Free Harvest at Mustang Ridge by Jesse Hayworth

was the ridgeline beyond. As far as he could tell, the dining hall had been built right where the photographer had been standing.
Talk about some family history.
    “Amazing, isn’t it?”
    Wyatt turned toward the voice, saw soft white hair and a welcoming smile. And then did a double take at the sight of Krista’s smile in the face of an older woman in jeans and a ruffled yellow apron painted with a cartoon cow.
    Putting his eyes back on the photo, he cleared his throat. “Who are they?”
    “We’re not sure. The clothing dates it to after the1880s, but they look too young to be Jonah and Mary Skye, who built the original homestead, and too old to be the next generation. Employees, maybe, or extended family.” She sighed. “It’s a shame, isn’t it, to lose the stories?”
    “When you’ve got a history like this it is.” He looked out the window, imagining the ghost of a covered wagon. “Impressive.”
    She dimpled up at him. “We’re going through all the old photos now, trying to match faces and get their stories written down. It’s not easy, though. Some of the pictures have names but no dates, or first names without last. Some don’t have anything at all, like this one.” She tapped the museum-quality glass, expression softening. “Maybe one of these days we’ll figure out who they are. But”—her voice sharpened and her eyes gained a new glint—“enough about yesterday. You must be the new wrangler! Welcome!” She held out her hand. “You’ll call me Gran. Everyone does.”
    Which answered one question: She had no idea who he was.
    Wyatt shook, getting a surprisingly strong grip in return. “Thank you, ma’am. Is Krista around?”
    “She should be out behind the main barn with Jupiter. You’ll bring her a cup of coffee. That’ll get things started off right.” She patted his arm. “We’re happy to have you.”
    “Begging your pardon, ma’am, but you don’t know me.”
    “No, but the guest ranch is Krista’s baby. If shethinks you’re good enough for it, then that’s enough for us.”
    Squelching the urge to tell her that maybe it shouldn’t be, he said, “Coffee would be great.”
    A few minutes later, loaded down with two steaming mugs and a couple of fluffy corn muffins that smelled like heaven, plus a day-old biscuit for Klepto, he rounded the back corner of the steel-span barn, where Dutch doors led from the stalls to a series of small individual paddocks. Beyond that, inside a fenced-in arena flanked on two sides by grandstands and a judges’ box, a round pen made of eight-foot-high pipe panels stood empty, save for a sparkling-clean water trough and a pile of fresh hay.
    “We seem to be missing something,” he told Klepto, scanning the horizon. “Where do you think— Ah. There.”
    On the spine of the ridgeline, a horse and rider stood beside a three-stone marker that looked like it had been there for generations. The scene could’ve come from a hundred years ago, two hundred, but he knew who it was even across the distance. Feeling her eyes on him, Wyatt raised a hand in greeting, and after a moment, the horse started down the slope.
    Krista knew her stuff, that was for sure. It was evident in the horse she had picked, and even more so in what he was seeing now, as the pair loped down off the ridgeline, with the gray mare looking like she had been working under saddle for the past eight months rather than the past eight days. She carried her neck with anatural arch and wore her ears to the front, looking relaxed and interested as Krista slowed her to a walk. A couple of whinnies came from the barn, and the mare answered right back with a happy rumble, as if to say,
Yeah, that’s right. I’m a rock star.
    Krista grinned and leaned down to stroke the mare’s neck and whisper something in her ear. And damned if time didn’t suddenly collapse in on itself, turning her twenty again, him twenty-four and struck stupid by the sight of the beautiful blonde on a big gray