Sylvie's Cowboy: Cinderella In Reverse

CHAPTER ONE - THE RANCH

Rural Florida, outside Clewiston

Two Days Before the Explosion

A dove gray Mercedes Benz limousine bumped along a winding, rutted dirt road through palmetto bushes, spindly pines, and scrub oaks to stop at an open gate with a rusty cattle gap. On a plank above the gate someone had burned "McGurk Ranch" in simple block letters.

Harry Pace, lean, tanned, and dark-haired with silvering temples, slid out of the limo's back seat. He gestured to the driver to stay put, and walked over the cattle gap, through the gate.

Harry had walked farther than any sane person wanted to in the sticky Florida heat when at last he soundlessly approached the front door of the ranch's modest house. He gripped the doorknob. It was locked. He sidled to his left and peered in a window. Nobody inside. From behind the house, he heard someone whistling "Your Cheatin' Heart." Harry smiled to himself and moved in the direction of the music.

In the second-story loft of a hay barn, Walter McGurk was forking hay out the open hay door, sailing it into a battered red pickup truck parked below. The truck's doors were inexplicably yellow. Walt whistled as he worked.

Walt made a heavy job look easy with his strong, athletic build. Sweaty shirt sleeves rolled up to his elbows revealed ropes of muscle undulating in his sun-darkened forearms as he lifted and tossed the hay. His faded jeans were tight and faded from many washings. His tooled leather belt held a large hunting knife in a weathered cowhide sheath. He wore battered, scuffed cowboy boots.

Harry approached the barn, shielding himself from view beneath a huge avocado tree. When he eased around the tree, a big, ugly dog growled from beneath the red-and-yellow pickup. In the loft overhead, Walt jerked toward the sound and spotted Harry instantly.

"What do you want?" Walt growled, echoing the dog.

"What does any man want when his partners are stealing him blind?" asked Harry, stepping out from beneath the avocado shade.

Walt spun and hurled his pitchfork like a javelin. It thwacked into the ground a hair's breadth from Harry's boots. Only Harry's eyes moved.

"You ain't stupid enough to be talkin' about me," said Walt. "I ain't a thief. Fact, I'm the only half of this partnership that ever does an honest day's work. So, what do you want?"

Walt used the hayloft's rope and pulley to swing Tarzan-like to the ground. He paced to the truck, drying his face and wiping perspiration out of his hat with a bandana from his pocket. Walt opened the truck's passenger door and helped himself to water from an Igloo cooler.

Harry walked around the grounded pitchfork to join Walt at the truck. Walt filled a paper cup with water from the Igloo, but when Harry reached for it, Walt offered it instead to the ill-tempered dog lying under the truck. Unperturbed, Harry got his own cup of water. Then he turned his back on Walt and toyed with a heavy avocado drooping from a branch.

"Spit it out, will ya?" said Walt, helping himself to water from the paper cup he had shared with the dog. "Butch and me got things to do."

Harry didn't turn around. "I was gonna ask you to help me when I make my play to get back what they stole," Harry said to the avocado. "But it occurs to me you're probably gettin' too old and too slow."

Behind Harry, Walt bent to reach beneath his jeans and pull a pistol out of an ankle holster.

"I'm twenty years younger than you, old timer, and I can still chop my own guacamole," said Walt.

Harry snapped the avocado from the tree. The branch recoiled, bucking and swinging. Harry feinted one way, then reversed direction, turned, and threw the avocado high. It soared like a miniature green football far over Walt's head.

Walt fired three quick shots, each one chopping a piece off the airborne avocado.

Avocado chunks rained down and littered the grass. Harry walked through them, turning them over with the toe of his boot. Walt slid the pistol back into his own boot. Harry gave him a satisfied nod.

"I want you to take care of Silvie," Harry said.

Walt shook his head. "I ain't up to spoiling your daughter for ya. You done too well already on that, if ya ask me."

Harry gave him a hard look. "Don't spoil her," he said. "Take care of her."

"You take care of her. Ain't seen her in nearly ten years. You and I both know she'd be happy if she never saw me again."

"I'll be busy," said Harry. "Gonna give some big city thieves a dose of their own medicine."

"And if they don't want to swallow it?"

Harry turned to leave, speaking almost to himself as he retraced the route to the limo. "Then we'll find out whether I'm gettin' too old and too slow."

Butch rose from beneath the truck, and Walt absently rubbed the dog's ears as he watched Harry go. Walt's brow furrowed, and there was both anger and worry in his voice when he shouted, "I got a good life here, Harry. Don't you mess it up for me, y'hear?! Harry?! I mean it, now."

Harry kept walking. He never looked back.

"Shoot!" said Walt in disgust. He splattered a hunk of avocado with a kick and snatched up the pitchfork to return to work. Harry was gone. Whatever would happen, would happen.

A cellular phone rang inside the truck. Walt walked over, leaned in, and plucked the phone from its holster on the dashboard.

"McGurk," he said into the phone. He listened, then responded, "Was that tonight? ... No, no problem. I just forgot is all. ... Clarice, people forget. It don't mean they don't love people. They just forget. I'll pick you up at seven. ... Fine. 'Bye."

He slammed the phone back into its holster and gave Butch an exasperated look. "I think what we need is one more fancy-planning, crazy-talkin', lipstick-wearin' tower of estrogen in our lives right now, don't you?"

"Woof!" said Butch.