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  ‘The fuck you want, Paul?’

  Mulligan recoiled slightly and then made a slow scan of the restaurant before bringing his eyes back to the eggs over-easy. ‘I want to hire you, Gerry.’

  ‘Hire me?’

  Reaching inside his windbreaker, Mulligan removed a small leather clasp and gave Gallen a business card from it. The card announced Paul Mulligan MBA—Vice-President, Security under a coloured banner for Oasis Energy, a massive oil and gas company based in Calgary.

  ‘MBA?’ said Gallen, having to smile. ‘Annapolis boys think wearing their ring is enough to run the world.’

  ‘Just staying current.’

  ‘I know nothing ‘bout gas, except how to pump it into a truck,’ said Gallen, thinking about making it north to a town called Shell, hopefully with the transmission healthy enough to tow a horse trailer.

  ‘Not oil and gas,’ said Mulligan, chewing on sausage. ‘Security.’

  Gallen sipped on his coffee and looked out the window. The sun was fighting through the cloud.

  ‘Heard of Harry Durville?’ asked Mulligan.

  ‘Owns Oasis Energy,’ said Gallen. ‘Real rich guy. What about him?’

  ‘I need a detail on him. Bodyguard, PSD—you know the score.’

  ‘What happened to the old one?’

  Mulligan laughed. ‘Shit, Ace. You soldiers always ask the same questions.’

  ‘Well?’

  ‘They were British guys, ex-Paras and Royal Marines. Got an offer from a big contractor in Iraq and they were gone.’

  ‘Who were they?’ asked Gallen.

  ‘Can’t say,’ said Mulligan. ‘Code of silence, omerta—all that shit.’

  ‘Doesn’t sound like my line,’ said Gallen. ‘What’s wrong with using the cops?’

  ‘Durville’s a billionaire but he’s hands-on,’ said Mulligan. ‘One day you’re escorting him onto an Arab’s super yacht, next thing you know he’s drinking fermented goat piss with peasants in Turkmenistan.’

  ‘Man gets around.’

  ‘Grew up in Alberta logging camps. He gets drunk and wants to fight—he can be trouble. I need a special crew on him.’

  They swapped stares. Gallen wanted to be on the road, collecting those horses and banking the thousand dollars a month he was going to charge to prepare them for the first showjumping competition of the season. Mulligan was an annoyance, a hand reaching out from his past, trying to pull him backwards.

  ‘Thanks for thinking of me, Paul,’ said Gallen, searching for cash in his breast pocket.

  ‘I’ll get this,’ said Mulligan. ‘Keep my card.’

  Gallen looked at him. ‘I’m not interested, Paul.’

  ‘Sure, Gerry. But for the record: you can run a team of four, they get two thousand a week. You get four. Full Oasis health and disability. The whole nine.’

  Grabbing his keys and phone, Gallen stood.

  ‘You know, I didn’t have a say in the Al Meni snatch,’ said Mulligan as they shook hands. ‘Wasn’t my call.’

  ‘You made the call, Paul.’

  Mulligan rolled his eyes. ‘It came from above, Gerry. Shit, you know how that works.’

  ‘Sure do, Paul,’ said Gallen, turning to go. ‘You were my above.’

  ~ * ~

  CHAPTER 3

  The transmission started slipping about ten minutes after Gallen took the road east out of Greybull for Shell. It didn’t happen on every change but you could feel it on the change up from second to third—a transmission that wasn’t handling the diesel’s torque as the truck climbed along 15 into the Bighorn range.

  Smoking one cigarette every half-hour, Gallen sipped on take-out coffee and willed on the transmission, deciding the truck would get them home if he had to drive at thirty mph across the whole damn state. It might have to rise up the to-do list he’d been writing since leaving the Marines and getting back to the farm; the list started with getting Roy to stop his drinking and went on through re-posting the horse yards, gravelling the driveway, getting the main load bearing fixed on the snow blower and replacing the boundary fencing on the bottom forty acres. The barn foundation had cracked and collapsed at the north end, the loading gates for the cattle were bent and broken, and the sump pump wasn’t working properly in the cellar. With spring starting, the cows were about to drop and Roy’s stock management system was in his head. There were animals all over the Gallen family’s three hundred and eighty acres and he only knew where two-thirds of them were hiding.

