Right Back On

Twenty-One

Fair week was surprisingly fun and relaxing. Normally there was a lot of stress, early mornings, and late nights involved, none of which I liked that much. While the mornings were still early, Blake helped relive a lot of my stress by never leaving my side at the fairgrounds.

Dad hauled my steer in on Wednesday night for the weigh-in and we went home around nine after getting him settled in. Well, I went home. Dad went back out to harvest. Lately he'd been throwing himself into his work even more than usual, not that I could blame him. I'd done the same, in a manner of speaking.

I was supposed to show at eight AM on Thursday so I was at the fairgrounds by six to feed and wash my animal. Blake walked up casually and started shoveling out dirty sawdust as soon as she got there. She informed me that Kellan had given her an early ride in before he went to work. I hadn't been expecting her to come and help but she was saving me a lot of effort, on top of serving as a bodyguard. The last thing I wanted to do was complain.

Most of the tension between the three of us had disappeared. Instead of fighting each other, we were all pretty focused on hating Oakley. Kellan was mostly silent on the matter but you could see the disgust in his expression every time she came up in conversation. Blake was, of course, angry, and extremely verbal about it all. Snide jabs about Oakley's general stupidity seemed to be her favorite.

"So Coda," Blake began, flinging some water at me from the scotch comb she held, "if I made an apple pie and cut a cow out of the crust, could I call it a cow pie?"

I burst out laughing, scaring my steer a little bit. "Probably."

"Think I could get Wyatt to eat it?"

"I don't know. He's kind of a garbage gut, so I bet you could."

"And you're the raccoon in this relationship," she snorted with a grin.

I actually hadn't heard from Wyatt since our adventure at my house on Sunday. Blake mentioned something about him going back home but that was all I knew. Pathetically enough, I didn't even know the name of Wyatt's hometown, or Blake's, for that matter. Neither of them liked to go into much detail about their home lives.

The two of us finished prepping my steer and went off in search of some breakfast. I bought her a boat of biscuits and gravy and a cup of coffee for myself, which we brought back to the steer barn to eat. Kellan had the brilliant idea of parking a couple of camping chairs in my stall. Almost all of my time that week was spent either in those chairs or at Kellan's house after taking care of my animal.

Since I hadn't really bothered to practice, I showed terribly and didn't get called back. Consequently, Blake took the opportunity to drag me to her place and begin practicing.

Roping without Kellan felt a lot different. Where he usually had a never-ending supply of quiet patience, Blake was enthusiastic and determined. Never one to avoid speaking her mind, she would screech when we did something right, or throw her ball cap in the dirt when we screwed up.

"Okay, so do you even know what breakaway roping is?" She asked, tightening her horse's cinch.

"Basically the same thing as team roping except there's no heeler and you don't hang onto the head."

She nodded in approval. "At least you know what it is. I highly doubt Oakley does."

"Okay, so we don't have have real calves and you're normally a heeler, so this might be interesting. I guess just start heading the dummy," she motioned to the black plastic and metal stand that I'd started my roping career on.

She was right in the sense that it was awkward to practice breakaway on an inanimate object.

"We need to get some steers," I whined.