“I’ve been getting ready for years, Hero,” Houndstooth murmured. “He’s been hiding from me on the Harriet. And I’ve been waiting for the need to kill him—the hunger for it—to die down. But it hasn’t. And now?” He patted his saddlebag. “Now I have a warrant to get onto the Harriet, and not even Travers can turn me away at the Gate.”
By way of an answer, Hero held out the flask. Houndstooth reached up for it. He misjudged the distance in the dark, and his fingers closed over Hero’s wrist. They both froze for a moment—then, Houndstooth slid his hand up over Hero’s. His fingers felt their way slowly past their hand, past their fingers, over their fingertips, finding the flask.
Houndstooth unscrewed the top of the flask, taking a long drink. Then, finally: “I wish you could have seen it. The ranch.”
Hero’s murmur only just carried over the hum of insects that rose around them. “Tell me.”
It was the kind of story that couldn’t have been shared by daylight. Houndstooth told Hero about the ranch—about the hard year he spent preparing the land he’d bought near the Harriet, about the harder year he spent getting his hands on good breeding stock. As the darkness thickened and solidified, he told Hero about sleepless nights spent nursing newborn hops back from the brink of death. He told them about hiring his first ranch hand, Cal—the man they were on their way to collect. He tried to show them a scar he’d gotten from his very first breeding bull—a thick rope of shining skin that cut across the inside of his bicep and ran almost all the way to his collarbone. He unbuttoned his shirt to show Hero where it met his shoulder.
“I can’t see it,” Hero laughed. “It’s darker than the inside of Ruby’s belly out here, Houndstooth.”
Houndstooth set down the nearly empty flask and grabbed Hero’s hand. “Here,” he said, and before he could think he had pressed their fingertips to the scar. His breath caught.
“Are my hands cold?” Hero whispered.
“No,” Houndstooth murmured back, as Hero’s fingers traced the full length of the scar where it met his shoulder. He could smell the sweet whiskey on their breath.
“What happened?” Hero asked, their fingertips still on Houndstooth’s collarbone.
“Well, the bull was trying to kill a nine-month-old hop, and I—”
“No,” Hero interrupted Houndstooth. “What happened to the ranch?”
For the space of three of their shared breaths, the only sound was the buzz of night insects and the flap of Ruby’s ears in the water. Then, just as Hero was preparing to draw a breath to apologize for asking a question they knew they shouldn’t have, Houndstooth answered.
“He burned it down.” His voice broke on the word “down,” as though he couldn’t quite hold the notion that the ranch was really gone. He lifted his hand and impulsively placed it over Hero’s.
“I woke up one night, middle of the night. I’d been in . . . in the birthing barn.” He cleared his throat but didn’t stop telling the story. His fingers tightened briefly over Hero’s. “I’d been in there all night, working through a difficult labor. It hadn’t looked good—I almost lost the mother three or four times. My hands were white and wrinkled from being underwater so long, trying to shift the hop into the right position to come out. But then, like nothing had ever been wrong at all, that mother just up and pushed out her hop. It was small, but it swam right up and poked its head out of the water and took its first breath, no problem. It was a healthy, perfect little girl-hop. The cow was looking at me like she didn’t know why I thought I needed to interfere.” He let out a breath that was almost like a laugh. “I was so exhausted, I fell asleep right there on the marsh grass beside her.
“When I woke up, the barn was filling with smoke. It smelled . . . wrong. I’ll never forget it, Hero.” He was nearly whispering, and Hero leaned a little closer to hear him. His voice was thick with the memory. “I stumbled outside and tripped over the hop, the one that had just been delivered. The mother was nowhere in sight—but then, I could hardly see anything, the smoke was so thick. There was sweat in my eyes, it was so hot, and the fire . . . the fire was everywhere.
“I picked up the hop and ran. She was small, small enough for me to carry, and too new to wriggle like they do. I got to the edge of my marsh and set her down in the water—her skin was already getting dry—and then turned to run back and put the fire out, but—” He stopped midsentence, and Hero could hear him trying to find the words.
“It was too late,” they murmured.
Houndstooth sniffed hard. He squeezed Hero’s hand once, hard, and then let it go. He leaned back on his bedroll, resting his head against his saddlebag again. After a few minutes, he went on.
“I couldn’t go back through the fire. The marsh grass was just dry enough, and there was a wall of flames between me and the paddocks. I couldn’t see through the fire and the smoke, but I could hear them,” he said. “The air smelled like . . . like meat, Hero. It was all wrong. I could hear them thrashing, bellowing. I could hear the hops. I could hear them burning. A hundred in all, hops and mothers and bulls, and I stood there and listened to them die.” His voice broke, and there were another few minutes in which they both pretended his tears were silent ones.
“I stayed there, as close as I could be without choking on the smoke, and I watched it burn. All the hippos I’d spent my life breeding—gone. Dead.” He fell silent.
“What about the hop?” Hero asked after a moment.
“Ah, well, of course,” Houndstooth answered, his voice still thick. “She started nudging at my ankles around dawn, as the flames died down. She was hungry enough that she started trying to suckle on the toe of my boot. She raised up well enough, didn’t she?”
“She sure did,” Hero answered. “Jesus, Winslow. A hundred hippos.” They whistled long and low. “That must’ve been a helluva ranch you built.”
“It was,” he replied. “It really was.” He laughed mirthlessly. “But after it burned? I had nothing left but bad debt. I had to sell the parcel to Travers to get out from under it.” Houndstooth spat into the water. “And look at me now. What do I have to my name? A bedroll and a grey hat and Ruby. The last of her line. And her getting older every day.”
Hero put their hand near the edge of their bedroll. Their pinky finger brushed against Houndstooth’s. He didn’t pull his hand away.
“A few weeks from now, that won’t be all you’ll have,” Hero murmured.
“No?” Houndstooth said, linking his pinky finger with Hero’s.
“No,” they replied. “In a few weeks, you’ll also have revenge.”
Chapter 5
“THEY DON’T HAVE HOPPERS in California, asshole. They don’t have hippos in California.”