OverTime 03: Slipping (First 70 Chapters)

Chapter 25: Your Friendly Neighborhood Client-Relations Facilitator (Lillabit)

I was a complete mess when he finally got back.

He-Jacob. Not He-Valley Boy. As it turns out, Clayton--the nighthawk--had noticed Valley Boy hobbled with the mules and sent him back to the remuda, when he switched shifts with wrangler Tomas.

"How badly did he seem hurt?" I asked, during the brief moment that I cornered him. Him-Clayton.

"Those hobbles weren't but a little loose," Clayton assured me. "You ain't hurt that sorrel none, Mrs. Garrison."

It hadn't even occurred to me that I might have hobbled him wrong too. Poor Boy! But as long as Clayton hadn't noticed anything wrong--not that he'd checked Boy's mouth--I'd reluctantly tabled the issue of my horse and focused on the immediate challenge of all these strangers.

As it turns out, these were cowboys from the two herds that had stampeded. Like young Willie Pratchett, they'd spent the night with whatever batch of cattle they'd managed to find. Their own chuck wagons being too far away, word had spread for them to come eat at ours.

Which they did, in dribs and drabs, and they just kept coming.

We had short cowboys and tall cowboys, young cowboys and younger cowboys. They were generally dirty and exhausted and, in many cases, angry at other cowboys. I did my best to ease the tensions with smiles and hellos and--most important--food. I poured and distributed coffee. I carried around the can of "lick" (molasses) for their "slap dabs" (pancakes). I lost count of the number of times my first words to one man or another boy were, "No, don't stand" or "Please, sit and eat."

During the slow periods, I helped wash plates, cups, and forks--in hot water, at my insistence, rather than just with sand. Eventually, I started drifting off, kneeling over the sudsy wreck pot.

Even sleeping late, I hadn't gotten much rest the night before....

I'm in the steam room at the gym, wrapped in a white bath towel, seated on hot, slick tiles. Saunas might be good for your skin, and for wicking toxins out of your system, but wow are they boring... especially alone, like I seem to be. They're hard to breathe in, hard to see in, and when the motor kicks on to send even more clouds of steam, ghostlike, into the intimate space, they're impossible to hear in. Also, I can never tell whether the damp dripping from my face and arms and legs, and forming droplets on my curling hair, is sweat or condensation.

On top of that, I've forgotten my water bottle.

Worse... I seem to have forgotten something else, too. I'm not sure what, but I can sense the loss of it in every cell. This is no, forgot-to-pay-the-electric-bill screw up. This is left-a-whole-'nother-life-behind....

Jacob cleared his throat, beside and above me, and suddenly I was back at camp, in my whole 'nother life, safe in Nebraska. And he was here.

I dropped the plate I'd been holding for who knows how long, and lunged at him like a wounded animal lunges for her burrow--

--kicking the wreck pot hard enough to not only trip myself but to send a wave of dishwater splashing over our feet, stumble on my own skirt, and literally falling into his arms.

Of course Mr. Curt-and-Competent caught me as easily as he'd catch, oh, a calf someone tossed at him. You know, if calf-tossing were a thing. Which I hope it is not.

I was glad for his arms around me, no matter how they got there, and I hugged him. Ducked my head. Pressed my cheek to his chest. Savored the scratch of his coat, the movement of his breath, the faint beating of his heart.