  It all came back to money and the fact that Roy Gallen didn’t have any. After a lifetime of raising cattle and rough stock for the rodeo circuit, Roy was hiding away from decisions in a fug of rye-drinking and hangovers.

  Showjumpers weren’t his people, said Roy, and Gallen would say, ‘So the bankers are your people? You want them shutting you down?’

  Taking it slow through Shell, the tawny-white Bighorns rising in the background, Gallen took a side road out of town and drove it till he pulled left into a large iron gate with the legend Tally-Ho Ranch across the arch. The Robinson property, the details of which Roy had begrudgingly passed on to Gallen.

  Taking it slow up the tree-lined driveway, he noted the white post-and-rail fencing and the warmblood horses in their paddocks, a few patches of snow still visible in the fence lines. There was more invested in each of those jumpers than Gallen used to make in a year in the military and he had a sudden blast of self-consciousness about the Arvada-Clearmont High School Panthers sticker on his rear screen. Did showjumping folks trust hockey players?

  The stock trailer Gallen had left at Tally-Ho was parked up against the barn on its struts and Gallen swung the F-350 in an arc, reversing the dually rear axle under the gooseneck hitch.

  ‘Kenny,’ he yelled, slamming the truck door and throwing on a heavy Tough Duck jacket against the cold of altitude. ‘You around?’

  ‘Here, boss,’ came a low voice, and Gallen walked around the barn to the yard where one horse was tethered to a rail. Beyond was a sand riding arena where Kenny Winter sat on a stationary horse.

  ‘This them?’ Gallen let himself into the yard, dodging the puddles as he closed on the tethered sorrel gelding. Running his hand along the animal’s withers and across his back to his rump, Gallen liked what he saw.

  ‘This the abscessed one?’

  ‘Easiest fix I done for a long time,’ said Winter, spitting into the sand. ‘Vet been coming out charging the lady four hunert a time for X-rays in the shoulder.’

  ‘You poulticed it?’ Gallen lowered his voice lest the owner overheard the redneck horse doctoring.

  ‘Sure. It burst this morning. Got half a bottle of peroxide up that hoof and he was purring like a cat inside an hour.’

  ‘Beats surgery,’ said Gallen, climbing onto the top rail and looking down on Winter, who sat on a black mare almost sixteen hands.

  ‘This one’s Peaches,’ said Winter. ‘She’s going over basic rails. I can have her over five-footers inside two weeks.’

  ‘The other?’

  ‘Name’s Dandy. Haven’t rode him yet, but Peaches is the money.’

  After walking the horses to the stock trailer where Winter had spent the night in the living quarters, Gallen approached the house, wanting to handle this right. He’d driven down on a look-see basis and now he wanted those horses back at the farm, bringing in real cash. If it meant making horse-promises, he’d become a horse-bullshitter and promise them the world.

  Knocking on the door of the two-storey Territory-status house, Gallen tried to scrape the mud from his boots and wondered if he reeked of cigarettes.

  The door opened and a child of nine or ten stood there. ‘Yes?’ she said, friendly.

  ‘Howdy, ma’am. Name’s Gerry Gallen. I’m here to see Mr Robinson about the horses? Peaches and—’

  The girl turned away. ‘Mom!’

  Gallen shifted his weight as the girl walked away, waving without looking at him. A woman came into the hallway and Gallen smelled baking, felt hungr
y.

  ‘Hi—Yvonne Robinson,’ said the woman, brown eyes and spilling dark hair which she pushed aside with her wrist as she put out her hand. ‘And you’re . . . ?’

  Feeling his jaw drop, Gallen flushed red. Before he could speak, the woman was beaming.

  ‘Gerry Gallen!’ she said, chuckling. ‘How you doin’, Gerry?’

