A Cowboy's Home by RJ Scott Page A

tried Nate. No answer. Then Gabe next, who
answered on the second ring. “Yo, Sam.” A smile in his voice.
    “I need your help.”
    “What’s wrong?” Gabe didn’t make a joke.
Evidently he’d picked up on the anxiety and urgency in Sam’s voice.
“Oh my God, is it Ashley, the kids? My brothers—?”
    “No,” Sam interrupted before Gabe passed out
going through a list of everyone he cared for. “Hell, no, I just
have... something. Do you know the old shacks up behind Ember
Bluff, about a mile up from them?”
    There was a moment of silence. “Yes, kind of.
There’s about five of them, old cabins from before the ranch was
officially here. Loggers’ shacks, I think.”
    Five? Shit, Sam hadn’t counted five, just the
one he’d sat inside with Tom. “Is Nate around somewhere?”
    “No, he left twenty minutes ago. He’s out
with a family on a trail with Adam. Is everything okay?”
    “Jay?”
    “Jay? He’s gone to town. Shit, Sam, tell me
what’s wrong. You’re worrying me.”
    “Can you get here?”
    “Where?”
    “The cabins up past Ember Bluff.”
    “What?”
    “Gabe, listen to me. I found a man in one of
the cabins. He has a gun and no ID. He’s ill, and we need to get
him help.”
    “Okay, I’ll call the sheriff and the
paramedics—”
    “No. He said no. Look, can you just get
here?”
    “Sam—”
    “Gabe, please, just you. No 911.” There was
no way Sam wanted a man’s life on his conscience.
    “Jeez, Sam. I’ll saddle up and be there as
soon as I can.”
    “Take the top trail and look for my
bike.”
    “On it.”
    Only when Sam was tracking back to where he’d
left Tom did he think maybe he should have asked Gabe to bring a
second horse. Or something.
    I’m not thinking this through. He
stopped the bike for a moment, the engine idling, his feet flat on
the ground. What the hell am I doing?
    “Saving a man’s life,” Sam answered himself
out loud. “Finding cosmic balance and shit. Righting all my
wrongs.”
    He bowed his head, focusing on his right
hand, the fingers curled around the handlebars.
    The last time he thought he knew better,
everything had gone wrong. A man he thought he’d loved had lost his
job and been shamed in the media. Sam pulled in the clutch, and
twisted the throttle, considering turning the bike around.
    That thought lasted all of a few seconds. And
then, with determination, he forged on up toward the cabin.
    He clambered through the twisted roots and
into the shack. Tom hadn’t moved from where Sam left him; his eyes
were still closed, the scent of vomit heavy in the air.
    “Tom?” Sam shook his shoulder. “I’m sorry,
man; I can’t do this on my own. Help is coming, but I’ll stay with
you all the time, okay. Gabe is coming. We can trust him not to
call 911, and I won’t let anyone hurt you. Unless, of course,
you’re an escaped murderer, in which case I will rat you out in a
second.”
    He was rambling again, anything to hear the
sound of his voice. He felt for a pulse and couldn’t find it.
Instead he pressed his ear to Tom’s chest, all kinds of awkward and
twisted. Tom’s heartbeat was there, his chest rising and falling;
he was alive.
    So now what?
    No way could he move Tom from where he lay.
Sam sat down next to Tom, felt the heat of the man radiating to
him, and placed a reassuring hand on his arm.
    All he could do was wait for Gabe, and it was
excruciating.
    His thoughts wandered to Bryan, the man he’d
lusted after at fifteen: the gardener, all sweat and muscles, and
God, Sam had been so eager to try everything. Being gay wasn’t an
issue for him, losing his virginity had been. And he’d been
reckless and stupid, demanding that Bryan show him everything. It
had been a long hot summer of sex until he turned sixteen.
    And then he’d come out; he was in love with
Bryan, or he’d thought so, and he told his family.
    Sam had come out of it smelling of roses,
because his family paid Bryan off and blamed the older man for
leading