I YOUNGBLOOD

there’s a small gap between theological fanaticism and social disorder; therein lies charisma.

It was two in the morning when the coyotes started hollering at each other, but by then Brody Boone had already slipped into wool trousers, a matching vest, and a buckskin jacket with copper rivets down the sleeve hems. The coyotes were a common nuisance; the crack of gunfire was not.

Relying on the silvery light of a fat moon, Brody strapped a ream of ammo over his hips and shoved pistols into the holsters hanging at his thighs. He thumbed shells into a wide-barreled shotgun as he quietly heeled the door shut on his way out.

Both his parents were heavy sleepers, but his little brother, Billy, was not. Brody’s feet had hardly left the porch when he heard padding footsteps behind him. He wheeled around, shotgun snug in the hollow of his shoulder, finger off the trigger.

He dropped his aim to the ground as soon as he saw his little brother at the end of the barrel.

Brody smiled calmly as he reached out and tapped a finger against Billy’s narrow chest, and when Billy looked down, Brody lightly flicked Billy’s nose. Billy swatted at him, but Brody danced away from the slower reflexes, grinning.

“Cabron,” Billy said.

“If you’re gonna curse, do it in English.”

Billy looked past Brody, hugging himself. “Adónde vas?”

“English, Bill.”

Billy crossed his arms. “No estoy usando grocerias.”

“Just you wait till your stubbornness costs your life.”

Billy repeated the question in exaggerated aristocratic English.

“Burro,” Brody said with a chuckle. “Hear the cows?”

They were lowing mournfully, and Billy nodded. “Wolves?”

“Coyotes,” Brody said. “I’m just gonna go give them a scare, okay?”

“Be careful.”

“Careful is for city folk and dandelions.” Brody winked. “Go back to bed.”

Billy began to protest, but Brody said, “How does coyote stew sound for breakfast?”

Billy wrinkled his nose. “Can’t be worse than the rattler Pa insisted would taste like chicken.”

Brody grinned again. “Go on now.”

Brody made his way to the southern gate, ducked between the wood panels, and crossed a large, vacant prairie. At the edge of the patch of grassland, the terrain grew jagged with granite as the slope steeped to the west, a conglomerate of ponderosa tightening together the higher he climbed. Rays of pearl seeped through the branches, guiding Brody’s steps to the plateau, hillsides he could likely hike blindfolded.

He stilled.

A breeze whispered from the east, tinged with the indication of campfire. Their homestead was too far from Ruidoso for this to come from town—this was coming from somewhere on their property. Catching his breath from the quick ascent, Brody scanned the valley and the accompanying hillsides for the glow of fire. Finding nothing, he continued eastbound and up, maintaining the advantage of high ground.

He followed a familiar deer trail, stopping again about a mile down the path. He lowered himself beside a pair of boulders pressed closely together, a landmark he called dicelegs—dice, because of how oddly square the outcropping had shaped and eroded; legs, because of how the bottom portion stretched almost like pillars down the steep slope of the hillside.

Swallowing, Brody found his mouth uncomfortably dry. He cursed himself for not bringing a canteen. He should know better, being a product of both the desert and the mountains, a child of survival and lawlessness.

Around and below the bend of the widely berthed outcropping was the orange glow he’d been after.

The thing about Brody was that he was fiercely protective, unflinchingly loyal, and above all, an ego safely in check by his wits. At nineteen years old, he was already acutely discerning when it came to battles he could win and battles he could not.

Crouching, he stepped around the dicelegs and crept toward the glow, shotgun held steady at the orange as he kept a constant eye for movement. Brody spotted the chestnut mare before he saw the tips of flame, yellow and orange flicking into his vantage above the lip of the outcropping like the forked tongue of a diamondback tasting the air for prey.

The lip of the outcropping stood about six feet from the firepit below, and as Brody went flat on his belly to crawl to the edge, he noticed a pair of boots crossed at the ankle lounged stolidly.

