She Warned Him She Came With Four Sons – The Rancher Said, “Good. I Need Hands on This Ranch”

Chapter 2

The ride out took two hours, and most of it belonged to the nine-year-old.

His name was Rafe, and he talked the way other people breathed — without stopping, without asking permission, and without ever quite finishing a sentence before the next one arrived. He told Caleb about the train from Kansas City. He told him about a man on the train who carried a parrot in a cage, and how the parrot had said something that made a woman faint dead away, and how the conductor had carried the woman out past the baggage car, and what the conductor had said about the parrot after. None of it was verifiable. All of it was delivered with the absolute faith of a boy who had discovered that the world was a story and he was simply the one telling it out loud.