Only 05 - Autumn Lover

faster.
    Lefty was walking next to his friend. Both cowhands were in their fifties. Both were gray-haired, and their faces were weathered by sun and storm. Their clothes were the same, faded and frayed. Their boots wore the marks of long use in stirrups. Spurs jingled softly at their heels.
    Each man showed the unmistakable signs of a lifetime spent around large, unpredictable animals. The cowhands moved stiffly on legs bowed from saddles. Theirhands were thickened by calluses, and scarred from burns left by ropes and branding irons.
    Both men were short one finger. It was the cost of learning never to put your hand between a lariat and the saddle horn when a thousand pounds of angry steer is on the other end of the rope.
    Except for Gimp’s stiff leg, there wasn’t a nickel’s worth of difference in the two men’s appearance.
    “Just getting some grain for my best horse, ramrod,” Gimp explained.
    “Got a stiff bridle here, and the saddle soap is in the back cupboard,” Lefty offered.
    Hunter knew the two men were more interested in sizing up the new ramrod than they were in saddle soap or grain. So was Elyssa, who was watching him from the corner of her eye while she groomed Leopard.
    Leopard watched Hunter, too, but without real interest.
    “Do what you have to,” Hunter said, “but I want those ten head of cattle I saw up in the piñons brought in closer before sunset.”
    “Yessir,” Gimp said.
    “We’ll jump right to it,” Lefty agreed.
    Bugle Boy put his head over the stall door and watched the two strange men with pricked ears and calm eyes.
    The cowhands passed quite close to Bugle Boy’s stall door, because Leopard’s stall was directly across the aisle. The men gave the spotted stud a wide berth.
    Hunter’s horse neither shied nor laid his ears back at the strangers walking close by.
    “Nice stud hoss you have there,” Gimp said admiringly.
    “Big, but easygoing, like,” Lefty said, glancing across the aisle. “Not like some other studs I could mention.”
    Leopard was standing in the center of his large stall, watching the men. His ears weren’t back, but there was an elemental alertness about him that spoke volumes to men who knew horses.
    “If you and all the other hands hadn’t roped, thrown, spurred, and repeatedly tried to break Leopard’s spirit while I was in England,” Elyssa said, “he wouldn’t watch you like a cat at a mousehole now. He has good reason not to trust men.”
    “Huh,” was all Lefty said.
    “Huh,” echoed Gimp.
    “Huh yourselves,” she retorted. “You just don’t like admitting there’s more than one way to break a horse. Quirts and spurs don’t work on an animal like Leopard.”
    “Yes, ma’am,” both men said.
    There was no real heat on either side of the disagreement. The subject had been aired thoroughly since Elyssa had come back to the Ladder S and confounded the men by riding the savage stallion with little fuss and no danger.
    Leopard’s unfailing gentleness with Elyssa still surprised the old cowhands, who were fond of predicting dire results from the stallion no man had been able to stay on top of. It galled their pride that a slender girl could do what tough, experienced men had failed repeatedly to do—ride the spotted stud that had a fearsome reputation as a man killer.
    Uneasily Gimp looked over the stall at the big horse and the fragile-looking girl. Wearing the green silk dress, a blacksmith’s leather apron, and leather gloves, Elyssa was bending over Leopard’s left rear hoof, cleaning it with a blunt steel pick. Flashes of scarlet petticoat burned like fire in the dim light of the stall.
    Gimp shook his head and muttered beneath his breath about foolish girls and man-killing studs.
    “Huh,” was all Elyssa said.
    Hiding a smile, Hunter bent over the manure rake and forked the last dirty straw into a wheelbarrow. He had worked with men like Gimp and Lefty before, old bachelors who complained about everyone and everything, including the friends they had known since they were knee-high to a short horse.
    Hunter knew the complaints weren’t serious. They were just the cowhands’ way of being alive.
    “S’pose you want me to shoe that spotted devil again,” Gimp muttered.
    “How did you guess?” Elyssa asked, straightening.
    “Combing cows out of them mountains is hard on shoes, and you’ll be doing a bunch of it.”
    “Shoeing Leopard won’t be necessary,” Hunter said clearly. “She won’t be taking