Melissa Cutler - Cowboy Justice

From the corner, Rachel let out a ragged breath that left the air in the room crackling with tension so brittle he couldve snapped it like a stick of toffee.

Dont look at her. Do the task at hand and keep your mind out of the gutter.

He picked up his hoof knife and took to cleaning the hoof, prepping it for the shoe. Ignoring Rachel.

He was doing fine with that until he asked her to bring him the shoe. Because then she came too close and said in a husky voice, You might not be a rancher by profession, but your heart is pure cowboy.

Dont look at her. Cowboy lawman, according to your sister.

She let out a throaty laugh and strolled toward her perch in the corner. And then, as if he werent having enough trouble keeping his thoughts virtuous, he watched the sway of her ass until she resumed her seat. Their eyes met, and the look she gave him singed him where he stood.

Forcing his focus to shoeing, he tested the smoothness of Growlys hoof with the pad of his thumb, filed down a couple rough spots, then fitted the shoe on. Before he had enough sense to restrain himself, he blurted, Unlike Jenna, you dig my cowboy lawman vibe, dont you?

What do you think?

Actually, he wasnt sure what the hell hed been thinking, asking her that. He selected a No. 5 nail and a hammer, then tapped the first nail in place. Hoping to defuse the tension with humor, he painted on his best self-deprecating smile and said in an exaggerated Texas drawl, Darlin, how about I show you my six-shooter?

Rachel snickered. I bet thats the line you use on all the ladies.

Hey, a guys got to work hard to earn the title Most Eligible Bachelor. My pretty face alone dont cut it.

The vandals brought beer. A bold move for trespassers. Then again, it was one in the afternoon, so either these punks carried the delusion they were above the law, or they set a new standard of stupidity from the other idiots whod felt the call of duty to send a message to Rachel Sorentino.

Rachel watched through the zoom lens of her camera from the narrow canyon floor, hidden from view by a smoke tree, as one of four young men shook a can of spray paint. Not too difficult to imagine what hed write on the boulder he and his buddies were grouped around. Catcher Creeks small, but zealous, group protesting her familys new business werent all that creative, shed discovered. Probably involved the word bitchand maybe the classic leave town or else. She wondered if these guys were better spellers than the rest.

Lincoln, her horse, sidestepped restlessly. She understood his discomfort. Even in the shade as she and Lincoln were, there was no escape from the weather. The surrounding walls of soil radiated the kind of dry, baking heat that pricked at the skin like needles and dried noses to the point of bleeding. Didnt help that this particular May was setting heat records all across New Mexico.

Not for the first time, she considered calling the sheriffs department, but that presented its own mess of trouble. Besides, this far off the beaten path there was no way a deputy would arrive in time to do any good. And she refused to consider the ramifications of Vaughn answering the dispatch call. Heaven help her if it came to that.

Like always, Rachel had no one to rely on but herself. Well, not exactly. She had Lincoln, her closest companion for over a decade. And she could always rely on the interminability of the ranchs problems, which hadnt given her a day of peace in all her thirty-two years of life. Yeah, she could definitely count on the presence of problems pulling at herlivestock problems, sister problems, money problems. The list went on forever.

She wiggled her hand into her jeans pocket and grabbed an antacid from the roll. As it dissolved on her tongue, she lifted the camera from where it hung around her neck and snapped a string of photographs, zooming in on the face of the vandal holding the paint. Hed written the Band the Iin straight block letters on the boulders flat face. She swung the camera right and snapped pictures of the truck. It was angled so she didnt have a clear visual of the license plate, but she could wait to capture that image while they were fleeing the sound of her gunshot.

The revolver in her saddlebag took .38s. She flipped the cylinder open and loaded ammo into two chambers.

Lincolns restless sidestep grew anxious. He wasnt a fan of the gun, not the noise or the recoil or the bitter odor of gunpowder. But he was getting more accustomed to it since the grand opening of Heritage Farm, with its influx of tourists and media attention, had unleashed Catcher Creek residents underlying hostility toward her family and turned the farm into a vandal magnet.

Rachels first tip-off about the controversy was a lowkey grumbling and grousing overheard in the shops and churches on Main Street, as reported by her youngest sister, Jenna, whose number-one hobby in life was keeping her finger on the pulse of the towns rampant gossip. The low grumblings evolved into a petition to add anti dude-ranch legislation, as the petition authors dubbed it, to the next county ballot. It wasnt long after the petition took to circulating that the first graffiti appeared on the ranch, scrawled on the side of one of Heritage Farms brand-new oil derricks.

Four months later, the protestors were still at it, and Rachel and her sisters were as determined as ever to make Heritage Farm a success.

She snapped the cylinder of her revolver in place, then spent a few minutes stroking Lincolns neck and whispering words of reassurance into his ear. She offered him a Fig Newton, his favorite treat. He snatched it from her hand, his tension easing as he chewed.

After a few more words of praise and affection into Lincolns ear, she straightened in the saddle and winced. The ulcer was bad today. She could actually feel it blazing a hole through her gut. She took the time to land another antacid on her tongue before raising the gun toward the sky, careful to aim to the left of the mesa so thered be no chance of the vandals being hit by a stray bullet. She was a good shot, and the men probably stood at too great a distance for her to hit, but she respected the firearm enough to understand its inherent unpredictability.

The word bitch had been neatly scrawled on the boulder, spelled right and everything. Impressive. She squeezed the trigger and braced for the deafening echo through the canyon.

Boom.

Her ears throbbed. The world went mute. All she could hear was the thud of her pulse in her ears and a high-pitched ringing. One of these times, shed have to remember ear plugs. She kept her gaze on the vandals, whod stopped painting and joking to scan the valley, searching for the source. They were too far away for her to gauge their facial expressions, but they werent running scared, that was for sure.

She fired again.

This time, she kept her eyes closed for a beat as the recoil swept through her system. The violence in the sound and energy of the gun hurt her whole body, from her teeth to her toes. Lincoln reared. She tugged the reins, asserting her control, and lowered the revolver. The vandals were running to the truck now. Excellent.

Setting the gun in her lap, she lifted the camera. Time for the money shot.

But as fast as they leapt into the truck cab and bed, they were out again, their hands filled with rifles.

Oh, shit. Damaged as her hearing was, her words were muffled and far away.

She dropped the camera to swing around her neck and took up the revolver again. The sweat on her palms interfered with her grip. She held it tight against her thigh as she dug for more rounds.