Argosy Junction Read Online Free Page B

and led them to a nearby corral fence. “Climb up on that second rail. I’ll bring her to you and you can slide on.”
    “Her?” Matt climbed the fence, balancing carefully on the rail. As Lane helped him slide onto the saddle and fit his feet in the stirrups, she explained how to ride.
    “Her name is Cardiff.” Lane mounted her horse and turned him around. “Stay beside me until you get the hang of it.”
    They circled the barns twice before they wandered down the driveway. Halfway to the road, Matt suddenly felt uneasy. Their comfortable companionable silence was gone, and in its place came an awkwardness that he scrambled to remove. “So what is your horse’s name?”
    “Talgarth.”
    Still grasping at straws as he pondered the sudden change in the air around them, he grabbed for the first thing that came to mind. “Interesting names you have for your horses.”
    “We name all our horses after towns and cities in the British Isles. Cardiff and Talgarth are both Welsh names.” She gave him a pointed look. “Want to see the whole ranch? It’s mostly uphill to see it and really it’s kind of hard for a beginning rider, but it’s a gorgeous view.” The change of subject made things more comfortable.
    It was a slow ride, one he suspected that Lane usually made in a fraction of the time, but they both enjoyed seeing the Montana mountainside as their horses made the slow steady climb up winding paths that crisscrossed the terrain. At the top, the view was breathtaking.
    “Wow. I can’t believe I just rode to the top of a mountain!”
    “Well, this is really a hill compared to the rest of them around here, but we’re on a nice ridge anyway. If you follow the ridge northeast, it takes you to that peak there.” Lane pointed at a high peak that seemed to loom over them.
    From this vantage point, he could grasp what no author had ever been able to define clearly on paper. Space—it was incredible. “Okay, so what all is your land?” Matt had never understood the deep need that some people have for owning hundreds or thousands of acres of land.
    Lane pointed out the town, where the highway met the dirt road, and spread her hands, gesturing to a river to the east and a mountain ridge to the northwest. A fence, looking very much like a dirty thread across the green spring grasses of their ranch, showed the boundary of the property, and it was immense. Matt tried to guess the number of acres and failed miserably. To him, one hundred acres sounded like an obscene amount of land, but the small pasture from the day before was probably more than a mere hundred acres.
    “How many acres do you own?” He hated himself for asking, feeling immediately as though he was fawning.
    “About thirty-thousand. Give or take. I’ve never asked, but I’ve heard them talk about how it’s divided into thirds.” She gestured showing the natural break of land. “I overheard Dad say once that the center there was about ten thousand acres so…”
    Matt, though like most men and not usually intuitive, sensed a shift in her comfort level and decided to jump in with both feet. “So you promised to tell me why the granddaughter of someone from sometime past who probably founded this area is now the town pariah. Does your family share your exalted status, or do you hold that honor alone?”
    The invisible barrier that she’d been building seemed to crumble. “Well, it’s a weird story. Did you see the woman cleaning the cabins this morning?”
    “Carrie? Yeah. She came to mine, but I told her just to replace towels every day, and I’d be fine. I couldn’t stand the sight of her scrubbing and stuff with that big—wait. She’s related to you, isn’t she? That hair and her height and voice—”
    “Carrie is my sister. She married Peter Gideon four years ago. A year after we were dis-fellowshipped from the Brethren .”
    “The Brethren ?” Just the sound of it sent warning bells screaming through Matt’s head. The name alone