"I know."
"And he's going to try to do it in ways that don't leave obvious tracks."
"I know that, too." She turned back toward the barn. "Come look at something."
He followed her through the barn to the back paddock, where the fence that divided her grazing land from the open range ran along the north property line. She pointed to the three posts she'd fixed that morning, and then to the stretch of fence beyond them, where the wire had been cut clean—not frayed or broken from weathering, but cut with something sharp in four separate places.
"That happened two nights ago," she said. "I found it when I went out to check on the cattle in the morning. Six head had drifted through onto Mercer's grazing lease."
Nathan crouched and looked at the cut wire. He didn't touch it. "Have you gotten the cattle back?"
"Five of them. The sixth I can't account for." She kept her voice even. "That's not a large loss, but if it keeps happening, it becomes one."
He stood. "This is how he works when he can't do it in the open. Small erosions, small damages. Nothing dramatic enough to report to the sheriff. Each one explainable on its own, but together they add up to constant pressure." He looked along the fence line. "He's trying to wear you down."
"He's been trying that for eight months," she said. "It hasn't worked yet."
He looked at her then, that steady, direct look she was beginning to recognize as his baseline mode of attention. "No, it hasn't." He said it like a simple observation, but there was something underneath it. Respect, she thought, though it took her a moment to identify it because she had become so unaccustomed to receiving it from anyone in Red Hollow.
"I need to ride the full fence line tomorrow," she said. "Check for more cuts. It's a half day's work at minimum."
"I'll ride the east half," he said. "You take the west. We'll cover it faster."