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“They’ll clear that when they know we’re watching,” Gage said.

“They’ll have to find them first. And if they do, at least we’ll see who clears it.”

The fourth camera was the one I’d been putting off.

The wash widened below the culvert, and the old track that used to run down to my father’s place was still there if you knew how to look. I did. I walked it with the last camera in my hand and Savannah’s boots crunching behind me, and then there it was.

A slab of concrete in the scrub, cracked through the middle with a creosote bush growing out of the split. Rusted pipe stubs where the water had come up. Some iron stakes where the skirting had been. That was it. You could stand in the middle of what used to be my whole life and not know it.

I stood there anyway, longer than I needed to.

“You can see the road from here,” I said. “Both directions. Put it on that post where it’s got some cover.”

Savannah didn’t move toward the post. She was looking at the slab.

“I haven’t been down here in years,” she said.

“Why would you?”

“It’s my land.”

“It was his place for years,” I said, still staring at the slab where the trailer had been.

Her chin came up. There she was. “It was my father’s land and your father’s job. He knew that.”

“He knew it for ten years. Right up until your old man ran him off like a stray dog.”

“A mare died, Switch. She died foaling on his watch, and the foal with her, and Dad found him asleep in his truck, drunk at dawn with a bottle on the seat.”

“He was sober that night.”

“You don’t know that.”

“I was sixteen and I was in the trailer. I know what he was like drinking and I know what he was like sober, and he was sober.” I heard my voice going rough and let it. “That bottle had been under the seat since Christmas. Your father didn’t want to hear it. Easier to blame the hand than the vet he couldn’t afford to call.”

It landed. I saw it land. Then she folded her arms and set her feet the way she used to set them when she was a kid and somebody told her she couldn’t ride the big horses.

“Dad did what he had to do.”

“Yeah,” I said. “So did mine. He hauled freight till it killed him.”

Gage came down the wash with the zip ties and took one look at the two of us. He strapped the camera to the post himself without a word, checked the angle and walked back up toward the side-by-side.

The creosote rattled in the wind. Somewhere up the hill a quail was calling.

“Put it wherever you want,” Savannah said finally. “Just get the sons of bitches off my land.”

She walked back up the wash. I stood on the slab where my father’s trailer had been and watched her go.

It was Tuesday. I found that out the hard way.

Gage had just come over to check on things and we were out in the yard when a silver SUV came up the drive fast enough to raise dust. It was early, nobody had called ahead, and there’d been men on that mine road last night with enough firepower in those cases to take a house apart. I was halfway across the yard with my hand under my cut and Gage close behind before I saw the horse-rescue sticker on the back window. I raised my hand to Gage to tell him to stop.

Too late. The woman getting out of the driver’s seat had already seen me.

Fifties. Boots so clean they squeaked. She took in my colors, Gage’s bike and the size of Gage. Her car keys were in her hand, and she held them like she was deciding whether she’d need to use them.

Savannah came out of the barn wiping her hands on her jeans. I watched her put on her company face on the walk over.