Free Christmas at Blue Moon Ranch by Lynnette Kent Page A

across the boy’s hands. “War is a terrible experience,
Rob. Don’t ever take it lightly.”
    They were still
staring at each other when Nate came back with the board. Daniel excused
himself from the nailing process and returned to the house, where he sat for a
long time in the dark, thinking about all the buddies he’d lost to war. Including
one he’d never met…Jamie Mercado.
    By sundown on
Friday, the corrals and the cattle pens were in good shape—clean, repaired and
functional. Daniel handed Rob a crisp fifty-dollar bill. “I appreciate the
effort. Anytime you want to come around, we’ll have work for you.”
    Rob’s eyes went
round in his dirty, sweat-streaked face. “Wow…thanks!”
    “Thank you.”
Daniel swiped at his forehead with his shirt sleeve—the October weather in
south Texas resembled his memories of summer in Ohio. “Have you got time for
one more quick chore?”
    Still staring at
the fifty, the boy said, “Sure.”
    Daniel led the
way into the house, where three moving boxes still sat in the living room. “Would
you help me move these into the bedroom?”
    Rob squatted
beside a box as if to lift it on his own, but couldn’t get it off the floor. “Man,
that’s heavy. What’s in there?”
    “Army gear,” Daniel
said, carefully casual. “Boots, uniforms, junk I carried around with me. I’ll
get the other side.”
    Despite Daniel’s
aching back, the two of them moved the three containers into a corner of the
bedroom. Each time they set down a box, the clank of metal hinted at the true
nature of the contents. Daniel ignored the sounds, and Rob didn’t ask for an
explanation.
    At the front
door, Daniel handed the boy an extra ten dollars. “Thanks again, Rob. Can you
ride your pony home in the dark?”
    Without meeting
his eyes, Rob shrugged one shoulder. “Sure.”
    He called Willa
a little while later just to check. “And I wanted to thank you for letting him
help out. Nate and I are grateful.”
    “Rob made the
choice,” she said stiffly. “He had to work after dinner all week to get his
chores here done, and then stay up late with his homework.”
    “He must have
big plans for the money,” Daniel joked. “What’s he got his eye on—a new video
game?”
    Willa didn’t say
anything for a long time. “He wanted to share it with Susannah and Toby for
lunch money. He heard me talking to Lili and Rosa about the bills and decided I
can’t afford to buy his school lunch.”
    Then she cut the
connection without another word.

Chapter Six
    After practicing
with Calypso in one of the corrals all week, Daniel welcomed Nate’s suggestion
for a Saturday ride across the pasture land of the New Moon. A portable
mounting block made getting into the saddle much less of a chore, and they set
out midmorning armed with a map, a sack of sandwiches and a thermos of coffee.
    They came across
the first break in the fence about an hour later. Nate hopped off his sorrel
pony, Daze, and went to inspect the wire.
    “Cut.” Stepping
outside the ranch boundary, he examined the ground beyond the fence. “Hoofprints.”
He frowned in disgust. “ATV tracks. Damn rustlers.”
    “Rustlers?” Daniel
sat up straight. “In the twenty-first century?”
    “Bet your beef
on it.” Nate came back to his horse. “There’s a good market over in Mexico for
beef, with no questions asked about the brand or the source.”
    “So somebody’s
been rustling Mercado cattle, is that what you’re saying?”
    “Yep.”
    Daniel
registered the sense of a big empty space where his guts used to be. Not only
did he have to learn the ranching business from the ground up, but he had to
deal with cattle thieves, too? Was he really up to the challenge? “Does Willa
know about this?”
    Nate shrugged
one shoulder. “I expect she does. Come to think of it, I heard the sheriff
mention something about rustlers out this way a few weeks ago. Miss Willa
would’ve reported the theft, wouldn’t she?”
    “That would