Well, nothing for it but for me to ride up to the house bold as brass and to see what happened after that. There was an obvious path to the front of t...e house, and I followed that since I had nothing else to go on. I got all the way to the front porch steps without a shot being fired, and that was a pretty good indication that there was nobody hiding out in the house. Nevertheless, I had to look.I hitched my horse to the rail in front of the house and walked inside. Naturally, the place was. I’d lost the girl I grew up loving, lost my best friend, lost my sister, lost my mother, lost Collie who’d walked away from me in disgust even though she couldn’t function independently and lost Tabby who had dragged the worst of my darkness out into the light of day and had bared her own to me. Six bonds I would have bet anything couldn’t have been broken and yet they were all shattered. Through it all, this one woman had forged a new one with me, drawing me to her even as others pushed me. He might not get it back. The experiment with Bex was over. A few minutes passed as Sam pondered the moonlight and his embarrassment. He was about to leave the chair for his bed and enjoy the rock as it hid under his mattress when a quick tap-tap sounded at his door. “Yes,” he said.The door opened and Bex stepped in. “We need to talk.” She closed the door behind her. Sam gestured at the bed and turned his chair slightly to hide his bulge from view. Bex looked at the bed, sighed, stepped over. "Nice rig," I offered. "Thanks," he replied. Not much of a talker, but who was I to argue.I found a map in the overhead console and spread it open. "Looks like Bison is the next town, maybe 60 miles," I noted."Yep," Dave replied, as he drove on stoically. Giving up on conversation, I was watching the parched prairie fly by when a new voice startled me, "Hey Dave, what do we have here? A fresh piece of meat?"I turned to find a second guy's head poked through the curtain that separated the cab.