The cold Wyoming wind swept across the brazen prairie and deep into his heart. He lifted his face to the gathering Night. It was that time again.
Two nights later he returned home, limping and bruised to his core. How had Grandfather described it? A pain of the soul, not of the body. Sometime after the Night he’d tangled with something tougher than he was. He searched his memory, but found nothing but black fog and blood. Always the blood.
In any event, his leg was broken and well chewed up. He would be getting no work done it for at least a few weeks. For a normal man, this would be months, for him it was only a few weeks. A convenience he would rather have done without, all things considered. His ranch was small, a tiny operation that would not survive without someone to tend the stock. He growled deep in his throat, giving vent to the anger of the white in his heritage. Fuck.
Mariah eyed the newcomer curiously over her coffee cup. She’d only been in town six months, but this man, she’d never seen. She’d been told that he was as native to this place as the grass was. His roots went as far back as the Lakota themselves. He was ruggedly masculine and supremely capable. His features were as ageless as the mountains around them. His hair resembled not so much anything as a black and gray shock of fur reaching down the length of his back. If it weren’t for the whiteness of the cast and the crutches, she’d never have guessed he had a weakness.
“Honey, that’s Wring.” Sally, the waitress who’d been her coworker until that fateful crash two days ago, whispered.
Mariah looked at an old white-haired coot. He grinned toothlessly back at her. As far as she could tell, he never left that stool at the diner accept to hitch up his britches.
“No, with the crutches.”
“You said he was old.” Mariah poked Sally.
“Well, he is. I guess. No one round here recollects when he was born.” Sally shrugged, disinterested.
“Anyway, he’s old enough. You want a, he’s the only one left who might hire you.”
“I haven’t been that bad.”
“Good luck honey.”
Mariah took one last fortifying sip of her coffee and watched Wring stare morosely at the chipped tabletop. He was in the diner to hire a hand. She knew for a fact that she was the only one applying for the job.
Wring could feel her eyes on him, this stranger. Unfortunately, she was the only person who’d shown him any interest in the last three hours. This was his second trip to town, if this widening in the road could be called “town,” in the last week for this purpose. No one wanted the job.
The woman stood up and smoothed her faded jeans. She fixed a bright smile on her face, then strode purposefully toward him. Wring slunk down lower in his seat, hoping she’d pass him by. He wanted no truck with the woman. Any woman.
“Hi.” She said brightly, sticking out her hand. “I’m here about the job.”
“Jobs closed.” He grunted. Her scent invaded his lungs with every searing lungful. He tried not to breathe, but his traitorous nostrils flared. She was a city slicker that wouldn’t be missed. His father had done it. He slammed the lid on the desire threatening to boil up.
He was not his father.
“Wonderful, when do I start?”
“You don’t. Hirin’ a local man. Not you.”
“You have to hire me. I’m the only person desperate enough to work for you.”
Wring hadn’t expected such brutal honesty, not from such an artificial source.
She sat across from him and leaned across the table. Those brilliantly golden, unblinking eyes bored into her. The fine hairs on the nape of her neck stood up. She was in the presence of a predator. One that had the only job in town. “Look. I’ve been fired from every employer in a fifty-mile radius. I’m getting desperate here. If I can’t work for you, I’m going to starve.”
“What makes you think I won’t fire you?”
“You need me.”
“The job is short term.”
“You need me and I need this job.”
As much as he loathed to admit it, she was right. His stock needed tending and there was no one to tend it. Twenty three days left until the Night. He eyed her speculatively. He would be healed enough to send the woman packing by then. He had no choice. “Pays a hundred a week plus room n board. You have to be gone by the 18th. Get your gear.” Wring had a feeling that this was the stupidest thing he’d done since his visit to Denver.
Mariah blinked and sat up. “Don’t you even want to know my qualifications?”
Wring heaved himself to his feet, arranging his hands on the crutches as carefully as a wolf arranging paws on thin ice. “You said it. I need you. You got two hands and two good legs. Hope you got some muscle.”
Her new employer tipped his hat to Sally and limped from the small diner. He put himself into the front seat of his pick up truck and leaned back, hands folded on his belly, snoozing. Mariah dropped her jaw and traded glances with Sally.
“Good luck honey.” Sally said. “Hope you know what you’re doing. That Wring, well, he’s a strange one.”
Wring lived at the tail end of the world. Mariah dropped her bag on the floor in the small cabin and looked around. There was a huge fireplace, a small kitchen dining affair and a couch. Beyond that there were two doors, one was shut, the other opened enough to reveal a bed. Wring padded inside past her and stoked up the fire, graceful as a predator, even in crutches. Hanging across a chair in the corner, shrouded with dust was a snarling wolf’s head and skin. Mariah crossed to it, her fingers reaching out to sink into its black and silver fur. Wring’s voice lashed at her like a snarling whip. “Don’t touch that.”
