Herd Instinct

The last hour of a night shift is the worst hour of any job, and I've got proof. It was four in the morning, the east fence line, and I'd been riding the perimeter of the Hollis ranch in a truck older than me. Tim, twenty-nine, three years on this job, and the most exciting thing that ever happened on that fence was a coyote with a limp.

I came back to the yard expecting an empty parking spot and a cold bunk. Instead there was a figure sitting in the cab of my truck with her boots up on the dash.

I knew the boots before I knew the face. Kerri. Twenty-eight, works the counter at the feed store, been mine for three years. We met at the rodeo in Burns, me twenty-six and her twenty-five and both of us broke, and I'd say it was love at first sight except mostly it was dehydration and free beer. Still counted.

"You're supposed to be home asleep," I said, leaning in the driver's window. "Like a normal person."

"Got off early. Store's slow in summer." She scooted over to the passenger side so I could climb in. "Also, something happened today and I didn't want to tell it over the phone."

"That sounds ominous."

"It's sorta ominous." She pulled her cap down lower, which is what she does when she's deciding how to say something. "You know Bridgette Mercer? Out past the creek line, the big place with the red barn."

"I know the barn. I've never met the woman."

"Well, I have. Three times this month, actually."

I looked at her. She's from eastern Oregon and she does not get flustered, but she was working at it. "Three times."

"She came into the store. Bought fence posts, stayed to talk. She's got a thing going, Tim, and she wants us in it."

"A thing."

"Her ex-husband, Dale, ran cattle off her place for years before the divorce. She's pretty sure some of her missing stock ended up mixed in with ours. Or ours ended up with hers, honestly, it goes both ways out here. She's offering a share of the recovery money if we can identify the animals and say so on the record. Brand inspection, the whole deal."

"And she told you this at the feed store."

"First time. The other two times were follow-ups." Kerri turned to face me. "She wants to walk us both through the map tonight. Seven o'clock. She said the money deal is yours either way, but you're the one who can do the identifying, so she'd like you there."

I sat with that. The Hollis ranch is struggling; everyone knows it, Kyle Hollis knows it most. A share of recovery money on stolen cattle could be the difference between a bad winter and a worse one. "What's the catch?"

"She's rich, Tim. Rich people don't really have catches, they have terms. But she was..." Kerri paused, hunting for the word. "Friendly. Friendlier than the situation called for. She asked if we were getting married yet. She asked about you twice."

"Twice."

"Don't make a face at me. I noticed it too." She shrugged. "Money's money. Seven o'clock. Wear the shirt I like."

* * *

I'd swapped my shift with Kyle to make it. The Mercer place is the kind of spread that makes ours look like a garden plot. New pipe fencing, a windmill that actually turns, and the barn she'd renovated into what she calls guest quarters, which is a fancy way of saying a barn with a kitchen and a lot of glass in the roof. The pavilion by the pond had string lights in it, which is not what you string up for a cattle negotiation.

Kerri knocked. Bridgette opened the door herself, and I understood right away why Kerri had been careful with her word choice. Forty-two, dark hair going gray at the temples and not apologizing for it, jeans and a silk blouse, the kind of woman who's decided what she looks like and made peace with it years ago.

"You must be Tim." She put out her hand and held mine maybe a second longer than a handshake needs. "Kerri's told me a lot. Almost all of it good."

"Only almost," I said.

Inside, the barn had been gutted and redone, timber floors and leather furniture, and a man about forty-five was at the counter mixing drinks. "That's Scott," Bridgette said. "My foreman. Fifteen years he's put up with me, which is longer than Dale managed."

"Longer than Dale deserved," Scott said, not looking up. "Beer, whiskey, or the pink thing with mint?"

"The pink thing," Kerri said immediately, and Scott smiled like that was the right answer.

Bridgette spread a map out on a table and got down to business first, which I appreciated. Her brand, a quarter-circle over an M, showing up in places it shouldn't. Dale's operation two counties over, buying stock at auction with paperwork that never quite added up. "The county inspector will impound anything we can prove. Recovery value runs to the money side of ten thousand. I'm offering you thirty percent for the identification work. Both of you."

