When it was over, he’d promised he’d never divulge what had happened. That their affair was their secret. She’d promised the same, that it was just a one time thing.
But it wasn’t. They couldn’t get enough of each other. It lasted days. Weeks.
He was on the edge of rethinking his future with Daisy. Right up to the moment Ned lassoed him and dragged him into the desert.
A thousand thoughts went through his mind. Had Daisy tired of her cowboy lover? Had she feared that Trey would tell her fancy fiancé that she was a loose woman?
Then there was the question that had plagued his mind all the time he’d been laid up in El Paso, wondering if he’d live. Had she wanted her indiscretion permanently silenced?
God knew, if she was out to skin him again, what chance would he have of getting out of here with his herd?
Mighty slim from his way of looking.
Fact remained that he needed an ally here. But friends were few in his world, and he hadn’t seen anyone here that he remembered except the grizzled cook. All new men. Ned’s pick? He damned sure would tread easy until he knew where their loyalty lay.
“You the ramrod of these beeves?” a man asked, his drawl as thick and dark as molasses.
Trey faced the man who was his height and packed twice the muscle and firepower. “Trey March, foreman. You are?”
“Cameron Ellsworth, Texas Ranger,” he said. Trey’s insides tightened with foreboding, because rangers didn’t make a habit of visiting ranches and lending a hand unless they were chasing trouble. “Mind telling me who owns this herd?”
Trey was bone-weary, covered in West Texas grit and wary as a whore in church, rarely in any mood to talk to the law and surely not at all right now. But if he hoped to foster an ally in the lawman, it was best he appear as if he hadn’t a care and hear him out.
“A hundred and fifty head are mine,” Trey said. “The rest belong to Daisy Barton, owner of the JDB Ranch and the Circle 46.”
“Jared Barton’s daughter?”
“One and the same,” he said. “The creeks at the JDB are running dust, and the well has been pumped dry—intentionally, we discovered. Since it’s getting harder and harder to find water to haul in, Miss Barton elected to move the headquarters to the old homestead.”
Ellsworth dipped his chin, as if stingy to give away anything more. “Drought’s playing hell on everyone. Now what’s this about a dry well?”
Trey eyed the man swathed in shadows, wishing he could read his eyes, wishing he had a clue what brought him here to the Circle 46. “The JDB blacksmith was jumped from behind and trussed up, then the pump was manned ’til it ran dry.”
The ranger made a sound of disgust and eased forward into a swath of moonlight, but the wide brim on his hat continued to shadow his face. “He claims he didn’t see who attacked him?”
“Yep, and I believe him,” Trey said. “Doubt the man would be breathing now if he’d so much as gotten a glimpse of who got the drop on him.”
Ellsworth thumbed up his brim and a pair of glacial blue eyes speared Trey on the spot. “You got a hunch who did it?”
Trey snorted and jammed both thumbs under his gun belt, fighting the urge to look away from those probing eyes. “If I knew for sure, he’d be dead.”
“No judge or jury would’ve hanged you considering the hell folks are going through trying to find water,” the ranger said.
With anyone else, that comment might have lessened his tension, but the fact was it still pulsed hot and heavy between them. Those cool eyes of Ellsworth’s were putting him on trial, and Trey feared the ranger would find him guilty in a blink.
“What brings you here?” Trey asked, damned tired of pussyfooting around.
“Been a steady trail of JDB cattle sold off in the last six months. The last hundred head were run through the auction block up in San Angelo and had fresh running brands.” The ranger drew those last three words out, his emphasis alerting Trey that something wasn’t right. “Whoever put the JDB brand on them did a sloppy job of it.”
Rustlers. “You see this rogue brand?”
“Sure did. It was a JDB brand in size and all, but it’d been altered just enough to make it different from those used on the ranch.”
Trey let what the ranger implied sink in and take root. If the lawman was right, somebody had gotten hold of a JDB branding iron. But if a rustler was set on stealing cattle, why bother with altering the brand so it would draw attention?
