"Anyways," the man said. "Nice running into you. We'll be waiting for those cows."
When they'd headed back through the break in the fence and mounted up, Clint turned the ATV
and watched them ride off.
"Who was that?" I said quietly.
"Glenn Yates’s son, Dennis, and a few of his boys," Clint ground out. "I don't know what the hell they were doing on my land, but it's twenty miles from where they usually have cattle this time of year."
"Shit," I muttered.
Clint turned the ATV back to the ranch without a word to me. He was silent when we parked back in the barn, hauling his leg over the seat and climbing off, heading in the direction of Brandon's bunkhouse.
I followed him. He hadn't told me not to, and I'd never seen Brandon's place. Besides, I wanted to know what the hell that was all about.
His long legs ate up the distance to the cabin quickly enough that I had to trot a little, but I slipped in the door behind him.
"Clint?" Brandon asked, "I know your momma taught you to knock."
They came around the corner. Brandon was wearing an apron and Will had bright yellow dish towels on. It looks like we’d interrupted some sort of secret domesticity, and Brandon looked grumpy about it.
"What's wrong?" Will asked, the first one to catch sight of the other man's face.
“Dennis Yates was on the ranch,” Clint spit out.
“Where?” Brandon demanded. “What did that fucker think he was doing?”
“He said that he was after some stray cattle, but there’s more than one animal that can break down a fence,” Clint said.
Will pulled his gloves off and tossed them over his shoulder, over a low dividing wall, presumably into the kitchen.
“He said he wanted to make an offer,” I said.
All three men turned to look at me, look hard, and for the first time since I’d been out here without clipboard, I felt like an outsider on Clint’s ranch.
Brandon was the first to relax.
“Did you tell him where to shove it?” he asked, turning to Clint.
“I told him to get his sorry self off my property,” he said.
Will nodded, firmly. “That asshole prowling around can’t be up to anything good, though,” he said, walking back into the kitchen again. I heard running water. It appeared that Will didn’t think this was serious enough to forgo doing the dishes for.
Brandon and Clint both looked at Will, then at each other. Even though their bodies were in hard lines of anger, I saw their lips twitch, and then they looked away.
“Pull up a chair,” Brandon told me, gesturing at the dining room table and taking a seat himself. “What has Clint told you about Yates?”
“He said that Will saved him twenty grand when Yates tried to steal stuff off the ranch,” I said, easing myself into an oak seat.
Will came out of the kitchen, gloveless, drying his hands on a dish towel.
“What?” he asked, before anyone said anything, “There was one knife left to wash, I couldn’t just leave it there.”
Brandon rolled his eyes.
“I know you couldn’t,” he said, and patted Will’s knee as Will took the last seat, beside me.
Clint cleared his throat. “Yates has been a nuisance for, well, I don’t even know how long. His daddy bought up a lot of land, and Yates has always wanted to buy the rest of the state.”