WILSON + WILSON

Pioneertown, Out Old Woman Springs Way

No matter how late Loretta comes home from mucking stalls, through the wind-scoured back range, he's still up working. He waits with that slick, entitled patience of a man who's never been made to wait for anything at all. At least not since the money.

I meet her at the door with a lift of my brows toward the parlor. "El acecha. He lurks," I murmur and move aside. Loretta slips out of muddy boots and brushes past me.

There he sits slouched on the worn leather sofa, one ankle hooked over his knee, thumbs flicking across the glowing screen of a tablet. Blue light pools in the battered wood grain of the coffee table 'side his humming phone and open laptop—his trinity of affection.

Loretta wants a bath. She wants the smell of mesquite smoke and horse sweat gone from her clothes, her hair. She wants silence. Instead, she says, "What's for dinner?"

Dance don't look up from his tablet. Muttering low and constant like a faraway generator, narrating headlines about tax breaks and rescued properties. Loretta knows each story will end the same way—with him as savior and her ranch as his next acquisition.

"Enchilades de chili rojo," I say.

Loretta shrugs out of her poncho, takes off her holster, hangs it on the peg. She likes the way the mother-of-pearl handle glints in the candlelight. Her mother's pistol. Priceless.

I bring her a mug of black coffee and a plate of fry bread—setting them at the little table under a lonely lamp. Loretta eats slowly, sips, watches Dance over the rim of her mug. She suspects he thinks of her as inventory—one more property to occupy, one more head of cattle to brand.

Tonight, she wears a handmade cotton blouse from my church sewing circle, its collar scalloped by my own patient fingers. It's her small defiance against the silk his assistants send from town.

Dance notices. His gaze slides from the tablet to her neck, and a grin breaks across his face like a crack in ice. He sets the device aside, leans forward, elbows on knees, the perfect cut of his charcoal suit pulling against his shoulders. His words are weighted, deliberate, tight. "You know, Loretta," he begins, "you don't have to work the stables anymore." Low, persuasive, designed to make his victory sound routine, like monsoon season in January. He sits back, adjusts the gold cufflinks that wink under the lamplight, rubs the black Ferrari key fob ‘tween his fingers. Like a talisman.

Loretta sips her coffee.

He talks about possessions the way ranchers talk about water rights—like it's life itself, something you own or you die without. "I've got a taste for the finer things," he says, and flourishes a slim silver case. Inside, business cards so thick they could stop a blade. "Custom stock. London," he says. "Smell that?" He holds the case out to her.

She don't lean forward.

The fine Corinthian leather belt across his middle creaks as he leans back. "Everything's a letdown, sooner or later," he says. "You'll learn. You're built for disappointment. I can help with that. One day, you'll thank me for telling you." He adjusts his suit jacket. "It won't be so easy for you later on when you lose your looks."

Loretta's skin prickles, a warning that starts on the back of her neck. It's the same alarm she gets stepping into a corral with a bull that's sizing her up. Some part of her so certain that if she lets him, Dance will destroy her—not by accident, but because he can. And the land. Her land. Always on his mind.

But the ranch is hers. The desert is hers. She's not going anywhere. The truth is, she can't live beyond this brittle stretch of sand and sky. The creosote blooming yellow just off the back porch.

Monday morning, Loretta drives the old Chevy into town to teach roping to a group of kids whose parents can't afford horses of their own. They arrive dusty and eager, calling "Hey, Miss Loretta!" in voices too big for their frames. She helps 'em mount, nudges their heels into position, sets their reins straight, makes sure they sit "deep and balanced." That's how she always says it. "Deep and balanced." Today, they bring her mariposa lilies or Mojave aster—she tucks them in her hair.

Sunday night, she visits the bunkhouse at the edge of the property. Colt's in there playing Texas hold 'em with the other hands. She brings jerky, twelve packs, a tin of chaw. And she carries messages for the grapevine. "Spread the word: beware that banker's contract; accept no offer with a handshake deal; watch out about the water rights." Then always a whispered tip: "Dance might be buying up parcels west of the ridge. Spread the word. Spread the word."

The cowboys grumble about slow rescue, about outsiders snapping up land. Loretta smiles, "Deal me in." Always sure to lose.

When Dance sleeps, Loretta drives the back roads. Well after midnight. Headlights sweeping over jackrabbits frozen in the light, dust pluming behind her like a snake, a roadrunner dashing for a late-night lizard. She pulls up to the same dim trailer, kills the engine, knocks on the aluminum door until a sleepy, unshaven man appears. "They'll be looking for her come sunup," Loretta says en voz baja, in a low voice, while handing over a small bundle. "Tell the senorita to pack light, head for Tucson. Lay low." The cash is never Loretta's. Sometimes it's from a rival rancher who hates the man in her bed. Sometimes it's from the same developer who would bulldoze us all.

Drawing looks she neither courts nor answers, Loretta walks her errands with a long, sure stride learned from years in the saddle, the hem of her denim skirt brushing her boots. Men notice her all right—slate-gray eyes, the fullness of a lower lip that hints at mischief but never quite delivers. Or does it? No one can figure why she's still here—a woman like her—all concho belt and shadow walker.

Once, at a rodeo, Colt—hat tilted, champion belt buckle flashing—tried to draw her down from her saddle in a moment meant gallant. Her mare, gentle as my church ladies most days, shied hard, spinning and lunging away. His horse bolted in turn, and he didn't reappear until the next day—swaggering into the bunkhouse with a grin and an easy apology. "Damn, Loretta, you can ride," Colt told her over the huevos rancheros I cooked up.

