Page 53 of Boston (Coral Canyon: Cowboys #12)

CHAPTER

THIRTY-FIVE

N o, I’ve really got to get up there in the next couple of weeks . Boston sent the text to Ernie, arguing back with his boss, something he’d literally never done before.

He hadn’t seen Cora in the three days since they’d broken up, and he’d had no need to talk to her either, but something she’d said to him had lit a fire in his belly.

You should have said something.

Boston rarely said something. He went with the flow, and that had earned him a reputation of being easy going, a good employee, and a pushover.

He didn’t really need to get back up to Ramsfire Ridge and the cabin, but he really wanted to go.

If I can’t get up there and make sure the cabin is okay for the winter, he tapped out . Then I won’t be able to get this excursion on our calendar for next year, when there might be eggs and eaglets being born.

There was no wildlife cam on the nest here in the Tetons.

But if he could take people up to that cabin and they could have the up-close and personal experience with wildlife they hardly ever got to see, Silver Sage would benefit from that.

The eaglets were usually born in mid-March, and for sure by April first, and the snow had usually stopped by then.

Usually.

All right, Ernie said. Let me see what I can do.

I’m sure Cotton can do one of the hikes , Boston said. After all, the man had been at Silver Sage for a couple of decades. Heck, anyone could do the Roundabout Trail, as it literally circled the property with an elevation gain of ten feet at one point that quickly went right back down.

Some guests used it as a walking trail, and someone before Boston had been hired had put out little signs for all the vegetation and animal habitat.

So he took people on the tour explaining the signs and showing them exactly what to look for in the landscape.

A monkey could probably do it if he had a script, and Boston had done his first few tours with one.

“This looks like the north entrance,” Cash said, and Boston looked up from his phone. They both still wore their white shirts and ties as they’d come straight here from their Sunday worship service, and they had plans to go to Uncle Jem’s for lunch that day.

“Yep,” Boston said, and he cut a look over to his cousin. “If we buy this place, which house do you think you want?”

“I don’t know,” Cash said. “I gotta see inside them first.” He glanced over to Boston. “Tell me why we wouldn’t buy this place.”

“I don’t know,” Boston said.

“It’s just because you’re in a bad mood,” Cash said. “You just got to go talk to Cora and tell her that you’re both going to be busy for the rest of your lives, and you guys just have to figure out how to make time for each other.”

Boston looked away and said nothing.

“Come on, brother.”

“I don’t know,” Boston said, plenty irritated now. “It sort of sounded like she’d already had doubts about us anyway. And what am I gonna do? Show up and say, ‘I can make more time for you’? Ain’t no one can make more hours in the day, Cash.”

“Yeah, you just make different choices.”

“Okay, Dad .”

Cash burst out laughing as he brought the truck to a stop and then flipped a U-turn. “Let’s go in over here and see what it looks like from this side.”

The other entrance to the property sat on the same highway that Uncle Tex lived on, just further north.

“I think this place is actually in Rusk,” Boston said.

“I think so too,” Cash said. “Or else it’s county.”

“I think it’s Rusk, because I’m pretty sure the sign that says ‘Welcome to Rusk’ is way back there before that red silo. Remember?”

“You drive this road way more than I do.”

“I’m pretty sure the Welcome to Rusk sign is back by that red silo.”

“That red silo is on our property,” Cash said, and Boston noted how he already spoke of it as theirs. “It was one of the pictures, remember?”

“I do remember that,” Boston said.

Cash made the turn, and the first thing he did was hit an enormous pothole. Boston groaned and threw his hand up to the bar above the window while Cash said, “Whoops, didn’t see that.”

“I bet a lot of the roads need to be repaired after fifteen years,” Boston said, and that would only be the tip of the iceberg.

He couldn’t even imagine the enormity of things that would need to be replaced, repaired, gutted, redone, and fixed up just to make this place livable.

He wanted to ask Cash if they really wanted to do this, but he kept his mouth closed because he hadn’t even seen the place yet.

Cash drove through pines and aspens, and just past two of the tallest trees on the property, the space opened up and revealed the blue farmhouse that Boston had seen in the real estate listing. It had looked big in the pictures, but it towered in real life.

“Wow,” he said. “How big was this house?”

“I think this is the bigger of the two,” Cash said. “Almost four thousand square feet.”

“What in the world are we going to do with a four thousand square foot house?” Boston griped.

