if it weren't for the wind

"No, they ain't all the same. If they're trained to take a rider and they still don't want you up there, it's something you're doing. I can give you lessons, if ya like. Can start you out on my horse, Whiskey. He's a good ol' boy. But if you call him an asshole, we're gonna have issues." Beck was real protective of his horse.

"Real nice, Murph," Beck answered with a humourless snicker. "Sayin' my dead brother ain't missing much. You're a real charmer. You're lucky I'm in a good mood." Lucas was another of Beck's sore spots, but he wasn't looking for an argument today. "And I'm thirty, by the way. Much as this babyface might indicate otherwise."

Beck stood a little straighter, stretching out their back and shoulders a little. "All I'm sayin' is if you're gonna be here, might wanna learn a thing or two, and be a little less combative with the people who're trying to teach you." There wasn't any malice to Beck's words. Just some friendly advice. But it was up to Murph if he took it that way.

He felt out of his depth - reeling at the amount of things he didn't know. Temperaments and trainings and breeding practices and techniques. It was a lot to take on at 47, more than he'd anticipated. But maybe Beck had a point - he was here, now. He'd signed up for this. No one had held a gun to his head and said, "You gotta' become a ranch hand with zero training or background knowledge or you're gonna' drop dead in the next ten seconds." He'd made a choice - the only choice that had allowed him to stay in Paxton, the one place he might eventually feel comfortable enough to call home - and maybe it wouldn't hurt to try. Or, at the very least, accept the help that had been offered to him at every turn.

Didn't mean he wasn't gonna' complain about it, though. He was an old dog, after all. Learning one new trick was plenty.

"A'right, fine," he huffed, raking his sweat-soaked hair off of his forehead. "I'll learn. But fuck bein' nice about it. I am what I am," he shrugged. "M'gonna' bitch. It's my right. I'm old, remember?" He shot Beck a rare grin. It wasn't very large, or very bright, but it was genuine.

"Horses ain't the problem. What you been riding? Are they already broke? Already worked under saddle? Chances are they can sense that you're nervous. They're real sensitive, y'know?" Beck had worked with flightly horses before, so-called problem horses. Most of the ones around Blue Rooster and Crown B would've been out of cow horse lines and raised to have good temperament. "Yeah? My brother woulda been about your age." He'd be turning forty-six this year, if he was still alive. "What made you want this job anyways?" He seemed a little (a lot) out of his element.

Murph scrubbed a hand across his face in frustration, smearing a line of dirt from his cheek to his chin. The sun was just beginning to paint the western horizon in a myriad of golden orange hues, but it was still dry and overly warm. What he wouldn't give for some fucking rain.

"He ain't missing much. Bad back, bad knees, gotta' get up and piss four times a night. Even worse, gotta' deal with twenty-year olds swaggerin' around, actin' like their shit don't stink." He snorted, shaking his head. "Gettin' old is a fucking treat."

They were on the last few boards of this section, and Murph was determined to finish repairs before they lost the light. At Beck's inquiry he shrugged, ripping the seal off a fresh box of nails. "I wanted to eat? Have a place to crash? S'not that deep."

When: Present (January)

Where: The Lost Horse Saloon

It was one of those evenings that Tim felt too wound up to go home. So, he stuck around in town a little longer than usual and drifted to the Lost Horse. He just entered the saloon, the crack of billiards drowned out the toll of the bell announcing his arrival, and caught sight of Murph right by the counter. Tim walked over before he had the sense to walk the other way; sometimes, when it came to Murph, it was better to just look the other way and to plead ignorance.

"Surprised you got cut loose from the Rooster before midnight," Tim said, taking the next seat over. He held up two fingers when the bartender caught his eyes -- he had his first legal drink at the saloon, the bartender knew exactly what he ordered. "Are you by yourself, or did you get sent out with the baby ranch hands?"

He'd only been here for an hour or so, but he was already well on his way to pleasantly buzzed - a luxury for him, these days. Since he'd joined the CM and started both living and working at the Blue Rooster, he'd been walking a thin line. No drinking during working hours had sounded fine at first - until he'd realized that he was always fucking working.

