Texas Fierce

by Janet Dailey

  How can you hate him so much? Susan wanted to ask. But that wasn’t why she was here.

  “My father wants Bull punished as badly as you do,” she says. “But according to him, Bull’s insisting that Ham had a gun when he was shot. Do you know anything about that?”

  “A gun?” Ferg shook his head. “Why the hell would he be packin’ a gun on a nice, friendly visit—especially when Bull had called and asked him to come over?”

  “So if there was no gun, why would Bull shoot Ham in the first place, knowing he’d be caught and arrested?”

  “Who knows? Maybe it was just because they didn’t like each other.” Ferg leaned close to Susan’s ear, his hand sliding around the small of her back. “How about a quickie in the stable?” he whispered. “Nobody’ll miss us that long. C’mon, I got a powerful yen . . .”

  She twisted away, fighting the panic that would have sent her flying at him, scratching and clawing. “That’s over and done with, Ferg. You’ve got a wife and family now. So behave yourself before I punch you in the eye!”

  He reached for her again. This time she was rescued at the last moment by one of Ham’s old friends, opening the front door. “C’mon, Ferg!” the man said. “We’re drinkin’ toasts to your pa. You’ll want to break out the good whiskey.”

  Susan was left quivering on the porch. Suffering Ferg’s drunken abuse had been bad enough. But worse was knowing she’d gone through it for nothing. Ferg hadn’t told her anything she didn’t already know. It was time to leave.

  She’d turned to go down the steps when she noticed the empty glass on the table. The glass would have Ferg’s prints on it. If they matched the prints on the brass casings, that could place Ferg at the pasture, shooting cattle, before his father’s death. It was a long shot but well worth a try.

  Using the clean handkerchief from her purse, she wrapped the glass, tucked it out of sight, and hurried to her car.

  She’d already planned to drop off the casings at Ned Purvis’s place. Now she had more evidence. Maybe she could even talk Purvis into getting her name on the jail’s visitor list so she could see Bull more often.

  Purvis was watering his rosebushes when she pulled up to his house. Inviting Susan to follow him, he took the glass and the casings to his office and slipped them carefully into the evidence bags he had on hand.

  “The fellow who runs the lab owes me a few favors,” he said. “If I push him, we could have the results back tomorrow. No promises, mind you, but if we get a match, it would suggest that Ferg and Ham were on the Rimrock for no good reason. That would take first-degree murder off the table for Bull. But a jury could still go for second degree or manslaughter, so don’t get your hopes up.”

  “Speaking of hopes,” Susan said, “I was really hoping you could get me in to see Bull again, maybe even get me on the visitors’ list so I could see him every day, on my own. Can you do that?”

  Purvis took his time, arranging a stack of papers on his desk. When he looked up at her again, Susan knew something was wrong.

  He cleared his throat. “I spoke with Bull this morning. He gave me a message to pass on. You’re not to come to the jail again. If you do, he’ll refuse to see you. And you’re not to stay on the Rimrock. You’re to go back to Georgia, move on with your life, and forget you ever met him. It’s over—for good.”

  CHAPTER 19

  THAT NIGHT ON THE PORCH STEPS, SUSAN TOLD JASPER ABOUT BULL’S decision.

  A long time seemed to pass before he replied: “Bull’s a proud man. I’d call him a fool, but I understand where he’s coming from. He wanted to give you a perfect life. Now, as he sees it, that’s not possible. For him, there’s no such thing as half measures.”

  Susan gazed up at the waning moon. “I can be proud, too, Jasper. Too proud to grovel on my knees to a man who doesn’t want me. I’d planned to spend the rest of my life here on the Rimrock. Even if Bull went to prison, I told myself I’d be here for him. Now he’s told me we’re finished, and I don’t know what to do next. My parents have disowned me. I need a job, a place to live . . .” She struggled to hold back the tears. She’d be damned if she was going to cry about this—at least not in front of Jasper.

  “You don’t have to leave right away,” Jasper said. “Stick around a while—at least until the grand jury rules next week and we know whether there’ll be a trial. Bull’s a stubborn son of a gun, but he’s crazy in love with you. If he gets off, things are bound to look different from the other side of the bars.”

