Keeping the Cowboy's Baby novel · Chapter 11 of 24

Chapter 11: Her Own Table

The deputy came in twenty minutes.

By then four trucks had stopped on the shoulder, and the ditch had an audience.

"Mr. Culbertson," the deputy said to Dalton. "Which Mr. Culbertson hit you?"

"My brother. He grabbed me by the shirt."

"And the truck in the ditch?"

"He drove it there himself. He's reckless."

The old rancher climbed out of his green pickup and walked around to Dalton's front bumper.

He ran two fingers along it.

"Green paint," he said. "Boone's truck is green."

"That's from the gravel."

"Son, I've been ranching for fifty years. Gravel doesn't leave paint on a bumper twice."

Dalton opened his mouth.

"And I saw you," the old rancher said.

"I came over the hill at the end."

"Your door was open and your phone was recording before anyone had touched you."

The deputy held out his hand.

Dalton gave him the phone.

The deputy watched it with a flat face.

He handed it back.

"Mr. Culbertson, I'm writing you up for reckless driving," he said.

"There was a pregnant woman in the other vehicle."

"You can take it up with the judge."

A low sound went through the watching men.

Dalton looked at me.

For a moment, the smile was gone.

What was left was thin, cold and furious.

"This isn't over," he said, soft.

"I know," I said.

The next morning I went to work.

Boone wanted me to stay home.

I told him I'd go to work or I'd go crazy.

He looked at me for a long moment and drove me to town himself.

Rasmussen's was packed by seven.

News had traveled down Main Street.

I carried plates through a room that went silent when I passed and louder when I left.

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