Today's Reading
"You know, this ranch is notorious in San Francisco for snatching up children and hauling them away, never to be heard from again."
The woman, Ellie, glanced back over her shoulder, then looked on past him. "We're notorious, Josh."
A faint chuckle sounded from behind Brody. "I can't wait to tell Zane he's known as a kidnapper and child-enslaver. That oughta make him mad."
"Michelle will calm him down, I expect."
Both of them laughed.
Brody listened to the back and forth at the same time he rounded the house, a nice-sized ranch house, and gazed past the huge barn to see sheds and more houses and a big whitewashed building two stories high. Every structure was well built. The houses had gardens out front with fences encircling modest yards. A prosperous ranch that almost looked like some of the small towns he'd visited.
Horses grazed in a corral. Chickens pecked at the ground behind a wire fence. He smelled hogs but didn't see them, but they could be behind any one of a dozen outbuildings. And spread out over miles of rolling grassland, he saw red cows with white faces, grazing and fat and contented.
But it was the big building that drew him.
Ellie must have noticed, though she seemed to be walking fast, her attention averted.
He, of course, was focused on the house and not paying the pretty blond woman with the sassy attitude any mind.
"Your brothers are most likely in class. Though they've been known to sneak off and not return until mealtime." This time she looked at him with a single arched brow.
"It's them all right. Those two are hard to keep ahead of. I shoulda known better than to go off to college. They were too much for Ma, and heaven knows Pa was no help."
That earned him a sharp look, but she didn't say why. Probably blamed him for abandoning them. Fair enough. He blamed himself.
Ellie reached the door and swung it open to complete silence.
It was a school. He could smell it. Chalk dust and books and, well, he couldn't say what else exactly. He just knew a school when he smelled one. They stepped into a wide hall lined with several doors in a row straight across from him and two sets of stairs leading to the left and the right.
"The upper floor has bedrooms. Several children in each room and bunk beds. We call it a dormitory. The boys on the right, the girls on the left. The upstairs are divided so there's no access between the two sides without coming down here. Most rooms are for three or four, but your brothers stay in a room where it's just the two of them. That's because we aren't full."
His brothers had always shared a room more fit for a closet, and when Brody was home, he slept in there with them. The two of them in a room big enough for four would be the finest place they'd ever stayed.
Ellie continued, "The children are in special individualized classes this time of day." She pointed to the door farthest to the right. "Morning is four grades divided up by age, the afternoon targeted to each child's skills. Thayne has shown an unusual gift for math and science. He focuses on that in his afternoon classes, with a few related subjects like physics and calculus."
Thayne, his impish sixteen-year-old brother, had a talent for arithmetic? How had they gotten him to sit still long enough to find that out?
"And Lochlan is fascinated by geography. He's always studying maps and asking questions about the world at large."
Now, that sounded like Brody's fourteen-year-old brother. He was searching for MacKenzie's Treasure. He probably loved geography because reading a map might lead him to a gold mine, though it never had for their pa.
"We keep the rooms quiet, Brody." Ellie spoke softly as she reached for the doorknob to the right. "I'll go get your brothers and bring them out. My older sister, Annie, is their teacher for this session, which this late in the day will be special skills. Be very quiet. Annie believes that teaching the children to direct their own studies, work independently, and most of all control themselves are the main goals of a teacher."
She opened the door. Though Brody kept quiet, he was standing right there and saw Lochlan in plain view right in front of him.
Lochlan saw him. His eyes went wide. He leapt to his feet, screamed, and jumped a full foot off the floor. "Brody! Thayne, come quick—Brody's here!" He turned to the room and shouted, "My brother is here!"
Brody took one second to see the severely annoyed face of the teacher and winced, but only for a second because his brothers came charging at him, and he found himself overcome with happiness and relief.
...
