Page 24 of The Wrangler and the Tenderfoot

I watched it pick its way along the fenceline, head down, oblivious to the eye in the sky. I felt the pulse of old folklore, the stories my grandfather used to tell about the things that watched from the shadows, waiting for me to slip up. I wondered if he’d ever imagined those stories would have a starring role in my actual adult life.

The drone followed, unobtrusive, as the animal moved parallel to the boundary, then peeled off and vanished into the brush. I tagged the location, set a route for a follow-up run, and marked it for review.

The far edge of the Coleman property was two miles of nothing on the map. A field for grazing or burning off old grass, flat as a billiard table until it kinked up against a line of thorny brush. That was the border, Coleman on one side, Maddox on the other.

On the monitor, the land unfurled in patchy scrub, a muddy stock tank, a tree leaning away from the prevailing wind. The drone drifted along the edge, caught a couple of wandering cattle and kept going.

I kept the focus tight on the target zone, pinging the motion sensors with every shift in the shadows. Most of what came up was debris, or maybe birds launching from the fence line, but on the third pass, something pinged.

It was a small structure, tucked behind a screen of mesquite and a couple of windbreak trees. It wasn’t on any of the satellite maps. From the air, it looked like an old feed station. Three walls still standing, the roof half-collapsed on one end, open to the brush on the other. I maneuvered the drone in under the overhang. As the drone circled and stabilized, the software locked onto the rectangular shapes stacked tightly under the overhang.

I’d seen them too many times when I was with the FBI. Gun crates. Not a hunter’s hoard or a paranoid’s one-off. This was a professional shipment, black hard cases, identical in size, each stenciled with a label in white block letters. Even the grainy drone image could pull out the key, BERGARA, SAKO, and the telltale MILSPEC numbers that said this was nobody’s private collection.

My hands were steady, but my guts felt like a gear turning in the wrong direction. I had been looking for chemicals, maybe a cache of pills, or some kind of shady traffic. But this was bigger, worse than I’d imagined.

I did a slow, lateral pan of the area, double-checked the angles. The structure was camouflaged from every ground approach. Only the overhead, only the drone, had a clear shot realizing there was a building there. I adjusted the camera to max zoom and let the drone hover, a silent mosquito above the secret. On the monitor, the lean-to sat still, waiting.

Part of me wanted to fly the drone straight back, download the footage, and take it straight to the FBI. But this was guns with nothing else. No motive, no supply line, no idea which of the Colemans or even Maddoxes were involved.

I maneuvered the drone to land in a nearby tree, up high and hopefully out of sight. Once it was in place, I cut the active feed, set it to motion-detect, and fixed the app to ping me if anyone got within fifty meters.

As the drone powered down, I sat in the truck, sweat pooling under my knees, and watched the playback.

Chapter 10: Reid

The atmosphere was heavy, a storm on the horizon as we ran over our land. We fanned out, four broad-chested shapes, Calder, Eli, Buck, and me, running flank to flank, paws silent on the sodden ground.

By the time we crested the ridge, the whole sky let go at once, a storm far worse than any of us had anticipated or we wouldn’t have started a run or gotten so far from the house. Hail bounced off the limestone, thunder cracked in sheets, and the whole world was lit in strobes, then black, then strobes again. My coat was soaked through, heavy with water, but it didn't slow me down. We took the ridgeline, doubled the fenceline, ran until the adrenaline spun itself out, and the ache in my lungs said it was time to turn.

We finally slowed, Calder looking around and sniffing. I turned in a slow circle. We’d gotten our directions crossed in this weather. We were on Coleman land. Not good, especially in our fur. There in the mess, half-shielded by the bluff and camo-tarp, I spotted crates under a half-fallen feed shed.

I shifted back, stood in the pouring rain, and pulled back the tarp to the music of the thunder. The first crate was stenciled with letters, BERGARA. The second, MILSPEC. I didn’t need to open them, but I did, prying the cold latch. Rifles, black and long, high-grade and not for hunting. The next was full of ammo, bandoliers in tight rows, each round so polished it caught the lightning.

Buck whistled. “That’s a lot of firepower.”

Eli glared down at the crates. “Who’s it for?”

Calder’s face was unreadable, but his eyes, even in his skin, were pure wolf. “Not us. Not ranch work, not hunting. This is for killing people.”

Buck picked up a round, rolled it in his palm, then set it down. “You think the Colemans know?”

I looked at the footprints around the lean-to, boots, three or four different sizes, some of them fresh, some going back weeks. “They know. Or at least, someone does. This certainly isn’t our doing. It’s theirs. ”

Eli said, “We gotta call someone, right? The sheriff, or—”

Buck laughed, a dry sound even in the downpour. "The sheriff is Coleman. Or might as well be." He said it the way a person says the sky is blue. Just a fact. Same sky it's always been.

I said, “We’ll sit on it. We watch. Nothing else.”

Calder nodded, once. “We don’t cross the line again either. That’s not who we are. The last thing we need is the Colemans figuring out our little secret.”

We headed back immediately, shifting back and taking off for home at top speed. Back at the ranch, we shook the rain off in silence. I swapped my soaked jacket for a dry one, and sat out on my cabin’s small porch to watch the rain.

It started up again, steady on the metal roof, pooling in the yard. I leaned against the porch rail, watched the water run off the eaves, and tried to line up my thoughts.

Gray appeared in the doorway of the bunkhouse, then ran for my porch, getting soaked in the process.

He looked normal, but not. Something about his posture, the way he kept his hands in his pockets. He said, “Can I talk to you?”