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    â€œGoddamn you, Pa.” With unsteady hands, she settled her hat back onto her head. “The ranch is mine, and it’s going to stay mine. Damned if I’ll spread my legs for Ben McKinnon or anyone else.”
    She caught the flash of headlights, murmured to her mare to settle her. She couldn’t make out the vehicle, but noted the direction. A thin smile spread as she watched the lights veer toward the main house at Three Rocks.
    â€œBack from Bozeman, is he?” Instinctively she straightened in the saddle, brought her chin up. The air was clear enough that she heard the muffled slam of the truck’s door, the yapping greeting of dogs. She wondered if he would look over and up on the rise. He would see the dark shadowof horse and rider. And she thought he would know who was watching from the border of his land.
    â€œWe’ll see what happens next, McKinnon,” she murmured. “We’ll see who runs Mercy when it’s done.”
    A coyote sang out, howling at the three-quarter moon that rode the sky. And she smiled again. There were all kinds of coyotes, she thought. No matter how pretty they sang, they were still scavengers.
    She wasn’t going to let any scavengers on her land.
    Turning her mount, she rode home in the half-light.

THREE
    â€œT HE SON OF A BITCH .” BEN LEANED ON HIS SADDLE horn, shaking his head at Nate. His eyes, shielded by the wide brim of a dark gray hat, glittered cold green. “I’m sorry I missed his funeral. My folks said it was quite the social event.”
    â€œIt was that.” Nate slapped a hand absently against the black gelding’s flanks. He’d caught Ben minutes before his friend was taking off for the high country.
    In Nate’s opinion, Three Rocks was one of the prettiest spreads in Montana. The main house itself was a fine example of both efficiency and aesthetics. It wasn’t a palace like Mercy, but an attractive timber-framed dwelling with a sandstone foundation and varying rooflines that added interest, with plenty of porches and decks for sitting and contemplating the hills.
    The McKinnons ran a tidy place, busy but without clutter.
    He could hear the bovine protests from a corral. Calves being separated from their mamas for weaning didn’t go happily. The males’ll be unhappier yet, Nate mused, when they’re castrated and dehorned.
    It was one of the reasons he preferred working horses.
    â€œI know you’ve got work to see to,” Nate continued. “I don’t want to hold you up, but I figured I should come by and let you know where we stand.”
    â€œYeah.” Ben did have work on his mind. October bumped into November, and that shaky border before winter didn’t last long. Right now the sun was shining over Three Rocks like an angel. Horses were cropping in the near pasture, and the men were going about their duties in shirtsleeves. But drift fences needed to be checked, small grains harvested. The cattle that weren’t to be wintered over had to be culled out and shipped.
    But his gaze skimmed over paddocks and pastures to the rise, toward Mercy land. He imagined Willa Mercy had more than work on her mind this morning. “Nothing against your lawyering skills, Nate, but that legal bullshit isn’t going to hold up, is it?”
    â€œThe terms of the will are clear, and very precise.”
    â€œIt’s still lawyer crap.”
    They’d known each other too long for Nate to take offense. “She can fight it, but it’ll be uphill and rough all the way.”
    Ben looked southwest again, pictured Willa Mercy, shook his head. He sat as comfortably in the saddle as another man would in an easy chair. After thirty years of ranch life, it was more his natural milieu. He didn’t have Nate’s height, but stood a level six feet, his wiry build ropey with muscle. His hair was a golden brown, gilded by hours in the sun and left long enough to tease