Page 123 of The Rancher Who Swore Off Love
Logan looked at Jonah. The man’s one good eye held steady, and the other had swelled completely shut overnight. He’d buttoned his coat wrong—two buttons off, the left side hanging lower than the right—but he had a point. Regardless of the mistakes of the past, Gracewashis sister. It would be beyond cruel for Logan to deny him a chance to help her.
“Fix your coat.”
Jonah looked down. Looked up. “Huh?”
“Your buttons. They’re off by two.”
***
They rode hard.
Thankfully, Mason had remembered to take an extra horse for Jonah.
The road south dropped past the ranch gate—Logan made himself look straight ahead rather than the trenches—and followed the creek into the trees. The aspens had started turning—gold at the tips—and under different circumstances the ride would’ve sat right with him. The kind of morning his mother would’ve called a blessing.
His mother, who’d died because a man named Dawson had buried stolen loot on their property and shot her for finding him. And now a different man wanted that same loot and had Logan’s wife.
Jonah rode ahead, guiding them off the main creek trail and through a stand of scrub oak that clawed at their legs. The path—if you could call it that—was like a suggestion made by deer and bad decisions before it narrowed to single file.
Logan clenched the reins. “How far?”
“A quarter mile. Maybe less.”
“And you’re sure he’ll be here?”
“Like I said.” Jonah ducked a low branch. “Spider.”
Mason pulled alongside Logan. “You got a plan?”
Plans required information, and information required time, and time sat somewhere in a prospector’s cabin with Grace.
“We go in. We get Grace. Anybody tries to stop us, we shoot them.”
“That ain’t a plan, Logan.”
“Well, it’s the only one we’ve got.”
No one said anything else until they reached the cabin. They stopped far away enough for the bandits not to notice them.
“Thomas, take the east side.” Logan glanced at the roof. “Come through the back wall. It shouldn’t be hard, given that the roof has already caved.”
Thomas peeled off without a word.
Jonah reined up behind a thicket of chokecherry. Through the branches, the cabin—what remained of it—crouched in a small clearing. Half the roof had collapsed inward, and the front wall listed hard to the left with gaps in the boards wide enough to see through.
Three horses were tied to a leaning post out front. And through the gaps in the wall, movement. Figures. At least two, maybe three, shifting around in the dim interior.
Logan swung down, tied his horse, and pulled the Winchester from the saddle scabbard. He checked the load. Five in the magazine, one in the chamber. He’d cleaned this rifle last Tuesday, same as every Tuesday.
“Jonah.” Logan kept his voice low. “Where does he keep her if he’s got her?”
“Back corner. Away from the door. Ace always puts his leverage where you can see it but can’t reach it easy.”
Leverage. The man called peopleleverage.
“Mason, you’re on my left. Jonah, stay behind us till I say otherwise.”
“Logan, I can—”
