Learning To Love (Contemporary Cowboy Romance) (Carson Hill Ranch series:Book 1) Read Online Free Page A

his name. Even with high-tech equipment and online trading, a man’s signature was the most important part of the deal, and Casey liked it that way.
                  After giving Samuel his list of supplies and watching as the store owner tabulated the trade, he marked how much credit the Carsons would have in the shop for the next time they came into town for supplies. Samuel helped him load the household items into his sacks and secure them in the back of Casey’s truck, putting a hand on the door handle when Casey started the ignition.
    “Wait, there’s mail for you,” he said, waving his hands at almost forgetting. He dashed into the side room of the store that served as the small town’s post office and came back with a small bundle, handing it through the open window to Casey and watching as the cowboy tossed it on the cracked upholstery of the passenger seat. “Sorry, I couldn’t help but notice when it came in there’s a flyer announcing an auction just east of here. Didn’t know if your family might be interested in bringing in a new breed at your place.”
                  “Hmm, sounds interesting. Did they say how many head?”
                  “I can’t remember now,” the gray-haired man said, taking off his glasses and cleaning them on his shirt. “I want to say it was somewhere around two hundred head of redback and one hundred head of stroud. The owner up and moved away after they foreclosed on some of his property, and didn’t leave any kind of forwarding address. Someone has to buy ‘em up quick or they’re gonna starve in the pasture once the grass is gone. And you know all the milking heifers are drying up, what with no one doing the milking. Animal control has been going out once a week and checking on ‘em, making sure they have fresh water and stuff like that, but now they’re state property. It’s a shame that it’s just going to waste, but that’s the way of it here when the money runs out.” 
    Casey nodded thoughtfully. Good thing the Carson ranch was overrun with family and ranch hands, he thought to himself. With a wave, he put the truck in gear, then turned in the direction of the ranch and settled in for the one hour ride over unpaved, packed dirt and grass, looking above the visor of the truck to make sure his gun was in its holder, in case he needed it during the trek.
                 
     

CHAPTER FOUR
     
                  “Dad, I received this announcement in the mail when I went into town today,” Casey said, holding out the crudely printed paper with information on the upcoming auction. He pointed to the list of livestock and farm tools, making a special note of the spools of fencing. Apparently, the owner had acquired a few hundred additional acres and was readying the extra parcel for pasturing when the money ran out. That was the shame of it out here, a lot of newbies came along thinking farm life would equal a simpler, less stressful time, but every rancher knew that any family was always one solid drought away from losing everything they had. “That fencing will come in handy, especially if the river keeps coming up over the banks and taking out the posts. I was thinking we could move our current fence to the other side of it, away from the water’s edge, and build a support that would keep the herd from getting out through the water. We’d have to build it up some, but we’d spend far less time building fences than we'd spend fixing them.”
                  Anders, Casey’s other middle brother, looked up from his computer and took off his glasses, nodding at Casey’s logic and looking to Dad for approval. Anders had been born small and stayed indoors most of the time, but that made him an excellent ranch manager. None of the others minded having the fourth son learning to run the vast farm, not when there was physical work to be done that he couldn’t do. Everyone contributed on a