It was his first day of the six months of days he owed to Sam, and he should have been looking forward to going up in the hills with the other hands, but he wasn’t. Working cattle didn’t seem to have the same draw for him it once did, and that surprised him. It was like his drinking. It seemed once it was in his past, that’s where it wanted to stay. He never would have thought in a million years it could happen, that his yearning for working cattle would just wither away like the plants in the desert during the dry season, and yet that was what it was beginning to feel like.

Besides, as he watched the men he would be with that day—good hands, all of them—jerking on their horses’ mouths or jabbing them with spurs because the horses wouldn’t, or couldn’t stand still in the crisp, early morning air, he slowly began to get a dull ache behind his right eye. It wasn’t that he faulted the men for what they were doing. After all, it wasn’t so very long ago he would more than likely have been one of the ones doing the very same thing. It was just that for some reason, and as of yet he hadn’t figured out what that reason was, he found that sort of thing very difficult to watch.

Looking around, he realized he actually knew most of the men getting ready to move cattle out of the hills that morning, although he couldn’t remember any of their names. He recognized many of them from other outfits he’d worked over the years, or from his countless nights in random saloons. But back then he never paid much attention to names. People’s names weren’t important and neither were the people for that matter. Back then if he needed to identify someone by name, whether in a bar or on the job, he’d just call him “Vern.” It was an easy name for him to remember, and besides most cowboys actually liked it. The way they saw it, if Henry McBride, a top hand in anybody’s eyes regardless of his drinking, called you Vern, then at least he thought enough of you to call you something other than, “Hey you,” or “Kid.” Someone like Henry calling you by name, even if it wasn’t your own, was actually a bit of a compliment, and that’s how most took it.

“Come on, Dave,” the voice of Topher Keys boomed out over the din of hooves, spurs and laughter. Topher was easily in his sixties, slightly heavyset with thick hands and a month’s worth of gray beard covering his craggy face. The five-inch brim of his worn cowboy hat shaded his eyes from sight when he held his head at just the right angle, and his voice was low and gravely from years of cigarettes and booze. He sat astride a twelve-year-old, sixteen-hand, paint mare he called Sissy, one of the only horses not dancing to and fro under their riders, and just the sound of thunderous voice commanded attention from all within earshot. “Hell, we ain’t got all damn day to wait fer you to git on yer damn horse. We got work to do.”