Tack Room

Seven days of branding on a Montana cattle ranch, and Mateo Ruelas has roped every calf that came through the gate. He is thirty-three and two years off the bull-riding circuit: warm brown skin, shaggy black hair to his jaw, dark eyes, a compact, ripped body, and hands scarred by twelve years of rope. He came north for honest work and a quiet season. He did not come for the man at the branding fire.

Jude Abernathy owns every acre in sight. He is thirty-nine and six-foot-four, with deep brown...