He didn’t like the reasons tumbling in his head, for they all pointed to someone setting someone else up for a fall. Damned convenient that all this trouble started about the time he disappeared from the JDB.
“When did you see this altered brand again?” he asked.
“A few weeks back. Rancher west of San Saba bought them.”
Yep, damned convenient that was when he was laid up, but then he suspected the man responsible had thought he was dead. “Ned Durant trail these beeves to market?”
“I didn’t see the drover, but the listed seller was Trey March.”
“Sonofabitch!” Trey stared at the ranger through a red haze of anger, but managed to hold a tight rein on it. “It damn sure wasn’t me.”
The ranger stared at him. “You could’ve ordered it done.”
Trey’s head pounded with the rage galloping through him. Altered brands. A rustler posing as him. What the hell had he ridden into this time?
A trap. That’s why Ned hadn’t kicked up a fuss when Daisy cut him free. He’d already stacked the deck against Trey.
No doubt Ned had used Trey’s name to run his operation right down to selling JDB cattle, but the only way to prove it would be to wrest a confession from Ned or the men he’d hired. Damned slim chance of seeing either done, especially if Ned had been doing some rustling too.
It took every ounce of effort to tamp down his fury. He had to control that temper now. Texans meted out swift justice to rustlers, and he didn’t aim to end up in jail or swinging from a rope.
“I had nothing to do with selling JDB cattle or any other stock during the past six months,” Trey said at last.
“Can you prove it?”
“Yep,” he said, but held off explaining until he knew what got the Texas Rangers looking into this. “You working on the auction house’s behalf or for the JDB?”
“A bit of both,” the ranger said. “I had a talk with Barton three months back when so many JDB cattle hit the market. He hadn’t sanctioned a sale. In fact he wasn’t missing more than a hundred head at the time.”
So Barton knew he was being took. “You saying that Barton suspected I was rustling cattle and using the JDB brand.”
“Made sense. Barton found it mighty interesting that his trouble started right after you lit out.”
Lit out? Trey opened his mouth to protest, then thought better of it.
Barton knew damned well he wasn’t rustling cattle. Hell, the man probably thought he was dead.
He suspected Barton had explained Trey’s absence as desertion to cover his own hand in Trey’s torture. Did it to protect Daisy’s reputation as well if anyone had been privy to their dallying. And Ned surely had found out he’d been romancing Daisy.
Trey couldn’t fault Barton for protecting his daughter. He couldn’t find it in himself to spill the truth either, not when it could bring more grief on her. Besides, he doubted the ranger would just take his word for it.
“Six months back I was doing business for Barton when I got waylaid,” Trey said. “I was dragged for miles then left for dead. If a drummer hadn’t come along when he had and hauled me into El Paso, I’d have been food for the vultures.”
“There anybody who can back up that claim?” the ranger asked.
“Pay a visit to La Valera’s Cantina in El Paso. I was a guest at her establishment from before Christmas until about two weeks past.”
The ranger smiled, but it wasn’t a kindly one. “She could be your sweetheart and would be more than willing to
lie for you.”
It was a fact that he was aware of. “Call on Doc Ivy in El Paso. He patched me up and looked in on me the whole time I was there.”
“I’ll do that,” the ranger said. “In the meantime I’m keeping a man here to watch you. You make one wrong move, and he’ll be obliged to do his duty.”
“Fair enough.”
There wasn’t a helluva lot else he could do but agree while Ellsworth checked out his story. Even then Trey didn’t hold a lot of faith that his name would be cleared.
Chapter 5
Daisy sat at the kitchen table with a cup of steaming coffee cradled in her hands, relieved beyond words to be sitting on something that wasn’t moving. She’d already explained to Hollis Feth why she’d moved the ranching operation here, earning her a dark scowl followed by a nod of approval for finally taking charge and firing Ned Durant.
