Page 82 of The Cowboy Who Worked Late

“I’m really proud of you, Henry.”

He looked down at her, all of his joviality still there, but somehow a sense of sobriety fell over him too. “Thank you, Angel. I did work real hard for that.”

“Hey, there he is!” his daddy yelled, and the Marshalls descended upon them. Angel didn’t mind because they were so open and so warm. Chelsea chatted with her daddy while Henry introduced Angel around to his siblings one more time.

“All right, all right,” Daddy said. “Let’s take the pictures and go.” He held two phones in his hand and said, “You guys get all together. Everyone together. Then, Henry, we can take you with your momma and daddy and your brothers and sisters and maybe just you and Angel too.”

And that was when Angel knew that Daddy had accepted her relationship with Henry.

And if he had, surely the other cowboys at Lone Star would too.

And perhaps it was time for Angel to accept it—and take it out of the shadows.

Chapter Twenty-Seven

Lincoln Glover had had enough of rain, cattle, ranching, and mud. This last week of May had really found Mother Nature angry. In the Texas Panhandle, she’d blown winds that had disrupted their planting, and then she’d sent rain that had washed everything away.

Since Uncle Ward employed rotational ranching and they moved their cattle, turkeys, sheep, chickens, and pigs around from pasture to pasture, something always needed to be done. Seven days a week.

They’d moved the main herd up into the hills already, but Uncle Cactus had reserved some cows and kept them on the ranch, so that he could watch them for medical reasons before he turned them loose into the wilds. He was also training some new cattle dogs, and he needed cattle to do that.

The sky thundered overhead, and Link tipped his head back and said, “Really, Lord?” His clothes bore burrs, seeds, random vegetational debris, and mud. The only good thing he could say was that he didn’t have burrowing owls at Shiloh Ridge this year. He and Dawson had built man-made nests for them at the top of the hill just outside of the Rhinehart Ranch property, and the owls had settled there instead of on either one of their ranches.

Link just wanted to go home, and he thought about Misty and what she might be doing that afternoon. She worked at an interior design firm and helped maintain the integrity of historical places. He wasn’t sure if she had a client that day or if she’d be home, but no matter what, he wanted to order dinner, shower away everything that had happened this week, and lay with his wife in his arms as they watched something on TV.

The problem was, he still had a couple of hours of work ahead of him, and that lazy evening with just him and Misty felt so far away. He got the last of the sheep through the gate and closed it, tying it off so nothing would come back out and nothing new could go in. He reached down and patted his horse’s neck because he wasn’t the only one out here putting in long hours in bad weather.

“Let’s go take a break,” he said. “Get a snack and some water.” He headed back to the stable, which took a good twenty minutes, and he didn’t make it before the sky opened, and rain began to fall.

“Of course,” he muttered, hunching down into his jacket, though it wasn’t cold, and stuffing his cowboy hat on as low as it would go to try to protect his face, neck, and shoulders. He and Morning Sky arrived back at the stable, and it took him another half hour to get his horse cleaned up enough to put in her stall.

He could take out another horse to finish moving the turkeys into the field that the sheep had just vacated. After that, he needed to go through some inventory in the equipment shed, and then he needed to check with his momma on the status of a couple of their planters that she had been working on.

Momma had started teaching Sunnie how to be a mechanic just the way she’d taught Sunnie to be a chef in the kitchen. Sunnie was real good with her hands, and she liked little parts and details and things coming together.

All the kids had one more week of school, and then they’d be working around the ranch for the summer. Daddy usually found a ton of projects that needed to be done that kids’ hands could do—anyone twelve and older. But this year, that was Link’s job.

Link was slowly and steadily taking over everything that Daddy usually did. He had to sit down with his father and make a list of all the things that kids could do. They could pull chicken wire tight, and the older kids could use a staple gun to put it in place.

Uncle Cactus had work to be done in his barn, and all the groundskeeping needed to be done. All the kids in Link’s family could use lawn mowers, weed eaters, and rakes. They tended to the vegetable gardens all summer, and they’d clean True Blue.

Rock especially loved being with the horses, and he worked with Uncle Cactus in their care, feeding, training, and general happiness. Lincoln had started putting together projects weeks ago, and he’d meet with everyone next week once school got out. They’d planned a few days on a vacation schedule, where they would take the kids down to the pool and to play in the river and give them a little bit of summer before they had to start working.

And of course, they had plenty of time to wade in the ponds, go fishing, ride bikes, fly kites, and do all the things kids did in the summer, around the little chores that Link would give them. They weren’t full-time cowboys like him. They weren’t the junior foreman.

Sometimes the weight of what Link did pulled at him, especially the thought of having to do it his whole life and especially having to be Bear Glover one day. He reminded himself that he had a dozen aunts and uncles and three times that many cousins. He would never be alone at Shiloh Ridge unless he wanted to be.

He had just finished washing his hands when Uncle Ward came in and said, “There you are. I’ve been texting you.”

“Yeah, well, I’ve been out on the northwest side,” Link said darkly. “Not much service down there.”

“We’re calling it for today,” Uncle Ward said. “Where did you get?”

“I just moved the sheep into field four,” Link said. “The turkeys still need to be moved, and then the chickens gotta be let out.”

“We’re gonna do it later,” Uncle Ward said. “There’s word of some tornado activity kicking up.”

Link heard the alarm in Uncle Ward’s voice. “Really? Have they put out a warning?” He immediately thought of Misty and where she might be. Was she down in town? If the tornado siren went off, would she be able to make it to the ranch? Did he even want her to? If not, where would she shelter?

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