Free The Rancher Meets His Match by Pamela Ladner Page A

higher. 
                  She followed her for what felt like an eternity until they came to an old shed.  Hilary stayed back in the bushes.  She dismounted her horse and grabbed her cell phone out of her pocket.  She put it on silence and slipped it back in her pocket then she crouched down in some bushes and watched.  She took in her surrounding and realized that on the other side of the shed were the remains of an old charred burnt down house with the chimney still standing.  She noticed an old driveway that led to an old fence road and she watched as Lisa walked her horse down the driveway toward the fence.  She dismounted and began breaking branches off hedges that stood there.  Then Hilary saw it.  There was an old gate there hidden by the bushes.  It hadn’t been used in years and looked like it had been forgotten.  Wh at was she up to? Hilary wondered . 
                  Hilary watched as Lisa got back on her horse and headed back the way she’d come.  Hilary snuck back to her horse and mounted up sure to stay hidden.  She had a sinking feeling and that feeling had her on her cell phone calling the county sheriff’s department.   She told Sheriff James everything she could about the place that she was now looking at.  She told him about the hidden gate and Lisa looking for it in the bushes.  He seemed to think she may have been checking to see if it was still there and then marking it.  He asked her if Lisa carried any ribbon or anything that could be seen from a road to mark the spot.  She told him she wasn’t sure but she would look.  After Lisa left, Hilary rode to the gate and dismounted.   She wound her way through the bushes until she found the gate and saw that there was indeed a blacktop road and an orange ribbon hung out there big enough to be seen from that road.
                  The sheriff asked her to wait there.  He was on his way out there to see for himself.  By the time Sheriff James got there, J.W. was there too. The sheriff walked around the area from the other side and studied it for a moment.  He then decided that it was indeed a marker for the rustlers.  They decided to leave it up so that they could catch them in the act.  He climbed over the gate and walked around the area pinpointing where the best place to put his men would be.  They would stake out in the old shed and up in the woods.  The darkness would consume them in the woods and no one would see them.  He made a call into the station and ordered several of his men out to the area. 
                  When the men showed up, they were all in a department of corrections van as the sheriff had ordered.  The men filed out one by one, and the van left.  He sent one of the officers to hide his truck somewhere down the road and in the woods far enough that it couldn’t be seen.  Then he lined the men up and put each one where he wanted him.  J.W. and Hilary were sent home and were warned to be careful of what they say around Lisa.  They wanted to catch these guys and hopefully it would be that night. 
                  The sheriff was usually right about things.  He had guys wa tching a man in town and they’ d reported sight of a woman coming and going fro m a hotel room where the man was checked in.  He had a feeling that woman would lead them to something like this.  He was glad that Hilary was smart enough to follow her gut and trail after Lisa without being detected and he was glad she called him.  He wished he could get men and women like her in his department.  He had good men but few of them possessed the qualities that this woman possessed.  Very few of his men went on their gut instinct.  He looked at gut instinct like a sixth sense.  If your gut was trying to tell you something nine times out of ten, it was right. 
                  At ten thirty, the sound of a big rigs brakes releasing air pressure alerted the men that