The Flood Stranded Me With Three Ranch Men, So I Kept All Three novel · Chapter 15 of 24
Chapter 15: Rope and Patience
Nels's room in the bunkhouse held an iron bed, a chair, a saddle on a stand and one shelf of paperbacks.
The covers had been peeled off every one.
He shut the door behind us on Tuesday night, and turned the key, and put it in his shirt pocket.
"Sit," he said.
I sat on the edge of the bed.
He took the chair, turned it backward and straddled it with his arms across the top rail.
He did not say anything for a while.
"Everything," he said at last.
"In order. Then I'll decide what to do with you."
"You're not afraid of me," I said.
"No," he said.
"Then why the key?"
"So you can't leave before you've said it all."
I looked at him.
His mouth was flat, but his eyes were not.
I told him.
I told him about my mother, who left this valley at nineteen and never said a word of why.
I told him about the lawyer in Billings, and the will.
I told him about the phone call that came after.
An old man I had never met had left me eleven million dollars in dirt and cattle.
I told him about the loans, and sixty-one deaths, and a night shift that had worn me down to the floor.
I told him I had driven up Sage Creek to look at the place once before I signed.
"And then the creek took my car," I said.
"You cut my jeans off, and I told myself I'd tell you in the morning. And I told myself that three mornings running."
"Why?" he said.
"You said the heir would sell you out by fall."
"Emmett said it," he said.
"I heard it at the table. I couldn't make myself be her."
The rest of this chapter is part of the paid portion of the series. Chapters 1–6 of The Flood Stranded Me With Three Ranch Men, So I Kept All Three are free to read — start from the beginning, then unlock the rest with coins in the app.
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