Luke Dawkins nudged his worn Stetson back on his head and took a long, hard look at the rusting metal gate. Arrowhead Hills Ranch was carved into the weathered wooden sign along with two imprints of arrowheads.
The last time he’d laid eyes on that gate, he’d seen it through the rearview mirror of the beat-up red pickup truck that he’d bought with money he’d earned working at the local feed and tack shop. That had been eleven years ago, when he was eighteen.
The rickety ranch gate seemed the same. Luke wasn’t.
You Can’t Go Home Again. Thomas Wolfe had known his stuff. The home might not change. The person who’d left would.
A few years of bouncing from job to job followed by eight years in the military had turned Luke into a man, yet he still dreaded returning to the place he’d once called home.
A small Texas Hill Country town with a lot more cows than people, more barbwire than roads and some of the best ranch land in the state.
All Luke had against the town or the ranch could be summed up in two words. Alfred Dawkins. Stubborn. Controlling. Bitter. Downright ornery.
The poor excuse for a father wouldn’t like having Luke home again any more than Luke wanted to be here.
Neither of them had a lot of choice in the matter.
The old defiant angers festered in Luke’s gut as he climbed out of his new double-cab pickup truck and stepped around a mud hole.
His boots scooted across the cattle gap as he unlatched and opened the gate before getting back into his truck and driving through it the way he’d done hundreds of times as a rebellious teenager.
He paused and took in the sights and sounds before he closed the gate behind him. A barking dog, though it wouldn’t be Ace, the golden retriever he’d raised from a pup. Ace had died from a rattlesnake bite when he jumped between Luke and the striking snake.
Luke had been fourteen then. His dad had scorned him for shedding a few tears. Nothing new. Luke had never measured up in his dad’s mind. Just one of the many reasons Luke had never looked back once he left Arrowhead Hills Ranch.
A crow scolded Luke from high in the branches of a nearby live oak. A horse neighed.
Luke looked to the left and spotted a couple of chestnut mares giving him the once-over. So his dad still kept horses. Good to know.
It had been years since Luke was in the saddle. His consecutive tours in the Middle East hadn’t allowed much time for revisiting the cowboy lifestyle.
It was shirtsleeve weather, warm for late January, but a bracing breeze rustled the tall yellow strands of grass and the leaves in a persimmon tree that hugged the fence.
Luke closed the gate, climbed back into his truck and drove toward the old house. He had no idea what to expect or what kind of health his father had been in before he suffered the stroke that had led to his being placed in a rehab facility.
Significantly weakened on the left side of his body now and with difficulty putting his thoughts into coherent sentences, he was unable to take care of himself, much less the ranch.
Not that Luke had originally gotten that information firsthand. It was Esther Kavanaugh, a longtime neighbor who’d been his mother’s best friend before her death, who’d called with the SOS. Luke had followed up with Alfred’s doctor and the rehab center.
So here he was, back in Winding Creek.
The brown roof appeared as he rounded a curve in the dirt ranch road. Trees hid the rest of the clapboard house until he was closer.
It looked smaller than he remembered it. A bungalow with two bedrooms, two baths, a family den, a large kitchen downstairs and an upstairs dormer with another bedroom and bath that had been his hideaway.
Luke parked in a gravel drive in front of the carport that covered what he assumed was his dad’s scratched and dented Chevy pickup truck. Alfred had always been a Chevy man and always hard on the finish of the vehicle. He’d never let bushes or shrubs get in the way of his getting where he wanted to go on the ranch.
The wide, covered porch that his mother had always filled with huge clay pots of colorful blooms was bare except for one old pottery planter full of dirt and dead flowers, a weathered wooden rocker and what looked to be a fairly new porch swing that dangled from the ceiling by only one chain.
Luke’s mother’s once prized flower beds that had bordered the porch were choked with weeds. The paint on the house was faded and peeling. A dark brown shutter on one of the windows hung askew.
Luke climbed out of the truck and took the cracked concrete walk from the driveway to the porch steps. A sense of foreboding rattled his mood. Stepping back into the house with its bittersweet memories of his mother would have been depressing in an ideal situation. This was far from ideal.
He had no idea what Alfred or the neighbors expected of him. He didn’t mind the work, but it wasn’t as if he had any authority to make decisions about the ranch. More than likely his father hadn’t even named him in the will even though Luke had no siblings.
The door was unlocked. Luke swung it open, but before he could step inside, he heard approaching hoofbeats. He turned as the horseman rode into view, pulled on the reins and stopped in the shade a few yards from the porch.
The black mare snorted and tossed her head as the rider climbed from the saddle and looped the reins around a low-lying branch of a scraggly ash tree.
The rider acknowledged Luke with a smile and a nod.
Luke tipped his Stetson.
“You must be Luke,” the cowboy said as he approached the porch steps. “Esther Kavanaugh said you’d be here sometime this weekend. She wasn’t sure when, so I was just coming by to see if you made it yet.”
“Yep. Luke Dawkins. Just drove up. Haven’t even made it inside.” He met the guy on the edge of the porch and offered his hand.
“Buck Stalling,” the guy said. “I’m a wrangler for Pierce Lawrence over at the Double K Ranch. He sends me over here twice a day to take care of the horses.”
“Is Pierce running the ranch for Esther Kavanaugh now?” Luke asked.
“He owns it. Mrs. Kavanaugh sold it to him a few months back.”
“Interesting. She didn’t mention that she’d moved when I talked to her.”
“She didn’t move. She lives right there in the big house like she always has, close to her beloved chickens and garden.”
“Does Pierce live there, too?”
“He did before he built himself, his pregnant wife, Grace, and his young daughter a house of their own no more than a good stone’s throw away from Esther. Right nice setup.”
“Sounds like a good deal for all of them. I just didn’t realize Pierce was back in Winding Creek.”
“Then you know Pierce,” Buck said. “I’m surprised he never mentioned knowing you.”
“No