After six months, he was mostly used to sobriety, painful as it was. But the rare free time he was allotted belonged to him, and fuck if he wasn't going to indulge himself.

"Hah," he snorted into the slightly watered-down beer he'd ordered before he'd gotten distracted with the whiskey shots. "I ain't babysitting anyone tonight. Nah, the rest of 'em all went down to that club. Wassit called? Somethin' about a cactus?" He shrugged. "Let 'em pay twenty bucks for one drink and get hearin' loss from shitty EDM. It's a right of passage."

The worst part about this whole ass thing, was he wasn't getting paid for this. Noah couldn't quite remember if there was a bottle of jack involved at the end of it, or if it was just one of those, 'it'd be a real help if you could get something done with that' sort of situations. While he was champion at holding flashlights for his father, which in turn made him a big help, this kind of sucked. What didn't suck however, was he got to pick the horse he rode and they did have this cute little roan thing that he thought was wasted here. It was just catty enough he thought it might be able to get down and do something if someone with half a skill would guide it, but that would not be him. "I just." He looked at Murph, "I don't understand how you keep spending more time in the dirt than you do on that horse's back. What do you think is the problem?" Noah asked, knowing he probably wasn't going to get an accurate self diagnosis.

This was the third time in as many weeks that he'd been thrown from the back of a horse (with an audience, no less), and at this point he was seriously considering just lying here and waiting to be trampled by the young colt still restlessly circling the training ring.

Honestly? Couldn't hurt any more than his pride did right now.

Cold, wet, hoof-churned mud was slowly soaking into the back of shirt and streaked across his face from where he'd fallen. As he wallowed, he swore he could feel his heartbeat in his right hip, throbbing like it was. That was definitely going to bruise.

Noah's face came into view and, in answer to his criticism, Murph simply scowled and flipped him off. "Fuck off," he wheezed, trying in vain to get his breathing back under control.

When: Present (January)

Where: Mesa Diner

The thing about the Cowboys was that Julie tended to keep her distance. Yes, she was married to a Top Hand, there was never a point in their marriage that Caid wasn't part of the Cowboy Mafia. She knew who was who among the hands and top hands. The fingers were a different story -- she didn't really know most of them, and they didn't really know her beyond owning the town's salon.

Until Murphy Bronson. She knew Murph through Joanne. At the sight of his familiar face, Julie squinted. Sure, he was older than she remembered and she was older, too. As the pots and pans clanged in the kitchen, and throngs of people waited for the grease-spotted takeout bags, Julie drifted closer to Murph. "So, long time, no see, but also: Joanne hasn't somehow, some way wound up in your corner of town or reached out to you has she? I feel like I'm sensing her on the wind."

While he was a lot less hungover these days, his love for artery clogging food was still going strong, and Mesa was as good a place as any to get his fix.

'Course, he wasn't exactly planning on running into Joanne's girl here.

"Julie," he murmured, taking a sip from his scalding hot cup of coffee just to have something to do. It was rank, naturally. All good diner coffee was. Suppressing a mild wince (at both the taste and temperature of the beverage), he turned his attention back to the woman in front of him. "Nah. I ain't seen your Momma since last New Year's. Which reminds me, you see her? You call me. She owes me eighteen bucks and a Charlie Daniels Band CD." He rolls his eyes, both exasperated and oddly fond in equal measure. "She got blitzed and kept tryna' shove the damn thing into the DVD player. Broke it right in half."

Nothing was better than a beer on a nice day when you were working outside, but it would've been impolite to drink when Murph was on the job. Technically, Beck was on the job too, but they had a little more leeway than Murph since they didn't work here full time and were just helpin' out as a favor. Beck never woulda thought they'd be considered superior (at least in Cowboy Mafia hierarchy terms) to an almost fifty year old man gruff as Murph was, but it wasn't like Beck to lord authority over people. He'd make sure what was needed to do got done, but he wasn't one for throwing his weight around just for the sake of it. At five-nothin' there wasn't much weight to throw anyways.

"So I heard your ass can't stay on a horse," Beck chuckled, not sharing who had spilled that particular bit of information. "How'd you get to be your age and workin' on ranches and can't stay in a saddle?" he asked, tools hammering methodically as he worked on the fence.

