Texas Free

by Janet Dailey

  At the end of Main Street she found the city and county building where, she assumed, the property records would be kept. The County Recorder’s office was in the basement. When she asked to see a map of the Rimrock Ranch, the clerk, a bespectacled young man who made an effort not to look at her birthmark, gave her a plat—a hefty book of surveyors’ maps with legal descriptions that meant nothing to her. Sitting down with it at a long table, Rose leafed through the pages until what she was seeing began to make sense. After forty minutes of searching, she opened a map and recognized the creek and the strip of land her grandfather had left her.

  Marking the page with a scrap of paper, she carried the plat to the counter, pointed out her land, and asked the clerk who owned it.

  “Have a seat and I’ll look it up,” he said. “Forgive me if it takes a few minutes. I’m new at this job.”

  “Is there anybody around who was here twelve years ago, when the deed was recorded?” Rose asked.

  “Sorry. Beth Hazelton, who ran this place for decades, passed away last month. I was part-time help. Now I’m running it myself, at least until the next election for County Recorder.”

  When Rose failed to make chatty conversation, he rummaged in the files and books for a few more minutes. Rose’s gut told her what he would find. But she had to hear the news for herself before she could confront Bull.

  “Found it!” the clerk said. “The deed to that parcel of land was recorded in 1974.”

  “And the owner?” Rose’s pulse quickened.

  “Mr. Virgil Tyler of the Rimrock Ranch.”

  Rose had known what she would hear. Still, she couldn’t help clasping at a last thin thread of hope. “Is anyone else’s name on the deed?” she asked.

  “No name’s recorded except Mr. Tyler’s. These days we make photocopies of deeds, but from back then, we’d have only the record. Mr. Tyler would have kept the deed himself.”

  “I see. Thank you.” Rose strode out of the basement room, a bitter taste welling in her throat. She’d hoped against hope that her suspicions weren’t true. But it was time to face reality. Bull Tyler, the man who’d sheltered her under his roof, saved her life more than once, and stood trial for the act she’d committed, had stolen her land and was very likely plotting to keep it.

  * * *

  “You say you saw a woman by the creek?” Ferg Prescott’s beetling brows met above a nose reddened by too much Kentucky bourbon. In middle age, he was putting on weight, developing jowls and a paunch that overhung his belt. Now, seated behind his massive desk, he looked like what he was—the absolute ruler of the biggest ranch in Blanco County, a powerful presence whose word was law.

  Tanner had met him less than a week ago. But he already knew enough to watch his step with the man. Ferg Prescott was sharp, volatile, and ruthless. His ranch hands were well paid, well housed, and well fed, but fear of their boss took a toll on them all.

  “Far as I know, the only woman on the Rimrock these days is the housekeeper,” Ferg said. “Could that be who you saw?”

  “This was no housekeeper. She was wearing jeans and boots and driving an old green Buick that looked like something from the forties.”

  “Doesn’t ring a bell.” Ferg stubbed out the butt of his illegal Havana cigar in an ashtray made of polished Mexican onyx. Lifting a fresh cigar out of a box, he said, “Tell me more.”

  “She was small, midtwenties, tawny brown hair, not bad looking,” Tanner said, understating his description. “The one thing you’d notice about her was a dark red birthmark down the left side of her face.”

  Ferg’s expression didn’t change at first. But his fingers clamped so tightly around the cigar that they crushed the fine, brown leaves, releasing their leathery aroma into the air.

  “Do you know her?” Tanner asked.

  Ferg nodded.

  “Do you think she could be connected to the cattle rustling?”

  Ferg’s eyes narrowed to slits of anger—or maybe it was something deeper and darker. Almost like fear.

  Taking his time to answer, he laid the crushed cigar aside, lit a fresh one, and took a slow puff, drawing it out as if weighing what he was about to say. “I don’t know about the cattle rustling,” he said. “But yes, I do know her. I can’t prove it, mind you, and it would never hold up in court, but I have every reason to believe the little she-devil murdered my father.”

  * * *

  Tanner crossed the ranch yard to the two-story frame bunkhouse, the one place on the ranch where he had access to a phone. Most of the hands would be out on the roundup. Tomorrow he’d be joining them. But right now he had the time and privacy for a couple of calls.