  “I wish I had your confidence.” Susan picked up a pebble from the step and tossed it into the yard. The dogs, tethered for the night, pricked their ears, then settled back into their spot next to the porch.

  “Believe me, I know what it’s like to love a woman the way Bull loves you, and then lose her. You never get over it. If Bull lets you go, he’ll regret it for the rest of his life. But right now he’s not thinking of that.”

  Susan knew about Jasper’s fiancée. She suspected he would never love again, being the man that he was. But she couldn’t believe Bull loved her the same way. He’d had other women in the past. It wouldn’t take him long to find someone else.

  “I’ll stay,” she said. “But only until I can make other arrangements. Bull said it himself—it’s over.”

  Jasper stood. “I’ll be damned,” he muttered. “You’re just as mule-headed as he is. I’m goin’ to bed.”

  The screen door closed behind him. Susan waited until his footsteps faded and she heard the click of his bedroom door. Only then did she bury her face in her hands and give way to wracking sobs.

  * * *

  She woke the next morning to a quiet house. The time on the bedside clock was 7:10. Jasper would have long since risen, made coffee, and gone out to start the morning chores.

  After pulling on jeans and a shirt, she pattered barefoot into the kitchen. The coffee Jasper had left her was cold. She made a fresh pot, poured herself a mug, added creamer, and wandered out onto the porch.

  Perching on the steps, she sipped her coffee and watched the last pale tint fade from the sunrise. She’d hoped her outlook would be brighter this morning, but after a night of too many worries and too little sleep, the days ahead of her loomed like a mountain of heartbreaking decisions. She’d been handed a new kind of life to build—a life without the man she loved. And she didn’t know where to begin.

  As the sun rose, shadows melted in the yard. A meadowlark trilled from the pasture beyond the barn. The two dogs, let loose at first light by Jasper, frolicked in the sunshine. One dog thrust his head into the space under the porch and came out with something that looked like a dried rabbit skin. Playing, he raced in circles, tossing his prize in the air and catching it.

  The other dog seemed more interested in Susan. With a low whimper, he came up the steps and sat down close beside her. Her first impulse was to move away, but the dog seemed to sense her troubled mood. It was almost as if he wanted to comfort her.

  Gingerly, she scratched one shaggy ear. “Hello, boy,” she murmured. “Are you Shep or Pal? I guess as long as you want to keep me company, that doesn’t matter.”

  The dog closed his eyes and sighed as she scratched downward past his collar and worked her way toward his chin. His tail thumped against the step. “So you like that, do you?” Susan teased. “I bet you don’t get enough petting around here. If you two would clean up your act . . .”

  Her words trailed off as her fingers touched something small and hard stuck to the fur at the corner of his jaw. She bent closer to look.

  Ugh! Her hand jerked away. It looked very much like a drop of dried blood, tangled in the long hair. Where could it have come from?

  From anywhere, she reasoned. When they weren’t tied to the porch at night, those dogs roamed all over the ranch. The blood could have come from the pasture, or from some small animal, like a prairie dog, killed and eaten.

  Susan tried to dismiss what she’d found. But her thoughts were racing. The dogs would have been t
ied to the porch when Ham Prescott was blasted with that shotgun. They had witnessed the shooting. Could the blood on the dog’s fur be Ham’s? Even the thought made her shudder.

  The dog in the yard, tired from tossing his rabbit skin, had brought it back to the shade of the porch, where he lay in the warm dust, worrying the thing with his teeth.

  Susan remembered the missing gun—the gun that, if found and proven to be Ham’s, could set Bull free. Would a dog pick up a metal gun, even a small pistol, and carry it off to hide? It didn’t seem likely.

  Unless the gun had blood on it.

  The rabbit skin had come from under the porch—a natural place for storing treasures like sticks, bones, and whatever else might catch a dog’s fancy. Susan’s heart began to pound. Scarcely daring to hope, she rose, then walked down the steps and around to the side of the porch, where she crouched to peer into the low space beneath.