Now she smiled and laughed as she listened to Hollis regale her with another story about her daddy. The man had worked for Jared Barton since the War of the Rebellion ended, in a variety of tasks, beginning with his being the chuckwagon cook in those early days of cowboying.
By his choice, he’d spent the past five years away from the JDB, then had come back to the Circle 46 a year ago to take over the job of ranch cook. It was a good job for a man his age, seeing as he had no desire to ever retire.
On sweltering days like these, he’d taken to cooking meals on the house stove. As he stated so succinctly, “No sense heating up the cookshack and the bunkhouse when this stove was just sitting here going to waste.”
“I don’t remember living here,” she said.
“That’s cause you never did.”
“Are you certain?”
“Sure am. Your daddy had no desire to ever return to this ranch again.”
“Why?”
Hollis gave a sad shake of his head. “Bad memories.”
Yet Jared Barton had held onto the land just to run horses. A stud farm that she suspected her daddy would have left Trey in charge of one day.
This might have been the home Trey had brought her to if they’d married.
“Yessiree, I was mighty glad when your daddy up and moved from Colorado,” Hollis said, as he forked over thick slabs of chicken fried steaks in the heavy frying pan. “These Southern bones of mine hated the cold and snow we got there.”
She frowned at the scarred plank tabletop. “How long ago was that?”
Hollis’s handlebar mustache twitched as he worked his mouth into a knot. “Reckon that was about sixteen or so years back.”
She must’ve been born on the Colorado ranch then. “I don’t remember living there either, but I do recall the snow and cold.” Her mama had told her that her daddy promised to get them back home come spring. Home to Texas? Had to be. “Did he sell out?”
“Soon as he bought the JDB. We drove the cattle there, and the womenfolk took the train to West Texas.”
Was that where she’d gotten those memories of being on a train? Maybe some of them, but she was certain she’d stayed with her mother and nanny on that trip. She hadn’t huddled with a train full of other children. Scared. Cold. Alone.
As for the JDB, she had a clear memory of her eighth birthday there. Her mother had gone all-out to make it a day she would remember, but her daddy did one better when he gave her a spotted pony.
She could still hear her mother fussing that she was too young to ride, but the pony allowed her to form a tighter bond with her daddy. Maybe that was for the best, because before the next winter her mother caught a fever.
She’d died before Christmas.
Daisy felt bad that she had great trouble bringing her mother’s image to mind. But she kept trying. All she ever got was vague pictures, no more than flashes of memory, before another woman’s features blurred with her mother’s to create another stranger in her life.
Her daddy explained it away as her being too young to separate her mother’s likeness from that of the nanny who’d cared for her when she’d come into their lives. That’s how he’d said it too. Not when she was born, but when she’d come into their lives.
“By the time me and the boys drove the cattle onto the JDB, your mama had settled into the new house.” Hollis shook his head. “Damned shame she had such little time to enjoy it.”
“Daddy told me that when Mother took sick with a fever, she’d feared that I’d contract it too,” Daisy said. “She insisted that she move here to the Circle 46 to recuperate, and my nanny went with her as she had some of the same symptoms. But neither of them got better.”
“I remember,” Hollis said. “They’re both buried in the old family plot alongside your daddy’s first wife and only son.”
Daisy cut the old man a sharp look. Her head throbbed just thinking about what her daddy had lost. “Daddy never talked about his first family.”
“Can’t blame him. Corinne Barton was a fine woman,” Hollis said. “She went through hell during the war and after, same as the rest of the Feths.”
That caught her attention. “Was she kin to you?”
“My sister. Only family I had living. We were both born on this ranch.”
That explained why her daddy let Hollis do as he pleased at the Circle 46. It’d been his family’s home. It still was in many ways, leaving Daisy to feel like a trespasser.
“The child that died. He was a boy?” she asked.
“Yep. Jared doted on that son of his. Damned shame.”