  The pay phone was mounted on a wall outside the first-floor dormitory-style bedrooms. It made sense that Ferg wouldn’t want homesick cowboys running up the ranch phone bill. Still, it struck Tanner as petty that the hired hands couldn’t even order a pizza from town without paying for the call.

  After checking to make sure no one was nearby, he placed a collect call to Clive Barlow at the regional office.

  “Anything new?” Clive asked.

  “Still chasing leads. If any of the Prescott men are rustling their boss’s cattle, they’re doing a good job of covering their tracks. Ferg’s still claiming that Bull Tyler is the rustler. In the absence of anyone else, I’m inclined to believe him.”

  “Well, this might change your mind,” Clive said. “I got a call from Bull this mornin’. Seems he’s missin’ cows, too.”

  “That doesn’t mean he’s telling the truth, or that somebody else on his ranch isn’t stealing them.” Tanner told Clive about the strange woman he’d seen that morning. “When I told Ferg about her, he almost crushed his cigar. He told me he suspected her of killing his father.”

  “Now that’s middlin’ strange,” Clive said. “I remember that case, ten . . . no, twelve years ago. Ham Prescott was an old bastard. Came onto the Tyler property with a pistol and got himself blasted to smithereens with a shotgun for his trouble. But it was Bull Tyler who admitted to the deed. Bull pleaded self-defense and the grand jury let him off. Now Ferg is sayin’ the woman done it? That doesn’t make sense.”

  “Ferg did say there wasn’t any proof.”

  “Well, whatever he says, you’d best keep an eye on the lady. Her showin’ up about the same time as cattle disappearin’ is a bit too much of a coincidence to suit me.”

  “Agreed. I’ll keep my ears open. Maybe I can pick up something on the roundup tomorrow.” Tanner hung up the phone, wishing he’d had better news to report. True, there were gangs of rustlers who swooped in and drove off cattle to load into trucks for out-of-state markets where they wouldn’t likely be traced. But nine times out of ten, the thieves would turn out to be local, often working on the very ranch where the stock went missing. Tanner had done his best to fit in with Prescott’s men. But he was new on the job, and if there was any business going on behind the boss’s back, they wouldn’t trust him enough to let him know. Most of them, in fact, seemed terrified of crossing Ferg Prescott in any way.

  That was why he’d turned his attention to the neighbors. But now Bull Tyler had reported cattle missing, too. Tanner’s gut instinct told him something wasn’t what it appeared to be. But what was it? What was he missing?

  For now, all he could do was trust his eyes and ears and get back to work. But there was one more call he needed to make. This call was personal.

  After fishing in his pocket for a handful of change, he made a long-distance call to a small ranch at the foot of Wyoming’s Wind River Mountains.

  A woman’s voice answered. She sounded anxious, or maybe just tired. Tanner knew his sister-in-law didn’t have it easy. Life on a struggling ranch with a husband and four active kids could take a lot out of any woman.

  “Is everything all right, Ruth?” he asked. “How’s Clint?”

  Ruth sighed. “He could be better. His back went out just in time for calving season, and now that I’m pregnant again, I can’t be much he
lp. Your brother needs you, Tanner. You need to come home.”

  “I’ll try to send more money. Maybe Clint can hire some high school kids for the heavy lifting.”

  “Maybe.” She sounded weary and frustrated. Tanner couldn’t blame her.

  Guilt bored deeper, like a sharp-bitted auger, as he ended the call. Five months ago, he’d seen the ad for this job in a newsletter for ranchers. The requirements—knowledge of the cattle business and law enforcement experience—had been a perfect fit for him. Taking the position as a special ranger for the TSCRA had meant leaving Wyoming and moving to Texas. Clint and Ruth had tried to talk him out of it. But he’d argued that the extra money would contribute more to the ranch than his presence and his meager salary as a deputy sheriff.

  He’d made good on that promise, at least. Most of his salary went back to the ranch for new stock and equipment, supplies, and repairs and to help his brother’s family through the lean winter months.

