“So, now that the men are back,” Santana said, sounding stronger than she usually did. “How about the women take the ATVs around the ranch, and we can stop at my place for a bit?”
“I want to do that,” Sadie breathed, then spun to look at her husband. “You’re taking your daughter for the afternoon. I’ve got mudding and discovering to do.”
Smiling down at her, he shook his head. “Call me if you need rescuing.”
Santana didn’t need to say that to Remy, but she also didn’t even look at him as she got up. Like he’d said, Toby was his kid, so it was up to him to take him for the afternoon.
Feeling Marcus tap me on my arm, I looked back up at him. “Be careful, keep an eye out for the horses, don’t drive like a crazy person, and call me if you need anything at all. Deal?”
Motioning at him to lean down, I whispered, “Honey, I had a stone removed from my ass just over two weeks ago. Trust me when I say I’m the last person who’s going to drive like a crazy person. That shit still hurts.”
I don’t know if it was the reminder of the accident or if he just wasn’t sure about me going out onto the ranch without him, but when we left, it was with Marcus watching me, his face lined with stress and his body language screaming that he wasn’t happy.
“I had no idea this place was so big,” Sadie chattered as we walked along the small river that ran down the back of the ranch. “I wonder if we can go into the river?”
“I wouldn’t,” Santana muttered, shivering. “I saw a snake in it the first time I came back here, so it’d take a miracle to get me in there. I’m one of those people that, if something random or out of the ordinary’s going to happen, it’ll happen to me. I’d be willing to bet you anything if I went into that water, I’d end up getting bitten by a snake having a swim.”
Sadie jumped back from it and looked around us. “There are snakes here?”
“Well, yeah? Why’d you think I wore my boots?”
I looked down at my Converse, then over at Sadie’s Toms. “Uh, could you have maybe warned us?”
“Sorry, I thought the guys would have known that. Shit.” Santana sighed and threw a stone into the river. “I’m sorry, you guys.”
I was about to tell her not to worry, but something caught my eye, so I left them with Sadie reassuring her it was okay and that at least she wasn’t wearing flip flops.
Initially, I’d thought it was a stick or a piece of something from the ranch poking out of the stream, but there was a silver metal piece on one end of the rod that wasn’t making sense.
When I got to the edge of the river, a shallow part that only had about an inch of water running over the dirt at the bottom, I squatted down and stared at it for a moment. It wasn’t from the construction of the fences, and it didn’t look like a stick or piece of the horses’ tack.
Hearing the girls walking over the leaves on the ground and getting closer, I thought about taking a photo and sending it to Marcus.
“What’s that?” Santana asked as she walked up behind me.
“Is that an old artifact, do you think?” I asked the ladies as they stood behind me. “You hear about people finding antiques and rare things in rivers or buried in their backyards. But this doesn’t look that old.”
I was contradicting myself with every word, but I just couldn’t tell what I was looking at.
“That looks like a crop,” Sadie pointed out. “Do they use those on the ranch, Santana?”
“No. The only time they use anything on the horses is to gently tap the back of their legs if they want them to mount one of the mares. There’s no force to it, it’s a bit like us nudging each other.”
With the story of the snake in my mind, I was hesitant to reach out and try and pick the thing up in case one moseyed down the river and bit me on the hand. I wasn’t meant to live that life!
Ah, fuck it!
Taking a deep breath, I plunged my hand into the water and grabbed it, hoping to dear God it wasn’t a snake with a silver-tipped tail.
Spoiler alert: it wasn’t.
But it was a crop and one that’d been illegal for a lot of years.
“We better take this back to Marcus and Remy. What if someone hid it here to hurt the horses?” Sadie suggested, just before she slid forward on the dirt, her arms coming out to try and stabilize her and knocking Santana and me into the water with her.