Just finding Lana’s story? Read Part 5 here to catch up on the line shack, Travis Pruitt, and Jesse’s white horse coming back alone.
Last time, I was standing in that clearing with June Whitaker safe behind me, Ghost blowing hard beside Willow with an empty saddle, and two sets of headlights crawling up the old logging road toward us. Travis took one look at the second truck and whispered, “That isn’t my dad’s.”
So many of you had theories about what June’s husband buried under that stall. A few of you were very close. Here is what happened next.
Two Trucks on the Logging Road
The crickets stopped. The horses went still. That clearing went quiet in the worst way.
“Who drives the second truck, Travis?” I asked.
He swallowed hard. “The buyer’s men. From Oklahoma. Dad said they’d never come up here themselves.” He looked down at the rifle on the stump like he’d never seen it before. “If they’re here, it means they stopped trusting him.”
I didn’t have time to be scared. I had a seventy-eight-year-old woman with rope burns on her wrists, a gray mare who would not leave her side, a lathered white horse whose rider was missing, and a feed store boy who had just picked the wrong side and then switched.
So I did what Grandma always told me to do when the world goes sideways. I made a list in my head, and I started at the top.
Number one: get June out of that clearing.
June Knew a Way Down the Mountain
June would not hear a word about riding Ghost. “That horse wants his boy,” she said, and she was right. Ghost kept turning in circles, staring back toward the river with his ears pinned forward, like he was trying to tell us something.
So Travis and I boosted June up onto Willow’s bare back. The second she took a handful of that silver mane, she sat up straight like she was sixty years younger.
“There’s a deer trail behind the shack,” she said. “Walt and I used to ride it to watch the sunrise. It drops down to the creek and follows it straight to the river crossing. No truck in this county can follow us on it.”
Travis picked up the rifle. My whole body tensed. But he just cracked it open, dumped the shells into his palm, and held them out to me.
“I’m coming with you,” he said. “You don’t have to trust me. Just let me help.”
I took the shells and slid them into my jacket pocket, right next to my phone, which was still recording. Then I grabbed Ghost’s broken reins, and the four of us slipped into the dark trees just as the first set of headlights swept across the front of that line shack.
Following Ghost Back to the River
No flashlight, no moon yet, branches clawing at my hair, my heart pounding so loud I was sure the men behind us could hear it.
Behind us, car doors slammed. Somebody shouted Travis’s name. A flashlight beam danced through the trees, way off to our left, and then lost us.
Ghost took the lead after the first quarter mile. I didn’t ask him to. He just shouldered past me and started picking his way down that creek trail like he had walked it a hundred times, and I let him. A good horse will always try to find his way back to his person.
We heard Jesse before we saw him. A low groan, then my name, so rough it barely sounded like him.
He was down at the bottom of a muddy cut bank by the crossing, half sitting against a cottonwood root, one arm wrapped around his ribs. His hat was gone. There was mud all down one side of his face. When Ghost found him, that big white horse dropped his head and pushed his nose straight into Jesse’s chest, and Jesse laughed, and then winced, and then laughed again.
“Dale ran us off the bank with his truck,” he said. “Ghost went down in the mud. I think my ankle’s broken.” He looked up at me, and even in the dark I could see those creek-water eyes find mine. “You found her. You actually found her.”
“You’re late,” I told him, and my voice cracked right down the middle. “I’m making you muck stalls for a month.”
He reached up and squeezed my hand. He didn’t let go for a long time. I didn’t ask him to.
What Walt Buried Under the Stall
We got Jesse up onto Ghost somehow, all three of us pushing, while he swore through his teeth. Then we crossed that river in the dark, the water cold enough to steal my breath, and climbed the bank toward the road that leads to my place.
That’s when June finally told us.
“Walt didn’t trust banks,” she said quietly, her hands buried in Willow’s mane. “In 1998, Dale Pruitt’s father tried to buy our land. When Walt said no, papers started showing up at the courthouse saying the creek and the whole south pasture belonged to the Pruitts. Forged papers. Walt found out who forged them. He kept the proof.”
Travis had stopped walking.
“He put the proof in a metal ammo box,” June went on, “with the real deed and a letter he wrote. And he buried it under the stall where a gray filly was born that spring.” She patted Willow’s neck. “This filly. He said nobody would ever dig up a stall with a mare that mean standing in it.”
I looked at Travis. His face had gone white as Ghost’s coat.
“My dad doesn’t want Willow,” he said slowly. “He needed her gone. So he could get into that stall.”
Headlights at June’s Barn
It was close to midnight when we came over the last ridge before my farm. From up there you can see the whole valley. My little barn with its one porch light. The road. And three miles across, June Whitaker’s place, sitting dark and empty the way it had been all week.
Except it wasn’t dark anymore.
Every light in June’s barn was on. I could see shapes moving inside. Even from that far away, in the still night air, I could hear it. The slow, steady scrape of a shovel hitting dirt.
June made a sound I will never forget.
And then I saw what was parked right beside that barn, next to the second truck from the logging road. A white car with a light bar on the roof. The sheriff’s cruiser. The same deputy who was supposed to come to my barn the night of the storm, and never showed.
Jesse saw it too. He leaned down from Ghost and said, very quietly, “Lana. Who did you text the river crossing location to?”
My stomach turned to ice. Because I knew exactly who. I had sent it to the sheriff’s office. I had told them every single step we were taking.
So now I’m asking you. Do we ride to June’s barn tonight, or do we wait for morning? And who else in this town is in on it?
Part 7 is coming soon. Follow Reiterin on Facebook so you don’t miss what Lana finds when she gets to June’s barn.