  ‘Yvonne McKenzie,’ said Gallen, now realising which Robinsons this farm belonged to.

  ‘Robinson for twelve years,’ she said, rolling her eyes.

  ‘Oh, well, congratulations,’ said Gerry, not seeing a ring.

  ‘I was expecting Roy. I’m sorry,’ she said, as if remembering her manners. ‘Lunch is on. You want to grab that Mr Kenny and eat with us?’

  ‘Sure,’ said Gallen, his face flushing again as surely as it was senior prom night 1992, when Gallen was in the back of a car with Yvonne McKenzie while Tessa White and Butch Droman tried to get beer from a Clearmont liquor store. Both of them dating someone else, a little tipsy on sly whisky and the smell of that Opium perfume, all coming together in one long kiss. Nothing ever said about it, and then Yvonne was gone to the University of Nebraska and Gallen was joining the US Marine Corps, hoping for a shot at officer candidate school.

  And then there was now. And Yvonne still looked like she did in the early nineties—only now she wasn’t a pretty cheerleader with athlete’s legs. Now she had some curves.

  ~ * ~

  Gallen spent the next hour worrying that his socks stank, that Winter would hawk or light up a smoke. He told himself it was because he didn’t want to lose Yvonne Robinson as a client, but he was looking at her far too much for it to be just that.

  ‘Dad says Dandy is lame; plain and simple, lame,’ said Lyndall— the child—as Yvonne cleared the plates from a formal dining table and offered coffee. ‘And he don’t like Peaches neither—says Mom is wasting her time with that glue-bag.’

  ‘Well Dandy ain’t lame now,’ said Winter, his drawl so slow that it sounded like a slur. ‘Just a hoof abscess. He’ll be jumping in a couple of weeks.’

  ‘I asked the vet to check that,’ said Yvonne, making a face. ‘He kept doing X-rays of the shoulder.’

  ‘Gotta pay those student loans somehow,’ laughed Winter, grabbing at a biscuit as the plate was removed.

  Lyndall asked Winter to play Wii and he obliged, following her into the next room.

  ‘What’s your friend’s story?’ said Yvonne, pouring coffee.

  ‘Used to play pro hockey in Alberta,’ said Gallen, catching a flash of her slender neck. ‘After Afghanistan, he was approached by a bunch of Clearmont businessmen to bolster our team.’

  ‘And?’ said Yvonne, with the smirk of a woman who’d grown up hearing hockey stories.

  ‘He went into the car park to settle a dispute with another player. Turned out the guy was a deputy sheriff from Gillette, and Kenny was expelled from the league. Roy gave him a job with the horses.’

  “Cos he’s good at it?’

  ‘The best I’ve seen,’ said Gallen. ‘If Kenny says that Peaches is the money, then tell those folks in Douglas County to start engraving your name on that cup.’

  ‘How’s a thousand a month, all in?’ said Yvonne. ‘That gives me feed, shoes and meds—and it gives me a jumper. Kenny can decide which one.’

  ‘You got it.’ Gallen took her outstretched hand. ‘But it don’t include no fancy vet from Shell.’

  A door slammed and boots stomped down the wooden boards of the hallway. Gallen noticed Yvonne wince and realised this was a shoe-free household for all but one person.

  A man appeared in the dining room, ash-grey hat, turquoise rodeo buckle in his Wranglers and a set of Texan dress boots. There was a cold greeting between the man and Yvonne and then Gallen was being introduced to Brandon Robinson.

  Gallen knew the name; Brandon Robinson was a one-time quarterback for the University of Nebraska Huskers. Then he’d gone on to law school at UCLA and become a developer of strip malls in Wyoming and Montana. It stood to reason that he’d marry someone like Yvonne.

  Brandon Robinson puffed out his footballer’s chest, his blond moustache twitching. ‘So. Gerry Gallen, huh?’

  ‘That’s me,’ said Gallen.

  ‘Hockey star and war hero, right?’ Brandon swung back to Yvonne as if sharing a joke.