Heart pounding, Brody appraised the wilderness for others. The noises of night chirped and howled and echoed a familiar cacophony, both distant and near. Mentally bouncing two ideas—of going back or confronting the lone stranger—he weighed the level of threat against his options. Plenty of travelers had seen themselves through these hills, a common connecting route between Texas and California, but rarely did anyone come this close to home. The Boone ranch was several hundred acres of staked land from his father’s father, a hold that precariously survived the Mexican-American War. The validity of the family’s claim to the land wasn’t so much permitted as it was overlooked in a time when thousands of other Mexican families were displaced in America’s ubiquitous annexation of southern territories, a destiny of manifest proportions that would soon segue into a far bloodier conflict.

After long observation, Brody concluded the man by the fire was sleeping, and better still, that he was alone. Pushing off his stomach, he held the shotgun in one hand, a groove in the rough stone with the other, and gracefully lowered himself to the mild slope of the clearing below. He landed with a soft thud and immediately set the butt of the shotgun against his shoulder.

The boots belonged to an imposing figure with a barrel chest and a frontier-hardened girth to his limbs. The duster of the slumbering man encased him, his hands interlocked behind his head, hat purposefully askew across his forehead to darken his eyes from the blaze.

Without a twitch or stir, the slumbering man spoke. His voice was as callous as his skin, the same way a thundercloud commands respect when it rumbles, not because it is cruel, but because one does not negotiate with forces of nature. One endures them.

“You belong to these parts?” the man drawled, shadows dancing menacingly across the exposed, lower half of his face in the firelight.

“ These parts belong to me. Family by right,” Brody said, a defense in the statement that was as much genetic as it was tangible. “Who are you?”

“August Gaines.”

Brody waited for the man to expand, but after a few moments of nothing but the sound of wood popping and hissing, he presumed— correctly—the man lacked verbosity.

Brody took a step closer, finger now on the trigger. “Don’t you want to know my name?”

August poked a finger on the underside of the brim and lifted the hat from his face, showing the deep lines of many miles and long years. He gave the young man a slow appraisal as if considering a piece of livestock, then said, “I ain’t decided yet if that’s pertinent.”

A bead of sweat fell down the back of Brody’s neck, making him feel feverishly cold for a moment regardless of the waves of heat he stood next to.

“What’s your business on my land, mister?”

“Yours,” August echoed.

Brody stole a glance around. Somehow, the trees felt closer. The horse seemed larger. The fire, hotter. Swallowing past the feeling of cotton in his throat, Brody regripped his weapon.

Before Brody could respond, August spoke again. “Sit down, boy.”

Brody was itching to do the opposite, felt the mistake of his choices before the vaporous reasons turned solid. From the corner of his eye, he thought he saw movement. He swept the shotgun in that direction, took a step back to angle himself better between a possible threat in the woods and the potential one on the ground.

“Good Lord, boy. You’re making me nervous.” August sat up and leaned his back against a propped saddle. He pulled out a pipe. “Sit down a beat, would you? I gather I’m not going back to sleep anytime soon, so I’d like to talk at you for a minute.” He reached into the saddle pack, paused to make purposeful eye contact with the boy as to convey his nonnefarious intents, and once he received a single nod of consent from Brody, he pulled out a moccasin water bag. Without taking so much as a sip for himself, August lifted the water in the boy’s direction.

Brody glanced at it but made no move for it.

August tossed it at Brody’s feet.

Brody had every intention of hightailing it back home, but soon he found himself sitting fireside. Lulled by the stranger’s pervasive calm, compelled by the dull ache in the man’s deep voice, Brody never felt himself being coaxed out of his armor until he was no longer wearing any. The more August spoke, the heavier felt the weight in Brody’s body. Soon, the shotgun lay forgotten beside him. A glass bottle surreptitiously replaced the moccasin. Furrows were traded for laugh lines. Brody had never met a man like August. A man who smiled only when it was earned, a man whose convictions seemed to blanket surrounding ones, a man who was a force of nature in every availing sense.

In the span of a few hours, Brody had developed a fondness for the patriarch, and although it never occurred to him why, the base reason was blatant: August seemed to buck society at every turn, but it didn’t seem that society had punished him one bit for it.