Chapter 32: Crooked Creek

"I'll bring it back," I said.

Gran put the calendar away.

"See that you do."

On the last Saturday in June, Kacey braided my hair in my mother's kitchen at five in the morning.

She did it three times, because the first two weren't good enough, and she cried a little on the second one and started over.

"You did that with the letter board too," I said.

"I'm a perfectionist." She pinned the end. "And I'm emotional. Hold still."

I wore my mother's wedding dress.

The old rancher had kept it in a cedar trunk in his attic for eight years, along with her saddle.

He'd never told me.

He'd brought it over in April with the sign.

It was plain white cotton with long sleeves. It fit me.

The left shoulder sat low enough to show the mark.

Kacey had made sure of that.

We trailered the grulla and the filly to Crooked Creek at nine.

The old ford was already full.

Both packs stood along both banks, under the cottonwoods, in their good jeans and their church shirts.

Seventy Jessups on one side. Nineteen Bridgers on the other.

The old rancher and his grandson were the only humans there.

They thought it was the prettiest ranch wedding they'd ever seen.

The Jessup riders had brought their horses.

So had the Bridger boys.

A hundred head stood saddled in the shade along the creek, tails swishing, every one of them calm.

I saddled the grulla myself.

The filly stuck to her mother's side, with a white ribbon somebody had braided into her tiny mane.

I knew who.

Kacey came up beside me and took the grulla's lead rope.

"No," I said. "I'm riding her down. You don't have to..."

"Nobody else can hold that mare," Kacey said, in a perfect Noreen Jessup voice. "You'll do it, Kacey. You owe this family that much."

I laughed so hard the grulla flicked an ear at me.

Kacey led the bride's horse down to the creek.

She walked in front of me in a green dress she'd bought for herself, with her chin up and her boots on.

She went straight down the bank between two packs of wolves.

The grulla walked behind her.

The filly trotted alongside, splashing at the edges.

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