  But Tanner had kept his real reason for leaving to himself. Desperate to escape his memories, his nightmares, and his gut-wrenching guilt, he’d jumped at the chance to get away and start over. Maybe in a new place, with new people and new responsibilities, he could begin to heal.

  So far, that wasn’t working so well.

  * * *

  Ferg Prescott poured himself a second shot of bourbon and tossed it down in a single gulp.

  Why now? He punctuated the thought with a string of the vilest curses in the English vocabulary. Why, now that the plan was in place to destroy Bull Tyler and get his hands on the creek property, did that ugly little bitch of a girl have to show up?

  He knew who she was, of course. After his dying father had named her as his killer and the girl had disappeared, Ferg had hired a top-notch investigator to track down her background information. It had taken months of work, cost a pile of money, and taken some conjecture on Ferg’s part, but he’d finally gotten some answers.

  Rose Landro, child of a single mother and an untraceable father, both presumed dead, had run away from foster care to stay with her maternal grandfather, an old hermit who’d bought the creek parcel years earlier and lived on the land in a tumbledown shack. As his only known relative, Rose would have been heir to the land.

  But that was where things got interesting.

  When Ham Prescott had shot the old man for refusing to sell, and Rose, hiding in the shack, had witnessed the crime, Bull had taken her in and used her to blackmail Ham. That had led to Ham’s going to the Rimrock to silence her and running smack into her shotgun blast.

  Restless, Ferg stood up and walked to the window, gazing out at his kingdom. Beyond a stand of budding cottonwoods lay the back road from the Rimrock, where he’d stopped the truck that night, delaying long enough to make sure his father died before reaching home. That was when Ham had told him it was the girl who’d fired the fatal shot.

  Ferg had kept his dying father’s confession secret and blamed the shooting on Bull. With Bull in prison it would have been easy to get the land and control the water from both sides of the creek. But Bull had not only gone free, he’d gotten rid of the girl and taken the land for himself.

  And now, the rightful owner of the contested property had shown up.

  Ferg sat down again, lit a fresh Havana, and blew a smoke ring into the air. On second thought, Rose’s return might not be so bad. His present scheme was risky. If it failed, he could use her as a backup, maybe become her ally against Bull to help her get the land back . . .

  A tentative knock at the door broke into his thoughts. That would be Garn, his son and heir. But Garn could damn well come back later. Ferg knew what the young fool wanted, and he wasn’t in the mood to talk about it now.

  His twenty-one-year-old son had been conceived by accident when he and Edith were little more than hormone-crazed kids, not even married yet. Spineless and bookish, with no interest in ranching, Garn had none of the drive and fire that had made the Prescotts the most powerful family in the county.

  Even more disappointing than Garn was the fact that Edith hadn’t given him the strapping, manly sons he’d wanted. After four miscarriages, she’d had her tubes tied for the sake of her health. Not that it had done much good. She’d died a few years later from ovarian cancer.

  Her photo hung on the side wall of his office, in a spot where he rarely looked. Now he gave it a passing glance. She looked the way she had in life, her colorless blond hair drawn back in a bun, her face bare of makeup. In younger days, she’d been pretty in a buxom sort of way, and always up for a romp in the backseat of his car. But the miscarriages had convinced her that she was paying for her sins. A preacher’s daughter, she’d turned back to her religious roots, taken a separate bedroom, and spent her nights reading the Bible. Not that Ferg had minded. He’d never been faithful to his marriage vows and had no trouble finding comfort elsewhere.

  Still, life wasn’t fair, he groused. Susan Rutledge Tyler, the woman he’d once hoped to marry, had given Bull two strong sons before the crash that took her life. Unless he wanted to marry again and start over, he was stuck with Garn.

  But back to the girl. He needed a way to break the ice with her. Blowing another smoke ring, he pondered what the ranger had told him. He’d mentioned a Buick, an old one. And Ferg had discovered an interest in collecting vintage cars. Maybe . . .

  The rap on the door had become more insistent. Garn wasn’t going away. Ferg sighed. “Come on in.”

  His son stood in the open doorway of his office. Pale like his mother, with a long face and gangly body like his preacher grandfather’s, he was wearing a yellow polo shirt.

