“I’m ten times the hand tha’ ol’ son of a bitch is,” Chad mumbled to himself. He then turned to Jake. “I’ll tell ya one thing. I’m ten times the hand tha’ ol’ son of a bitch is!”

“Well, it’s too late now,” Jake said flatly. “He’s stayin’ and you ain’t.”

“I’ll prove it, too,” Chad grunted.

“You ain’t gonna’ prove nothing,” Jake told him.

“The hell I won’t. I’ll show her wha’ kind a hand I am. Once she sees wha’ I can do, she’ll run tha’ ol’ son of a bitch off fer sure.”

“Don’t be stupid, Chad. Just leave it be.”

“Don’t call me stupid’r I’ll kick yer ass!” Chad fumbled for the door handle. “Now pull ov’r so I can puke.”

Big Steve would need to stop the truck three more times so Chad could be sick before they got back to the ranch. In between bouts of throwing up, Chad formulated his plan for how he would make Henry look bad, win back his job, and get back in Jessie’s good graces all in one fell swoop. He was so drunk he didn’t even realize he was vocalizing every step of his plan rather than just working it out in his head, and after hearing what he planned on doing, Jake and Big Steve thought it best to simply drop him off at the ranch gate and head back to town. Both men knew if Chad actually went through with his alcohol-induced plan, not only would he not get back in Jessie’s good graces, but most certainly his life at the Lazy K would come to an abrupt and irrevocable end. Neither wanted to be around to get caught up in the wake of Chad’s self-destruction, or to have Jessie think they had been part of it. The men felt absolutely no loyalty or allegiance whatsoever to the head wrangler, so if Chad was going down, he was going down by himself, simple as that.

The colt had eaten his fill of hay that had been placed in his pen early in the day and had been dozing in the relative coolness of the starlit night when he first detected there was something wrong. A terrible odor drifted past him on the breeze, and as hard as he tried, he couldn’t pinpoint where it was coming from. There was the strong smell of cigarette smoke mixed with stale alcohol, beer and the sweat of a human. Not just any human, though. It was the smell of the man in the big hat, the one he didn’t like and didn’t trust. There was some noise in the distance, the sound of the man in the big hat mumbling to himself, and suddenly there he was, standing near the colt’s pen, a coiled rope in one hand and saddle in the other.

The colt snorted a loud warning, then started running furiously in the pen looking for an escape from the foul-smelling human. The heavy wooden gate creaked loudly as the human opened it, entered the pen, and then closed it behind him. Chad staggered to the middle of the sixty-foot enclosure and built a loop in his forty-five-foot lariat. He swung the loop over his head a number of times before finally throwing it toward the colt.