Page 13 of His Texas Claim

“Devastating for me. I’ve sat in the dark, in the rain, for six hours waiting on a five-minute call window. Every second was worth it.”

I hummed. “Sounds a little like hunting.”

She wrinkled her nose. “Never done it.”

“You disapprove?”

She groaned under her breath. “Not…exactly? I understand there’s overpopulation, particularly with white-tailed deer in the Hill Country. I understand it serves a purpose. But I can’t stomach the idea of killing an animal.”

“So you probably wouldn’t love it if I told you my primary job here on the property is as a hunting guide and doing population control.”

“No,” she said. “I would not love that.”

“Figured.”

“Do you like it? Killing them?”

“No.” I kept my eyes on the trail. “Somebody’s got to do it. Deer overpopulate, they starve in the winter, or they wreck a farmer’s fence line trying to get to feed. Rather it’s quick.”

“That’s a very practical way to think about death.”

“Ranch teaches you that.” I paused. “For me, it’s more ethical than slaughtering the cattle.”

She was quiet for a second. Buck trotted back to check on us, then peeled off again.

“I’m not judging you,” she said, “for the record.”

“Didn’t think you were.”

“I just don’t understand how you can be that gentle with a dog and also shoot things for a living.”

“They’re not the same thing.”

“Fair.”

We were getting into more and more dense forest around the creek…it was deeper here, a subtle waterfall flowing along to our right.

“What about the frogs?” I said. “You ever have to kill one? For science.”

“Sometimes. Voucher specimens. You need at least one physical sample to formally describe a new species—genetics alone isn’t always enough for the taxonomy to hold up.”

“How do you feel about that?”

She didn’t answer right away, then: “Horrible. Makes me cry.”

I was quiet for a moment. Didn’t know what to say to that, when it seemed like she was really mourning something so…trivial.

“Strange to worry yourself over something so small.”

Bryn huffed a laugh. There was…something behind that laugh. I couldn’t place it. “Even the smallest lives can mean something.”

I thought about deer season—about Neto telling me the first year I could hunt that if you stopped feeling bad about it, you’d stopped doing it right.

I’d never told anyone that. Wasn’t sure why I was thinking about telling her.

I didn’t.

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