The debt that had accumulated during those two hard years, medical bills, a drought that thinned the herd, a bank note that grew heavier with every missed quarter, had brought the Hartwell spread to the brink of foreclosure, and the Lark Fair's shooting contest, with its considerable cash purse for the finest marksman in three counties, represented the only realistic chance Josie could see to clear enough of that debt to buy her family another season.
She had learned to shoot from her late brother Daniel, killed two years back in a stampede that had also crippled her father, and she wore his coat to the contest that morning, not for sentiment alone, but because some stubborn part of her believed his steadiness might still be riding along in the fabric, guiding her hand the way he'd guided it during a hundred practice sessions along the creek behind their barn.
She had registered under her full name rather than any disguised initials, fully aware that several of the contest officials would object to a woman competing at all, and had decided, with the same flat determination she brought to every hard decision since her brother's death, that their objections mattered considerably less to her than the mortgage payment due in 6 weeks. Her father had begged her not to enter, worried for her reputation in a town that still whispered about unmarried women who behaved too boldly, and Josie had kissed his forehead, and told him plainly that reputation did not keep a roof over anyone's head, and that she intended to win that purse, whether Larkspur approved of the method or not.
It was a promise she carried with her the entire ride into town, past fields that should have been thick with cattle and were instead thin and struggling, a visible reminder of exactly what she stood to lose if her nerve failed her at the shooting line. She had practiced every evening for two months leading up to the contest, riding out to the same creek bend where Daniel had first taught her to hold a rifle steady, working through the particular grief of hearing his voice in her memory, correcting her stance, and her breath long after his own voice had gone silent forever.
Those evenings alone at the creek had become, without her quite intending it, as much a ritual of mourning as a ritual of practice, and by the morning of the contest, she carried both purposes into Larkspur with her.
The practical need to save her family's land, and the quieter, harder-to-name need to prove that her brother's steadiness still lived on in her own two hands. Wade Sutter had ridden for the Ashkam Cattle Company for six years, rising from a common hand to foreman through a combination of genuine skill and a reputation for getting difficult jobs done without excessive fuss. And the job that brought him to Larkspur that autumn was on paper a simple one. Survey the Hartwell spread's water rights and grazing quality ahead of an offer the company intended to make once the bank foreclosed. an offer calculated deliberately low because a foreclosed property in desperate circumstances rarely commanded its full worth.
Wade had performed this exact errand for the company perhaps a dozen times over the years, and had never once let himself dwell too long on the family's losing ground on the other side of the transaction, understanding that dwelling on it changed nothing, and only made a necessary job harder to do, he arrived in Larkspur 2 days ahead of the contest. intending to complete his survey quietly and ride on before the fair's crowds complicated his errand, and found himself, almost by accident, drawn into the fairground on the contest's opening morning by nothing more than idle curiosity about the town he was quietly working to reshape.
He had not expected to feel anything watching the shooting contest beyond mild diversion, and had certainly not expected the particular jolt that ran through him when a young woman in a man's worn coat stepped to the firing line amid a chorus of muttered objections from the contest officials, and proceeded to outshoot every man present with a composure that bordered on defiance. He asked a fairground vendor her name almost without meaning to and felt something considerably heavier than idle curiosity settle into his chest when the vendor answered, "Josie Hartwell, daughter of Wendell Hartwell, whose ranch," the vendor added, without any particular awareness of the weight his words carried, was rumored to be going under to the bank within the month. Wade stood at the edge of that fairground for a long moment afterward, understanding with sudden uncomfortable clarity exactly whose land he had ridden 200 m to help take, and exactly how considerably more complicated his simple errand had just become.