This Red Rock Read Free Page A

asked him, my heart sinking
    a little as the weight of the spade registered. It was only a
    spade , for crying out loud. Man up, Arzano.
    “You"ll know.” He tipped his head again in the direction
    of the stalls. “I"ll be back in...” he looked at his watch, a glint
    of leather and silver against the brown of his arm “say an
    This Red Rock | Louise Blaydon
    14
    hour and a half? I expect progress, aristocrat.” He winked,
    and tilted the brim of his hat in my direction, a quick switch
    of his hand knocking it back into place in the moment
    immediately following. Deft hands, and not a born laborer"s
    hands, either. I forced myself to divert my energies away
    from that particular train of thought, and nodded my assent.
    “There"ll be progress,” I promised. He grinned, and
    walked out, snicking the bolt neatly back into place behind
    him.
    I soon discovered that he hadn"t been kidding when he
    said I"d know which stalls were in need of attention. The
    horses—of which there weren"t too many, really, given that
    this was a cattle ranch where the horses" main function was
    to help with herding—were all out for the day, hard at work.
    Looking at the stalls, though, my heart didn"t exactly grow
    fonder of them in their absence.
    Put simply, they stank. The horses may have been
    absent, but they had left their mark behind. As I wandered
    from one end of the row of stalls to the other, it became
    evident that not just one or two but all of them were severely
    in need of a thorough cleaning out. Oro had been right, of
    course, in that this was hardly a task requiring any great or
    specialized skill, but my heart still sank at the mere idea of
    embarking upon it unaided. Spade in hand, I wandered in
    some desperation back to the main door of the stable and
    peered out. Oro was nowhere to be seen. The brown dust
    yard outside the door was quite empty, all the laborers
    having long since departed for enterprises rather further
    from the main hub of operations. It seemed that I was quite
    on my own.
    This Red Rock | Louise Blaydon
    15

    As I saw it, I had two options. I was, after all, Frank"s
    nephew, his guest. Frank had not personally given me any
    orders at all, and I presumed he was unaware that anybody
    else had. I could still go back into the house, pretending
    never to have been awake, and wander in to find Frank for
    breakfast. But the potential pitfalls of this plan were
    manifold. Frank, a rancher all his life, would have been
    awake for hours by now. His general tendency, though, now
    that he was getting a little older, was to get up in good time
    to give his men their orders and then go back to the house to
    order supplies and check accounts before breakfast.
    Chances were, he had spotted me already from his window. I
    had no desire to be caught out in my deception after what I
    said last night. Additionally, I did not fail to recognize the
    fact that, as one of Frank"s trained ranchmen, it was quite
    likely that Oro"s idea of an easy task for a beginner had been
    gleaned from Frank in the first place, and that Frank, even if
    I succeeded in convincing him that I had just woken up,
    would simply set me the same task again himself. And if that
    happened I would be here again, still facing the same
    Himalayas of horse dung, but without several of the
    advantages of the current situation. Frank wouldn"t know
    that I had dragged myself valiantly out of bed without ever
    being asked; that I had set about finding myself something
    to do in order to prove myself as eager for and capable of
    work as any of his hired hands. Furthermore—and I can"t
    pretend this wasn"t the overriding factor—Oro would know
    everything. He would know that my attempted projection of
    myself as an honest working man was nothing but a
    delusion; most likely, he would think me a pampered little
    faggot, and, what"s worse, dishonest. The thought of Oro
    coming in here after the agreed hour and a half had elapsed
    This Red Rock | Louise