Page 7 of September’s Cowboy Travis

“Why? That doesn't even make sense.”

“Maybe not. But I got you smiling.”

I immediately stopped. But that only made him smile harder.

I was starting to understand why half the town wanted to strangle him and the other half had dated him. There was probably considerable overlap between the two.

His ranch office took up one end of the barn. Travis opened the door, and I stepped inside, expecting at least some version of the chaos everyone seemed to attach to his name.

Instead, a filing cabinet stood against one wall with handwritten labels on every drawer, and the wall calendar had feed deliveries and vet appointments written across it in neat block letters.

I looked around.

“What?” Travis asked.

“Nothing.”

“That was an accountant's nothing. The kind where you silently judge me.”

Shaking my head, I denied it. “I don't silently judge people.”

“Bullshit. You expected a beer box.”

Maybe I had, but I wasn't telling him that.

He leaned against the desk. “Because you listened to people in town.”

Mustang Mountain hadn't handed me a formal dossier on Travis Cole. Nobody needed to. He was trouble when he was younger. Then he drank too much for a while. He’d built the kind of reputation that would take him half a lifetime to shed, especially in a town the size of Mustang Mountain.

Travis opened the filing cabinet.

“Here's the Kincaid lease.” He handed me two folders. “And these are the Pritchard sales.”

I took them and sat down at the desk to review. Looked like the dates matched. So did the headcounts and deposits. All the brand records lined up with what I'd already pulled.

I checked the last page twice before closing the folder. “So far, this supports what you told me yesterday.”

Travis sat across from me, one ankle resting on his opposite knee. “Good.”

Most people wanted reassurance the second the numbers started clearing them. Travis acted like he'd learned not to expect good news until there was no possible way for it to turn bad.

“For what it's worth, I haven't found anything that suggests you knew Roy was altering records afterward. I'm not clearing you from the deposit yet,” I added. “But this part checks out.”

“Thanks.”

Next, I opened the lease. It showed the same acreage on the same terms with no mention of Parcel 17-B. I spread out the old map next to it. “What do you call this section?”

Travis leaned over the desk and looked at where my finger pointed. “That's the north pasture.”

I waited.

He looked at me. “What?”

“That's it?”

“What were you hoping for?”

“I don't know. Something slightly less imaginative than Parcel 17-B, but slightly more imaginative than the north pasture.”