Lone Star Winter: The Winter Soldier

“I’m sure I wouldn’t make a good soldier, even if Harley thinks he would,” she remarked somberly.

“I wanted to make enough money to retire while I was still a young man,” he mused. “I planned to come back home, buy a ranch, get married and settle down.” He finished his own sandwiches and took a sip of his iced tea. “It almost worked. But along the way, I helped a government agency get hard evidence on that drug lord Lopez,” he said, searching her eyes. “As I mentioned a while back, he had my house in Wyoming set on fire. The hitch was, my son was supposed to be rescued before the incendiary device was placed. Lopez’s henchman didn’t think one kid more or less would matter.” He traced an invisible pattern on his coffee mug. “The only consolation I had was that Lopez had the assassin eliminated for that slipup. He doesn’t kill children.”

“I’m so sorry,” she murmured, watching him.

“So am I. But all the regrets in the world won’t bring back that little boy.”

His face was harder than rock. She sketched it with her eyes. “You can help me take care of my little boy.”

He glanced at her. “What makes you think it’s a little boy?”

“Wishful thinking, I guess. I love baseball and soccer and working around the ranch. I know girls can do those things, too, but I’d love a son.”

“You’d love whatever you get,” he chided.

“Yes. I would.” She grimaced.

“What’s the matter.”

“I don’t know.” She laughed nervously. “I have these mild cramps sometimes. I read a book about being pregnant, and it said some women have fleeting cramps during early pregnancy.”

He scowled. “That doesn’t sound good.”

She picked up her sandwich. “Maybe it’s just nerves. It’s been a rough few weeks.”

“Sure it has. But if those cramps get any worse, you go see a doctor.”

“I will.”

After lunch, he took her out to the huge, airy barn to see Puppy Dog, who was comfortably contained in a huge stall with a drain in the concrete floor, and fresh wheat straw making a comfortable place for him to sleep.

“Hello, Puppy Dog,” she said, going into the stall to pet the frisky, enormous puppy. “Did you miss me?” She glanced past him at the clean containers of dog food and water, and the dog toys liberally scattered along the wall. “Maybe not, considering all the toys.”

“Dogs need something to play with. Keeps them active and healthy. I got half a dozen for Bob, too.”

“Bob?”

He motioned to her. She gave Puppy Dog a last hug and went out of the stall. He whined for a minute and then went back to pick up a ball he liked.

In the stall next door was a huge white-and-tan collie with an intelligent face and soft brown eyes. There were still traces of malnutrition in the coat, but Bob was beginning to shape up into a beautiful animal.

“He’s a doll,” she said, smiling at him.

“She’s a doll.”

She hesitated. Turned. Raised her eyebrows.

“She’s a doll,” he repeated.

“Bob is not a female name…”

“If a boy can be named Sue, a girl dog can be named Bob.”

“You listen to too many Johnny Cash songs,” she accused with a chuckle.

“He’s great, isn’t he?” he asked. “‘A Boy Named Sue’ was great, but I loved everything he ever recorded.”

“I have two of his albums myself,” she confessed.

He grinned. “I knew you had good taste.”

She liked the way his eyes twinkled when he smiled. He was something of a curiosity around town, because he had a reputation for being a hard case and unsociable. But here, on his home ground, he was relaxed, pleasant, even amusing. She wondered how many people ever got to see this side of him. Probably not many.

“What happened to that man who broke into my house?” she asked abruptly.

“Sheriff’s got him locked up,” he told her. “We left the crowbar right where it dropped. The man wasn’t even wearing gloves. There are enough fingerprints on it to convict him. He’ll make bond, of course, and then he’ll go home.”

“Home?”

He turned toward her. “A man wearing an Armani suit drove up here a few days ago and introduced him self as my new neighbor. There’s a honey packing ware house on my border. But it’s not honey they’re distributing, if you understand what I mean.”

She stilled. “Drugs?”

“Raw cocaine,” he replied. “Or, rather, cocaine paste. At least, that’s what we suspect they’re stockpiling in that warehouse.”

“Here, in Jacobsville?” she gasped.

“Right here,” he said.

“Then tell the sheriff and let him send some men out to arrest the owners!”

“They won’t find cocaine if they do,” he said carelessly. “In fact, I’d bet my boots that they’ll phone in a tip about themselves just to draw the law out there to check around. And while they’re checking, all the honey in the jars will be real honey, and even a drug-sniffing dog won’t find a trace of cocaine. Having searched the place once and found nothing, local law enforcement will logically hesitate before they go back out there a second time. At least, not without some concrete evidence of malfeasance. It’s easy to get sued for harassment, and believe me, Lopez would howl at the idea of taking our sheriff to court over it.”

“You sound very cynical,” she told him.

“I know how these people operate. In my checkered past, I’ve dealt with drug dealers, gunrunners, diamond smugglers, hit men…”

Her eyes were growing wider by the second. “You outlaw, you.”

“Count on it,” he told her. “I did what the job called for. Wars make strange bedfellows. Got to have guns and ammunition, you know, not to mention explosives, communications equipment, medicines. You can’t walk into the nearest superstore and buy those.”

“You can buy guns,” she began.

“Registered guns,” he emphasized. “They’re required by law to do a background check before they sell a gun, and there’s a waiting period. If you know where to go, you can get everything from Uzis to C-4, and no waiting.”

“I had no idea,” she murmured, shaking her head.

“It’s almost impossible to shut these drug cartels down. They are run on a corporate structure. In a sense, they’re multinational corporations. They have a hierarchy, complete with divisional managers and regional distribution networks. When you understand the way they work, you also understand why it’s such an uphill battle. You can’t arrest every gang member in the country. That’s what it would take to stop it. And even then,” he added, “there would still be dealers. You know why? Because where there’s demand, there’s supply. As long as there are people willing to pay for illegal drugs, there will be people who sell them.”