Page 8 of The Rancher Who Swore Off Love
The train lurched forward.
Chapter Two
Pitkin, Colorado
1880
The bay mare had thrown a shoe again.
Third time this month, and Logan had to crouch in the stall with the hoof braced between his knees, running his thumb along the frog to check for bruising, while the mare did her level best to lean her full weight onto his shoulder. Twelve hundred pounds of horse pressing down on a man had a way of focusing the mind. He shifted under her, keeping his boots planted in the straw, and dug a pebble out of the sole with the point of his hoof pick.
“Easy, girl. Hold still, and we’ll get this over with quick.”
She flicked an ear back at him. Impatient creature. The two of them had that in common.
Behind him, somewhere near the tack wall, Mason and Thomas huddled together, whispering like a pair of schoolgirls sharing secrets behind the privy. They’d been at it all morning. Every time Logan turned around, there they stood, heads bent together, mouths going a mile a minute. The second he took a step in their direction, they scattered like quail.
Soon enough, he kept his promise to her and let her hoof down gently.
Then he straightened and brushed straw from the knees of his trousers. He’d patched the left knee twice already this season, with small and even stitches, because a man ought to take pride in his mending, and the fabric was holding just fine even if the color didn’t quite match anymore. He’d tucked his shirt in crisp that morning despite the ranch work ahead, and rolled his sleeves to the elbow.
Their mother used to tease him for that.
You iron your dungarees, Logan, and the cows won’t respect you any less for a wrinkle.And maybe she’d had a point, but he’d gone right on pressing his shirts anyway, and now the habit ran so deep he’d sooner skip breakfast than walk out the door looking rumpled.
Over by the tack wall, Mason elbowed Thomas in the ribs. Thomas swatted his arm. Mason jerked his chin toward Logan and mouthed something, and Thomas shook his head so hard his dark hair whipped across his forehead.
“Y’all wanna tell me what in tarnation’s got you two actin’ like you both swallowed a hornet’s nest?”
They split apart.
At nineteen, Mason looked fifteen with that round and soft face he’d never grown out of. He put on the kind of wide-eyed innocent expression that had neveroncefooled Logan in the boy’s entire life. He had the same chestnut hair as Logan, and the same pale blue eyes, but he was packed into a stockier, shorter frame that made him look like a condensed version of his eldest brother.
“Ain’t nothin’. Just talkin’.”
“You beenjust talkin’since sunup. Every time I come within ten feet, you two clam up tighter’n a miser’s coin purse.”
Logan crossed his arms and fixed them with thelook—the one their father used to give when he caught them filching biscuits before supper—which Logan had inherited along with the ranch and the responsibility of keeping this family from flying apart at the seams.
“Out with it. What’re you schemin’?”
At twenty-two, Thomas still carried himself with the loose-hipped confidence of a man who’d figured out early that a square jaw and a ready smile could get him out of most anything. He leaned back against the stall post and examined his fingernails.
“Can’t two brothers have a private conversation without gettin’ the third degree?”
“Not when those two brothers are you and Mason, no, sir.”
“That’s hurtful, Logan. That cuts me deep.”
“I’ll cut you deeper if you don’t—”
The sound came from outside. Faint at first. Thin, reedy, and raw like a cat caught in a fence.
Logan held up a hand, and all three of them went still.
It came again. Louder. A warbling wail, the kind of sound that burrowed straight through a man’s chest and set his teeth on edge.
“The devil is that?” Mason took a step toward the door.
