Page 2 of Down in Flames
The buckles were big at local rodeos, but the prizes were small. Most riders were happy just to cover gas and time off work. Out here, it was every man for himself. The only people a rider had in his corner were buddies willing to lend a hand.
But Kade Keller was a ghost, and ghosts didn’t have friends.
“Got anyone pulling for you today, Keller?” Hank Pruitt asked around a fat lip of Skoal.
“Naw.” West bit his glove strap between his teeth and pulled it tight. The tang of leather oil stamped his tongue. “Want to lend a hand? There’s a beer in it for you.”
Hank squinted at him through the stringy bits of hair that had come untucked from his Stetson. “A’ight. I gotcha,” he said, and then added with a hint of mischief, “You need all the help you can get, son.”
The sun was gliding low and heavy behind the mountains before the rodeo started. Barrel racers went first, their shadows stretching like mythic, flying beasts across the arena. In most events, rider and horse worked together as a team, and their trust and partnership showed in everything they did.
Not so with broncs. They didn’t have the same glamorous reputation as bulls, but they were just as dangerous even without horns. Dislocated shoulders and broken bones were just rites of passage in bronc-busting, and neck braces were standard gear in every toolkit for a reason. Bucking horses were finished as soon as they shook a cowboy free, like dislodging a gnat. After that, all they wanted was to take a victory lap and gloat a little bit. But that didn’t mean much to the men they ripped through on the ground.
A temperamental mare named Death Rose waited for him in the chute. She was a real beauty, combed and curried until her sorrel coat gleamed beneath the arena lights, but there was a fierce look in her eyes.
“Hey, gorgeous,” West murmured, stroking the forelock that curled over her forehead.
“Hurry it up, Keller,” Hank said, spitting in the dirt and kicking some dust on it with the tip of his boot. “We’re not here to make friends with ‘em.”
“You’ve got a real way with the ladies, Hank,” West teased. He’d learned from his buddy Tucker Grace to never take a horse for granted. They were so much more than simple animals. Stupid and sentimental as it was, West liked to think introducing himself made a difference.
“I do fine with the two-legged kind,” Hank said dryly.
West laughed and slung a leg over her bare back. Nothing connected them except the simple rigging that stretched across her withers. She snorted and whinnied, jittering in place and side-stepping to slam his thigh into a post. West murmured to her in a gentle voice, jamming his hand beneath the wooden handle until his knuckles popped.
The crowd droned like a swarm of wasps, peppered now and then by the bright trill of a fiddle down on the green. Pickup men loped silently at the edges of the fence. Autumn crisp was moving in fast from the mountains but nervous sweat still rolled down West’s nose and dripped off the tip.
His heart tripped like a snare drum in his chest, alarmingly fast, and he discreetly slid two fingers beneath his glove to check his pulse. Quick, but steady. Nothing a few deep, calming breaths wouldn’t fix.
Hank clapped him hard on the shoulder, but West barely felt it through the thick pad of his rough stock vest.
“Keep it ninety, Keller!” Hank shouted.
West jerked a thumbs-up without looking at him. His neckroll was so stiff he could barely turn his head, but it kept his head from popping clean off on the hardest bucks, so he figured it was worth it.
There was power in the air tonight. It tingled over his skin like a gathering electrical storm, raising the hair on his forearms. Energy twitched through Death Rose, quivering in her haunches as they settled together.
This was his night. He could win. But that wasn’t his reason for riding, so he clenched his jaw and slipped one boot heel just behind the mark out line at the mare’s shoulder. When the stars aligned and he was tempted to just cut loose and show the world what he could really do, the simplest way to sabotage himself was to fail the mark out on the first jump. It was an automatic disqualification, and he kept the trick in his back pocket for nights like this. Nights when he was sure he could throw a rope around a hurricane and ride it all the way to ninety points.
The gate flew open at his nod, and Death Rose leaped into the arena. It was like trying to ride a lightning bolt. She went berserk, jack-knifing like a broken seesaw and snapping his body back and forth hard enough to shake his fillings loose. His father never spoke of his riding days, and he sure as hell hadn’t passed on any of his knowledge, but bronc-busting wasn’t rocket science. It didn’t take killer instinct, no matter how much the tough guys nattered about it. Mostly, it took a lot of balance, a little bit of skill, and enough pigheadedness to keep holding on when a sane person would let go.
West was a master at that.
Every worry and doubt he’d ever had was shaken right out of his head in a matter of seconds, disappearing in a tidal wave of adrenalin. His heart hammered, and his breath ran like a freight train through his lungs.
Funny, how eight seconds could feel like an eternity.
Every muscle in his back and shoulders felt like they were tearing loose at the joints, strained by the sheer force of each buck. The crowd roared, but he ignored them. It wasn’t his name they chanted. Kade Keller was just an alter ego, a figment of his imagination. A man he could never be. But beneath the spotlights of this outdoor arena, riding lightning through clouds of sand, he could pretend.
Death Rose tore across the dirt, taking him with her whether he liked it or not. He knew his form was damn near perfect, and he was already calculating his dismount when the buzzer sounded. That was when the mare whipped around and slammed him into a fence, dragging him across the weathered posts. A rusty nail caught his jeans and tore open his thigh, but he held on. That was when the pickup riders closed in fast, taking her by surprise and startling her into an uncontrolled rear. West held on grimly as they both went almost vertical, but he sensed the instant she hit the tipping point.
They fell together, West spinning like a frisbee off her back and slapping the hard-pack face-first. A shower of colorful sparkles exploded behind his eyes, like the confetti cannons they’d popped at Abigail’s last birthday party, and then the horse landed on top of him. She hit with the power of a mack truck, punching the air from his lungs. Blinding pain ripped through him from shoulder to pelvis.
For a terrifying clutch of seconds, he wasn’t sure he was still alive. Then Death Rose climbed to her feet and angrily shook her coat, galloping to the opposite end in a flash of hooves and dust.
“You okay?” A pickup man dropped low in his saddle, leaning down and thrusting out a helping hand. West clutched him by the wrist and hauled himself painfully to his feet.
Everything ached, but not in the red-hot poker way of broken bones or crushed pelvises. He'd taken most of the damage to his face. His nose was definitely broken. Dust clogged his nostrils, and a bitter, coppery taste flooded his mouth, but he was otherwise miraculously uninjured.