Page 10 of The Cowboy's Off Limits Option

The truck flies down the two lane highway that runs out to Keller's Ferry while I try to call Callie, but her phone is going to voicemail.

Rowdy's right; the last person we need knowing about this is Rowan.

Keller's Ferry got its name from the land ferry service that operated in the eighteen hundreds when the road between the toll station there and the then-mining settlement that became Moonshine Ridge was a single lane, dirt track that could only handle one way traffic up and down the mountain.

I don't know if the roadhouse bar out there called the Tollhouse has any historic connection to the actual toll station that eventually led to the small town's establishment-- and I've never cared to find out.

The Ferry isn't much more than a glorified cross roads. Being higher in elevation than the valley, it's home to some orchards and the farms that tend to them. It's a great place to sneak off after a high school game if you've got a girl or managed to score some beer or both, if you're lucky.

I think everyone I know has at least one good memory of a bonfire somewhere in the Ferry's pitch black fields that they'll never tell their folks about, but the Tollhouse bar is a whole other story.

It's not the sort of place you go to hang out after work with your buddies for a pitcher and a game of pool. It's a place for getting good and fucked up, first on cheap booze, and then in a fight.

Last I heard, it's caught in a turf war between motorcycle clubs that both want to claim it as their hangout.

Even the Pereiras have been coming into town to do most of their drinking at O'Hare's lately, and that says something about the place, because those guys are idiots who get thrown off bulls for fun.

It takes a lot for the Lazy P to decide your bar is too rowdy for them.

What the hell is Callie doing out there?

Somehow, I manage to get to the blinking red light at the intersection that marks the town of Keller's Ferry in twenty minutes. Unfortunately, the Tollhouse is up in the foothills, another ten miles of winding, country, backroad out of town.

Cal's little hatchback is easy to spot out front. Pulling into the empty lot that serves as the bar's parking lot, the truck skids to a halt, throwing gravel out from under the tires from my hard braking.

A few motorcycles are parked along the fence that walls in a large outdoor area around the building.

Out at the far edge of the lot, there's an early seventies Chevy Blazer with the top off that looks like it used to be blue but now it's wearing a proud coat of rust and dust. I can make out half the Flying R's brand on a peeling sticker on the bumper.

The Ralstons are technically our neighbors to the south, with their ranch, the Flying R, taking up several thousand acres on the other side of an outcropping of rocky foothills where the river finds its way back into one channel after the false delta that gave our ranch its name.

But we don't interact with them as much as we can help it. No one in Slow River does.

We're a town with a long memory and we hold grudges, and the Ralstons burned their bridges four generations back.

People around town tolerate them as far as we have to when they come around for whatever purposes bring them in, but that's about as far as it goes.

The brothers who inherited their family's ranch inherited the reputation that goes with it. Everyone knows the Ralston name and no one's keen on hearing it.

From beyond the door of the bar, propped up by a bucket of concrete that appears to serve as an ashtray for those who bother to use one, I hear shouting. The raised voices are followed by the kind of laughter that sounds like people having a good time at someone else's expense.

The Tollhouse isn't the kind of place you walk into alone.

Squaring my shoulders, I pull myself to my full height, making myself as big as I can-- like I'm facing down a goddamn mountain lion-- and head inside.

Chapter Five

Callie

"Think that one's used getting dinner first."

A gruff voice yells from behind me, where a few men are sitting at the bar.

"Oh, she's used to eating, that's for sure!"

The comment from the guy that just joined his friend and I at the pool table drips with innuendo; his reference to my curves every bit as obvious as the way he leers at them in my short skirt and halter top.

It doesn't feel sexy in the slightest. I feel exposed and vulnerable and I wish I had worn something that shows less cleavage.

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