She laughed and rolled her eyes. Since Randy filed her report with the Lewistown Police, and her existence wasn’t a secret anymore, I’d introduced Mallory to Howdy, Jimmy, and Larson this morning. After their initial, and very understandable, shock over everything she’d been through, they all quickly became fast friends.
Each one of them offered to teach her all the ways of the ranch. It only took me wrapping my arm around her, drawing her close to my side, and my friends instantly knew…she was taken.
I helped Mallory up onto the mare, and a wide smile spread over her face. I could already tell she was going to fall in love with riding.
“Ready?” I asked, swinging up onto Moonshine.
With an excited nod, she replied, “I’m ready!”
Moonshine started to walk toward a trail, and Goldie followed.
“I don’t even have to steer her. She’s following you!”
Laughing, I glanced over my shoulder. “You might want to practice, though.”
Mallory shook her head. “Maybe in a bit. Right now, I think I’ll let her do her thing while I adjust to just being on top of her.”
The trail widened, so I told Mallory what to do to get Goldie to come up beside me and Moonshine. She was a natural when it came to riding. Her seat was perfect; she took to the instructions like a pro, and when I asked if she wanted to trot, she replied she was ready to run.
“How often do you have to check the fence line?”
“Once a month, sometimes more if we’ve had a storm with high winds.”
“And you do it on horseback?”
I shook my head. “Not always. Most of the time, we’ll drive it, which saves time. Some ranchers are using drones now to checkon their fence lines and their cattle. I like to look at them with my own eyes, or send out one of the guys, to make sure nothing’s wrong. The only way you can really do that is to get up close and personal with them.”
“So, you raise cattle, breed horses, grow hay…and it’s just you and five ranch hands? How do you get all the work done?”
Laughing, I said, “There are more people than just the six of us. We do a majority of the work with the cattle, but when we need to do vaccines and branding, or bring the cattle down into the valley before winter hits, there’ll be a lot more people here working. There are plenty of days I’m gone all day. It’s a long day being a rancher, a lot of hard work, but I wouldn’t want to be anything else. I grew up watching my granddaddy and my father doing it. It’s in my blood.”
She remained quiet, and I had a feeling I knew what was going on in her beautiful head.
“You must do well with it. Your house is amazing. Not to mention, you have your own plane.”
I smiled. “If you manage it correctly, you can doverywell.”
“You mentioned before that Chad didn’t get along with your parents. Do you know why?”
Shrugging, I replied, “I’m not sure. Everything was fine until my brother was about ten, then something changed.Hechanged. He grew distant and angry all the time.”
“Did you ever ask him what was wrong?”
I let out a harsh laugh. “Plenty of times. He never would say, and I eventually got to the point where I no longer cared. He did his thing, and I did mine. When we were in high school, we hardly spoke.”
“That had to be hard for your parents.”
“Yeah, it was, but they tried their best.” We rode on a bit longer, and I brought Moonshine to a stop. “Do you want to stretch your legs for a bit?”
She smiled. “Okay.”
“Remember how I told you to get off?”
“Yep!” she said, swinging her leg over and getting off like she’d done it a million times. “Will the horses be okay?”
I tossed the reins over Moonshine’s back and did the same for Goldie. “Yeah, they’ll be fine.” Taking her hand in mine, we started walking toward one of the small lakes on the ranch. “Do you want to talk about what happens next, now that you have your memory back?”
She drew in a breath and exhaled. “Well, I was offered this amazing job as an assistant.”
