if he tears the whole place apart doing it.

Nobody’s talking much anymore.