Read A CALLAHAN CHRISTMAS MIRACLE for Free Online

Sometimes Galen wondered if it was him. He’d rather it was, than any of his siblings. One day they would know—and no doubt the decision they would face would be difficult.
    Today, he had to worry about trouble closer to home. “The enemy may have built reinforced tunnels under our ranch.” He looked into the distance, seeing the deep canyons and mesas that time had carved into the land. “We found some machinery in a cave. The only explanation is that it’s at the beginning of a tunnel, or underground bunkers. They could be right underneath the house.”
    “I know.” Running Bear rested his palms on his knees. “They are not there. Yet.”
    “But they’re coming.”
    “They are. It’s their mission.”
    “To what purpose?” Galen pulled his cowboy hat lower, shielding his face from the sun.
    “To surround us. If they can do that, they’ll have a stranglehold here that will be hard to break.”
    “How do we stop them? Make sure they don’t get here?”
    “Buy the land from Storm.”
    Galen considered that. They’d need a consortium of some kind to buy that much land without stretching the resources of Rancho Diablo. “We’ll be operating on limited manpower.”
    “We’ll hire more people. Or bring the Callahan cousins home. Let them live here, where there are no tunnels. One of you would have had the land eventually, if you’d won Fiona’s raffle.”
    “We always figured that was a fairy tale you guys cooked up to get us married and with families.”
    “No,” Running Bear said. “Well, yes and no. Yes, Fiona will do anything to see you happy, as your married cousins and siblings are. But we always intended to grow the ranch. We knew they were building tunnels. We hoped you would come to love it here as much as your cousins do.”
    “I do. The whole family does.”
    “I know. But one of you must be the head of that ranch. We don’t want it broken up and weakened, making it easy for the cartel to move in.”
    Galen shook his head. “I don’t like it. If Ash wins the ranch, she’ll be over there alone. She may not want us all living there. We need to stay together as a family. As a unit. We always have.”
    “So win the land yourself.”
    “I have no reason to expect that I’m in the running. I have no wife, probably won’t for years.” He’d taken care of his siblings so long he didn’t know if he’d ever be able to relax and have time for romance.
    He thought about Rose next to him in bed last night and decided he could relax a little.
    “Tell your brothers and sister that you want the land.”
    Galen started. “I can’t do that. I can’t tell them I’m bumping them out of Fiona’s ploy.”
    “You don’t want any of them living on land that only you knows has been compromised. It’s not safe.”
    “Can’t we destroy the tunnels?”
    “We would destroy acres and acres of good land with them.”
    There were no good answers, no good choices. “It’s too dangerous to raise a family there now, so what difference would it make if we destroyed it? Those tunnels are how they’re getting to Rancho Diablo so easily, Grandfather.”
    “Yes.” Running Bear nodded. “You must ask your ancestors what the right answer is.”
    “The right answer to what?”
    “Your path. What you are meant to do.”
    “I say we burn them out. From burned ground comes new growth.”
    “It would take many men to do it.”
    That was also true. He’d had lots of military training. Teamwork wasn’t unknown to him. “It would be expensive to bring in that much personnel.”
    “Yes. But it can’t be done alone.”
    “Explosives. I can think of a hundred ways to collapse tunnels.”
    His grandfather opened his eyes to look at him. “You’d be put in jail. You can’t set fires and blow up land without breaking the law.”
    “There has to be a way.” Galen just couldn’t think of one. But it made his blood hot with anger that the enemy was gaining on them by doing whatever they wanted, while