As Will took a short hold on the reins, the colt danced, his head sky high. He rolled his white-ringed eyes back, trying to see the unfamiliar person on his back.

Will shot J.D. a smug grin. “I’m gonna ride him.”

The feeling that burst through J.D. was jealousy, pure and simple. The colt was his. He had a natural talent with horses, and that was one thing his snot-nosed little brother couldn’t horn in on. Except now he was. Nothing was sacred.

“You’re gonna get dumped on your bony little butt, shithead. Get off him.”

Will took a tighter hold on the reins. The colt danced around in a circle, blowing through flared nostrils. The color was gone from Will’s face, but he showed no other sign of losing his nerve. “I can ride him if I want, John Dopeface. You don’t own him.”

“I own him more than you do,” J.D. shot back. He jumped up on a rail on the corral fence and reached for the colt’s bridle. The horse shied sideways, beyond trusting anyone. “Get off before you ruin him!”

Will ignored him, his attention snagged by the sound of Sondra’s voice as she and some of her town friends came down across the yard toward the corral. She was laughing and talking, her voice like the sound of water tumbling down a mountain stream. She dressed like a town lady, which J.D. hated, but then, he hated most everything about Sondra and Sondra’s snotty friends. He was too busy glaring at them to notice that Will was taking the colt out through the gate.

Everything seemed to happen at once then. Will said something to catch his mother’s attention. She turned toward him, smiling brightly, and raised a hand to wave. The colt went off like a rocket. He shot straight up in the air, all four legs coming off the ground. Will’s eyes went as round as silver dollars, then squeezed shut as the horse came down, driving his head down between his knees and jerking him halfway over the animal’s neck in the process.

There was nothing to do but watch the wreck happen. J.D. stayed on the rail, his fingers digging into the rough wood. Sondra was screaming. Her lover went running to find help, but there was no helping Will. He would be the victim of his own stupidity. So would the colt.

J.D. watched, sick at heart, as the colt pitched and squealed, wild with fright. Will somersaulted off and hit the dirt with a sickening thud. The colt wheeled and ran away from the crowd and straight into the corral fence. He hurled himself up against it, trying desperately to clear the high rail, tangling his forelegs between the bars in the process.

As the townspeople crowded around the groaning Will, J.D. went to the aid of the horse, talking to him softly, trying to calm him, praying the animal wouldn’t break a leg in his scramble to free himself from his predicament. The colt’s copper coat was nearly black with sweat and flecked with lather. Blood ran down the white stockings on his forelegs, where he had scraped the skin away against the bars of the fence.

Chaske came and took the horse, frowning darkly at the damage that had been done to the animal-physically and mentally. Every bit of work they had done was ruined that quickly, that carelessly. J.D. started to follow him toward the barn, but the old man shook his head and shot a meaningful glance at the crowd gathered around Will.

“See to your brother first.”

J.D. started to protest, but bit the words back as Chaske stared at him long and hard.

Will was alive and moaning, soaking up the sympathies of the townspeople like an obnoxious little sponge. J.D. was more worried about the colt. Getting dumped was a common enough occurrence; people seldom died of it and it was generally their own fault anyway. The colt, on the other hand, might never lose his mistrust of people now. And that was all Will’s fault.

He took up a stance where he could scowl down at Will. Sondra glared up at him through her tears. She kneeled in the dirt beside her baby, cradling his head in her lap, stroking his cheek as he cried softly and held one arm against his middle. “How could you do this!”

J.D. all but jumped back at the attack. “It wasn’t my fault! I told him he’d break his stupid neck!”

“You should have stopped him. My God, J.D., you’re sixteen. Will’s just a little boy! Don’t you have any sense of responsibility at all?”

She couldn’t have hit him any harder with an ax handle. Responsibility? What would she know about responsibility? She was the one who had left her family for her own selfish reasons. She didn’t know spit about responsibility. And she’d bred a son in her own selfish image. J.D. knew without question that Will would turn the story around so that none of the blame would rest on his own head. It would all be J.D.’s responsibility-like the chores and the house and every job Dad ignored because he was too busy pining away for a wife who was as faithless as a bitch in heat. And J.D. would take it and bear up and never say a word to anyone, because he was a Rafferty, and that was his biggest responsibility.

J.D. brought himself back to the present, shaking his head at the fog that had shrouded his brain. It wasn’t like him to look back. What was done was done. It didn’t matter anymore.

But as he looked across the pen at Will, he knew that wasn’t true. It did matter. It mattered a lot. The stakes had only gotten higher and higher with the passage of time, until now everything hung in the balance. The ranch sat on the pinnacle, teetering precariously. Will was the weight that could tip it either way.

They hadn’t spoken a word since the scene outside the Hell and Gone. J.D. hadn’t trusted himself. He knew his temper only made things worse, but he could hardly look at Will these days without seeing red. From the beginning he had been the one who loved the ranch, worked the ranch, fought tooth and nail for the ranch, yet Will had the power to lose it for him. Between his gambling and his womanizing, he seemed hell-bent on doing just that.

The idea of not being in control of his own destiny made J.D. furious and terrified in a way nothing else could. All their futures-his, Del’s, Tucker’s, Chaske’s-were sliding into the hands of a man who had never taken responsibility for anything in his life.

Will leaned against the side of the barn, bent over at the waist, drinking from the hose. He had shown up in time for breakfast, refused everything but black coffee, which he drank in silence, leaning back against the kitchen counter. Mirrored aviator sunglasses shaded eyes that were most probably bloodshot. He took them off now and sprayed himself in the face with the water.

They had spent the day finishing inoculations and all the other miscellaneous checks on the steers and heifers. As predicted, the corral was a sea of mud, churned deep by the hooves of thousand-pound animals. J.D. was covered with muck to his waist. He could feel flecks of it drying on his face and the back of his neck. Pushing himself away from the rail, he made his way toward the hose.

Will handed it to him, then stood back, settled his sunglasses into place, and slicked his dark hair back with his hands, turning his profile to the setting sun. He looked like a movie star bathed in golden light. Tom Cruise come to play cowboy for a day in Hollywood’s newest fun spot. The analogy only fueled J.D.’s temper. He used the hose to douse it, letting the cold well water pour over the back of his head and down the sides of his face.

Tucker had already gone to the house to see about supper. Chaske was doing the chores. The day was winding down, the sun sliding toward the far side of the Gallatin range. Down the hill from the pens, the cattle dogs were hunting mice, bounding through the bluebells and needlegrass, setting the tall stalks of beargrass bending to and fro like the stems of metronomes. Somewhere in the woods beyond, a wild tom turkey gobbled, advertising for a date.