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Much as he prayed, dawn broke inevitably over the dark crags of the mountains. He stayed until the last sparkly pinprick of starshine had been burnt from the wide sky. Sunlight spilt through the peaks, flooded the valley much as whatever river had once carved out this water plain.

In Zack Sheridan’s selective memory there weren’t enough stars in the heavens as there had been times he’d ridden this valley, galloped over the lush green slopes of the meadows. On Monroe first, when he’d been so young his feet hadn’t quite reached the stirrups. And later, after the elderly piebald mare had pined herself away after his Daddy’s death, the first horse that had been completely his. He and Rafferty had both grown up out on those hills, though to this day he suspected the stallion had grown up wiser.

They ought to have left the land to the horse. At least Rafferty wouldn’t have screwed up this badly.

Last time he’d seen the bay stallion, Rafferty had been kicking the shit out of the local horse dealer’s trailer. Stomping and snorting up a fuss, telling Zack in as plainly a way as the animal knew how, that he didn’t want to leave. He’d turned and walked away, the neighing and the kicking still ringing in his ears.

It came down to some kind of shit, he decided, when he was too ashamed to look his old horse in the eyes. Wherever he ended up, he hoped the stallion was somewhere he could still run, still feel the sweet grass beneath his hooves and the glass-clear air running through his mane.

As for him, he had nowhere to go.

The auction for the sale of the house was scheduled for later that morning, but Zack declined the Realtor’s invitation to attend. Everyone who had seen the property said the same thing; the house wasn’t worth saving. Better bulldoze the lot and build something new, something fancier. That those walls had seen him right for twenty-five years didn’t seem to hold much sway as far as they were concerned.

Maybe it shouldn’t have. Couldn’t be too right if he’d managed to lose it.

But with the money any prospective buyer needed to plough in to bring the place up to scratch, it wouldn’t fetch as much as it could have. The land was a different story, even if it remained in the same book. No one wanted to buy it to keep cattle or raise horses; they wanted it to develop houses and vacation properties. One suit had even come to inspect the place armed with blueprints and schematics of a luxury spa resort.

It might have been different if the majority of the money wasn't going straight to banks and credit companies, and all the others to whom he was in debt over his ears. Some of the debts were old enough to have been his father’s fault, but most of them were Zack’s own, and he’d done little to lessen any of them.

The land didn’t pay. It was a vacuum that sucked in twice the money he brought in. There was nothing here that broke even; not the livestock, not the horses, nothing. Zack knew he’d been living a dying sort of life, but he would forever have to bear the knowledge that he was the one who’d driven in that final nail.

At least there’d be a little left over. Enough that he wouldn’t be entirely homeless, enough that he wouldn’t quite starve. At least not until he blew what little he did have. And then he didn’t have the first idea what he’d do.

There was nothing he knew how to do, besides this.

And there was nothing he knew how to do in that moment, besides stand on the sloping hillside for the last few minutes that this beautiful wild land remained his, and watch as in the distance, expensive cars drove into the farmhouse’s front yard.