The Sons of Grady Rourke by Douglas Savage

dollars, please.”
    â€œHow much for the coffee?”
    â€œOn the house,” Tunstall answered for Billy. “It was nice talking with you, Patrick. I hope things work out with your brother.” The Englishman excused himself, stood up, and walked into Shield’s back office.
    Patrick reached into his pocket and laid four silver dollars on the table. Billy picked them up and went to the counter. Patrick followed him and picked up a canvas sack heavy with his purchases. The sack was only two-thirds full so it would dangle from the saddle’s cantle.
    Outside, the sun was well up and seemed to stop dead in the purple sky to the south. It was noon and Patrick regretted having already burned up half of the day. He walked to the paddock on the side of the store and waited for his horse to come over. Tunstall’s blind horse followed the swishing tail. Saddling quickly, Patrick heaved the sack across the back of his saddle. The saddle was a cattleman’s saddle designed for roping and cutting John Chisum’s cattle: long toward the rear and secured by two belly cinches.
    Patrick rode at an easy walk toward the west. The sun was shoulder high to his left. He pulled his fur collar up high on his neck to keep the cold breeze out of his thick flannel shirt.
    He glanced right as he walked his mount past the Wortley. Patrick did not see Sean. But Melissa Bryant stood ankle-keep in old and dirty snow just outside the door. Still in her short sleeves, she wrapped her arms across her full chest to keep warm. The brilliant sun was in her eyes, squinted nearly closed. Her long black hair shined against the drab adobe wall behind her.
    Patrick looked down and kept going. When his eyes half hidden by his wide hat met the woman’s blue eyes, he nodded and touched his floppy brim with his gloved hand.
    The woman blinked and turned quickly, closing the door behind her.

Chapter Four

    B Y M ONDAY , J ANUARY 28 TH , 1878, P ATRICK R OURKE HAD stayed away from Lincoln for six days. During that time, he continued to work at making the ranch house livable. It seemed to him that he cleaned out enough cobwebs to knit a sweater. Mucking out the barn felt like working in a mine. The frozen piles of manure were like shoveling rocks. With the fences down, the cattle with mutilated ears strolled the brown and yellow snow up to the front door as if they were the real tenants of Grady Rourke’s home. When mornings came cold and bright under a purple sky, dozens of them huddled to stay warm on the front porch. Patrick wondered if the weight of their thin bodies had shattered the front window—through which the night wind still blew hard against the faded curtain nailed across the sill and sash.
    By Monday, six days had passed since the woman who had no voice had walked behind Patrick’s chair in the cantina. He had felt or had imagined that he felt the coarse linen of her skirt just touch the back of his neck. She did not walk through his dreams until the third night.
    Because of the woman, Patrick thought over hot coffee in a tin cup, because of the woman the cattle dozed this morning on his front porch. Since his third morning in his father's bed, each day he awoke from dreaming of Melissa Bryant. Instead of stepping out of his warm bedroll onto the ice-cold hardwood floor the instant his eyes opened, he lay there with his hands folded under his head and thought of Melissa. Each morning, he wasted an hour trying to conjure every detail of his dream in his mind. Inhaling sleepily, he would imagine that he had her scent on his beard, instead of the stench of the night’s cow droppings steaming on the front porch and seeping through the billowing curtain.
    The morning hours spent remembering her were hours that would have been better spent on mending fences and patching the roof. But instead of stoking the fire in the hearth and baking a sourdough biscuit to go with his morning coffee, Patrick sat thinking about