Page 185 of The Lonely Road

“Kid, you did good!” This comes from Mac. “Real good. So, now that you’ve won your big case, I want you to know that I’m completely and fully retired. The business is all yours. You can take my name off the door.”

“Not doing that, Mac.” She loops her hand around his forearm. “It’s always going to be McCready and Morningstar. It has a good ring to it.”

Clara is in the back seat of the Wrangler on the phone—Dakota, then Luis, then someone from the ditch company, who apparently needs to know the outcome immediately.

She talks with the efficiency of a ranching woman who has six things to do and has just been told she can do them. The relief in her voice is something she has been holding for a very long time and is finally allowed to put down.

We drop Clara off at Silverbell.

Dakota is already coming down from the barn. Eli appears from somewhere at a run, his wooden horse in his hand, heading for his mother at full four-year-old velocity.

I watch Clara catch him.

Wiley stands back, as if letting the family have their moment, but it’s obvious that he’s part of the family now, too.

We step out of the Wrangler, and everyone talks at the same time.

Taya pulls Ranger from her bag and walks up to Eli.

He sees the horse before he sees her.

His eyes go to it immediately—the painted pinto coat, the braided mane, the slight wear at the ears where his hands have been.

“Ranger,” he exclaims.

She crouches down to his level, the horse held out between them. “He did his job.”

Eli focuses on the horse. Then at Taya. “Did you win?”

“All the way. Same as you said.”

He takes Ranger and holds him up. Then he presses him against his chest alongside Copper, both horses together, and grins at Taya.

“He kept you safe,” Eli remarks like he’s reporting a fact he already knew.

Taya ruffles his hair. “He did.”

Eli nods slowly with the gravity of someone whose system has been vindicated. Then he looks past Taya at me.

I hold very still.

He regards me for a moment. The full four-year-old assessment—the same one he gave me in Clara’s kitchen when he appeared in the doorway with his bad dream and his horse pajamas and asked if I was going to fix what I broke.

He looks up at me. “Did you help?”

“I tried to.”

“He did, Eli.” This comes from Clara.

He considers this.

“Okay.” He turns to his mother and holds up both horses. “Mama, Ranger came home.”

“He did, baby.”

Dakota has reached us by now. She’s in her work gear, the notebook under her arm, the headgate records she does every day, regardless of what else is happening in her life.

“We won?” She sniffles. She’s been crying.