Free Bull Head by John Vigna Page A

next to him.
    He glanced to where his brother Harold was snoring, burrowed deeper into his bag, and drew it over his head to cover his ears. The snores rattled through the room, caught deep in Harold’s throat before they whistled out. Maurice slipped out of bed, pulled on his overalls, the binder twine in loops over the bulk of his flannel shirt and wool sweater. The floorboards creaked beneath his boots. He examined the door. Still too drafty. Needed more deer hair and moss to chink the cracks. He pushed open the door and closed it quietly behind him, stopped the shrivelled beaver’s tail from swinging backand forth, scratching the wood like a coarse pendulum.
    The magpies were edgy, but it was too dark for them to move from the cottonwoods. Here and there, a nervous peep. An iron-grey sky in the east where the stars were dulling. A coyote loped in the distance, glanced over its shoulder, cut south across the summer pasture. About an hour ’til sun-up. Chilled air crawled down from Bull Head Mountain, chased Coal Creek, rose out of the coulee, and flowed over the stubbled bunch grass. Starlight and sagebrush on his tongue. He could taste winter coming on.
    His horse cropped grass; mist streamed from her nose as she tossed her tail. She was sooty black with a silver mane. A good find some years ago, an auction horse, his favourite, strong working stock that never quit or let him down. A magpie sat on her back; the muscles on her withers stuttered under its feet like tightly coiled ropes.
    Lately, she didn’t move right. The bump on her foreleg, just below the knee, had grown larger. She shifted her weight from left to right. He knew she would rest a while longer, wait for the stars to fade as the sun rose. She blinked at him, eyes like gems. A narrow white stripe on her nose. Not a smart horse, nor a great horse. Just a horse that got the job done. She needed a rest and a good fattening before the winter.
    He walked past her, past the Delco generator, toward the pickup truck.

    Fred ran a tavern in town and had personally delivered the used truck and generator a few days ago. Maurice and Harold had gone to high school with Fred’s father, Orin, but dropped out towork the ranch after their own father died. The brothers knew their ideas didn’t cotton with town. That was over sixty-five years ago. Now that Maurice and Harold were on the downward slope tumbling toward eighty, Fred kept a promise to his father to update them on their business transactions, but really, Maurice knew he welcomed any excuse to check up on them.
    â€œShe’s a beauty.” Fred kicked his truck door shut. “And she’s all yours.”
    Fred handed Maurice a bank draft for $67,500.47 and a bag of Oreo cookies to celebrate their latest run at the cattle auction.
    Maurice turned away, took a deep breath, and examined the cheque carefully. He held it up in the sunlight, squinting before he stuffed it in his overalls and gave his brother the cookies. Harold tore open the package, split one in half, and scraped the cream off each piece with his front teeth. Maurice shuddered at the sound and eyed the truck. Neither of them had driven a vehicle other than their tractor. Their ranch was blessed with streams and wooded groves and some of the valley’s best grass for livestock; horses got them everywhere they needed to go.
    â€œBest if you take her back with you.” Harold’s teeth were blackened with bits of cookie. “If it’s got tits or wheels, she’ll give us trouble. No use for her here.”
    Maurice booted the ground, stole peeks at himself in the reflection from the truck’s window. White wisps of hair poked out from beneath his baseball cap, faded brown with stitching across the front that read Never Trust a Man Who Doesn’t Drink , an ironic gift from Fred since Maurice never touched the stuff. Now that they had a generator, costs would shoot up. No telling how high if they used