Lawless

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“Likewise. We’re ready to start shooting Monday,” Harper told Judd. “We just need to discuss a few technical details...”

“If you want to know anything about the livestock,” Christabel began.

“We’ll ask Judd,” the model said in a haughty, husky voice. “He’d surely know more than you would,” she added with deliberate rudeness.

Christabel’s dark eyes flashed. “I grew up here...” she began belligerently.

“Judd, I’d love to see that big bull you told us about,” the model cooed, taking Judd’s arm in her slender hands and tugging him along.

Christabel was left standing while Judd walked obediently toward the big barn with Tippy and Joel Harper and his entourage. She wanted to chew nails. She was, after all, a full partner in the ranch. But apparently they considered her too young to make big decisions, and Judd was too fixated on the redhead to care that she’d been dismissed as a nobody on her own place.

She glared after them until the sound of a horse approaching caught her attention. Nick Bates, their livestock foreman and ranch manager, came riding up, his tall, lithe figure slumped in the saddle.

“What’s your problem?” she asked him.

“I’ve been chasing cows,” he muttered darkly. “Some damned fool cut the fence, and five cows got out. We ran them into another pasture and I came back for the truck and some wire to fix the break.”

“Not the pregnant cows,” she said worriedly.

He nodded. “But they seem all right. I had the boys herd them into the pasture down from the barn, just in case.”

“Who left the gate open?” she wanted to know.

“None of my men,” Nick assured her, his dark eyes flashing in his lean, rugged face. “I rode up to Hob Downey’s place and talked to him. He spends his life in that rocking chair on the front porch most of the year. I figured he might have seen who cut the wire.”

“Did he?” she prodded.

“He said there was a strange pickup truck down there early this morning, one with homemade sides, like a cattle truck would have,” Nick told her. “An older truck, black with a red stripe. Two men got out and one acted like he was fixing the fence, then Hob went out on his porch and yelled at them. They hesitated, but a sheriff’s patrol car came up the road and they jumped in the truck and went away real fast. It was a small opening, just wide enough to get a cow through, and not visible except up close.”

She moved closer to the horse, worried and thoughtful. “I want you to call Duke Wright and ask him if he’s got a black truck with a red stripe, and ask who was driving it this morning.”

Nick leaned over the pommel, meeting her eyes. “You’ve got some idea who it is,” he said.

She nodded. “But I’m not mentioning names, and what I know, I’m keeping to myself. Get down from there.”

He lifted both eyebrows. “Why?”

“I don’t want to have to go to the barn to saddle Mick,” she admitted. “The film crew’s down there. They make me nervous.”

Nick swung down gracefully. “Where are you going?”

“Just out to see how that fence was cut,” she told him.

“I already told you...”

“You don’t understand,” she said, moving closer. “The fence where the bull died had been cut, too, remember? I never mentioned it to Judd, and we fixed it, but I noticed how it was cut. No two people do the same thing exactly alike. I can tell if it was Maude or Judd who opened a cola can, just by the way they leave the tab. I know what the first wire cuts looked like.”

“I’ve got to find Denny. He picked up some new salt licks. We’ll take those out when we fix the fence.”

“Good enough.” She swung gracefully into the saddle and patted the gelding’s red neck gently, smiling. “I’ll take good care of Tobe, okay?”

He shrugged. “I never doubted it. Want me and Denny to get the truck and follow you over there?”

She shook her head. “I’m no daisy.” She noted the rifle that protruded from the long scabbard beside the saddle horn. “Mind if I take this along?” she added.

“Not at all. I’d feel better if you did. Remember the safety’s on. Is Judd down there?” he asked abruptly, nodding toward the barn.

“Yes, so you’d better go straight to the equipment shed. What he doesn’t know won’t get me dressed down.”

He started to argue, but she was already trotting away.

She didn’t really need to look at the cuts to guess that Jack Clark had been around, making mischief. He might have just wanted to let the cows out, or he might have planned to steal some. But she wanted to get away from Judd and the others. If she were lucky, they’d be long gone by the time she got back. Besides, it wouldn’t hurt to make sure her theory was correct. If she could get any sort of evidence to give Cash, he could take care of Jack Clark for her.

She remembered the look in Judd’s black eyes when he’d helped Tippy Moore down from the SUV, and the way he’d let her lead him away after insulting Christabel. He hadn’t even seemed to notice that she’d been insulted, either. Her heart ached. Just as she’d dreaded, the model’s arrival marked a turning point in her life. She wished she could turn the clock back. Nothing was ever going to be the same again.

5

As Crissy suspected, the fence was cut in the same place that the other one had been, very close to the vertical brackets of the hog wire. She swung down from the saddle and examined the cuts carefully. The wire cutters that had been used both times weren’t sharp and the cuts weren’t neat and clean.

She turned, leading Tobe by the reins, and sighed angrily as she looked toward the flat horizon. Jack Clark had stolen from them, and they’d fired him with justification. But Clark had a vindictive streak a mile wide, and he wanted vengeance. Crissy was afraid that it wasn’t going to end with poisoned bulls and cut fences. She hoped that Duke Wright would have some news for Nick about the Clark brothers when he phoned him.

She spotted Hob Downey on his porch and walked up to greet the older man.

Hob was in his seventies. He’d been a cowboy all his life, until he was forcibly retired by his boss. He knew more about horses than most anybody, and he was lonely. He sat on his front porch most every day, hoping that somebody would stop and talk to him. He was a gold mine of information on everything from World War II to the early days of ranching. Crissy visited him when time permitted, but, like most young people, time was in short supply in her life.

