Page 147 of Dusty Spur Ranch Cowboys

“I didn’t hear you walk up,” he says.

“I wasn’t trying to hide.”

“I was distracted.” He moves aside with a brief laugh. “Work call.”

“Sounded heated.”

“Yeah.” His attention returns to me. “How much did you hear?”

He frames the question casually, yet his fingers press against the phone through his pocket. “Enough to know someone is testing your patience.”

His shoulders ease before he turns toward the shelves and pulls down a roll of wire. “You have no idea.”

He hands it to me, and moisture coats his palm despite the shade inside the shed.

“You heading back to the west fence?” he asks.

“Unless Willy’s promoted himself and fired the rest of us.”

Beau smiles more naturally. “He likes being in charge.”

“He likes the idea of it.”

I leave the shed and continue toward the fence until Beau crosses to the barn, then I double back around the building. A cigarette butt lies beside an old feed barrel where the dirt shows marks from someone pacing.

Beau smokes, which makes the cigarette easy to explain. The ash still pulls my thoughts toward the tree line where I found the same smell after chasing the person watching the ranch.

I study the crushed filter without touching it. Most ranch hands could buy the same brand, and suspicion can turn ordinary details into evidence when fear does the thinking.

Across the yard, Beau smiles at one of the ranch hands before grabbing another feed bag as though the phone call never happened.

Maybe I’m reading too much into a few overheard sentences after everything Hank told me about Travis, but I know this feeling too well to brush it aside.

Every song I’ve ever finished started with a line that didn’t make sense until much later—and right now Beau feels exactly like that unfinished lyric.

CHAPTER THIRTY-TWO

Red

I watch Beau carry another sack of feed into the barn while Arizona tells me what she heard outside the equipment shed.

Every strange thing that’s happened over the past few months has carried Travis’s shadow somewhere behind it. I kept telling myself there wasn’t enough to connect the dots.

Now Arizona hands me another one.

He returns to the truck, grips the next sack, and swings it over his shoulder without glancing toward us.

Six years he’s worked this ranch. Six years I’ve trusted him with keys, records, and horses worth more than most trucks parked in town.

Now I can’t decide whether I’m watching a loyal ranch hand… or a man who’s been lying to my face.

“What happened when he saw you?” I ask.

Arizona tracks Beau across the yard. “He asked how long I’d been standing outside, and I hinted I’d just walked up.”

“You think he believed you?”

“He wanted to, because he stopped asking.”