Page 4 of The Lonely Road

I tilt my head back and laugh. They join me.

I file the stranger away in the part of my brain that doesn’t stop working just because it’s Friday night.

Joy orders a second round of drinks, and the band starts playing something that makes the whole dance floor move.

Six months in Wildflower Canyon, and I’ve learned who belongs where. It’s a small town, where a new face lands like a stone in still water, and the ripples reach everyone before the weekend’s out.

By the end of the night, Moxy will know his name, his drink order, and probably his credit score.

Right now, I don’t know anything about him, and I find that I’m paying attention to it more than I should.

New man in town.

Watching.

Not from here.

Let it go, Taya.

File closed, pending more information.

I turn back to my friends and let the noise of the cowboy bar, far away from the swanky cocktail lounges of Aspen, pull me back in.

“Clara Whitman is in love with you.” Aria props her chin on her hand. “Thanks for taking her on as a client.”

Aria sent Clara to me.

I pat her on her shoulder. “No, thank you for helping me get business.”

Joy picks up her beer. “Who is Clara Whitman?”

Aria owns a ranch attached to Kincaid Farms, one of the largest operations in these parts, and even though Joy is a Kincaid, she’s definitely not a rancher. She has a clothes boutique on Main Street: Bringing You Joy. Unless you want to go all the way to Aspen, Joy’s place is where you can find high-quality jeans, leather jackets, and dresses sexy enough to stop a man mid-sentence—her words, not mine.

“Remember the woman I told you about? Who lost her husband in that equipment accident a while ago?” Aria reminds her sister-in-law.

Joy nods vaguely.

“Clara owns Silverbell Ranch,” I continue. “Fifteen hundred acres, up in the north valley. Her husband Deke died eighteen months ago. Since then, she’s been running the place alone with two kids, a part-time foreman, a mortgage, and a water rights claim that’s been in her family since 1948.”

Aria shakes her head in disgust. “And one of those high-falutin’ corporations wants to take those rights away from her.”

In places like Wildflower Canyon—and there are hundreds of them across the West—there’s a war being fought in slow motion. On one side, working ranch land: hard, unglamorous, not nearly as profitable as the labor demands. On the other hand, the same land valued by outside money that wants to turn it into the next Jackson Hole or Bozeman—luxury resorts, private airstrips, and ski chalets for people who think a Stetson is a fashion choice.

The ranchers who’ve held on are those who understand that the fight isn’t just economic, it’s existential. This is their way of life that they’re protecting. As Duke likes to say, “I’ll be damned if they’ll replace American meat with crap grown in Brazil and put a parking lot on my ranch. Fuck that.”

Men like Mav Kincaid and Duke Wilder, who owns the massive Wilder Ranch, have been on the front lines of the fight—working with lawmakers, anchoring the community, making sure small operations like Clara Whitman’s have enough ground to stand on so they don’t have to sell their family’s legacy.

“Not take the rights, per se, but challenge them. There’s a difference, technically.” I pause. “Not much of one. The development corporation behind the challenge has investors, lawmakers, and a law firm that charges more per hour than Clara Whitman makes in a week.”

Joy’s eyes sparkle bright. “But she has you, and you’re better than all those motherfuckers!”

These women remind me of my grandmother.

Delia Morningstar raised me in Ignacio after my parents died in a car accident, and she never once wavered in her belief that I could do anything I set my heart to. When people told me I was being too ambitious—applying to Harvard Law, really?—she told them to mind their own business.

“You’re going to be just like Pearl Casias,” she’d say.

The famed Pearl grew up on the Southern Ute Reservation and went on to become the first female Tribal Chairman of the Southern Ute Indian Tribe—one of the first Native American women to attend Harvard Law School.