Page 35 of Unleashed
Colten's truck is parked behind mine. Headlights off. I pull out onto the dirt road and kill my headlights. I've driven this land in the dark since I was fifteen. Dad used to send me and Colten out to check fences at night because he said a man who can't navigate his own property blind doesn't deserve to own it.
"You bring the irons?" I ask.
Jett reaches behind the seat and pulls out a canvas bag. Two branding irons, the Sterling Ranch mark,SR, forged in the same shop where my great-grandfather made the originals a hundredyears ago. A can of lighter fluid. A box of matches. Two pairs of leather gloves.
"And I brought marshmallows," Jett says. "In case we get hungry."
"You brought marshmallows to an arson."
"It's not arson if you own the moral high ground."
Seven and Dolly, Jett's mare, are in the trailer behind us. The last stretch has to be done on horseback.
Twenty minutes south, we pull up at the boundary fence, our fence, the one that was cut two days ago.
We unload the horses without speaking. Seven stamps and snorts as I tighten his cinch. Colten swings up onto his buckskin, Bowie, and checks his rifle in the scabbard.
"Rules," he says, voice low. "Outbuildings only. Nothing occupied. Message, not murder investigation."
"Buzzkill," Jett mutters, mounting Dolly.
"If someone comes out, we handle it clean. No shots unless they shoot first. In and out, thirty minutes." Colten looks at me. "Ace. I mean it."
"What? I'm the picture of restraint."
I don’t know what he means. I’m a saint.
"You set a man's truck on fire last year because he cut you off at a gas station."
"He deserved it."
Colten stares at me.
"Thirty minutes. Got it."
We ride.
Ranch 42 sits in the valley below the ridgeline. From up here, we can see the main house, bunkhouse, and outbuildings scattered along the east fence. Equipment sheds. A hay barn. A tack room. No lights. No movement.
Good.
We tie the horses in the tree line and go on foot. Jett takes east. I take west. Colten positions himself on the ridge with his rifle and scope, watching the main house. If a light comes on, he whistles, one short, one long. Our signal since we were kids.
The first outbuilding is a wooden equipment shed. Nothing valuable inside, which is exactly the point. We're not here to cripple their operation. We're here to let them know we were inside their walls while they slept.
And that if they want to play with fire. They will get fucking burned.
I pull on the gloves, soak the base of the shed with lighter fluid along three sides. They'll see it burning from their beds.
Then I take the branding iron, kneel at the main gate post, the big wooden beam at the entrance to their property, the one every rancher in Arizona knows is sacred, and I carve.
SR.
Not burned. I think this is better. Cuts into the wood, gouging out the letters an inch deep. I want them to see this in daylight. I want them to run their fingers over it and understand that we were right here, close enough to touch, and we chose to leave a signature instead of a body.
This time.
Across the property, a flicker of orange. Jett's started his fire. I strike my match. The lighter fluid catches with a soft thump, and blue flame races up the walls, turning orange as it finds the timber. Within thirty seconds, the shed is engulfed.