  ‘No,’ said Gallen, as Winter silently appeared in the doorway behind Yvonne’s husband. ‘Wasn’t like that.’

  ‘You sure?’ said Brandon, like he was teasing a child. ‘Way Yvonne told it, you were black missions, special ops. All that spooky shit.’

  ‘I drove a truck,’ said Gallen. ‘It was nice meeting you.’

  ~ * ~

  CHAPTER 4

  The engine pinged as it cooled and Gallen gave their location for the third time: County Road 42, the extension of 195 along from the old Fenton place. Roy grumbled and growled and Gallen still wasn’t sure if he was coming to get them when his father hung up the phone.

  They were west of Clearmont, in the boonies of northern Wyoming, the transmission having quit and the horses getting moody in the trailer as the sun dipped behind the Bighorns, bringing the temperature down in a hurry.

  ‘Thought Roy was fixing that thing’ Winter nodded at the hood as he lit a cigarette.

  ‘I was,’ said Gallen, leaning back in the driver’s seat and sighing. ‘Had the money and all.’

  Gallen liked that Winter didn’t ask him what happened. When Gallen had arrived back on the farm three weeks earlier, Winter had been there working for Roy and they’d avoided one another. Gallen liked that Winter didn’t push and pick about the tranny like Marcia would have when they were married. Truth was, Gallen had had a reconditioned tranny on order with the local Ford mechanics, but the fundraiser for Richards had come along and by the time he’d made the drive south he’d put more into that envelope than he could afford.

  ‘Give the tranny money to that boy in the chair?’ asked Winter, staring out the windscreen.

  ‘Something like that,’ said Gallen.

  ‘Least it went to a good place.’

  ‘Hope you’re right, Kenny.’ Gallen exhaled smoke out the cracked window. ‘Richards was a good soldier once.’

  ‘Can’t always be a good soldier in civvie life,’ said Winter.

  ‘No. But you don’t have to get drunk and drive off a bridge when your wife’s expectin’.’

  They sat smoking, the truck cab cooling in the silence.

  ‘So, you been away?’ said Winter.

  Gallen exhaled. He’d come out of the Marines, taken his cheque and drifted around for almost six months: saw people who served with him in the Ghan and Mindanao; met relatives of young men who’d lost their lives; saw other lives, other ways of living, and he liked them. But not enough to stop him drifting back to Wyoming and to Sweet Clover. The farm wasn’t much, as far as lives go. But it was his.

  ‘Wasn’t away.’ Gallen looked through the side window. ‘Just taking my time coming home, is all.’

  ‘You mind?’ said Winter, reaching for the glove compartment and coming out with a fifth of Jim Beam.

  ‘What’s the occasion?’ Gallen offered his coffee traveller.

  ‘We talking about the shit?’

  ‘No,’ said Gallen. ‘Thought we’d done a good job of not doin’ that.’

  Winter swigged at the bottle. ‘Roy told me not to bring it up.’

  ‘He taught you good.’

  Winter showed a busted incisor as he smirked. ‘Said when it came to war, Gerry weren’t much of a talker.’

  ‘Not much talk from you neither, Kenny.’

  ‘What’s to say? Got cold, got shot at. Got out still able to fog up a mirror.’

  ‘What I call a good war.’ Gallen smiled and touched his traveller to the bottle of Beam.

  ‘Amen,’ said Winter.

  ‘You Canadians. In the south, right? Fighting out of Kandy?’

  ‘Yeah. But I worked in the north, with Americans and Au
ssies.’

  ‘Special forces?’

  ‘In the Canadian forces they called us Assaulters.’

  ‘Kind of sums it up,’ said Gallen, relaxing as the bourbon warmed his stomach. Headlights shone as a truck rounded a bend in the road—Roy, coming to pick them up.

  ‘You were Marines Recon, right?’ said Winter. ‘Made captain.’

  ‘You been in Roy’s office.’ Gallen knew that his Marines plaque and his Silver Star were mounted where his father could see them while he drank.