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Harold stepped closer. “I don’t care who called you. Your people take direction from us while they’re on this site.”

Kyle gave him a level look. “On horse movement? Absolutely. You tell us what animal goes where, we move it. But my drivers don’t get six different people yelling six different things at them while they’re hauling livestock through smoke.”

For a second, neither man said anything. Jodie resisted the urge to bang her head against the table.

Please. Both of you. The fire is already bigger than your dicks.

Dana walked over before either one could decide to measure anything else. “Harold, give Watchdog one point of contact for loading. Kyle, your rigs stage east of the holding pens and stay out of the access lane until we call them forward.”

Kyle glanced at his rigs, already lined along the east fence. “Already there. Works for me.”

Harold held his gaze another second, then jerked his chin toward Dana. “She’s your point.”

“Done.”

Jodie exhaled through her nose.

Men.

Virgil pushed through the group from the direction of the pens and made his way to Jodie.

Oops. Spoke too soon.

“You counting my sheep into those trailers?”

Jodie looked at him. “We’re counting everything.”

“Well, don’t.” His face was streaked with dust, his Akubra pulled low against the wind. “My sheep walk.”

Willow blinked. “All three hundred?”

“Unless somebody taught them to drive since breakfast.”

Jodie almost smiled.

Virgil pointed east. “I’ve got grazed ground with water. Been my fire plan longer than half the people standing here have been alive. I’ve got men moving them now.”

Jodie looked back at her board. She drew a line through the number she’d penciled beside SHEEP—TRANSPORT and wrote OVERLAND—VIRGIL instead.

Three hundred sheep disappeared from the trailer column and she breathed easier in spite of the smoke, which was now making her eyes water. She pulled up the bandana that had been around her neck. She wasn’t the only one covering her nose and mouth.

“What about Hank’s cattle?” Kyle asked.

“Hank said he’d handle that.” But Jodie worried. He already had his horses to worry about, and she didn’t know if he had a safe place for the cattle to go the way that Virgil did with his sheep.

Beside her, Virgil looked east, the way he had when he pointed out his own ground. He didn’t say anything.

Jodie didn’t think anything of it.

She looked toward the pens as another gust drove smoke through the rails. Two hundred mustangs. Twenty trailer loads, give or take. And unlike the sheep or the cattle, the BLM would be damned before they let anybody open a gate and scatter the horses back into the country they’d spent two days chasing them out of.

“Every stock trailer goes to the horses.” Her voice sounded calmer than she felt.

Mac appeared from the far side of the staging area a few minutes later, coming toward her with Ben beside him. His bandana was pulled up, and he was carrying a hitch pin in one hand. His gaze found hers.

Jodie let out a breath she hadn’t realized she’d been holding.

He’s here. He’s safe and he’s here.