Page 30 of The Lonely Road

“If I were their lawyer—which I’m not—I’d be looking hard at any years her use wasn’t consistent. Her husband got sick before he died. They had a bad season or two.”

He gets out, already scanning the crowd.

I stay in the truck for one additional moment and parse through what he’s told me: nothing monumental, but some new information about a claim regarding irregular use.

I file it carefully—something to give to Jessup’s Texan vultures to pick through.

Then I get out of the truck.

The auction grounds are exactly what I expect.

The lot is a spread of corrals, auction rings, and structures added over decades without a master plan, the whole thing growing organically, incrementally, and without vanity. The air smells of hay and cattle and woodsmoke from the barbecue that’s been running since before I arrived, judging by the quantity of smoke and the length of the line in front of it.

Half the valley is here. Maybe more.

I follow Feig into the crowd.

It’s cold despite the blue sky and the shining sun. It’s early spring, and the icy fingers of wind get into your collar no matter how you wear it.

Feig buys us coffee from a woman he calls Auntie. I figure they’re related until the next person in line calls her that, too. I’ve seen it before—on reservations, where titles like that mean respect, not blood.

My companion disappears into a scattering of men cut from the same cloth—businessmen in ranch country, but not cowboys or ranchers.

Coffee in hand, I do a quick recon of the place. There are clusters and connections in how certain people orient toward each other.

Ranching families in work gear.

The auction ring in the center, where the stock moves through, is fast and technical, watched with the seriousness of people for whom this is not entertainment but economics.

I find a place along the fence where I can see both the ring and the crowd.

Someone arrives, and the air shifts, like a change in weather.

The cause, I note, is Mav Kincaid.

He’s in my file—which is how I clock him.

The crowd adjusts around him, almost imperceptibly, pulled by the gravity of a man who owns a significant portion of this valley and knows it—carrying that weight without arrogance or apology.

He’s big, dark-haired, with a physical ease that comes from spending your life working the land. His wife is at his side—Aria, her hand in his. I instinctively know that this couple holds hands because they mean it, not for the audience.

Behind them is Joy Kincaid in a burnt-orange jacket that has no business looking this good at a livestock auction. Beside her, half a step behind, is a man who is keenly aware of where Joy Kincaid is at all times and works hard not to show it.

He’s not in my file, but he doesn’t need to be. The way his attention tracks her. The ranch gear. The two coffees, one handed to her without comment, taken without acknowledgment—like it was always hers.

Hunt Blackwood. Wilder Ranch’s foreman.

According to Feig, he and Kincaid’s sister have something going on.

I recognize Duke Wilder because I looked him up, and he’s with his wife, whom I have seen at Wild Coffee. She’s the cowboy in the relationship. He used to be a suit. She’s a horse woman through and through. You can see it in how she moves, talks, and scans the animals, ignores the people.

Three people converge on them immediately.

Elena walks away, leaving her husband to handle them, and he does it with the relaxed authority of someone who runs a hundred thousand acres and has gotten used to being the biggest bear wherever he is.

“Hey,” Bree Keaton greets me like a long-lost friend. She slaps my shoulder. “How’s it hangin’?”

I chuckle at that. “A little to the right these days.”