Page 9 of The Rancher Who Swore Off Love
Thomas cocked his head. “Sounds like—”
Logan pushed past them both and strode out of the stable into the morning light.
The sun hit him full in the face, and he squinted against it as he scanned the yard. The house sat up the hill to the right, and the porch his father had rebuilt last spring caught the early light. The fenceline stretched out to the left, marking the property’sedge where the grass gave way to scrub brush, and the land started its long roll toward the tree line.
Beyond that, there was nothing but open country formilesin every direction.
Nobodycame out this far. Not anymore. Not since Logan had closed the ranch to visitors two years back, and not a soul in Pitkin questioned why when they all knew full well what had happened on that porch.
The wail cut through the air again, and, this time, it carried a quality he couldn’t mistake for anything but what it impossibly turned out to be.
Ababy.
He broke into a jog, following the sound down the slope toward the fenceline. Mason and Thomas scrambled after him, and he could hear Thomas muttering something under his breath that sounded a whole lot like a prayer, which would’ve been noteworthy under any circumstance, given Thomas’s well-documented lack of religious conviction.
The basket sat just inside the fence, right where the property met the dirt road that wound down to town. Woven wicker, about the size of a washtub, with a checked cloth draped over the top that had slipped halfway off. And underneath, red-faced, furious, and screaming with the full power of two tiny lungs, lay a baby.
Logan stopped in place. He stared at the basket, then at the baby. Then he turned around and looked at his brothers, who skidded to a halt behind him, looking about as dumbfounded as he’d ever seen two grown men look.
“All right,” he pointed at Mason. “Which one of you done this?”
“Donewhat?”
“Don’t play simple with me, boy. You two been skulkin’ around all mornin’ whisperin’ and carryin’ on, and now there’s a baby in a basket sittin’ on my property line. So which one of you put it there?”
Mason’s mouth dropped open. “You thinkI—where in the Sam Hill would I get ababy,Logan?”
“Don’t look at me, brother.” Thomas held up both palms. “I ain’t even been to town in three weeks on account ofsomebodywon’t let me off this ranch long enough to—”
“This ain’t about that, Thomas, and you know it.”
“I’m just statin’ facts! Hard to father a child when you’re locked up on a ranch like a prisoner of—”
The baby screamed. All three of them flinched.
Logan looked down at the basket. The baby had worked one arm free of its wrappings and waved a tiny fist at the sky. A tuft of fine, pale hair stuck up from the top of its head like dandelion fluff.
Something in his chest pulled tight.
Logan sighed. “Well, we can’t just leave it here hollerin’ like that.”
He bent and scooped the basket up with both hands, careful, the way a man handled a crate of eggs he couldn’t afford to break. The baby weighed almost nothing. The whole contraption, baby included, couldn’t have topped fifteen pounds, and it struck him as a terribly small amount of weight for something making that much noise.
“Bring it up to the house.” Mason was already backing up the slope. “Maybe Pa will know what to do.”
“Pa ain’t gonna know what to do with a baby any better’n we do.”
“Pa raisedthreebabies, Logan.”
“And look howthatturned out.”
Thomas snickered. Logan shot him a look that could’ve curdled milk and started up the hill toward the house, holding the basket out in front of him at arm’s length like it might go off.
The baby kept right on screaming.
“Hush now.” Logan shook the basket. “Hush up. We’re goin’ inside. It’s all right.”
The baby didnothush. The baby, if anything, found a second wind and a higher register.