A half-brother. Was it possible she’d heard about him and that had caused her to envision the boy who’d watched over her? Was that why she was troubled with the memory of a young boy from time to time? Why there were times she’d believed she had a brother?
That had to be the reason, for there’d been no young boy in her life. She’d just longed for a playmate. A sibling. Her mother had told her enough about it to fire her imagination.
She wanted to ask more about her daddy’s first wife and son. Wanted to know every detail that Hollis Feth could remember about his sister and nephew. Wanted to know more about her own mother as well. But just forcing those few memories had her head pounding. If he told her more right now, she’d likely forget it or tangle it in her thoughts.
There would be time to visit with him later when she wasn’t so tired and out of sorts. She could finally visit her mother’s grave, and maybe just doing that would free her thoughts more.
Maybe if she sat there in peace at her mother’s grave she’d be able to rid herself of the strange nightmares she’d had for as long as she could remember.
“Now your mama,” Hollis began, yanking her thoughts back to him. “She wanted a child so. When you came along she was the happiest woman in Colorado. But I reckon you knew that.”
When you came along. Odd that Hollis said nearly the same thing as her daddy had.
“Daddy told me, but it’s good to hear.”
She’d known that her mother had pined for a child—a girl if she could have her choice. Knowing that was the truth helped ease that empty feeling that had come over her out of the blue.
Hollis returned to the skillets sizzling on the stove. She felt comfortable around this man, even though she hadn’t been near him for five years or so. Oh, he’d come to Daddy’s funeral and talked to her some then, but she’d been too aggrieved to appreciate the visit.
Now in just an hour she’d found out he was her daddy’s brother-in-law. This was his home, yet he’d left it too to go to Colorado with her daddy and mother. But when they came back to Texas, Hollis had moved to the JDB with them.
“Why didn’t you come back here when you left the JDB five years ago?” she asked.
Hollis sighed. “It was time for me to move on and try my hand at something besides cooking and rounding up cattle. But last year, I was ready to come back home.”
She thought to ask what he’d done during those years away, then changed her mind. He’d tell her when he was ready to, if ever.
“How many men did Ned let go
here?” she asked.
“Six of them. All with horse experience.” Hollis muttered something she couldn’t catch; she suspected it was a ripe oath. “He had the gall to tell me that he wasn’t paying me anymore for cooking, so I might as well clear out too.”
“But you refused to budge.”
“I wasn’t about to let him run me off.”
Thank God for that. “Trey asked if Sam Weber was still the foreman.”
“Nope. He just took off without a word to anyone. Guess he had a bellyful of Ned telling him what to do and headed off to greener pastures.”
“He wasn’t fired then?”
“Nope. He’d been arguing with Ned over the horses, and I half thought Ned would send him packing. Wasn’t surprised when Sam pulled up stakes.”
Just like Trey had done.
She rubbed her brow. She’d been so sure that he’d tired of Ned’s bossing too. That he’d tired of romancing her. That he’d just up and left so he wouldn’t have to face her or her daddy.
Except Trey insisted that Ned had dragged him into the desert and left him to die. Trey hadn’t left her of his own free will.
“Ned won’t take kindly to having the tables turned on him. He bears watching,” Hollis said.
That was much the same warning she’d gotten from Trey. “We all have to be vigilant.”
Hollis forked the cooked meat into a big tin pan. “I heard March took off last year.”
“He did,” she said. “He came back yesterday claiming Daddy owed him.”
“Don’t know about that,” Hollis said. “But he left four fine thoroughbreds here.”
So he’d told her the truth. “Daddy must have trusted him.”
“Believe so. Heard March was a hard worker. That he kept to himself for the most part. That he was a good man.”
Good lover, too. But she wouldn’t fall into his arms again. Trey was a tumbleweed. A seasoned cowboy who did fine for the short hauls.
He never professed to have roots, and he didn’t seem inclined to put any down either. Soon as he found another place for his cattle and horses he’d be gone. Or maybe he’d just sell them and be free to roam. A tumbleweed.
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