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keep the soil fresh and productive, and they used natural fertilizer. They maintained ponds of cattle waste, which was used to produce methane that powered electricity for the calving barn and the other outbuildings. It was a high-tech, fascinating sort of place. Especially for a bunch of cattlemen who’d taken a dying ranch and made it grow and thrive. They weren’t rich yet, but they were well-to-do and canny about the markets. Besides that, Mallory was something of a financial genius. The ranch was starting to make money. Big money.
    Cane went to the cattle shows with their prize bulls, Darby had told her, when Cane stayed sober for a long-enough stretch. He was sort of intimidating to Morie, but he had a live-wire personality and he could charm buyers.
    Dalton, whom they called, for some reason, Tank, was the marketing specialist. He drew up brochures for the production sales, traveled toconferences and conventions, attended political-action committee meetings for the county and state and even national cattlemen’s associations, and devoted himself to publicizing the ranch’s prize cattle. He worked tirelessly. But he was a haunted man, and it showed.
    Mallory was the boss. He made all the big decisions, although he was democratic enough to give his brothers a voice. They were all opinionated. Darby said it was genetic; their parents had been the same.
    Morie understood that. Her dad was one of the most opinionated men she’d ever known. Her mother was gentle and sweet, although she had a temper. Life at home had always been interesting. It was just that Morie had become an entrée for any money-hungry bachelor looking for financial stability. Somewhere there must be a man who’d want her for what she was, not what she had.
    She rode the fence line, looking for breaks. It was one of the important chores around the ranch. A fence that was down invited cattle to cross over onto public lands, or even onto the long two-lane state highway that ran beside the ranch. One cow in the road could cause an accident that would result in a crippling lawsuit for the brothers.
    Darby had been vocal about the sue-everybody mentality that had taken over the country in recent years. He told Morie that in his day, attorneys were held to a higher standard of behavior and weren’t even allowed to advertise their services. Nobody had sued anybody that he knew of, when he was a boy. Now people sued over everything. He had little respect for the profession today. Morie had defended it. Her uncle was a superior court judge who’d been a practicing attorney for many years. He was honest to a fault and went out of his way to help people who’d been wronged and didn’t have money for an attorney. Darby had conceded that perhaps there were some good lawyers. But he added that frivolous lawsuits were going to end civilization as it stood. She just smiled and went on about her business. They could agree to disagree. After all, tolerance was what made life bearable.
    She halted at the creek long enough to let her gelding have a drink. She adjusted her earphones so that she could listen to Mark Mancina’s exquisite soundtrack for the motion picture August Rush. There was an organ solo that sent chills of delight down her spine. She got the same feeling listening to Bach’s Toccata and Fugue in D Minor played on a pipe organ. Music was a big part of her life. She could play classical piano, but she was rusty. College had robbed her of practice time. She’d noticed a big grand piano in the Kirks’ living room. She wondered which of the brothers played. She’d never asked.
    She stopped at a stretch of fence where the last snow-and-ice storm had brought a limb down. The ice was gone, but the limb was still resting on the fence, bending it down so that cattle could have walked over it. The limb was a big one, but she was strong. She dismounted, buttoned her coat pocket so that the iPod wouldn’t