Long Road Home (3 page)

“Good point. And of course you’re welcome to the cabin. It’s been empty since Jim, Janet, and the kids moved out six months ago.”

“Coop told me that you found Jim a job at a cow-and-calf operation in Bozeman. That was nice of you.”

“It was the least I could do. The Longs were like family, but there wasn’t enough work here any longer to make the situation viable. He says they’re happy in Montana, so that’s something. Meanwhile, we’ve extra furniture in the main house you’re welcome to have.”

The Green Springs Ranch compound consisted of a main ranch house with dual wings to allow for multiple generations to enjoy breathing room while living beneath a single roof. The cabin she’d offered him had been built for the ranch foreman’s family. There was also a bunkhouse that, during the ranch’s heyday, had been home to three full-time hands and other seasonal ones. But that was now empty.

“Don’t worry about it. I’ll work something out. And it’s not like I’ve got much gear to deal with.”

After being screened by the command transition counselor and attending the mandatory separations brief and seminar, Sawyer had driven out of the main gate and headed straight to a Walmart, where he’d bought a cheap canvas duffle to replace the sea bag he’d been lugging around for years. He’d picked up the straw Stetson at the Boot Barn not far from Camp Pendleton. A Marine might be a Marine all of his life, but for now, Sawyer was past ready to wrangle cows instead of terrorists.

“I wouldn’t have expected your dad to get into holistic ranching.” He looked out at Austin’s beloved horses contentedly grazing in other pastures. “Especially since he wasn’t selling all that much stock for food consumption.”

She laughed. “Why would you be at all surprised? Just because of all his complaining about tree huggers and having bitched when Rachel took down that old sign Johnny Mott had hung in the front window of the New Chance offering a spotted-owl breakfast special?”

“He might bitch about tree huggers,” Sawyer said as their horses walked side by side through the grass. “But deep down he loves the land. If Merrills hadn’t taken such good care of this place over the generations, it wouldn’t have survived.”

“Dad’s always believed in leaving a light footprint. But you know as well as I do that ranching isn’t the most secure way to make a living.”

“The best way to make a small fortune in ranching is to start out with a big one.”

“True.” She smiled at the familiar axiom. “Green Springs has survived by running a tighter ship than most. Good breeding records allowed us to sell off the majority of steers and calves to other stockmen. Any that weren’t rodeo quality went to conventional food markets. I’m probably not spilling any deep, dark secrets by admitting Dad initially scoffed when your father decided to go grass-fed, grass-finished organic.”

“A lot of ranchers get stuck in tradition, running their spreads the way they’ve always been run.” While earning his B.S. in range management from OSU, Sawyer had studied both the good and the bad.

“True. But your father was generous enough to share his profit ratios, and even a man as stubborn and set in his ways as Dad could see the benefit of not having to buy truckloads of feed every year by changing over to grass finishing.

“He also noticed that even without automatic immunizations, Bar M cattle weren’t getting sick because the nutrients they get from the grass and legumes your dad grows boosts your cattle’s natural immunity. Borrowing that idea offered us additional savings. Not to mention easing concerns of stock getting sick just when we were due to deliver a contracted number to a big rodeo.”

“Green Springs has always had a sterling reputation.”

“It has,” she agreed with understandable pride. “But we always needed to keep a lot more extra steers on hand, just in case. After we switched over, on the rare occasion we did get a sick animal, we separated it from the herd, treated it until it was healthy again, then shipped it out for the general retail market.

“More and more folk are starting to take notice that not only is holistic good for the planet, it’s good for the bottom line. Which, in turn, allows more families to stay on their ranches instead of selling out to big-city developers.”

“Or movie stars,” Sawyer said, thinking of an A-list action star who’d been buying up nearby land as if God wasn’t making any more of it.

Which, oh, yeah. He wasn’t.

“Oh, please don’t even bring Hollywood wannabe cowboys up with Dad,” she said. “Nothing gets his dander up more than people who can afford to offer millions for their own private paradise, never minding that they’ve no need to make a living off it. Which drives up property values and forces those struggling to live off their land to have to go to work in town.”

“Which our families have avoided.”

“So far,” Austin qualified. “Not that the Bar M has any reason to worry.”

