Ten minutes later, Nate was incredibly pissed off. Not only were the jugs of weed killer gone so were several socket sets and a chainsaw. Will and I eased into the shadows of the supply shed as Nate, Kyle, and Landon all had meltdowns about the thefts. All three of the older men kept tossing looks at Will who, to his credit, kept his mouth shut. This time.
“We’re going to start padlocking this shed,” Landon announced tartly. “Honestly, I thought living out here would get me away from having to lock up every damn thing I own like I had to back in Manhattan.”
“How much you want to bet that if we make a surprise visit to the McCrary homestead, we’ll find our missing supplies as well as those damn bones?” Kyle said, itching for an excuse to tangle with our neighbors. Nate gave his second a dark look. “Just saying. You know those fuckers are behind this.”
“We don’t know anything, and we have no proof,” Nate reminded the small group assembled in the supply shed. A carpenter bee was bouncing around the roof, trying to find a nice beam to burrow into. “You are not to go looking for proof either,” Nate told Kyle.
“We’re just going to start locking up everything. Nate will have the key. Perry, make sure a note is hung in the bunkhouse for all the hands to read. If they need anything they have to track down Nate for a key. Also, add a little something that states that if anyone should have any clues as to the person responsible for the thefts taking place on Prairie Smoke land they should come forward. Should I offer a reward for information?”
“Money talks,” Will piped up.
I spoke up as well. “It’s going to be hard to get Natives to turn a fellow Native into a White man no matter how much money you offer. No disrespect.”
Nate, Landon, and Kyle all nodded in sad commiseration. Landon spoke up. “That’s understandable. Maybe if you speak to them, Perry? Explain that we’re not looking to come down hard on anyone. Well, shit, yeah I guess we are.” He ran a hand over his face. It was pretty warm in this shed even with the door open. “Right, well, I’ll leave it to you to figure out how best to handle this with the hands, Perry. Nate, give them a check to cover the costs of more weed killer. You boys can run to Copper Falls before you head to the Lone Vale pasturelands. I’ll order a new chainsaw online and pray we don’t need it before it arrives.”
“Yes, sir,” Nate said and that ended the meeting. We exited the shed and stood there watching as Kyle removed the padlock from the toolbox in the back of his truck and handed it and the small key to Nate. Once the shed was padlocked Will and I headed to Copper Falls to buy more weed killer. He was quiet the whole way, barely saying a word there and back.
It wasn’t until we were attaching the small metal wagon on the rear of an ATV hours later that Will spoke up.
“I didn’t take any of that shit,” he told me as I lowered the tongue of the wagon onto the ball attachment of the four-wheeler.
“I know.” I stood straight and looked him right in the eye so he could see my sincerity.
“They think I did.” He stalked off, grabbed two jugs of weed killer then hauled them to the cart, bare biceps bulging and flexing. The cart bounced when he dropped the jugs into it. “I could see it in their eyes. Even my own brother thinks I did it.”
“They know you didn’t take it. They’re upset.” It sounded lame even to my ears. Will rolled his eyes to the Wyoming sky. “Look, there’s no way to prove or disprove anything.”
He pushed his hat back from his eyes. “We could make a covert run to the Hollow Wind ranch and check out their barns and sheds. The Jante runs right by the cabin. Their land is right over the river. If we can find the shit on their land, we just sneak back and tell Kyle.”
“No.” I began tying down the boxes of dried food and supplies for our little excursion. We’d be living a real cowboy life for a few days. Coffee made over a fire, beans from a can, and macaroni from a box. No microwaves or showers or washing machines like in the bunkhouse. Just a fireplace, a bunkbed, and the river to wash our asses in. The only thing missing from the whole wild west ethic would be horses. The ATVs were just so much more practical and had a special twenty-five gallon tank already in place. It was hard to strap a tank to a horse’s ass. “We’re not going to do something stupid like that. You heard Nate.”
“It’s not Nate’s balls on the line, is it? If they try to pin this on me and I lose my job that will fuck with my parole. I have to stay gainfully employed and clean.”
I snorted at the clean comment. “Right, and that wasn’t you who was toking it up in the bunkhouse a week ago?”
He crossed his arms over his chest. “It wasn’t me it was Ron but sure point the finger at the guy trying to fucking better himself!”
Ouch. “Sorry. I just assumed.”
“Yeah, so did they.” He waved a hand in the direction of the massive log cabin that Landon and Montrell lived in. “I thought you were different. Being Native and all, you’d get how being judged by bogus shit that has no reflection on the real you is like.”
Yeah, he had me there. “Sorry, I just assumed. I’ll talk to Ron about the dope.”
“Do that. And help me clear my name.”
“Will…”
He hustled around the cart, his expression hopeful now. God. Damn. It. “Quick nighttime trip. Over the river and through the woods to Hollow Wind Ranch we go. Hour tops. We nose around, see what we can see, and then we sneak back over onto Prairie Smoke land with no one the wiser.” I battled internally for the longest time. If not for his stupid blue eyes filled with stupid optimism, I would have blown this stupid idea right out of the water. Man there was a lot of stupid taking place. That should have been a warning, but it seemed my dick was doing the thinking. Still, I was the senior man on this little work excursion. I needed to be the one to not be stupid and—“You know I didn’t do this. Help me clear my name, Perry. Please. I’ll owe you.”
It was the please and the sound of my name that did me in. “Fucking right you will.”
He grinned and threw his arms around me. It was just a quick hug, more a backslap and a whispered thanks, but it hit me right in the solar plexus. Winded and woozy from the press of his hard, angular body to mine, I stood there soaking it all in. Will pulled back just a bit, his hands on my hips, and searched my gaze for something. Ten seconds or so tick-tick-tocked by as we stared at each other. Then he moved back, shattering the moment like a sledgehammer taken to an ice carving.
“Thanks, man, I appreciate it. Let’s get rolling!”
He slapped my shoulder then climbed onto the ATV with the cart. I nodded, my senses scattered to the winds and somehow managed to climb onto a second four-wheeler while hiding an enormous erection. This little job was suddenly feeling far less like a little job than it had thirty minutes ago.