Page 1 of A Rancher's Heart
Chapter One
October, Silver Stone ranch
Caleb Stone ran like hell.
He wasn’t prone to moving at high speeds, and he sure didn’t think jogging was a thing any red-blooded man did for entertainment, but at that moment, running wasn’t about anything except survival. Caleb tucked in his chin, pumped his arms and drove his feet into the ground, sprinting full-out toward the nearest fence.
Two feet away he dove, thrusting his hands forward to propel himself through the metal railings.
He went down hard, body slamming into the dust and mud outside the pen.
The furious bull on his heels jerked to a stop inches from the fence, snorting a final warning. The beast glared between the rails as if daring Caleb to step back intohisterritory.
Check out the new bull, will you?Caleb could hear his brother Luke’s request. Fine. The beast was checked, and it appeared he was wildly cranky and not too pleased with his new owners.
“Impressive bit of flying.”
Caleb rolled to stare at the sky, ignoring the pain in his body. If he lay there for long enough, his annoying baby brother might find something better to do.
Unfortunately, good sense didn’t come in large packages amongst his five younger siblings. Neither did the concept of showing a man mercy when he was down.
Dark brown eyes in a familiar, yet younger version of his own face stared back as Dustin leaned over, his amused smirk far too broad considering the kid was only nineteen, a full sixteen years Caleb’s junior.
Caleb raised a brow, deliberately offering as little emotion as possible. As if he were lying on his backside because that was exactly where he meant to be. “Need something?”
Dustin shook his head before changing his mind and nodding. “Luke’s looking for you. He’s in the main barn.”
Caleb got to his feet, clenching his teeth to keep from moaning as a sharp pain shot through his ribs. Nothing was broken—thatsensation was familiar to him as well. He’d only banged and bumped himself this go-around, but no way he was going to give any of the young punks he worked with the satisfaction of knowing how much taking a tumble had begun to hurt.
He wasn’t old. Thirty-five wasn’t old, damn it.
“I’ll be there in a minute.” He checked his watch then eyed Dustin. “How come you’re not working?”
Dustin grinned. “I am working. Luke’s got me doing fence checks for the rest of the afternoon. You were kinda on the way to where I left the quad.”
His little brother—the kid was as tall as Caleb but still had a few years of filling out to do—adjusted his hat then sauntered off, whistling. Moving slowly, but at least in the right direction.
Caleb recovered his own hat before heading the opposite way, picking up the reins from where he’d ground-tethered his horse. He swung a leg over her back and turned toward the barn.
Dustin wasn’t a bad kid. For all Caleb’s concerns about having to raise his siblings after his parents had died suddenly in a car crash, they’d all turned out pretty good. A little more reckless than Caleb appreciated. Like Walker, brother number three, who was currently on the circuit risking his fool neck.
Though, they were all fools. Ranching was a potshot—success subject to the whims of weather and the ever-changing price of livestock. There were no guarantees at the end of the day.
The only certain things were chores and bills.
Luke joined him as he entered the barn, his far too astute brother giving him a close once-over before grinning. “What’d you think of the new bull?”
Caleb held his expression in check. “Seemed sound enough.”
Luke nodded. “I thought he was moving a little uneasy. Slightly lame on the foreside.”
Not that Caleb had noticed, but then it was hard to judge a beast’s gait while fleeing for your life in front of the working end of the horns rather than admiring from a safe distance.
“Keep an eye on it,” he ordered. “What’s up?”
Luke’s easygoing smile faded. “I’ve been double-checking our feed supply, and depending on how hard a winter we get, things might get tight. We’re running more head this year, and with the floods two springs ago, we lost a lot of ground.”
Caleb let his brother talk him through what they had stockpiled, but he couldn’t remember enough details from the previous year to give a firm answer off the top of his head. “All the records are in the office. I’ll check them, but at this point there’s not much we can do except hope for the best.”
