Judd knelt and wrapped the rope around the hind legs of the steer. “You can walk away every time the flies start bitin’. Or you can swat ’em until they’re gone.”

“Huh?” Wyatt was used to Judd’s adages and respected him for his experience and wisdom. But sometimes, he wished his friend would just come out and say what he meant.

Judd knotted the rope and then sat back on his boot heels. “Problem with you young pups is that you expect things to be easy, and then the minute they’re not, you pack up and hightail it out.”

“I ain’t expecting nothin’ to be easy. You’ve seen how hard I’ve been working for months.” Wyatt couldn’t keep the frustration from rising with his voice. “Poured my heart and life into this ranch. And for what? What do I have to show for it? A herd of dead steers, that’s what.”

“Quit your blubbering,” Judd muttered, standing up.

“I ain’t blubbering.”

“Could have fooled me.”

“Things are always going wrong for me. Can’t seem to make a go of anything I set my hand to.”

“Things always go wrong. Just the way it is in a broken world.” Judd shot a stream of spit straight into the dirt. “We can call it rubbish and throw it away. Or we can pick it up and fix it as best we can.”

Wyatt shook his head. Judd didn’t understand what his life had been like, all his efforts to make a way for himself so he could build a new home for his family. Something always put a hitch in his plans and kept him from succeeding.

“Been hanging my hat on something my ma taught me from the Good Book,” Judd continued, jawing more now than he had in a month. “She always said, we ain’t supposed to be surprised when we come against fiery trials. If the Lord suffered, then we gotta expect the suffering too.”

Wyatt wanted to respond that he wasn’t surprised by fiery trials, but as he glanced around the growing darkness at the dead steers, his inner dickering fell silent. Had he expected the good Lord to take away his problems and make everything work out? What if he’d been pulling away from God and blaming Him when things didn’t go the way he wanted?

Fiery trials. Reverend Zieber had recently preached about the three men who’d been thrown into the fiery furnace for not worshiping a false god. The onlookers had seen not three men in the fire, but four. God hadn’t taken them out of the fiery trial. He’d walked with them through it.

Was that what God promised? Not to pluck him out of difficulties but to be there in the midst of them?

“So”—Wyatt tried to make sense of everything—“you think I need to stay put instead of walking away?”