Cash came to a stop in front of it and grinned out the windshield. “Make our daddies jealous.”

“Yeah, as if they don’t have enormous houses.”

“Hey, my daddy’s got a lot of kids,” Cash said.

“I mean, it’s not falling down,” Boston said. “We’ll know more when we can get out and climb the steps.”

“Yeah, we’re meeting Cal over at the other house. I think you can get there once you’re on the property, but I’m not sure.”

“I’m sure you can,” Boston said. “What would be the point of having two houses if I have to go back on the highway and drive around?”

“Just with these roads,” Cash said. “I think we’d probably be safer if we went the other way.”

“No doubt about that.”

Boston’s phone buzzed, and he practically jumped back into it. “Yes,” he said, as he read Ernie’s text. “You want to go hiking with me in a couple of weeks?”

When Cash looked over to him. “I got that housing situation I’ve got to handle in a couple of weeks.”

“That’s like three weeks from now,” he said. “Maybe four.” He re-read the text. “Wait, this is then too.” His heart fell to the bottom of his stomach because he wanted to go eagle-watching at Ramsfire Ridge this week to escape any chance of running into Cora.

“Oh, it’s only two and a half weeks,” he said. “They gave me the sixteenth to the nineteenth. And, of course, I never work on Sundays, but I’ve got a breakfast with Beth that day, because then she’s going to Maryland on the twenty-first.”

“Oh, the twenty-first is when I can get into the house,” Cash said. “I can go hiking from the sixteenth to the twentieth.”

“Sixteenth to nineteenth,” Boston said absently as he texted Ernie back a great big thank you!

Cash navigated them over to the other house, which also stood two stories tall, but in brick. It also had a wider base, bigger front porch, and seemed to be hulking into the ground. The bottom level then tapered into a smaller second level that probably only had a couple of bedrooms.

“This one feels older than the other one,” Boston said. “Like it was probably the original place.”

“Feels like it, doesn’t it?” Cash opened his door and got out of the truck. Boston tucked his phone in his back pocket as he did the same.

Cal turned out to be shaped like a penguin, with a small head that wore a big cowboy hat and narrow shoulders that widened into a bigger belly and then narrowed to just legs.

“Howdy,” Cash said, shaking his hand. “I’m Cash, and this is my cousin, Boston.”

“It’s great to meet you,” Cal said, and his deep voice did not match his tiny head. Boston smiled and shook his hand anyway, and the three of them faced the brick house.

“So you can probably tell that someone tried to paint this brick,” Cal said.

Boston had not been able to tell until that moment, but now he could see that the white brick was only that color because of paint.

“It’s actually a golden brown brick,” Cal said.

“And paint comes off real easy, and we can reseal the brick so that it’ll last a lifetime.

” He held out a picture. “This is the original house from 2010, right before they painted it.”

“I thought you said it’s been vacant for fifteen years.” Boston looked at the picture, and the house definitely looked better without the paint.

“Yeah, they were sprucing it up to sell,” Cal said. “But they never put it on the market.”

“Why not?” Cash asked as they made their way toward the bottom of the steps.

“The husband passed away, and the wife couldn’t deal with the farm equipment and all of the acreage. The houses and barns are stuffed full.” They walked up the steps, and then Cal darted in front of them. “This is going to look bad, boys.”

“Oh, this isn’t good,” Boston said.

“Have an open mind,” Cash hissed at him.

“I’m here, aren’t I?” Boston shot back.

Cash looked at him like he’d morphed into another creature, and Boston could admit that he sort of had. He hardly ever bickered with anyone and never in front of a stranger. He always just bit his tongue and went along.

Why didn’t you say something?

“The previous owners of this place,” Cal said. “The Wickers?—”

“Wait. Did you say Wicker?” Boston asked. “Like Wicker Trail Road?”

“Yeah,” Cal said. “Same family. They’ve owned this land for generations.”

“Wow,” Boston said. “I take people on that trail. I’m a guide at Silver Sage.”

“We love Silver Sage,” Cal said.

“Yeah, we all love it,” Cash said. “Now why is this gonna look bad?” He shot Boston a glare, and Boston focused on Cal, because he’d like to know why it would be bad as well.

“Like I said, the Wickers have had this place since it was founded in 1877,” Cal said. “That’s almost one-hundred-fifty years. And well, I’m sure there’s some items that you’ll find here that are that old.”