Page 16 of The Cowboy’s Reckoning

“Just get him so he behaves for a prospective buyer. Do that and I’ll add a bonus.”

She could use a bonus. Little expenses were popping up, as they tended to do in ranching, but lately, they were getting more pop-ups than usual. The plugged culvert had really set them back, but hiring the excavator had been cheaper than replacing the road after a washout. All they needed was one huge vet bill and she’d find herself beyond robbing Peter to pay Paul. Peter was dead broke until they took the yearling steers to market in a couple of months.

Lil ended the session on a win. The gelding finally reversed direction without throwing a fit, so she mounted and worked a much more cooperative Dudley in the round pen before releasing him into the field. Then she caught Fancy—the easiest of the four.

Luke, the thoroughbred fresh from the track, was high energy, and though he showed no signs of contrariness or disrespect, he was looking for both a leader and a reason to run. He shied at everything, and Lil had to constantly be on guard. She always rode him first while she was at her best. Second came Magnum, who had the opposite problem, always needing to be driven forward so that he didn’t fall asleep in place. Lil wasn’t certain why the owner brought the gelding for a tune-up, because he didn’t have the energy to qualify as a fresh horse, but it was his second visit since Lil began taking on horses to train. He was Lil’s rest period between Luke and Dudley.

She checked her watch after saddling the mare. Jordan was due soon to begin repairing the barn roof. Would he mention the matter of the sale again? Two days had passed since his initial inspection. He hadn’t said a word about the sale. Had he given up?

Nice thought but unlikely.

She led Fancy to the round pen for warm-ups, stopping dead as a movement in the trees at the far end of the pasture caught her eye. It took her a minute to realize what she was seeing. Cows—her cows—breaching the fence and spreading onto Weston land.

“Crap.”

Two properties abutted Lil and Meg’s ranch. One was Tom Baxter’s grazing property. Cows getting out on that property was an issue, but Tom was reasonable. The second property was the Weston Conservancy, a stretch of land that had been designated wildlife habitat. No cows allowed, which was why Lil and Meg took great care with the fences bordering both pieces of land. Tom Baxter would complain. The managers of the Weston Conservancy might well hit them with a big fine or hold the cows in lien. She and Meg couldn’t afford a big fine, therefore Lil needed to get the cattle off that land ASAP.

She led Fancy through the pasture gate and swung into the saddle almost as soon as the latch had dropped into place.

She nudged the little mare into her polite collected canter, which quickly turned into a dead run as the mare realized that she was being urged on instead of held back. By the time they reached the break in the fence, the mare was breathing hard but still had plenty of energy. She followed Lil’s direction and moved hard to the right to cut off the cows before they scattered to the point that it would take hours to round them up.

The cows knew that when the horse showed up, they were probably going to lose and several of them headed back to the safety of the pasture they knew. Thankfully, the others eventually followed and within half an hour she’d found the scattered calves and Fancy was pushing the herd of forty across the pasture to the corral where they kept the weanlings. The mare seemed delighted with the situation. Lil not so much.

This isn’t right.

She and Meg checked the fence often because they didn’t want the headache of chasing their cattle off other people’s land, and their boundary situation wasn’t friendly to trespassing, accidental or otherwise.

So how had they had three breaches in a short period of time?

*

The ranch felt empty when Jordan got out of his truck. Empty of humans, that was. A goat bleated at him from the weed patch where she was eating, and the handsome gelding he’d noticed on his previous visit hung his head over the fence.

Jordan stood next to his truck and took in the place. The house was a simple two-story box, the type built mid-century when people finally started making money on the ranches their grandparents and great-grandparents had started. The outbuildings were nicer than those on the Tree Fork. Newer too. It wasn’t a ritzy place, but it had a decent setup.

Had Carl Jordan lived here at some point? No one in the area seemed to know much about the man. Those who were savvy about who owned what recalled his name as owner of the ranch. One guy that Wade had spoken to remembered him buying the Willow Creek from the Westons in the nineties, thus splitting the property. Not unusual when someone needed money. Jim Reed was doing the same thing.

“Hello?” he called.

The goat answered.

Out of a sense of professionalism, and in case he fell off the roof, he texted Lil to let her know that he had arrived. After shoving the phone into his back pocket, he began unloading tools and lumber from the bed of his truck. He leaned into the back seat to grab his small toolbox, then jumped when something poked the back of his thigh.

He turned to find a big white dog studying him. Friend or foe?

“Hey there …”

Slowly its tail began to wag. Good thing because he was pretty certain the dog could take him in a fair fight.

The dog hung around while he finished prepping for the job, then suddenly went on alert. A moment later it trotted out of sight around the far end of the barn. Jordan followed out of curiosity and found Lil unsaddling a sweaty sorrel mare. She glanced at him before pulling the saddle off the horse’s back.

“Got your text. Thanks for coming.”

“Looks like you gave her a workout.” The horse was soaked but not breathing hard.

Lil set the saddle on a nearby rail, then pushed a few wisps of dark hair away from her face. “Unplanned, but yes. The cattle got out, and I put them back.”

Her sister had been fixing fence for that exact same reason the last time he’d stopped by. “Do you have a fencing issue?”