  It was dark under the porch, the smell mildly repulsive. Fingers of light, falling between the boards above, outlined a clutter of odds and ends. No way was she going to reach under there and feel around with her bare hand. Pushing to her feet, she hurried into the house to put on her shoes and get a flashlight.

  The light helped some. By shining it at different angles, she could make out several bones, a well-chewed sock, a shed snakeskin, and an old leather strap. A desiccated bird lay within easy reach. So far, no gun.

  She could always get a rake and pull everything out into the open, but even then the gun might not be there. Maybe Ferg had taken it after all—in which case it would never see daylight again and perhaps neither would Bull.

  She was weighing her choices when suddenly she saw it. Half buried in the dirt was the dark metal grip of what appeared to be a small pistol. Pulse racing, she reached for it, then checked herself. The location of the gun was important, as were any prints that might be on the weapon. As vital evidence, it would have to be properly handled.

  She was eager to give Jasper the news. But first she needed to go into the house and phone Ned Purvis.

  The lawyer picked up on the first ring. “Don’t touch a thing,” he said. “I’ll be right there.”

  When Purvis’s vintage station wagon screeched to a stop in the yard, Jasper and Susan were waiting for him. They’d shut the dogs in the barn to keep them from getting in the way.

  Purvis had come well prepared. First he used a Polaroid camera to take a picture of the house front with the porch. Then he had Susan hold the light while he photographed the gun in place. “I don’t want the prosecution to have any doubt where we found this,” he said.

  “Why do I get the feeling you’ve done this before?” Susan asked.

  “Didn’t I tell you?” Purvis gave her a grin. “Back in the day, I used to be a big-city cop. After a few years my wife and I got tired of the stress, so I earned my law degree and we moved to the country. No regrets. But I do enjoy dusting off my old skills now and then.”

  He used tongs to reach under the porch, lift the gun out of the dirt, and drop it in an evidence bag, after which he took another photo. He studied the pistol, which was caked with dirt and what looked like more dried blood. “A Beretta three-eighty,” he said. “That sounds about right. Looks like it’s taken a beating—even got tire prints on it. My guess would be that it fell out of Ham Prescott’s hand when the blast hit him. When Ferg turned the truck around to leave, or maybe when Bull drove off with the girl, it got run over and pushed into the dirt, where one of the dogs dug it up the next morning.”

  Susan’s heart sank as she saw the small gun. “It’s a mess,” she said. “How can you find any prints on it now?”

  “Not to worry,” Purvis said. “If Ham loaded the gun, there should be prints on the magazine and the ammo inside. And the blood traces can be matched to type, at least. Just to be sure, I’ll snip off that bit of blood you found on the dog. Then everything can be logged into evidence.”

  They walked to the barn to collect the sample and let the dogs out. By now Jasper had gone back to work.

  “So, have you made any plans?” Purvis asked her.

  Susan shook her head. “I’m still at square one. Jasper says I’m welcome to stay, but if Bull doesn’t want me here, I need to be gone.”

  “You know that Bull’s been under a lot of strain.”

  “Of course I do. But that doesn’t mean I can ignore it when he says he doesn’t want me.”

  “You need to understand something,” Purvis said. “When a good man, especially a man as proud as Bull, has his back to the wall, his first concern is protecting the people he loves. That’s what Bull is doing. He’s protecting you from shame and hurt and disappointment—from danger, too. He knows that if he’s in prison and Ferg decides to go after you, there’ll be nothing he can do.”

  “But won’t finding Ham’s gun be enough to clear him?”

  “Let’s hope so, but the legal system can take unexpected twists and turns. Even if Bull goes free, he’ll always be known as the man who killed Ham Prescott. There will always be people who’ll believe he’s a murderer. If you’re married to him, you and your children will be tarred with the same brush. He wants to spare you that.”

  Susan sighed. That was Bull, all right. Proud and protective to a fault. The worst of it was, she loved him for it.

  “Bull’s the only man I’ve ever wanted to be with,” she said. “How can I convince him that he’s wrong?”

  “I don’t know that you can. Bull has to convince himself of that.”

