Chapter 23: Rope

The stock sale was in a tin barn outside Woodward, Oklahoma, and I got there at dusk on Tuesday.

I had left Poppy on Carys's ranch with her young hand's mother, who had raised six boys and promised to put a rifle across any man who woke her.

The auction ring was a half circle of bleachers around a sawdust pit.

An auctioneer was selling bull calves at a speed that made no sense to me.

I found Carys in the third row from the top in her canvas jacket, with a bid card in her fist.

She did not turn around.

"You're late," she said.

"The judge ran long."

"I heard." She raised the card. "Poppy?"

"Fed, bathed, and giving orders to the whole household. She says to tell you to pick the one with the black face."

The corner of her mouth moved.

"Lot forty-one," the auctioneer cried. "Yearling, black as a church hat, sired by a champion!"

A bull calf trotted into the ring, with a white blaze down his nose.

"That's the one," Carys said, quietly.

She raised her card three times.

A man at the front of the ring bid against her and gave up.

"Sold!" the auctioneer said. "Dunning Stock! What name for the ticket, ma'am?"

Carys looked at me.

"You pick it," she said.

"I don't know bulls."

"You know when to shoot them. Name him."

I looked at the calf in the pit, nosing the sawdust, as stupid and sure of himself as any animal alive.

"Rope," I said.

She laughed.

It cracked halfway through, and she put the back of her hand to her mouth.

"Rope," she told the auctioneer.

"Dunning's Rope!" he called, and moved on.

Her trailer was parked behind the barn, with a bunk room built into the nose.

She unlocked it and went in first.

I shut the door behind me.

There was a narrow bed, a lantern, and a coffee can of cash on the shelf.

She stood with her back to me.

"Say it," she said. "Why did you drive three hours?"

"Why did you drive away?"

"Because the room was full," she said. "You had a judge and a daughter and a house. You didn't have a place that was only mine."

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