"That's generous," I said.

"It's efficient. I've seen you riding that fence line from my place, Tim. I know exactly how thorough you are." Her eyes stayed on me one beat past comfortable, and then she looked back at the map like nothing happened. "The mixed stock runs the west pasture. I'll take you through it tomorrow at first light."

Scott came over with the drinks and handed them out. He's a big man, gray coming into his beard, the kind of calm that comes from having seen every stupid thing a ranch can produce. He sat down across from Kerri and asked her about the feed store, and then about the rodeo, and he actually listened to the answers, which is rarer than it should be.

Somewhere in there the meeting stopped being a meeting. Bridgette refilled my whiskey herself, sitting down next to me instead of across from me, and the map got rolled up and pushed aside. She asked how long Kerri and I had been together, and whether we'd ever thought about leaving this country, and what I did before night work. Kerri was laughing at something Scott said at the other end of the table.

"You know," Bridgette said, quiet enough that it was just for me, "when I first saw you, at the feed store, through the window, I told Kerri she'd done well."

"We've done okay."

"That's not what I mean and you know it." She touched my arm, just her fingertips, right where the sleeve rolled up. She left them there while she said the next thing. "This deal is real. The money is real. I want that understood before anything else gets said in this barn tonight."

"Understood," I said. "Money's settled. Separate subject."

"Good. That's exactly the way I'd want you to say it." She took her hand off my arm and picked up her own glass, and I noticed Kerri had gone quiet across the room and was watching us, not upset, just watching. Scott got up and put something on the small stereo by the kitchen, something slow and old.

Bridgette stood and stretched, like the meeting part of the evening was officially over. "Kerri, come look at the pond with me. It's prettier in the dark and I want to show you the lights." Then, to me: "Scott will fix you another drink. Take your time."

Kerri looked at me on her way out the door, and raised her eyebrows in a way that meant either help or come find us later, and I honestly couldn't tell which. The door shut behind the two of them.

Scott poured me two fingers without asking. "First time out here?" he said.

"First time inside."

"Figured." He leaned against the counter and studied me in a friendly way. "Bridgette's had a plan for a long time. The cattle thing's real, don't get me wrong. But it's not all of it. You and Kerri are going to want to talk before the night's over. That's free advice."

"Advice on what, exactly?"

He grinned into his own glass. "On what kind of evening this is turning into. She'll explain the rest herself. She always does."

The pond part didn't take long. I gave it ten minutes with Scott, who talked about irrigation like it was a religion, and then I took my glass outside and walked down toward the string lights. The air had cooled off the way it does in eastern Oregon in July, dry and clean, and the pond was black glass with a line of little bulbs floating over it.

Kerri and Bridgette were sitting on the bench under the pavilion, and they weren't talking. Kerri had her cap in her hands, turning it over, which is what she does when she's working up to something. I've watched her do it at the feed store when a customer wants a discount she can't give. I sat down on her other side and waited.

"I've been talking to her three times this month at the feed store," Kerri said. "Not just for the cattle stuff. Well, partly for that."

"And partly?" I said.

"Partly because I needed to say some things to somebody who isn't you, so that I could figure out how to say them to you." She put the cap on her knee. "Tim, we've been running on idle for a while. You feel it too. Don't pretend you don't."

I did feel it. Three years together, since the rodeo in Burns when I was twenty-six and she was twenty-five, both broke, and somewhere in there we'd gotten comfortable the way a fence gets comfortable. Still standing. Not doing much.

"I feel it," I said.

"I love you. That's not the part I was scared to say." She turned on the bench to face me. "The part I was scared to say is that I want more out of tonight than a deal about cattle. And I want it with you. Not instead of you. With you."

Then she kissed me, right there in front of Bridgette and the pond and God and everybody, and it was not a peck. It was the kiss from our first year, the one I'd been quietly