Page 71 of Retribution

“Yeah.” Kurt smiled. “And potentially… fun.”

“Fun?” She slowly raised her eyebrow.

Hoo boy. Fun? Yeeeah… I know all about you and fun, Kurt…

“Yep.” Kurt took a sip of his drink, then pointed at her. “Do you remember about two years ago doing some preliminary analysis work on a potential deposit in southwestern Montana?”

Dana pursed her lips. “Yeah. The one Gary asked me to do after Bob Thoenburg and his team announced the Sheep Creek find.”

“Exactly. What do you remember about it?”

“Well,” Dana replied, furrowing her brow. “Gary thought we should do some investigating to see if there was any possibility of any additional rare earth mineral indications along the Gunnison Range.”

“But you had a different idea.”

She studied him shrewdly. “Did he go over this with you?”

“A little.”

“Okay, so I spent a lot of time reviewing spectroradiometry data, and I thought there were better opportunities to be found northwest of the Gunnison Range.”

“In the Sapphire Mountains.”

“Yeah.”

“And you narrowed your search to one mine in particular.”

“Nooo. I narrowed my search to one specific mine I felt was the best starting point for a more in-depth review.” Dana shrugged. “Whether there’s anything of value there or not I have no idea. The only real way to know for certain would be to do an onsite walk-over survey and assessment.”

“And that’s what Gary wants us to do.”

“Wait…” Dana held up her hand. When Kurt had brought up the work she’d done over two years ago at the beginning of this conversation, she’d been searching through her memory to retrieve the specifics of the research she’d performed back then. It was starting to come back now, including one particular detail that had her eyes growing a little wider.

“Are you telling me Gary wants to send us to… Rawhide Ranch.”

“Ding, ding, ding!”

Dana laughed. “You’ve got to be kidding.”

“Except I’m not,” Kurt replied.

“Oh my God, do you know what Rawhide Ranch is?”

He gave her a quizzical look. “Do you?”

“Kurt, it’s a dude ranch.”

“Hmm.”

“What does that mean, ‘hmm’?”

“I’m going to take your answer to mean you don’t know what kind of dude ranch Rawhide is?”

“What do you mean what kind of dude ranch it is? It’s the kind where people pay big bucks to play cowboy for a week, then afterwards tell all their cocktail party friends how hard they had to rough it.”

“Wellll…” A broad grin split Kurt’s face. “Rawhide Ranch is a little different than that.”

“And what the hell does that mean?”