Page 45 of The Cowboy Who Worked Late

Most of his prayers stemmed from his heart, murmured through his mind, or got uttered quickly in a state of emergency. They weren’t heartfelt, out-loud conversations with God, hardly ever.

“Dear Lord,” he said. “Help me to know how to pray.” He figured he might as well start there. His momma and daddy had taught him as a little kid, but again, Henry had been out of practice for a while. Everything in the room seemed to come to a standstill, and Henry felt the presence of the Lord more powerfully in that moment than he ever had in his life.

“I’m really grateful for a good weekend,” he said. “Really grateful for good parents and a momma who takes care of me and all those around me by sending food. I’m grateful Angel and I had a chance to get away, and I’m real grateful that something started there. I don’t know how to navigate this ground. I’m going to need a lot of help. I don’t really want it to be a secret, but I can understand why it needs to be for now.”

He rolled his neck from side to side, feeling it pull in an almost uncomfortable way. “To be honest, Lord, this thing feels a little bit forbidden.” He sighed, almost angry with himself. “Fine, it feels exciting too. Okay? I’m excited about it. I like this woman. I think she likes me. I feel more settled now. I don’t feel as wild and as young. And yeah, it’s exciting to be in a secret relationship that no one else knows about.”

He felt himself settle out of that wildness he’d just spoken of. “But I don’t want to be a liar. I want to work hard. I want to do good. I want my life and my work to matter. So if there’s anything that I need to do, if there are different things I need to say or different paths I need to go down or something I need to study, I ask for Thy help in guiding and directing me to those things.”

Henry ran out of words, something that rarely happened to him. So he closed simply with, “Bless my momma and daddy. Bless Paul, John, and Rich. Bless everyone here at Lone Star. Amen.”

There was no resounding “Amen” to come behind it from the congregation or his family at mealtime. Henry held very stilland tried to listen for choirs of angels who would add their seal of approval to his prayer. He didn’t hear them so much as he felt them, especially in the presence of his granddaddy, who had passed away more than fifteen years ago. He didn’t carry the Ackerman name, but hewasan Ackerman, and he wanted to do good. He wanted to make his momma and daddy proud, and his grandma and grandpa proud, and Three Rivers proud.

Henry finally climbed into bed, snapped off the light, where he finally got to relive his amazing outdoor kiss with Angel as he drifted off to sleep.

The following day, Henry paced in front of his standing desk, his phone pressed to his ear. “Yeah, all right, Charles,” he said. “I understand.”

“I know it’s not what you want to hear,” Charles said.

“No,” Henry said. “It’s not, but I understand. I get the limitations of things. It’s not like it’s your fault. I’m just a little frustrated.”

And frustrated he was. It streamed through him like white river rapids racing down a hill toward their final destination of a waterfall, where he would be drowned at the bottom. “Thank you for your time, Charles. If you think of anything or anyone else I can talk to, give me a call.”

“Yes, sir,” Charles said. “Always good to talk to you, Henry.”

His frustration eased a little bit, and he said, “You too, Charles. Have a good day.” The call ended, and Henry used his willpower to keep from throwing his phone against his desk and then stomping away like an angry badger.

Instead, he gently set his phone on his desk, sighed, and took his head in his hands, running them through his hair as he looked down at the jumble of notes on his desk.

None of it had to do with a horse that needed to be shod. All of it had to do with 3D printing and the limitations they had with the materials they could use. It turned out some of the lighter metals that he wanted to try simply broke under 3D printing. There weren’t printers advanced enough to do that, and the layering techniques that the metal had to go through with blacksmithing caused the shoes to be brittle and hard. They still wouldn’t work for Gilligan, and Henry felt like he was back to square one, trying to shoe horses in the Dark Ages.

“Shoes would only last five days,” he muttered to himself, circling the big number five he’d scrawled on the notebook in front of him. There was no way he could take a proposal to Bard and Angel about having to get 3D printed horseshoes every five days.

It would take that long just to cut them all and weld them all together. So they would need a full-time person making shoes just for Gilligan, and that so wasn’t reasonable or feasible.

“No way,” he muttered again, and he slammed closed the folder of his notes. Various pages stuck out the sides in a jumbled mess, and he carefully tucked them all in and arranged them so they were all standing up straight like soldiers.

He put the folder on the shelf under his desk and looked at the brown one there. That meant he had a horse to work on. He always had plenty of work to do around the ranch, but part of their commitment to excellence was to find a way for every horse to be cared for individually, to have their personal needs met, and for their owners to know that Lone Star was the only place that was going to provide the quality service that their horse deserved. And that included shoes for Gilligan.

Failure streamed through Henry now as strongly as the frustration had just a moment ago. In times like these, he wanted to call his momma and be reassured. Talk to his daddy about what he should do next. So Henry picked up his phone, picked up his head, and tried to pick up his spirits as he texted his father.

Need some advice, he said.Working with a horse named Gilligan, and I can’t find a pair of shoes that he likes. He spelled out the trouble the horse had with his back frog and how he needed something really light and really soft. He sent that text and quickly followed up with,I’ve been exploring 3D-printing options and nothing that I’ve found so far will work. Do you have any contacts or anyone I can talk to about shoes for a horse like Gilligan? Let me know.

Henry navigated over to his text thread with Bard as he told him that he would like to set up an appointment sometime this week. It was already Wednesday. He started a new text thread with both Angel and Bard in it, and said,I’ve hit a roadblock with the 3D printing for shoes for Gilligan, so I don’t need to meet with you quite yet. I’m still working on some possibilities and exploring some other options. Let me know if you want me to bring in what I’ve got, but it’s not much. It’s not a solution that we can do, and I don’t have another option for Gilligan at this time.

Henry hated sending that text, but he did it anyway because it was his job. Then he picked up the two folders he had to work on that afternoon, and he headed out of the stable, where the desks were, to get his next horse. That horse also deserved excellent care, and he could hold secrets just as well as Gilligan or any other horse.

So Henry set aside his cares and troubles over the 3D printing, and the fact that he and Angel had no plans to meet up again that day or the next day or ever again, and he focused all ofhis attention on making sure that Cocoa-Mocha felt like the king of all equines.

When he finished, he texted Angel privately to find out if he could see her that night, and if they could have another clandestine meeting somewhere here at Lone Star.

Then he prayed she’d say yes, because he really needed something to look forward to.

Chapter Fourteen

JJ Walker trudged up the stairs, the backpack on his back feeling heavier than it had when he left that morning, though he had turned in a couple of the library books he’d borrowed for his midterm. He really wished this building had an elevator, but it didn’t. Sometimes, JJ really wished he hadn’t decided to come to Amarillo State College at all. At the same time, his life had been completely stagnant at Seven Sons Ranch, which his father co-owned and still worked eighty hours a week.

JJ was named after his dad. The two J’s stood for Jeremiah Jonah, and he felt like he had a lot to live up to. He did. The Walker name really meant something, and the seven brothers that comprised the family, along with their wives and all their kids, had taught JJ that. One of his uncles, Uncle Tripp, had adopted his wife’s son, Oliver, and JJ grew up hearing, “Walkers are winners. The Walker name means something, son,” from everyone in his family—all the men, Grandma and Grandpa too.

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