  A goddamned yellow polo shirt with some kind of animal on the pocket! He couldn’t even look like a rancher!

  Bull sucked on his cigar and blew out the smoke in a cloud. “If you’re here to talk to me about that fool Washington internship, you can forget it. I told you it was a waste of time, sending in that application.”

  “But it wasn’t,” Garn said. “I’ve been accepted. I won’t be starting until fall, but I need to respond in the next few days.” He took a breath, as if gathering courage. “This is my dream, Dad. I’ve wanted to go into politics ever since President Reagan came to the ranch on that bird-hunting trip.”

  “I don’t give a damn what your dream is,” Ferg said. “You’re not going to Washington. You’re going to stay here and learn to run the ranch.”

  “I knew you’d say that,” Garn said. “That’s why I mailed my letter of acceptance this morning. It’s a done deal. I’m going.”

  “Over my dead body!” Ferg thundered. “I let you go to college when you begged me. But now that’s done. You’re staying right here!”

  Garn shook his head. “Let’s not fight about this, Dad. I’m twenty-one years old. I can do what I want. Meanwhile, I’ll be here through the end of summer. That’s almost five months. If we can make peace, I’ll knuckle under for that time and focus on the ranch.”

  Spoken like a budding damned politician, Ferg thought. He’d always equated political types with rats and maggots. But at least the young fool had the cojones to stand up for what he wanted. Maybe that was better than nothing.

  “We’ll talk later,” he said, as a new idea sprang up in his mind. “Meanwhile, I’ve got an errand for you to run.”

  He scrawled a note on ranch stationery, folded it into an envelope, and wrote a name on the outside. “Take this to the Rimrock Ranch,” he said. “Deliver it personally to Miss Rose Landro.”

  * * *

  Garn didn’t mind being asked to deliver the note. He’d been dying of boredom, and any excuse to get away from the ranch and his father’s bombastic presence was welcome.

  He drove slowly on the dirt road that connected the two ranches. Much as he loved flying along in his sleek Porsche, he didn’t want to raise dust that would settle on the car’s shiny black finish that had just been waxed the day before.

  With one hand on the wheel, he glanced at the note his father had given hi
m. Miss Rose Landro. The name was intriguing. He pictured some exotic movie star type, but Miss Landro could just as easily be eighty years old.

  Since the envelope was unsealed, he took the liberty of unfolding the note and reading it. Interesting, he thought. Whomever this Miss Landro was, it seemed he was about to get to know her, perhaps know her well.

  CHAPTER FOUR

  IT WAS ONE-THIRTY WHEN ROSE ARRIVED BACK AT THE RIMROCK. BERNICE was standing on the front porch, a gingham apron over her slacks. Her apple-cheeked face broke into a smile as Rose climbed out of her car. “So there you are, honey. I knew you might be too tired for breakfast. But when you didn’t show up for lunch, and I saw that your car was gone, I started to worry. Come on in the kitchen. I’ll make you a sandwich.”

  Rose would have answered that she could make her own sandwich, but she knew Bernice meant well and was trying to be friendly. With a murmur of thanks, she followed the woman into the kitchen and sat down at the kitchen table she remembered from the old days.

  “Where are the boys?” she asked, making conversation. “Are they in school?”

  “Yes, they take the bus into Blanco Springs. They’ll be home around four. They’re good boys. You’ll enjoy getting to know them.” Bernice busied herself at the kitchen counter, slicing cold roast beef and homemade bread. “Jasper’s told me a lot about you,” she said.

  “A lot?” Rose’s pulse skipped. “How much?”

  “I’d say just about everything, including some secrets I’d never tell a soul. My brother thinks the world of you. He’s always hoped you’d come back.”

  “Jasper was my best friend when I was here before,” Rose said. “But I get the feeling Bull isn’t all that happy to see me. I’ve only made his life more complicated.”

  Bernice sliced the sandwich in two, arranged it on a plate, and set it, along with a napkin and a glass of milk, in front of Rose. “Bull’s got a good heart,” she said. “He’s been through hard times, and it’s given him some rough edges. But in the end, you can count on him to do the right thing.”