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Virgil looked past Mac toward the holding pens, then farther west into the smoke.

“I can bitch about Hank’s cattle destroying my land after they’ve come through this alive.” Virgil opened his truck door.

“Hank might object.”

That earned Mac a look.

“Hank objects to the sun coming up if he didn’t personally approve it the night before.”

Mac smiled despite himself.

Virgil climbed into the truck, then leaned an arm on the open window. “If you get him on the radio, tell him where his cattle are going. Otherwise, he’s liable to come looking for them and run right past the opening.”

“I’ll tell him.”

Virgil nodded once and pulled the door shut.

Mac stepped back as the truck started. Virgil swung around the staging area and headed toward the track that would take him to the fence line.

Mac watched until the truck disappeared into the smoke. He knew exactly what Virgil was giving up. Not just grass, but forage he’d planned around and fence he’d have to repair. Hours of work later sorting stock that shouldn’t have been mixed in the first place. Maybe more than that if a hundred cattle tore up ground Virgil had spent years trying to make productive in a country where cheatgrass grew faster than saltbush.

And the miserable bastard hadn’t hesitated or drawn attention to himself.

Mac turned back toward the trailers. Everyone had been so damned busy deciding what kind of man Virgil was. And granted, they weren’t entirely wrong. He’d signed with the BLM right after the meeting and let everyone keep planning around Hank’s place for a month without saying a word.

Jodie.

Mac took a handheld off the nearest tailgate and keyed it. “Hank. It’s Mac. Come back.”

Static, and under it the hiss of a channel with nobody on it. He tried twice more, then checked the display to be sure he was even on the right one. He was.

Of course. Low ground, a basin, and twenty miles of hill between here and Hank’s kitchen. The radio did exactly what the radio always did.

Kyle came past with a clipboard against his hip. “Dana cleared Hank’s horses. Two trailers, and he’s a driver short.”

“That one’s mine.” Mac was already moving. “Told him I’d do it back at the house.”

“Take Ben.”

“Yup.”

He looked for Jodie on his way to the truck. She was at the board with her back to him, bandana up, writing while somebody read numbers at her over the wind. Her pen didn’t stop.

He didn’t interrupt her. He’d already told her the part that couldn’t wait.

The Ram pulled out of staging with Ben in the passenger seat and a borrowed gooseneck rattling behind. At the top of the access road, Mac slowed where the track to the fences cut away north.

Two ruts in the dirt going into the smoke. Nothing at the end of them that he could see.

Somebody ought to be out there with him.

He turned south and drove to Hank’s.

TWENTY-FIVE

For the first time all day, the board was getting better.

Not good. Jodie wasn’t stupid enough to call anything about the last several hours good. But the column of horses still in holding was shrinking, and the column of trailers that had actually left the site had stopped looking insultingly short. One of the first stock rigs had already unloaded and was on its way back. Dana’s loading crew had found a rhythm. Nobody was yelling at the horses anymore. Nobody was yelling much at each other, either.