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your job for now.” Sky gave the mare a final pat on the neck and let himself out of the stall. “Don’t forget to clean the stallion barn when you finish up here.”
    â€œYeah, and after I finish that, I’ll be taking a shower and headin’ into town, so don’t be looking for me around here,” Lute shouted at Sky’s back as he exited the barn.
    With the closing of the barn door, Lute resumed his grip of the wheelbarrow handles and used the built-up anger inside to propel the wheelbarrow out the back of the barn, where he dumped the reeking mass into a shallow pit. For a moment he glared at the growing mound piled there, knowing that his next job was likely to be loading it up and hauling it off to be spread over the lower pastures for fertilizer while the cattle were grazing up on the caprock.
    He wondered what the chances were that Slade Haskell would be at the Blue Coyote tonight. Lute had heard some talk that Haskell might be looking for drivers for his trucking company. But when he’d cornered Haskell about a job a couple weeks ago, Haskell hadn’t been hiring.
    Right now there was nothing that would give Lute more pleasure than to find work somewhere else and tell Sky where he could put this shovel.
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    By the time the last of the guests had left, the spring night had turned chilly. A blaze crackled in the parlor’s great stone fireplace, casting its warmth out to the room’s massive leather chairs and letting it rise to the open-beamed ceiling.
    Will lounged in one of the four overstuffed chairs and let his gaze slide to the occupants of the other three—his brother Beau, the ranch’s aging foreman Jasper Platt, and Sky Fletcher. He watched as his brother took a swig from the bottle of Mexican beer in his hand.
    â€œIt was a fine service, Will,” Beau said with a nod, and absently used the back of his hand to wipe away the bit of foam on his upper lip. “But there’s one thing I’ve wondered about all afternoon. Why in hell’s name did you have Garn Prescott give the eulogy? Dad hated Ferguson Prescott his whole life, and I can’t imagine that he felt much different about Prescott’s son. I could almost picture Dad turning over in his coffin when the esteemed congressman took the pulpit.”
    Will fixed a steady gaze on his brother, reminding himself that Beau hadn’t set foot on the ranch once in the past eleven years. It was time he learned the true situation, considering half the ranch would now be his.
    â€œThere are two answers to that question,” he said. “The simpler one is that Garn phoned me with an offer to do it. Since nobody else was stepping up, I let him. I knew he’d do a decent job, and he did. So what if he was looking for a few votes in next fall’s election?”
    â€œAs well as a vote from that good-lookin’ ex of yours,” Jasper added with a wink. “He’s been sniffin’ a trail around Tori ever since his wife died.”
    â€œNot that Tori’s interested,” Beau said. “I know for a fact she’d like him to take a walk.”
    â€œTori can do whatever she wants,” Will snapped. “This isn’t about her.”
    â€œSo what’s your second answer?” Sky Fletcher was a man who did more listening than talking. Tall and lean, with the black hair, hawkish bones, and tawny skin of his Comanche ancestors, he studied Will with riveting cobalt eyes.
    â€œThe second answer’s about survival.” Leaning forward, Will set his bottle on the coffee table with a sharp thunk . “This isn’t the Old West anymore. Most of the ranches in these parts have sold off their acreage to farmers and developers just to stay afloat. The biggest outfits, the ones that haven’t broken up, have been taken over by syndicates of investors, a lot of them from back East or even places like Singapore and Dubai. More and more cattle are