The Rebellious Rancher. Kate Pearce
a great movie for its time.” She sipped her coffee. “You should still watch it.”
“I hate musicals.” Ben topped off her coffee. “I can’t dance, and I sing like a bullfrog.”
“Which is funny because the guy they cast in the movie as Benjamin couldn’t dance or sing either.”
“Then why the heck was he in it?” Ben asked.
“Back in the day, if you were on contract with a studio they could pretty much put you in whatever they wanted, and you had to make the best of it.” She grimaced. “Actually, that hasn’t changed much now. Poor old Ben was stuck at the back or sitting down while everyone else was dancing up a storm.”
Ben smiled. “Now that I can relate to, seeing as I was always stuck at the back in school and church stuff.” He eyed the remaining three sandwiches. “You okay if I have another one?”
“Sure! Have them all if you like.” She gestured at the sandwich in her hand. “This is plenty for me.”
“We’ll eat again after we set up camp tonight.”
“How far are you planning on going?” Silver asked as she finished up her sandwich.
“About five miles. I don’t want to push you too hard.” He watched her face fall. “Do you think you can make it?”
She grimaced. “I’m not sure. How far have we come already?”
“Three miles, give or take.”
“Is that all?” She gawped at him. “I thought it was at least ten.”
“Well, we are traveling very slowly. An average horse can easily put in fifteen to twenty miles a day.” He finished off his coffee. “How about you let me know if you can’t make it, and if we can stop, we’ll do it.”
“Thanks for being so nice,” Silver said softly.
He shrugged and tried not to smile back at her. He normally had no problem keeping things professional, but Silver wasn’t anything like his normal clients. He’d never ended up in a crazy conversation about musicals, and his mother’s reasons for giving them alphabetical names. He had no idea why his mother did anything anyway, and in his current mood, was unlikely to ask her.
“We’re going to be out here for over a week,” Ben reminded Silver. “There’s no point in ruining the experience for you on day one, is there?”
She reached over and squeezed his hand, and he fought the impulse to close his much-larger fingers over hers. “Thank you, though.”
“Yeah, well, let’s get moving, shall we?” Ben eased out of her grasp and stood up, brushing crumbs from his clothing. “We don’t want to be stuck up here when it gets dark. It’s not called a ghost town for nothing.”
* * *
Ben wasn’t what she’d expected. Silver glanced over at him as he guided her down what she guessed had once been the main street of the once-thriving town of Morgansville. Getting him to talk required a lot of effort, but when he did open up, he had a dry sense of humor that appealed to her, and he was far from stupid.
Due to the higher altitude, a lot of the buildings looked as if they had only just been abandoned, although Ben had told her it had happened a long time ago. Something was bugging her. “Why is it so quiet and barren?” She turned a slow circle, listening in vain for any sounds of life beyond her and Ben. “It looks like someone dumped these buildings on the moon.”
“The settlers cut down all the trees to build the houses and the stamping mill, pulled up all the bushes and stuff to plow the fields, and caused the equivalent of a mini dust bowl.” He pointed out toward the barren hillside. “That used to be covered in sequoias.”
“Is that why the settlers eventually moved down the road?” Silver asked.
“The creek dried up, they couldn’t power the stamping mill, and the mine stopped producing enough silver to make it worth the effort anymore. They had a town meeting and they decided to move down the valley to what we now call Morgantown.”
“I can’t say I blame them.” Silver gazed into the broken window of one of the wooden houses where strips of wallpaper were swaying in the breeze. “This would make a great film set.”
“I bet—except I don’t think the Morgantown Historical Society would be happy about letting a film crew tromp all over the place. These building aren’t as sturdy as they look.”
“I’m auditioning for a role in a Western next month,” Silver said. “I really want to get the part, and I thought this might help me get a sense of how it might have been back then.”
“So I heard.”
He shifted his booted feet, making his spurs jangle. Since their unexpected bonding over lunch he’d retreated back into the shortest sentences possible. But maybe they hadn’t bonded, and he’d just been polite listening to her chat away like a fool. That was his job after all.
She frowned. “My dad told you?”
“Yeah.” He started moving again, his gaze at the building at the end of the street. “Do you want to see the bank? The vault’s still there. I guess they couldn’t figure out how to remove something so heavy.”
“Sure.”
Seeing as her dad was super overprotective, she had to wonder what else he’d said to Ben. Had he warned him off? Silver smiled at her own arrogance. Maybe it was way simpler than that and Ben Miller simply wasn’t interested in getting to know her. She rarely got the opportunity to talk to someone outside her tight circle and she’d enjoyed talking to him and stupidly wanted him to like her back.
But how would she know if him liking her was genuine? Being around famous people could distort the most basic of interactions. She’d done her first commercial as a baby, and never had what could be considered a normal life. Maybe she wasn’t even capable of being liked for herself—maybe she didn’t know who she was after all.
“You okay?” Ben had halted in front of a brick building and was looking back at her.
“Yes, sorry, I was just thinking.”
“About this place as a movie set?”
“No, about my inability to know how to act like a normal person.”
He looked her up and down. “You’re doing okay.”
“Thanks.” She frowned at him. “Every time I start a conversation, you look at me as if I’m nuts.”
He took so long to answer that she’d almost given up hope.
“You’re... different than the people I normally take out on a trail ride.”
“In a good way or a bad way?” Silver advanced toward him.
“Neither. Just different.” He pointed in through the open doorway. “If you look right through the back you can just about see the open vault.”
Chapter Four
God, she was tired. The sun was setting, and there were no other lights around them as Ben finally called a halt. In the gathering darkness, she could just about hear the sound of running water and make out a copse of trees. For some reason, she’d been expecting a lot more than that.
She managed to dismount and just stood there holding Ladybug’s reins as Ben started to unload the mules.
“Where’s the backup staff?” Silver asked.
“The what?” Ben looked over at her, his face barely visible in the gloom.
“The people who set up the campsite.”
“That would be us.” He set two of the packs on the ground and started on the second mule. “Everything we need is in here. Which