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Another minivan pulled in beside the monster truck, and a
mother with three girls piled out. Jake nodded to them,
motioning to the first stable, and turned back to Rendell. "Is
there anything else, Mr. Rendell?"
"That section has the best view of the river. I need it. And
I'm going to have it."
"Good evening, Mr. Rendell."
Rendell crossed his arms, a mirror of Jake's body stance,
but if he assumed Jake was going to partake in the stare-
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down, he was wrong. Jake simply stepped past him and
followed the girls into the barn. The girls led out three of the
smaller horses. "Are you coming?" Jake called, speaking to
Mark alone. Mark shrugged his shoulders at Rendell, and
followed Jake into the second barn.
"Damn fool," Jake said, under his breath so the girls
couldn't hear him. "I told him that stretch is a flood plain, but
he won't hear me. He says his developers gave him to go
ahead, but it's flooded once every ten years or so since my
dad bought the land."
Mark nodded. He didn't like the look Rendell had given
Jake at all. "Has he threatened you?" He followed Jake back
to the private barn, where he was more than a little pleased
to see Hank, Jake's champion roper. When Jake had stopped
competing he could have sold the big gunmetal gray gelding
for twenty grand, easy. Hank took up the slack faster than
even Butter could.
"Of course I kept him," Jake said, ignoring the asked
question and answering the unasked one. "It was the least I
could do to give you an unfair advantage as to not having to
compete with the greatest cow pony in Alberta, if not western
Canada."
The cow pony stood at least sixteen hands at the shoulder.
"The very least, eh?"
Jake nodded and gave him a big boned dun Appaloosa
mare named Chancey. They saddled up and then joined the
girls in the yard. He mounted on the wrong side, using his
right leg to pull himself up. Getting his leg up and over the
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saddle probably wasn't in the rusty red binder, but it had
been too long since Mark had sat in a saddle.
"Is that okay?" Jake asked, and put a hand on Mark's
upper thigh. It was tight, and muscles he'd had his entire life
felt atrophied, but it was okay. And the hand on his leg was
even better. He nodded.
"Good." Jake slapped Chancey on the ass as he walked
behind her. Chancey swished her bob of a tail good-naturedly.
The girls waved to their mother, who was in the office at
work with the door open and the fan on. "She does the
books," Jake explained. "And the girls volunteer with the
horses. They seem to think I'm doing them a favor by letting
them muck out stalls."
"Do you have help year-round?"
"Mostly. The money isn't tight, most months it's
nonexistent. If we didn't raise the cattle, some months
there'd be no money to pay even utilities."
Mark got down at the first gate and opened it then closed
it behind them. The girls took off on ahead, their blond
ponytails streaming out behind them, but Mark kept behind
with Jake.
"You didn't answer the question. Has he been threatening
you?" It wasn't his place to pry, Mark knew it, and Jake knew
it. It fell under the sacred realm of "personal business," and if
Jake didn't answer this time, Mark knew he could never ask
again.
"Not exactly threaten," Jake said quietly. "A gate gets
opened. Was it left open or did it get opened? A dead animal
falls into the drinking water. An accident? Little things. Things
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that happen all the time. It's just a hay field, but the way the
price of hay skyrockets so quickly in a bad year, if I can't feed
the herd I'd have to cull it and how ironic would that be?"
Then he hesitated. "And there was a dead calf," he said.
"With the herd. It could have been wild dogs, or an accident
and they just found the corpse, but I swore around the edges
of the throat where the most damage was, it looked cut, like
with a knife. He probably just came by to see if it spooked
us."
"Did you call the cops?"
"They came out. Even if its throat had been cut, there was
no way to prove Rendell had done it. He's been nothing but
just another polite good ole boy. And his offer for
undeveloped farm land that floods is really quite generous,
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