Page 6 of Roping Her In

Jake nodded at Beau and then turned his attention to Charlotte. “Thank you,” he said.

“Hailey’s great,” Charlotte said. “My brother had Smiles Glover out to his ranch a couple of times this summer, and he brought Hailey with him. She’s really smart and can assess a situation really quickly.”

Jake once again nodded, as if he knew all of this, though he didn’t. “We have another student too,” Jake said. “I’ll have to meet with him at some point before the internships begin.”

Beau swung into his saddle, and Jake hurried to finish getting his horse ready. “If there’s something you need help with,” Beau said. “You let me know.”

“All right,” Jake drawled, and then he climbed atop his horse as well. “Let’s pray this stream isn’t full of debris.”

Charlotte moved to open the gate for them, and Beau chuckled as he led out. “Oh, it’s going to be,” he said. “I brought the handsaw, gloves, and our long pole.”

Jake caught sight of them attached to the saddlebags on Beau’s horse, and he gritted his teeth. “At least it stopped snowing,” he said.

“It’s gonna start again,” Beau said, just as Jake cleared the gate.

Charlotte latched it behind him, and Jake moved to his friend’s side instead of trailing behind him like a wounded puppy. They remained quiet on the ride out to the stream, which would only take about thirty minutes.

If Jake rode the fence bordering the entirety of Three Rivers Ranch, it would take half a day, and that was if he never stopped to note problems or fix anything. The ranch spanned hundreds of acres, and while it wasn’t as large or as profitable as Shiloh Ridge to the south, it was definitely in the top five biggest, best ranches in the Texas Panhandle.

Jake’s gratitude that he got to live and work here flowed through him. Since he didn’t really need to hold the reins and direct his horse, he closed his eyes and sent a silent prayer heavenward, thanking God for his parents and the love of animals, land, and ranching that he’d inherited from them. Heck, it was also because of his father that he even had this job.

As Jake finished his prayer, he sighed and opened his eyes.

“What’s that about?” Beau asked, his voice quiet.

Jake glanced over to him. “What’s what about?”

“That sigh.” Beau looked at him fully. They’d been working together now for two years. His friend had just turned fifty-five, and he’d been living and working on this ranch since before Jake was born. He’d met and married Charlotte, finally settling down only about fifteen years ago now, and Jake trusted that anything he said would be kept between the two of them.

He knew Three Rivers didn’t have any dating policies, and Beau didn’t need to sign off on any relationships anyway. Jake couldn’t imagine having that conversation with Libby Jackson, who was only older than him by a few years. They’d been friends growing up, as they’d both lived and worked here on the ranch.

Jake’s humiliation burned hotly through him, and he shook his head. “No reason,” he said. “Just praying for a miracle.”

He managed to smile, glad when Beau accepted the answer with a grin of his own. “You and me both, brother,” he said.

They faced forward again, the bleak winter Texas landscape spreading before them. Jake loved it, as it carried a sense of peace and serenity he’d been unable to find anywhere else. He believed God existed everywhere and knew every detail of every place and every person in it, but that the Lord reserved a special place in His heart for Three Rivers and anyone who visited there.

“I can’t believe I ever left this place,” he said, his voice quiet among the wind.

“This land is something, isn’t she?” Beau spoke with the same sort of reverence that moved through Jake.

But it only lasted a few moments before the rain started again.

“Told you,” Beau said, his grin still hitched in place.

Jake couldn’t quite find the energy to return it, because he’d just caught sight of the stream ahead. “She’s over the banks,” he said, a dark note entering his tone.

Beau looked and even raised up in his saddle two inches. “You have got to be kidding me.”

But Jake wasn’t kidding, and neither was Mother Nature. The stream that ran through this part of the ranch kept their cattle alive and their crops watered during the long, hot months of summer and autumn. It fed other areas of the ranch as well, and continued through town and on to Shiloh Ridge Ranch in the south. If they dammed it up here, it caused problems for everyone downstream.

He brought his horse to a stop twelve yards from where he could see the water, as the ground had started to soften and feel boggy beneath her hooves. Beau joined him on the ground and started to set a pole in place that they could tie their horses to. Jake took tools and equipment from him, and while Beau finished up with the horses, Jake turned toward the stream.

Large parts of Oklahoma had burned this past summer, and as their winter weather came through, the burn scars produced landslides filled with mud and debris that came down the rivers into Texas. Seeing as how Jake could get in his truck and drive an hour north from the ranch and hit the Oklahoma border, he wasn’t surprised that this hadn’t been mitigated before it had reached Three Rivers.

With every step, he sunk a little further, until the water was practically at his knee. He finally came to a stop where he should’ve been standing on the riverbank, hopelessness filling him from top to bottom.

“Do you see where we need to begin?” Beau called from behind him.