White-Out

At eighteen, Scott Danner steps off a Greyhound bus in Cheyenne with forty pounds of everything he owns.

He came for a ranch job, but there’s another reason too. Nobody at the Chesholt Trail Cattle Ranch knows his father or his grandfather. Nobody knows what the Danner name is supposed to mean. For once, Scott gets to show up as just Scott and see what he can make of himself.

Wyoming in January makes him earn it fast.

The days begin before daylight, breaking ice and feeding cattle in temperatures that turn leather stiff. The bunkhouse offers little privacy and even less mercy for the newest hand. Scott knows how to work, though. He knows cattle, horses, fence, and weather. People are harder.

Especially Gary Kramer.

Gary is older, built like a man’s man, and he’s almost impossible to read. He doesn’t say much. Scott keeps finding himself watching anyway.

Then winter closes over the ranch.

With snow burying fences, work becoming dangerous, and the world beyond the Chesholt disappearing beneath white, Scott begins to find out what remains when there’s nowhere left to go except forward.

White-Out is the first of six prequel novellas leading to Rodeo Clown, following Scott Danner from eighteen to twenty-five through the ranches, roads, men, and choices that shape the person he will become.