“The ranch is doing well.” And although Sawyer knew that he was the logical Murphy son to take over operations, he wasn’t in any hurry. Not only did he want to prove himself capable of running his own spread, he was looking forward to his dad being in the cattle business for a very long time yet.

They’d reached the cabin.

Austin had never been much of a toucher. It was well known throughout the basin that just because his only child happened to have an extra X chromosome, that hadn’t kept Buck Merrill from raising his daughter to be as tough as any boy. She’d never been coddled or pampered. Except, when Buck wasn’t watching, by Winema Clinton, the brisk and busy housekeeper who ran the domestic side of the ranch.

But as they pulled up in front of the cabin, which, like the main house and bunkhouse, had been built with lumber grown and milled on the property, Austin reached between them and placed a slender hand on his thigh.

“I’m so glad you’re home. I was worried sick. I don’t think I ever prayed harder in my life.”

There’d been a time, back during their teen years, when Sawyer had teased her about finding a church on Sunday morning in whatever town she happened to be in while traveling the rodeo circuit. But that was before he’d discovered the old war axiom was true: there weren’t that many atheists in foxholes. Or when you were dragging your butt over rocks out in the open in the Helmand Province, a perfect open target for some Taliban sniper’s bullet.

“Believe me,” he said as his leg tightened beneath her light touch, “you weren’t alone.”

Austin gave him a long, direct look. “You’ve changed.”

Sawyer wasn’t going to lie. Although his dad had expected all three of his sons to pull their weight on the Bar M, Sawyer had been the one with a wild streak.

“Life happens.”

“Now there’s a pithy observation,” she said dryly as she took her hand back. “We’d better check the place out. Give you time to change your mind.”

“Not going to happen.”

It wasn’t as if he didn’t have other choices. He’d been invited to partner with his dad while staying in the big house, which, as he’d just told Austin, wasn’t a choice his father, the new Mrs. Murphy, or Sawyer would’ve honestly wanted.

If he was going to settle back into River’s Bend, he needed to make his own decisions and his own mistakes. And hopefully climb his way out of this deep, dark pit he’d landed in before he ended up becoming one more statistic.

Leasing these Green Springs pastures seemed like a good start.

3

“A
RE YOU SURE
you’re going to be all right?” Austin asked her father. “With Winema away visiting her grandchildren?”

“I told you, I’m going to be fine,” Buck Merrill grumbled from his saddle-brown leather recliner as he watched a rerun of an old bull riding competition. “I just had a little tumble. Nothing like falling off a horse. You don’t have to treat me like I’m a damn toddler who needs a babysitter.”

“That’s not what I’m doing.”

Grizzled brows dove over eyes framed by deep lines that came from years spent outdoors. “Aren’t you?”

“I worry.”

“Don’t.”

They’d had this argument too many times to count. And it never did any good, so Austin had no idea why she kept trying. Perhaps, she considered, because although her dad had forgotten more than most ranchers knew about raising cattle and quarter horses, he refused to read any of the PPS information Ryan Murphy had given her. Or the many articles she’d stayed up late into the night researching online. In this case, he was behaving exactly like a stubborn toddler, determined to have his own way come hell or high water.

“The lasagna’s in the fridge. Just stick it in for an hour at three hundred fifty degrees. I’ll be home by nine.”

“And I’ll be in the sack by then, so you might as well stay as long as you like.” They might have sold off the stock, but Buck Merrill would probably keep rancher’s hours until he took his last breath. Which Austin dearly hoped would be years and years from now.

Just the thought of losing this man, whose crusty exterior hid a warm and generous heart, had her eyes swimming. She leaned over the torn arm of the recliner and kissed his bristly cheek. “I love you, Dad.”

“Have fun at your wine party.” He might not say the
L
word, but the gravelly huskiness of his voice assured Austin that she was, indeed, well loved.

“It’s a book club.”

His chuckle, as rough as a mile of ungraded gravel road, was one she didn’t hear all that often since his old polio nemesis, which had been lurking all these years inside him, had made an unexpected and unwelcome appearance. “Sure it is.” The warmth in his eyes belied the gruffness of his tone. “You’re a good girl, sweetheart. You deserve a night out. Even if you want to insist it’s all about the book.”

