Wild Trail (Clean Slate Ranch #1)(18)
Wes went for a different conversational tactic. “So Colt tells me you guys did SWAT together,” he said.
Mack’s fork scraped across his plate. He glanced around at the other tables, probably looking for Colt so he could level the guy with the glare now creasing his face. “Yeah, we did.”
“That always looks so sexy on TV and in the movies.”
“Looks sexy, but it ain’t. It’s a lotta hard work. You take big damned risks every time you enter a scene. Sometimes it doesn’t go your way.” Mack’s voice softened by the end, hinting at a story. A sad story Wes probably wasn’t going to get at a picnic table, over a pile of ribs.
He didn’t want to piss Mack off by pressing, so Wes asked, “I’m guessing you like it better out here?”
“Yeah. Guess I’m a country boy at heart.”
“At least the horses seem to like you, because you aren’t much of a people person.”
Something rumbled in Mack’s throat that sounded a lot like laughter. “You aren’t wrong about that.”
Derrick interrupted with a question about the horses, and that stole Mack’s attention away for a while. Wes watched him while he ate, noting that Mack visibly brightened when he talked about the horses they rescued and trained for the public to ride. For someone not born to the life, it was definitely in his blood. Kind of like how acting was in Wes’s blood. Maybe he’d never be the major star he’d dreamed of being, but he couldn’t imagine giving it up. Not for anything.
At some point, Arthur stood atop one of the picnic tables and clapped his hands to get everyone’s attention. “While y’all continue to eat, and please do continue because we’ve got plenty,” he said in a booming voice, “I want to tell y’all a story.”
Mack groaned softly. Whatever the story was, he’d probably heard it a billion times by now.
“The Garretts were founding members of the town of Garrett. We’ve been on this land for many generations, and there’s a story that’s come down from father to son. A story I’ll share with you now. See, Garrett used to be a gold rush town, back in the day, only the gold wasn’t here. The few veins they found dried up fast. So we became more of a crossroads than a destination.
“As my great-great-great-grandfather told it, a train got robbed once by a group of thieves. A train that happened to be carrying gold meant for Washington, DC. Gold these thieves carry off, only the Pinkertons find them. These thieves load up on horseback and tear off into the wilderness, going right through Garrett lands. The Pinkertons split up, one group chasing straight after, and the other circling to intercept on the far side of the mountains. Only when they finally catch the thieves, they ain’t got the gold on ’em.”
Wes blinked, more surprised by that part of the story than he should have been. Pretending to have missing gold on the land was a great sell to tourists, and Arthur told the story like he believed it.
“So where’s the gold?” Miller asked.
Someone threw a dinner roll at his head.
Arthur gave a big, dramatic shrug of his shoulders. “No one knows. Agents swarmed the land, much as my ancestors allowed, but no one ever found the gold, far as I know. Family used to go out and search, but there’s parts of the land that’s never been touched. There’s just so much, and so many places to bury gold. Plus...the ghost.”
Murmurs rippled over the crowd—perfect dramatic pause, too, from Arthur. “My great-great-grandfather told stories of going out looking for the gold, and having a sense of bein’ watched. No one was ever around, but he wasn’t alone. A big old tree branch would snap off and fall close to where he stood. A campfire would blow out for no good reason. After his brother was bit by a rattler and died, the family decided to stop searchin’ and leave the gold to that ghost.”
“Dude, what if we went out with metal detectors?” Liam said to his buddy.
Wes’s eyes nearly rolled out of his head.
“I’d advise against it,” Colt spoke up. He was at the table next to Liam’s, and he turned to them with a grave expression. “Had some guys your age two years ago wantin’ to do the same thing. Warned ’em not to, but they went out, anyway. Came back with the piss scared out of them and wouldn’t say by what. Packed up and went home the same day.”
The dude-bros exchanged worried looks.
Wes didn’t buy into the whole ghost thing, but the story was reasonable enough to keep those two meatheads from wandering off on their own.
“Yup,” Arthur said. “It’s why we have fences up, and why the trips into the wilderness are guided by our horsemen. They know these lands, and they know where to avoid. That don’t mean you gotta be scared to explore. Just stay on the marked trails, hear?”
A general murmur of consent went around the group.
“Now, how about a little music to round out the evening?” Arthur asked.
One of the ranch hands—Wes didn’t remember his name, only the tattoo sleeves on both arms—stood with a guitar looped around his neck. He started playing “Oh! Susanna,” which made Wes’s skin twitch, but the Reynolds boys raced over to the musician and started clapping along.
Sophie seemed absolutely charmed by the whole thing, so Wes relaxed and let the night play out. Well, as relaxed as he could get with Mack’s big body so close to his. Wes’s entire being was aware of the man, and that awareness stayed at DEFCON One for the rest of the night, because Mack didn’t move. Even as others got up to mingle, a few even to dance to the music, Mack stayed at the table and watched it all.