"I don't need no help. That's for damn sure," she said.

Loretta lets most things men do pass without answer, but sometimes a gesture haunts her. One night, Colt slips over from the casino and joins her brood around a campfire, singing low, mournful cowboy songs until the moonlight silvered the Joshua trees.

Another night, he appears 'neath her balcony. Folding sheets and towels late, I lean in from the shadows in the hallway, whisper, "Throw him something—a flower—he'll finish the song and leave."

Loretta plucks a single pink bloom from the Beavertail cactus and tosses it down. Colt catches it like it's fresh-mined gold, tucks it under his hatband, sings one last verse, and disappears 'neath a starry sky. The clip-clop of his horse fading in the distance.

Sometimes, she spots him at the edge of the feed store lot or trailing her at a distance through the farmer's market. He follows her clear down the sidewalk to the courthouse steps, then melts away when Dance's car roars up. She tells me it's nothing—just a boy—courting a crush.

"But Maria," she says, "the flower was a mistake."

Most of the time, Dance delays. Not long—ten minutes, maybe fifteen—but long enough time for her to feel the weight of it. She sits in the corner booth of the saloon and watches him finish whatever business keeps him near men, cigars, whiskey. The jukebox wailing George Jones, Hank Williams, Johnny Cash.

It's not always talk. Sometimes it's just the stillness of him sitting with a man at the bar. Other times it's a low exchange that don't reach her ears. But she don't need to hear. The shape of Dance's hands in gesture or on the table, the shape tells her everything. The relaxed sprawl when he's winning, the slow drum of fingertips when he isn't. He'd be a poor poker player. Too many tells.

Loretta also knows Colt is upstairs—Dance keeps him close these days. There's a weight in the catwalk that squares the place, the faint creak of a boot shifting on old wood. Over the railing, Colt watching. Always watching.

The first time she noticed, it unsettled her—Colt's eyes catching hers through the slats, the flash of recognition before he stepped back into shadow. Now she pretends not to see him.

When Dance rises, the room changes. Conversation drops a decibel, cards hang in the air before being thrown. He crosses to her without hurry, and though he says nothing, the air between them pulls taut.

She could leave. She could walk right past him, out into the warm, dusty dark where the screech owls hoot. But she stays. Whatever it is Dance has to tell her—or not tell her—will shape the next day, the next week, the next time Colt's eyes finds her through the floorboards.

Even this late, long after the sun has dropped behind the spine of the mountains, the wind stirs convection, like an oven. And inside, the saloon holds heat like a grudge. Ceiling fans churn without conviction, pushing dust in lazy tornadoes, catching lamplight. Somewhere behind the bar, an icebox coughs, its motor struggling against the cruel summer.

Tonight, Loretta sits in the far corner booth, the one with the view of both doors, her elbows set wide along the tabletop, scattered with the remains of a meal she'd only half-touched, a taco, guacamole. She feels hungry. But not for food.

I tend bar tonight. The piano in the corner quiet for an hour, but the memory of its last player still hangs in the air—an old ranch hand with thick fingers stumbling through an ancient hymn. Even the smell of the place has layers: the tang of old beer seeping from the boards, stale cigarettes in the curtains, chorizo on the grill.

From the catwalk, Loretta hears Colt's guitar. Lonesome cowboy songs. The ones that melt her.

The night outside stands full of small threats. Out in the desert, coyotes move—careful, testing the edges of the light. On the road, headlights slide past now and again, their beams cutting briefly through the slatted blinds. Loretta glances out the window, watches each one, the way she might watch for a change in the weather. Eyes always moving toward the sky.

Colt stops playing. From the rafters above, a sound comes—soft enough to be ignored if she wants to ignore it. The slow creak of a board under a boot. She don't look up. Not yet. But she can feel him. Colt moves the air, like static before storm. Her sonar reads his pattern of silence.

She watches the gamblers at the far table lean in close, whisper dark secrets. Loretta reaches for her mug of coffee, takes a slow drink, taps her nail once against the rim, her own echolocation.

From the bar, I look over, see a question half-formed in her face, then she lets it drop. I turn away. At home and here, I done worked long enough for Loretta to know when not to see.

The front door as it opens. The night air pushes in, bringing with it the smell of tar and kerosene. Dance steps inside. He don't walk straight to her. He never does. 'Stead, he stops at the bar. I pour him a bourbon, neat.

Loretta don't shift in her seat, but she keeps him in the corner of her vision. She knows not to show him the weight he carries in her night. To Dance, power is a game played on the length of one look.

Overhead, another small sound. Not wood this time—metal. Like a bullet sliding in a chamber, if you ask me. The sound stops.

Loretta feels Colt tighten the circle.

"Loretta." His voice a drawl, but with intention. She looks up at him, one brow lifting like she'd been expecting someone else.

"Colt."

Neither smiles. The silence between them holds years, like patina.

"You should come with me now," Colt says.

Visions slide through her. The coyote howls at the moon, but what does he want?

"Get your rifle, the revolver too. Loretta, come with me, leave this place."

"I can't. Some hearts flower like Joshua trees—only after the rarest winter."

And at the sound of her own voice, she wakes, upright and watchful, ready for Dance to come home.

She's the avenging angel, I guess. Or shadow walker. The last stand between him and hijos de dios, the children of God.

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