Murph tried not to focus on the sweat slicking the back of his neck or sticking his undershirt to the ridges of his spine, but the blazing Arizona sun made that a truly futile endeavor. He'd been out here for hours, replacing rotten boards and shoring up weak spots in the fence line, before Beck had joined him. And, sure, the help was....appreciated - though there was a fat chance in hell of gettin' him to ever admit it - but, God'Almighty, what he wouldn't give for some fucking silence.

"Huh," he grunted in response to Beck's probing, brows furrowing as he struggled to yank a stubborn, bent nail from a cross-post. "Fuckin' horses," he hissed, "are the problem. What kinda' animal meant for ridin' don't want nobody to ride it?"

The nail he was struggling with relented with a final tug and he tossed it to the side with a scowl, digging through his pockets for a new one to replace it with. "Never worked a ranch before," he replied vaguely, seemingly unwilling to elaborate on his unorthodox work history. Adopting a mocking tone, he mumbled under his breath "How'd you get to be your age... I'm 47 not 90. Jesus."

𝐁𝐀𝐒𝐈𝐂𝐒

Name: Murphy "Murph" Bronson

Age: 47

Occupation: Ranch Hand @ the Blue Rooster Ranch

Affiliation: Finger for the Cowboy Mafia

Gender & Pronouns: Man (he/him)

Faceclaim: Norman Reedus

𝐒𝐊𝐄𝐋𝐄𝐓𝐎𝐍

tw alcoholism, death

Well. This sure-as-shit wasn’t how he pictured life in his late 40’s - licking the boots of people who were still in diapers when he was at his prime. It’s embarrassing and humiliating, but Christ alive if it’s not the best option he has right now. Which, really, must say a lot about his fucking choices.

Murph grew up in a trailer park on the southside of a no-name town an hour outside or so outside Nashville city limits. His Momma smoked and his Daddy drank - just like everyone else’s - and he spent most of his time picking fights he couldn’t win and drinking warm, stale beer in the small patch of woods between the park and the interstate. When he was fifteen, his Momma passed from complications brought on by her COPD and two weeks later his Daddy was in the wind. 

Murph was gone not long after. He hitched from Tennessee to Kentucky to Indy, up the East coast and back down again. For a piece-of-shit who never finished high school, he usually did alright for himself working odd jobs - bouncing, bartending, fixing cars and anything else that might break. Only problem was - he could never actually keep any of those jobs. Try as he might, he’d either get too drunk or too ornery, or the call of the double-yellow lines - the open road - would come calling.

Drifting was fine. He’d seen shit most people could only dream of - the Grand Canyon at dawn, the Mojave Desert under a blanket of stars, mist covering the Smoky Mountains after a long, hard rain. Drifting was fine, until he started getting old.

Somehow, being cramped up sleeping in his 1997 Chevy Tahoe in his late 30’s wasn’t so thrilling, anymore. Waking up to a new place every morning and bedding down in a different deserted parking lot every night started to feel desperate in a way he couldn’t explain. So at 37, he picked a spot on a map, drove to it, parked his SUV, and then found a spot to park his ass. Permanently.

And for awhile, Paxton, AZ was great - perfectly fucking ordinary. He got himself a shitbox apartment and a job at the local diesel mechanics. He ate Chinese takeout and slept in a real bed and it was… fine. It was all fine, for almost ten years, until his old bad habits came knocking. 

In 3 months, binge-drinking, apathy, and self-destruction took him from gainfully employed and moderately well-adjusted (all things considered) to destitute, unhoused, and on his last dime. Black listed from most spots in town due to his bad behavior and quickly running out of options, Murph took a gamble on the last place that might take him - the fucking Cowboy Mafia. 

Now here is, painfully sober, shoveling shit, scrubbing dishes, and falling off of horses more often than not. Bottom of the proverbial fucking totem pole. He’s worn out and run-through at the end of every day, and while he often fantasizes about running off and hitting the open road again, something (beyond being chased down by psychotic cowboys and offed in his sleep) keeps him around. 

𝐏𝐋𝐎𝐓 𝐀𝐑𝐂