“Hi, Hob!” she called.

“Come sit a spell, Miss Crissy,” he invited with a grin.

“Wish I had time, Hob. Nick says you saw some fellows in a pickup truck down by our fence this morning.”

He nodded. “Sure did. Skulking around like. I don’t have a telephone, or I’d have called you.”

“Was one a tall man with a bald head?” she asked carefully.

He grimaced. “One was wearing a hat pulled down low on his forehead, so I can’t say if he was bald. Couldn’t say how tall he was, either. The other fellow was wearing a shirt that could have drove a colorblind man crazy. Kept on the other side of the truck, mostly, couldn’t see him well.”

She sighed. “How about the truck?”

“Had a big rust spot on the left front fender,” he offered. “Rest of it was black with a thin red stripe. Had homemade gates, unpainted. Looked to me like they were about to collect a cow or two, Miss Crissy.”

She’d have to find out if the Clark brothers had a pickup truck, or drove one of Wright’s fitting that description, and what color it was.

“Cut that fence, didn’t they?” he persisted.

She nodded. “But don’t let that get around, okay?” she asked. “They might be dangerous, and you’re all alone out here.”

He chuckled. “I got a shotgun.”

“You can’t stay awake twenty-four hours a day,” she pointed out.

“They might come back and try again.”

She couldn’t be sure of that. “You just keep your eyes open and watch your back,” she told him.

“Somebody mad at you, is that it?” he wanted to know.

“Something like that. Thanks, Hob. You take care of yourself, and lock your doors at night.”

“You, too, Miss Crissy. Sure you won’t sit a spell?”

She smiled. “I’ll come back when I can. But I’m up to my ears in movie people right now. I have to get back home.”

“We heard they was going to make a movie at your ranch. You going to be in it?”

She laughed. “Not me! See you, Hob.”

“See you.”

She got back on Tobe and turned him toward the dirt road that led back to the ranch. It was disconcerting to think that Jack Clark and his brother John might have been responsible for two attempts on their livestock. They might try again, and they couldn’t afford many losses right now, not even with the added revenue the movie shoot would bring in. They needed a new direction or they were going to go under.

Specialization, she thought, was the only answer to their problem. They could do what Cy Parks did and raise purebred livestock—but that required a hefty bankroll up front that they didn’t have. They could do what a few other producers had done and try marketing their own brand of organic beef. But that would entail upgrading their production methods and finding a buyer who wanted quality organic beef...maybe an overseas buyer, because those profits were really high, according to Leo Hart, who sold organic beef to Japan.

If only horses could fly, she thought, and laughed at her own whimsy. Judd had tried that angle already, and failed. They were told that their cattle weren’t lean enough for the high priced markets, that they were fed too much corn and too little grass. That was why Christabel had been nudging their cattle into pastures to fatten them on grass—and had lost their prize Salers bull in the process.

But it wasn’t the grass—rather, the clover—that had killed that bull. And that cut fence was no accident, either. It was the Clark brothers. She knew it, even if Judd wouldn’t listen. Cash would. And somehow, she was going to prove it!

* * *

She walked Tobe down to the barn, noting that the big SUV was gone, and so was Judd’s truck. What a relief. At least she didn’t have to worry with company today.

But the relief was short-lived. After she’d unsaddled and brushed Tobe, and taken the rifle back to Nick, there was unwelcome news.

“Duke Wright doesn’t own a black pickup with a red stripe,” Nick told her with a sigh, pushing back the hat from his sweaty blond hair. “And he doesn’t have any cowboys who do.”

She grimaced. “I was so sure...!”

“Maybe he borrowed it,” he said.

Her eyebrows lifted. “You think?”

“Anything’s possible.” He gave her a long look. “Judd wanted to know where you were. I told him you rode over to check on the cows that got out of the pasture.” He held up a hand. “I didn’t tell him the fence was cut. I figured you’d tell him when you wanted to.”

She smiled. “Thanks, Nick. I owe you one.”

He shrugged. “No problem. I’ve already told the boys to keep their eyes open for any suspicious vehicles around here.”

“Good idea. And keep that pasture where you moved the cattle under twenty-four hour guard, even if you have to pay somebody overtime,” she added firmly, inwardly grimacing at another expense they could ill afford. “Make sure he’s carrying a rifle, too.”

He nodded gravely. “I’ll do that.”

She hesitated. “And take pictures of the way the fence is right now, and save that wire where the cuts are,” she added as an afterthought. “If anything ever comes of this, we’ll need evidence.”

“You bet! I’ll put it in the equipment shed.”

“Thanks, Nick.” She wandered back up to the house. Maude was wrapping untouched slices of cake and grumbling.

“‘Can’t eat cake,’ she said. It’s got calories.” She glared at Crissy, who was smothering a grin. “And doesn’t drink coffee, because caffeine’s bad for you. They didn’t have time for it, anyway, and she gave our house a look that I’d have liked to push her off the steps for!”

“They won’t be here long,” she said comfortingly.

“That’s what you think! I heard that director tell Judd that it would take a couple of months for them to shoot the movie, and even then, that they’d probably have to come back to reshoot some scenes after they finished.”

That meant they’d be here until Christmas. She thought about Judd being around that model all the time, and her heart sank. It was worse than she’d ever dreamed it might be.

“That model was really playing up to him,” Maude was muttering. “Hung on him like a chain the whole time, smiling up at him, laughing with him. She’s stuck on him already.”