Free Crybaby Ranch by Tina Welling Page A

“Well, I deserve that talk. I used to drink quite a bit.” He watches me a moment. “Friday night was the exception, not the rule. But that kind of talk takes a while to die down in the valley.”
    Especially when you break your own rule. I nod.
    â€œGet rested up from your divorce…. Did you get a divorce?”
    â€œIt’s, um, in the works.”
    Bo gets up and begins to carry away the used dishes. “When it’s over, I think you should give me a whirl.” He grins as if he’s making fun of himself. I laugh and discard my nervousness for good. We got it all out in the open.
    â€œFor now,” he says, rinsing his plate, “let’s walk up Saddlestring Butte.”
    The early-spring forest surrounding Bo’s Crossing Elk Ranch crackles beneath our feet as Bo leads the way up the path after dinner. New grasses poke through last year’s brown flattened weeds.
    Bo points out a warbler’s nest that has fallen during the winter from a narrow-leafed cottonwood. Something about birds’ nests intrigues me. The intentional gathering of supplies, for one. The deliberate downiness of its interior. I am reminded of my connectedness to other living things as I, too, prepare a home. I pack the nest along to place on a shelf beside my books.
    The path leads down near a stream, which exposes mostly dry rocks this early in the season. Spring melt off won’t begin until the nights warm up, according to Bo. The path forks and climbs uphill as it leaves the creek bed.
    â€œTo find my house, follow the trail south. I’ll show you another time.”
    I don’t say so, but I’ve seen his house already. From this slope, higher up behind my cabin, I spotted a good-sized clapboard house, painted gray many years back, one barn and three outbuildings, also a house trailer parked in the drive. Today, we are taking the north trail uphill to his favorite site for watching the sun set or the moon rise.
    I wonder where his cattle graze, and I ask.
    â€œI don’t own any cattle.”
    By his tone of voice, I know I’ve touched a sore spot. He walks on ahead, increasing the distance between us. I figure the problem must involve money—a shortage of it—to guess by the quick sale of my cabin.
    After a while Bo waits for me to catch up. He says, “Myrna Loy tells me you’re a jeweler. Is that so?”
    â€œI’m not a jeweler,” I say, “I just like to make jewelry.”
    â€œThat’s what I used to say. I’m not a cattleman. I just like to have cows. But my reasons were the opposite of yours.”
    I don’t understand what he means, but I counsel myself to allow Bo his own pace toward the subject of cows. We approach a bench of land on Saddlestring Butte where our trail levels off and we step out of the trees. The spread of valley lies to the east, north, and south. We’d have to climb higher, to the top where the snow is still deep, to watch the sun set. Tonight, Bo says, we’ll view the alpenglow on the Gros Ventre Range across the valley floor. He pushes through sagebrush to a group of boulders and sets his butt against one, crossing his boots. He plucks off a piece of sage, rolls it between his hands, then brings his hands up to cup his nose.
    â€œI keep thinking that someday I’ll stuff a pillow with sage and sleep on it all winter.”
    I decide right here that I like this man. I feel impatient to know more about him. Against my better judgment, I introduce the touchy subject again. “But you don’t have cows.”
    â€œSold them. So I don’t have to say my line anymore about having cows, but that I’m not a cattleman. I’m really a welder.”
    â€œWelder? Like at Wedco Manufacturing?” I drove around the place twice looking for the Pamida store.
    â€œI weld metal sculpture.” He looks away from me as he says this, over toward the pale cloud blossoms of lavender