Page 40 of Chains and Vows

I spot Cash over by the round pen—which must be the water cooler around here, because every time I look that direction there's men gatherin', talkin' low, gesturin' at something I can't see.

He's standin' with a couple hands, hat on, arms crossed, and even from here I can read the posture. This is a man who knows exactly what he owns and exactly what he's responsible for and he doesn’t carry either of those things like a burden.

He carries 'em like a fuckin' religion.

He sees me. And again, just like yesterday, he holds up one pointed finger. One more minute.

I acknowledge it with a tilt of my chin and stay where I am.

I light a smoke and wait, watchin' the happenin's.

Will I ever have a place here?

Will I ever have a job to do at dawn like Cash and his men?

Or will I be Wyatt with a different face?

Is that half-wild filly mine now?

I don't know.

The future doesn't like a day planner, but I add her feral ass to my vision board just the same.

I'm just finishin' my smoke when Cash comes over. I drop the butt into the industrial ashtray they keep out here for the hands—a rusted steel can bolted to a post, half-full of other men's leavin’s—and I straighten up.

He nods at me. "You ready?"

"As I'll ever be."

"Let's go."

And that's the whole conversation. That's Cash. No ceremony, no preamble, no speech about what we're about to do or why. Just two words and he's already walkin' toward his truck like the decision got made three days ago and I'm just now catchin' up.

Which, I mean. Fair enough.

I fall in beside him.

We get in.

This day is me, standin' in place. Turnin' in a circle and pointin' myself in a particular direction, and the direction I'm pointin' is southeast, and southeast from here means Miles City, Montana, about an hour and a half of flat broken prairie between me and whatever comes next.

County seat of Custer County. Population eight thousand somethin'. Just north of the fancy school where Mercy's at.

And represented in the Montana state senate by one Senator White.

Father of today's target. The whole reason I'm sittin' in Cash Ashby's truck at dawn.

Marcus White Jr.

CHAPTER 10

Again, I wake up late in the morning. The sounds of the ranch, the slant of the sunlight. It's all I need to know the time.

Two days in a row is a pattern, Savannah Rose.

My mother's voice is so strong in my head this morning that it actually startles me upright.

I sit there for a moment, breathin', blinkin’ at the pale pine ceiling of my room, and I can feel her disappointment the way you feel a change in barometric pressure before a storm rolls in off the peaks.