  They went into the barn, and Susan held the dog while Purvis snipped off the dried blood and bagged it. Letting both dogs out, they walked back into the sunshine.

  “I have a suggestion for you,” he said. “With my daughters gone, the whole second floor of my house is empty. You’re welcome to stay there. In return for a little light housekeeping and office work, you’d have your own room with your own bath. And you’d be close by for Bull, when he comes to his senses.”

  “You said when. Do you think he ever will?”

  “He’d be crazy if he didn’t. My wife and I had a wonderful marriage. I could wish nothing better than the same for you two. So what do you say? Do you want to come on board?”

  “That sounds perfect. Thank you so much.”

  Susan clasped the lawyer’s arthritic hand. For now, at least, Purvis’s offer was like the answer to a prayer. But with Bull’s future and her own hanging in the balance, it was too soon for relief.

  “One thing,” she said. “Whatever happens with Bull, promise you won’t tell him where to find me. As far as he’s concerned, I’m just gone. That’s all he needs to know.”

  “And Jasper?”

  “I’ll tell him, of course. Same promise.”

  Purvis gave her a nod. “Understood.”

  * * *

  On the following Thursday, the grand jury convened in an upstairs room of the Blanco County courthouse to determine whether Virgil Tyler should be indicted and bound over for trial.

  The hearing lasted less than forty minutes. In light of the strong evidence—Ham Prescott’s pistol, Ferg’s fingerprints on the brass casings, and proof that there’d been no phone call to the Prescott house on the night of the shooting—the prosecutor requested that the charges be set aside.

  Bull walked out of the courthouse a free man.

  He followed Ned Purvis to the lawyer’s old brown station wagon and climbed into the passenger seat. The sense of unreality lingered, like the dregs of some otherworldly dream. He’d never gotten used to the idea of being in jail. Now that he was free, his most powerful emotion was not so much relief as a smoldering rage.

  “Let’s go,” he told Purvis.

  “Go where?” The lawyer waited, maybe wondering whether Bull would bring up Susan. But Susan was only a bittersweet memory now. He knew that she’d found Ham’s missing gun. He owed her for that. But he’d ordered her to leave, and she’d taken him at his word. The fact that she wasn’t here waiting for him was enough to let Bull
know that she’d already gone.

  “You can drop me off at the Rimrock,” he said. “When I get my legs straight under me I plan to buy you a good steak dinner and a bottle of the best whiskey in Texas.”

  “You know where to find me,” Purvis said. “Meanwhile, no need to worry about payback. I’ve already billed the county for my services.”

  Bull had called Jasper from the courthouse to give him the good news. The cowboy was waiting on the porch when he climbed out of Purvis’s wagon.

  “So what now?” Jasper asked as Purvis drove away.

  “Right now I’m going to take a shower and wash off the jail stink,” Bull said. “After that, I’ve got a score to settle.”

  Jasper gave him a worried look but said nothing. It was as if he sensed that his boss was in a dangerous frame of mind and needed to be left alone.

  Twenty minutes later, showered, shaved, and dressed in clean work clothes, Bull walked out to his truck, climbed into the cab, and drove off toward the Prescott Ranch.

  * * *

  Ferg poured himself a brandy and walked into the parlor. It was midafternoon, about three. Edith had gone to Lubbock with her mother to shop for maternity clothes. Old Joe, the cook, was napping on the back porch. Garn was sitting in the corner with his nose in some kind of book.

  Looking at his son, Ferg mouthed a curse. If he didn’t know better, he might’ve suspected that somebody else had knocked up Edith and fathered the kid. Garn had no interest in ranching. He disliked cattle, hated chores, and was an indifferent rider. All he wanted to do was read and wander around by himself. But never mind. A fertile woman like Edith would give him more sons, stalwart boys, born to rope and ride, and strong enough to carry on the Prescott legacy.

  The sound of a vehicle caused him to glance out the front window. His pulse lurched as he recognized Bull’s pickup.

  Ferg had gotten a call from the prosecutor’s office after the grand jury decision, so he should’ve been prepared for a visit from Bull. But he hadn’t expected it to happen so soon. He wasn’t ready.