“One of your prep school boys should have that liquid easily.”
“Maybe.”
She paused and watched me. “You could blackmail someone,” she added slyly.
I narrowed my eyes at her. My stomach began to turn because I was considering it. “Who?”
“That married executive in Chicago. You could contact him and blackmail him.”
“My dad already did that!”
“Right. Your dad. Not you. You don’t think he would pay to keep you quiet as well?”
I considered it. “Maybe.”
“Good boy,” she said as the doors opened to the lobby.
Chapter Twenty-Six
I woke the next morning with no real idea why Jonah and I were driving an entire town away to help a guy the family barely knew when the ranch couldn’t afford to lose any more hands, but then again, they helped Bridge and me out so who was I to judge?
We pulled up to the ranch and noticed it was a little bit outdated and not as kept as the Hunt Ranch.
“Amos is almost seventy,” Jonah explained. “He used to keep a better ranch, but I suspect he’s gotten a little old and can’t keep up.”
“Where are his kids?”
“His kids went to college and never came back. They built lives in the city.”
Can’t blame them, I thought.
We pulled toward the main house and took in the sights. Parts of the barn roof were falling in. The fences need immediate restoring. I suspected a few cows had probably escaped through them. Amos McAllen was too old to keep up with his ranch.
“Why doesn’t he just retire?” I asked as we came to a stop.
Jonah gave me that look again. “Retire on what? Most ranches around here don’t necessarily take in a huge profit. We survive from year to year.”
I nodded but couldn’t fathom how people lived like that.
An older but fit woman emerged on her porch and met us by Jonah’s truck.
“You must be from the Hunt Ranch,” she said, extending her hand.
Her smile reached her eyes as she squinted in the sun.
“Mrs. McAllen?” Jonah said, taking her hand.
“Oh, please, call me Faye!”
“Faye, I’m Jonah Hunt and this is another of the ranch’s hands,” Jonah said discreetly.
“Spencer,” I said, offering my hand and she took it.
“So nice to meet you boys,” she said cordially. “Come on in for a moment.”
We followed her up the creaky steps of her porch and I briefly noted that needed repairing too. Her house was small but comfortable and clean.
“I’ve got something special planned for your lunch today,” she said, beaming.
“Don’t trouble yourself, Miss Faye, we’re here to help you, remember?” Jonah said.
She grabbed his hand in both of hers and patted them gently. “I know, son, and I cannot tell you how grateful we are,” she said, nearly shedding a tear and pulling on my wound tight heartstring.
“This is what we do for our neighbors,” Jonah said smiling.
She patted them once more then let them go.
“If you don’t mind,” Jonah began, “we’d like to get straight to work if that’s okay?”
“Oh, by all means, don’t let me keep you, love.”
He smiled once more and I followed him out and onto the porch.
“They’ve only got a hundred cows here,” Jonah said, scanning the field near the barn and applying his gloves. I pulled mine from my back pocket and followed suit.
“Oh, good, we should be done pretty quickly,” I said, feeling a little invigorated. Jonah looked at me. “What?” I asked.
“We’ve got a ton of work to do here. We’ll be here until late, I think.”
“What? Why?”
“Have you seen the state of this ranch?”
“Yeah, so?”
“So? We’ll have to make all these repairs for them.”
“What in the hell, Jonah? I thought we were just here to help with the herd.”
“We are,” he said, bounding off the front porch and heading toward the barn. “But we’re gonna leave this ranch better than how we found it.”
I shook my head. “That is ludicrous.”
Jonah stopped in his tracks. “Spencer, you afraid of a little work?”
“No,” I said, affronted.
“Then quit your bitching,” he replied, cursing for the first time I’d heard since I met him.
I laughed. “Fine.”
We tended the herd, just like we did at the Hunt Ranch, but in a fraction of the time. Then Jonah made me clean and organize the barn because it was a cluttered mess. We could tell Amos left the tools he needed at a level for easier access so we hung all the tools he didn’t frequently use on the barn wall and did the same for the tools he used often at a level he could reach them.
That took more than three hours alone. I thought we were done, but Jonah decided the floors needed cleaning so we grabbed a broom and a hose, much like we did in the horse stalls when we would clean out the pellets. We scrubbed and rinsed the concrete floor. When all was said and done, it looked like a brand-new barn, save for the holes in the roof where patches of snow were coming through.
“We’re gonna have to tackle that roof,” he said, eyeing the damage.
“How are we going to reach it?” I asked, looking around.
“There’s a ladder built on the outside. We’ll have to gather materials and climb up.”
We searched the barn and found what we needed, then rounded the building searching for the ladder.
“Dude, that looks sketchy,” I said, inspecting the rungs of the old attached ladder. I placed a foot on the first rung and tested my weight. It held. “How are we going to get the wood up there?”
“Tie it up, I guess, and heave it over.”
“Okay,” I said, heading for the barn in search of rope.
We tied the wood and tucked our hammers and nails in our back pockets and hauled the heavy load up and onto the roof.