Page 88 of The Rancher Who Swore Off Love
A two-year-old heifer. Seventy dollars at market. One of the best breeders he’d raised, gentle enough that Miriam could’ve sat on her back in a year or two, and now…
He looked at the hole. “This ain’t natural.”
“Logan—”
“Look at the edges, Mason. You ever see a sinkhole with straight sides? You ever see the ground open up in a perfect rectangle?”
Mason lowered his head.
“Somebody came onto my land. Dug a hole in my pasture. And my heifer walked into it and broke her leg, and I just—” He bit down on the rest of it. Breathed through his nose. “We ain’t goin’ to town.”
“Logan.” Grace slid down into the hole next to him. “Logan, I’m so sorry.”
When didsheget here?
“Go back to the wagon.”
“Let me—”
“Grace, go back to the wagon.”
She flinched.
“We’re ridin’ the property. All of it. Tonight.” He looked at his brothers and Jonah. “Every acre, every fence line, every drainage ditch and tree line and low spot where somebody coulddig without bein’ seen. If there’s another hole out there, I wanna find it before another animal does.”
“It’s gonna be dark in two hours,” Thomas said.
“Then we better ride fast.”
“Logan.” Grace put her hand on his shoulder. “It could’ve been—”
“Don’t tell me it’s a drifter. Don’t tell me it’s a coincidence. First, somebody breaks into my house, and now somebody digs holes in my pasture?” He pointed at the dead heifer. “That’s seventy dollars and a good animal. Gone. Because somebody wants somethin’ on this property, and I don’t know what, and I don’t know who, and I am done sittin’ around waitin’ for the next hit.”
Miriam grabbed a fistful of Grace’s hair and tugged. Grace looked at Logan’s face the way she’d looked at the strongbox the morning after the break-in.
“Okay.” She nodded. “Okay. Ride the property. But eat first. Please. You can’t spend all night in the saddle on an empty stomach.”
“I ain’t hungry.”
“I don’t care if you’re hungry. I care if you fall off your horse at midnight because you’re too stubborn to—”
“Fine. I’ll eat.”
Chapter Twenty-Four
Sneaking off the ranch at two in the morning had one obstacle greater than any other.
Gerald.
That damn rooster slept on a fence post about eight feet from the bunkhouse door and operated on a hair trigger. Breathe too loud, step too heavy, exist too aggressively in his general vicinity, and the bird lit up like a fire bell, crowing and flapping and waking every living thing in a quarter-mile radius.
Jonah had learned this the hard way. Twice.
So, tonight he went out of the window. The bunkhouse had one on the east wall, about four feet off the ground, just wide enough for a man to slide through sideways if he sucked in his gut and accepted that his shirt buttons would scrape the frame. Mason snored three feet away, face down in his pillow, dead to the world in that total way only a nineteen-year-old with zero guilt and a clear conscience could manage.
Must be nice.
Jonah hit the dirt outside. Stayed low. Moved along the east wall of the barn, cutting behind the chicken coop—Gerald shifted on his post, one eye cracking open, and Jonah froze fora solid five seconds until the bird tucked back in—then through the gap between the tool shed and the hay barn, down the slope to the creek.
