Webb chuckled. “You don’t need to sleep on it. Land is like a woman. The minute you set eyes on her, you know whether you want her or not. And you want this place. I can tell.”
“I said I’d sleep on it. Maybe I’ll look around and see what else is available, too.”
“Go ahead. But you won’t find anything this good. When I heard you were looking for land, I called in a favor, put down a small deposit, and asked the bank to hold this parcel for thirty days. The time’s almost up. If word gets out that it’s available, somebody will buy it. Blake Dollarhide would probably be first in line.”
Logan was beginning to see a pattern. “So why haven’t you bought it yourself?” he asked.
“Good question. But a ranch the size of the Triple C costs a lot of money to run. We’re rich in real estate and cattle, but not in cash. Otherwise, I’d buy this parcel in a minute. Choice location, manageable size, good soil, and water. Come on out back. There’s something you’ve got to see.”
The splash of flowing water reached Logan’s ears as he followed Webb around the house. Striding through high grass and weeds, he found the creek bordered with willows and flowing high with spring runoff.
“That’s the creek I was telling you about,” Webb said. “It runs along the east property line. The far bank is federal land, but you’d have free use of the water.”
Logan was tempted to ignore a prickle of warning. He wanted this land. He’d wanted it from the moment he set foot on it. But even without asking, he sensed what Webb had in mind. According to his story, the creek forked below its headwaters into two branches—one flowing north toward the Triple C Ranch, and the other south toward the Dollarhide property.
The water in this branch flowed south.
* * *
“Come on, Joseph!” Buck Haskell called as he raced out of the schoolhouse door. “Me and Chase and Cully are gonna catch us some fish.”
Joseph sighed. He knew his friends would be going to Hollister’s Pond. And fishing sounded like just the thing to do on a Friday afternoon. But he couldn’t skip out on a promise. “Go on, Buck,” he said. “I promised Miss Anderson I’d clean the boards and erasers. If I get done, I’ll catch up.”
“Oh, go on, Joseph.” Britta Anderson waved him toward the door. If she had a soft spot for him, it was probably because she was Joseph’s aunt as well as his teacher. A tall woman with a freckled face and kind blue eyes, she wasn’t a beauty like Joseph’s mother or her younger sister, Gerda. Maybe that was why she hadn’t married. But she was one of the smartest women Joseph had ever known.
Looking at her now, he couldn’t help wondering if she knew the family secret he’d learned only last night—that Blake Dollarhide wasn’t really his father. Had she kept it from him all these years, like the rest of the family?
“It’s a beautiful spring day,” she said. “Go with your friends, Joseph. Catch a fish or two for me.”
With a grin and a murmur of thanks, Joseph rushed outside.
He and his sixth-grade friends were ranch kids. On school days, they rode their horses into town to attend the two-room school. Buck and Chase lived on the Triple C. Buck’s dad, Virgil, was the foreman, or at least that was what Buck said. His mother, Ruth, taught the younger children in the ranch school. Chase, of course, was the Calder heir—big for his age, handsome, and self-confident, the kind of boy to whom everything came easily.
Cully O’Rourke was the newest, and the only one of the boys who was poor. His clothes, though clean, were frayed and patched; and his boots looked too big for his feet, as if they’d been handed down from someone else. His black hair hung in strings around his thin face.
Joseph had seen the family in town. The father, who ran cattle on scrubby land in the foothills, looked like a grown-up version of his son. The mother, surprisingly neat and pretty, had been trailed by a small girl with a mop of black hair and fiery eyes. Maggie, her father had called her.
Being Irish and poor might have made Cully an outcast, but he told funny stories—most of them off-color, which boys of that age found hilarious. And he would do almost anything on a dare, from swallowing a live worm to sprinting across a bull pasture. Those qualities gained him acceptance, even admiration, from his peers.
Joseph joined his friends behind the schoolhouse, where their horses were tethered to a hitching rail. Most of the time they rode bareback. Only Chase used a saddle. Now he mounted up and swung his bay gelding in the direction of home.
“Aren’t you coming with us, Chase?” Buck asked.
“Not today,” Chase said. “My dad wants me to help cut some yearlings from the herd. He’ll skin me if I don’t come straight home.”
“Hell, Chase,” Buck said. “Can’t one of the cowboys do that job?”
“That’s what I asked my dad,” Chase said. “But he told me I needed to learn every job on the ranch if I ever want to be the boss.”
Joseph watched his friend ride away. Until last night he’d expected to be the future boss of the Dollarhide Ranch. But now he couldn’t be certain of anything. He no longer felt sure of who he was or his place in the world.
“Let’s go!” Buck kneed his horse. The other boys followed, whooping as they shot out of the schoolyard, galloping across the open fields behind Blue Moon, headed south, past the town, toward the pond on the Hollister Ranch.
The Hollister spread wasn’t large, but it was one of the choicest parcels of land in the county. Deep native grasses carpeted a rolling landscape that had never been farmed by wheat growers. Ample groundwater fed wells that kept the grass green from early spring through fall.
Near the border of the ranch was a spot where the groundwater had risen to the surface to form a natural pond, overhung by willows and stocked with thriving yellow perch. For boys brave enough to ignore the NO TRESPASSING sign, the Hollister pond was heaven on earth.
A quarter mile short of the ranch, the three young riders cut back to the main road, which would take them past the ranch house. Here, to avoid attracting attention, they slowed the horses to a walk.
As they passed the substantial brick home with its long driveway, Joseph fixed his gaze on the road ahead. He’d known all along that the woman who lived there was Joe Dollarhide’s first wife, Amelia. What Joseph hadn’t known until last night was that Amelia was his grandmother—and that she’d wanted nothing to do with her son’s child.
When he tried to picture her, there was no memory. Most likely, he’d never seen the woman. He only knew that she was old and that she lived alone except for her servants and the cowboys who tended her cattle. He’d even heard whispers among the children at school that she was a witch. But Joseph didn’t pay them any mind. Witches were only make-believe.
Pushing away the thought, he caught up with his friends. The house was out of sight now. A log rail fence stretched along the road, bordering the pasture. Planted along the inside of the fence was a thorny hedge of wild roses.
Just ahead, marked by the NO TRESPASSING sign, was a low opening where it was possible to crawl under the hedge. On the far side was the pond.
The boys dismounted and tethered their horses to the fence. Cully, who was the skinniest and bravest, bellied through the opening.