Page 105 of The Rancher Who Swore Off Love
“He looked at me, Logan.Lookedat me. Like I’m the one trespassin’.”
The gopher stuffed the rest of the leaf into its cheek and disappeared into a hole.
Logan pinched the bridge of his nose.
He should’ve brought the rifle. Not for the gophers—a rifle and gophers made about as much sense as a hammer and a mosquito—but because the look on Grace’s face said she might try to strangle one with her bare hands if the opportunity presented itself, and somebody needed to maintain order.
Then again, with Grace, maybe he should’ve brought two rifles.
“All right.”
He crouched at the edge of the plot and studied the holes. Five—no, six entrances, spaced out every few feet along the rows, with little fans of loose dirt kicked up around each one. Classic pocket gopher setup. Mama, Papa, and the whole litter making themselves at home.
“We ain’t gonna kill ’em.”
She pushed him. “Why the hell not?”
“Because gopher blood makes the soil bitter, and it’ll ruin your planting beds for a season.”
He’d made that up. Entirely. Right there on the spot. The real reason lay in the fact that Grace would cry if she watched something die, and she’d deny it afterward, and he’d have to pretend he hadn’t noticed, and the whole thing would turn into a production.
“So what do we do?”
“Chase ’em out. Collapse the tunnels. Pack the dirt hard enough they can’t dig back in.” He straightened up. “Grab that bucket by the pump and fill it. We’re gonna flood ’em.”
“Flood ’em?”
“Pour water down the holes, they come runnin’ out, we chase ’em past the fence. Then we stomp the tunnels flat.”
Grace grinned.
***
The first gopher came out like a furry brown cannonball.
Grace had poured half the bucket down the main tunnel entrance, and for about three seconds, nothing had happened. Just the glug of water swallowing into dirt. Then the ground heaved, and a gopher shot out of a hole six feet to the left, spraying mud, and bolted straight between Logan’s boots.
He grabbed for it. Missed. The thing moved fast for an animal built like a hairy potato.
“It’s gettin’ away!”
“I can see that, Grace!”
He chased it across the plot. The gopher juked left. Logan juked left. The gopher reversed. Logan’s boot caught a mound of loose soil, and he stumbled forward three steps with his arms pinwheeling before he caught his balance on the bean trellis, which promptly leaned sideways at a forty-five-degree angle.
Grace doubled over laughing.
“Real helpful!”
“Oh, I’m helpin’,” she said, holding her side as she wheezed. “I’m helpin’ by not dyin’ of laughter so I can tell this story at supper.”
The gopher vanished under the chicken coop. Fine. Let it live under Gerald’s jurisdiction. That rooster terrorized everything within a ten-foot radius; one fat gopher would just make its day better.
Grace dumped more water down a second hole. Two gophers this time, a smaller pair that burst out together and split in opposite directions as if they’d rehearsed it. Logan got one moving toward the fence with his boot. Grace chased the other with the empty bucket held over her head like a weapon.
“Get—back—here—you—little—” She swung the bucket at the gopher, missed by a solid two feet, and the momentum spun her halfway around. “Did you see that? Hedodged!”
“They got good reflexes.”
