We weren’t even a hundred feet away from the barn when we saw a forest green Land Rover with chrome trim speeding up the dirt driveway, a cloud of dust in its wake. Pax, in the lead, brought Triton to a halt. I pulled on Melissa’s reins and told her to stop. She listened but gave her head a quick shake, telling me that she was slightly irritated—and maybe knowing that trouble was about to unfold.
What happened next happened quickly, and it’s something of a blur to me to this day. To my horror, and Pax’s, a lanky man got out of the vehicle and planted his rawhide boots wide on the Raulton property. Tracy Rydeman stared at the two of us with his palms on his hips and said in his Stockton County drawl, “Gentlemen, I hope I’m not interrupting anything.”
“Tracy,” Pax whispered, recognizing
