The Maverick: The Maverick / Magnate’s Make-Believe Mistress

“Better get your van going,” he said, holding out a palm-up hand and looking up. “We’re going to get a rain shower. You could be stuck in that soft sand when it gets wet.”

“I could. See you.”

“See you.”

She took off running for the van. Life was looking up, she thought happily.

Chapter Three

Harley went back to the ranch house with Bob racing beside his horse. He felt exhilarated for the first time in years. Usually he got emotionally involved with girls who were already crazy about some other man. He was the comforting shoulder, the listening ear. But Alice Jones seemed to really like him.

Of course, there was her profession. He felt cold when he thought about her hands working on dead tissue. That was a barrier he’d have to find some way to get past. Maybe by concentrating on what a cute woman she was.

Cy Parks was outside, looking over a bunch of young bulls in the corral. He looked up when Harley dismounted.

“What do you think, Harley?” he asked, nodding toward several very trim young Santa Gertrudis bulls.

“Nice,” he said. “These the ones you bought at the auction we went to back in October? Gosh, they’ve grown!”

He nodded. “They are. I brought them in to show to J. D. Langley. He’s looking for some young bulls for his own herd. I thought I’d sell him a couple of these. Good thing I didn’t have to send them back.”

Harley chuckled. “Good thing, for the seller. I remember the lot we sent back last year. I had to help you deliver them.”

“Yes, I remember,” Cy replied. “He slugged you and I slugged him.”

Harley resisted a flush. It made him feel good, that Mr. Parks liked him enough to defend him. He could hardly recall his father. It had been years since they’d had any contact at all. He felt a little funny recalling how he’d lied to his boss about his family, claiming that his mother could help brand cattle and his father was a mechanic. He’d gone to live with an older couple he knew after a fight with his real folks. It was a small ranch they owned, but only the wife lived on it. Harley had stayed in town with the husband at his mechanic’s shop most of the time. He hadn’t been interested in cattle at the time. Now, they were his life and Mr. Parks had taken the place of his father, although Harley had never put it into words. Someday, he guessed, he was going to have to tell his boss the truth about himself. But not today.

“Have any trouble settling the steers in their new pasture?” Cy asked.

“None at all. The forensic lady was out at the river.”

“Alice Jones?”

“Yes. She said sometimes she likes to look around crime scenes alone. She gets impressions.” He smiled. “I helped her with an idea about how the murder was committed.”

Parks looked at him and smiled. “You’ve got a good brain, Harley.”

He grinned. “Thanks.”

“So what was your idea?”

“Maybe the victim was here to see somebody and got ambushed.”

Parks’s expression became solemn. “That’s an interesting theory. If she doesn’t share it with Hayes Carson, you should. There may be somebody local involved in all this.”

“That’s not a comforting thought.”

“I know.” He frowned as he noted the gun and holster Harley was wearing. “Did we have a gunfight and I wasn’t invited?”

“This?” Harley fingered the butt of the gun. “Oh. No! There were some local boys trying to harass Alice. I strapped it on for effect and went to help her, but she’d already sent them running.”

“Threatened to call the cops, huh?” he asked pleasantly.

“She invited them to her van to look at bodies,” he said, chuckling. “They left tread marks on the highway.”

He grinned back. “Well! Sounds like she has a handle on taking care of herself.”

“Yes. But we all need a little backup, from time to time,” Harley said.

Cy put a hand on Harley’s shoulder. “You were mine, that night we had the shoot-out with the drug dealers. You’re a good man under fire.”

“Thanks,” Harley said, flushing a little with the praise. “You’ll never know how I felt, when you said that, after we got home.”

“Maybe I do. See about that cattle truck, will you? I think it’s misfiring again, and you’re the best mechanic we’ve got.”

“I’ll do it. Just don’t tell Buddy you meant it,” he pleaded. “He’s supposed to be the mechanic.”

“Supposed to be is right,” Cy huffed. “But I guess you’ve got a point. Try to tell him, in a nice way, that he needs to check the spark plugs.”

“You could tell him,” Harley began.

“Not the way you can. If I tell him, he’ll quit.” He grimaced. “Already lost one mechanic that way this year. Can’t afford to lose another. You do it.”

Harley laughed. “Okay. I’ll find a way.”

“You always do. Don’t know what I’d do without you, Harley. You’re an asset as a foreman.” He studied the younger man quietly. “I never asked where you came from. You said you knew cattle, but you really didn’t. You learned by watching, until I hooked you up with old Cal and let him tutor you. I always respected the effort you put in, to learn the cattle business. But you’re still as mysterious as you were the day you turned up.”

“Sometimes it’s better to look ahead, and not backward,” Harley replied.

Parks smiled. “Enough said. See you later.”

“Sure.”

He walked off toward the house where his young wife, Lisa, was waiting with one preschool-aged boy and one infant boy in her arms. Of all the people Harley would never have expected to marry, Mr. Parks was first on his list. The rancher had been reclusive, hard to get along with and, frankly, bad company. Lisa had changed him. Now, it was impossible to think of him as anything except a family man. Marriage had mellowed him.

Harley thought about what Parks had said, about how mysterious he was. Maybe Mr. Parks thought he was running from the law. That was a real joke. Harley was running from his family. He’d had it up to his neck with monied circles and important people and parents who thought position was everything. They’d argued heatedly one summer several years ago, when Harley was sixteen, about Harley’s place in the family and his lack of interest in their social life. He’d walked out.

He had a friend whose aunt and uncle owned a small ranch and had a mechanic’s shop in Floresville. He’d taken Harley down there and they’d invited him to move in. He’d had his school files transferred to the nearest high school and he’d started his life over. His parents had objected, but they hadn’t tried to force him to come back home. He graduated and went into the Army. But, just after he returned to Texas following his release from the Army, he went to see his parents and saw that nothing had changed at all. He was expected to do his part for the family by helping win friends and influencing the right people. Harley had left that very night, paid cash for a very old beat-up pickup truck and turned himself into a vagabond cowhand looking for work.

He’d gone by to see the elderly couple he’d lived with during his last year of high school, but the woman had died, the ranch had been sold and the mechanic had moved to Dallas. Discouraged, Harley had been driving through Jacobsville looking for a likely place to hire on when he’d seen cowboys working cattle beside the road. He’d talked to them and heard that Cy Parks was hiring. The rest was history.

He knew that people wondered about him. He kept his silence. It was new and pleasant to be accepted at face value, to have people look at him for who he was and what he knew how to do rather than at his background. He was happy in Jacobsville.

He did wonder sometimes if his people missed him. He read about them in the society columns. There had been a big political dustup just recently and a landslide victory for a friend of his father’s. That had caught his attention. But it hadn’t prompted him to try to mend fences. Years had passed since his sudden exodus from San Antonio, but it was still too soon for that. No, he liked being just plain Harley Fowler, cowboy. He wasn’t risking his hard-won place in Jacobsville for anything.

Alice waited for Hayes Carson in his office, frowning as she looked around. Wanted posters. Reams of paperwork. A computer that was obsolete, paired with a printer that was even more obsolete. An old IBM Selectric typewriter. A battered metal wastebasket that looked as if it got kicked fairly often. A CB unit. She shook her head. There wasn’t one photograph anywhere in the room, except for a framed one of Hayes’s father, Dallas, who’d been sheriff before him. Nothing personal.

Hayes walked in, reading a sheet of paper.