Cowgirls Don't Cry(127)

“Understood.”


“Casper said things’d gone to hell in a hand basket since Luke died. He’d entrusted you with the ranch and you’d make some piss poor decisions and he no longer trusted your judgment.”


Jessie threaded her fingers through his.

“When we pressed him for solid facts, Casper sputtered something about you convincing your brothers to buy more land, when the three of you couldn’t take care of what you already had.” Charlie grunted. “Course, that’s when we pointed out for the last two years, since you’ve taken over, your calves had a higher weight ratio than ever. Then I told him you boys buying that grazing land, even when you had to put yourselves in hock for it, was one of the smarter decisions anyone’s made.”


“Casper didn’t wanna hear that,” Carson pointed out. “He also didn’t wanna hear us tellin’ him that he hadn’t been pullin’ his weight for damn near a decade. And that if it hadn’t been for his sons bustin’ ass, we would’ve redistributed his parcel amongst the three of us and our sons.”


A feeling of pride and dread surfaced simultaneously. Brandt and his brothers had done everything to make their part of the McKay ranch as successful as the others. But with their dad overruling them, they’d lost some of what they’d gained. “What was his response?”


“Typical Casper blustering. Told us if we thought we could do a better job, then we could go ahead and buy him out.”


Brandt went motionless. Not only would Casper McKay cut him out, he’d cut out Tell and Dalton from their heritage too. He took a long swallow of beer and met his Uncle Carson’s gaze, managing to keep his voice steady. “What did you say?”


“We took him up on it.”


Silence.

Brandt felt as if he’d been sliced in two.

“Now before you go getting that look on your face, son, hear us out. You know we’ve been restructuring several aspects of the ranch over the last few months.”


“Chase mentioned it, so did Kade, but I’ll admit Casper kept us in the dark. Whenever we asked, he refused to talk about it.”


Charlie nodded. “Chase said as much. Which let us know that anything we were doin’ had to be completely above board. It also forced us to look very closely at the past legal documentation for the ranch.


And what Dash Paulson found sort of shocked us.”


“What’s that?”


“We were under the impression that if just one of us wanted to sell our portion of the ranch, the other three owners would be forced to sell theirs too. Which is how Casper tried to control us, or at least got away with a lot more shit than we would’ve let him, had we known the real legalities of the matter.”


Carson pointed with his beer bottle. “It entails lots of legal gibberish that took us slow readin’


ranchers some time to understand, but the bottom line is we were wrong. Casper never had the power to force us to sell.”


Brandt held up his hand. “Wait a second. My dad threatened to sell his portion of the ranch?”


“Several times over the years. To be honest, he even went as far as to have it appraised about six months after Luke died.”


That son of a bitch. “Why?”


“So he could point out what idiots we were for keepin’ it, when we could have more money in our pockets than we could ever spend.”


“How much money we talkin’?”