Rodeo Nights Read Online Free Page A

noise that resembled disapproval, but wasn’t that at all. “Wish you were back under better circumstances.”
    “Yeah.” Walker let out a breath.
    “Jeff...?”
    “Doctors say it takes a while to know what’s what with a stroke. But he’s doing better, coming along a bit every day. They’re talking about sending him to Billings for rehabilitation. Might wait some because they’re short-staffed up there, but that’s not all bad since there’s more folks to spell Mary here than in Billings.”
    “But?”
    Walker felt his frown deepening. No wonder Gulch had spotted the “but.”
    “He isn’t talking yet. When Tom first called, I got ahold of a doctor on the rodeo committee where I was at and started asking questions. Almost every answer started with ‘it depends,’ but one thing he did say was that if somebody who’s had a stroke isn’t talking some, least making sounds the first week or so, chances are they’ll never talk.”
    “You worrying about it won’t change what’s going to happen, Walker. Won’t change it anymore than drinking ever changed what’s already happened. I sure know that.”
    Without answering, Walker looked at the sky, still blue and cloudless even as the sun withdrew its warmth.
    When he’d met Gulch, the nickname was so long established most people had forgotten it originated when Miller went off the bottle—because he’d gone dry. But one morning in Pendleton, Oregon, eighteen months after Kalli left, Walker had woken to a thundering hangover and a dim memory of a spectacularly careless ride on a bull named Killjoy. He’d found Gulch Miller sitting in his camper.
    Gulch hadn’t done any more than talk and pour coffee, but Walker knew what it had cost the little man to tell about the auto accident years before that had killed his wife and baby daughter and left him, at twenty-two, healthy enough to rodeo and sick enough at heart to nearly drink himself to death.
    “And that’s what you’re in danger of doing, Walker,” he’d said that rainy morning. “But you’re the impatient sort. Not waiting for booze to do it from inside. You’re trying to get stomped to death first. I’ll give you this, you’re getting some hellacious rides out of it, good enough to put you in the Finals come December. But chances are, you won’t live to ride in them. Is that what you want?”
    No, that wasn’t what he wanted. And in time, he’d accepted that no matter how much he drank, it wouldn’t blot out the fact that he couldn’t have what he did want—Kalli.
    “She looks good, doesn’t she?” Gulch’s matter-of-fact tone didn’t hide the underlying empathy. Clearly, his thoughts had followed a similar path to Walker’s.
    “Yeah, she does.”
    “‘Course, I saw her year before last when she was visiting Jeff and Mary....”
    Like all her visits, it had been arranged for when Walker had let his aunt and uncle know he’d be rodeoing in some other part of the country. Not that anyone had acknowledged that. Nobody ever mentioned Kalli to him, except that once, when his mother had died two years after Kalli left, and Mary had given him the carefully written note. He’d recognized the handwriting. He’d burned it that night.
    “So I’d seen her since she became a big New York City executive. Even discounting that Jeff and Mary were bragging on her, she’s doing mighty well for herself. ‘Course, she was always smart as a whip.”
    As he had with Tom, Walker sensed an underlying concern from Gulch:
We know how you fell apart last time. We were there to pick up the pieces. Don’t leave yourself open for a second time. The pieces might be too small.
    And they were right.
    Gulch went on recounting Kalli’s accomplishments, but Walker only half took it in. Spectators filed in, some pausing on the catwalk to the Buzzards’ Roost to ooh and aah over the livestock penned below. To his right, gruff chatter and occasional raucous laughter punctuated the arrival of cowboys,