Page 346 of Rangers Last Promise

She held out her hand but waited.

Max looked at me.

“Friend,” I said.

He stepped forward and sniffed her fingers.

Nora scratched beneath his chin.

“He’s beautiful.”

“He knows.”

“Do not let the Magnolia Ladies hear there’s a new man with a dog in town,” Blaze warned. “They’ll be here before you get your bags inside.”

A car horn sounded behind us.

Everyone turned.

A pale blue sedan pulled into the parking lot.

Trigger closed his eyes. “You had to say it.”

Three doors opened.

The Magnolia Ladies emerged.

Agnes carried a pie.

Mabel carried a covered casserole.

June carried what appeared to be a new dog bed.

I looked at Blaze.

“How?”

“They know everything,” he said. “We stopped asking.”

The women marched toward me.

Agnes reached us first.

She was small, white-haired, and moved with the confidence of someone who had never lost an argument.

She looked me over from my boots to my face.

“You’re too thin.”

“I’m two hundred and ten pounds.”

“Thin,” she repeated.

Mabel walked around me and inspected my truck.

“Living out of this?”

“Sometimes.”