Lawless

“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.”