“It is,” she said, even though they both knew that wasn’t totally true. Ranch life could be a lonely life. Even lonelier for women. Austin valued her time with friends as much as she did whatever book the group would agree to read every month.

The drive to the Bar M was less than five minutes house to house. During the day, she might have walked or ridden Blue, her roan quarter horse, but tonight, with a new moon and rain on the horizon, she drove the ranch pickup that had turned over a hundred thousand miles long ago but was still running. That was the first cardinal rule of ranching: you either made do, did over, or did without. The Dodge Ram might look as banged-up as an old bull rider, but it got her where she needed to go, and that was all that mattered.

Although the meetings changed locations every month, most of the women who’d begun the group had remained, becoming close friends. Jenna Janzen ran the Chapter One Bookstore; Layla Longstreet was a nurse practitioner who also was in charge of Ryan Murphy’s medical office; Rachel Hathaway was engaged to marry Cooper Murphy this summer; and real estate agent Mitzi Murphy had married Sawyer’s father, Dan, this past Valentine’s Day.

Rounding out the group was Heather Campbell, whose husband, Tom, was a large-animal vet, while she was an avid gardener who sold her flowers and vegetables at the local farmers’ market. The past few years she’d begun to gain a reputation around the Northwest for her weaving, which, she’d told Austin, allowed her to have the best of two worlds: a career doing what she loved while being able to be a stay-at-home mom to her twelve-year-old daughter and seven-year-old son.

Heather had been Austin’s best friend all their lives. And Tom, who’d grown up on a small, struggling ranch that his parents had sold a few years ago, could always be found hanging out with the Murphy boys. Sawyer in particular.

“Oh, yum!” Jenna said as she took the container and lifted the lid. “You brought brownies!”

“I’m trying out a new recipe.” Along with breeding Desperado and training and selling her horses, Austin picked up much-needed extra income baking for Chapter One and the New Chance Café. “They’re dark fudge with a caramel sea salt frosting.”

“I swear,” Layla said, “you don’t ever have to read any of the books we’re supposed to be discussing as long as you show up with your unbelievable baked goods every month.”

“I second that,” Rachel said. “I can’t wait to taste them. Your lemon meringue pie bars sell out like hotcakes. Actually, better than hotcakes,” she amended. “Which is really saying something because the place is packed at breakfast.”

For even longer than Austin had been alive, once local ranchers finished with early-morning chores, they’d driven into town for a hearty breakfast at the New Chance. Since Rachel had bought the café, they were not only getting the best food in all of Southern Oregon, they no longer had to risk food poisoning the way they had when the previous owner, Johnny Mott, had been in the kitchen.

“So,” Heather said, “how did this afternoon with Sawyer go?”

“It was nice seeing him again,” Austin said mildly, taking the glass of wine Rachel handed her. “Thanks.”

Heather was not one to give up. “Just
nice?
”

“I think you’ll like this Oregon rosé,” Rachel said in a less-than-subtle attempt to rescue Austin. “It just said spring to me. It’s complex, crisp, with flavors of peach, rhubarb, and the slightest edge of salinity.”

“You read that off the bottle,” Layla said. It was well known that while Rachel had aced her studies at New York’s Culinary Institute of America before buying River’s Bend’s New Chance Café, she’d flunked wine.

“I did not.” Rachel laughed. “It’s how Gabriel Lombardi described it when he came down from the Willamette Valley to sell me a case from his family’s vineyards. I’ve learned to trust his advice. Although, to be honest, I would have bought it without the salesmanship because it’s such a pretty pink color.”

“It reminds me of spring apple blossoms,” Jenna said.

“Speaking of spring,” Heather pressed on, “we all know what men’s fantasies turn toward during this time of year. So, I’m going to try again.” She speared Austin with a look. “Well?”

“He’s leasing the land.”

Austin had mixed feelings about that. She didn’t have any problem with a Murphy grazing cattle on Merrill land. But as much as they needed the money, she wasn’t certain how she felt about Sawyer being so close after he’d already let her know, in no uncertain, heart-crushing terms, that the mind-blinding, toe-curling kiss they’d shared outside the hospital had merely been triggered by jetlag and stress about his dad’s heart condition. And had had nothing to do with her. Really.