Texas-Sized Secrets

Hiding her bulge wouldn’t be an option in the next couple of weeks. She’d be forced to wear bigger shirts and the maternity pants Rosa had purchased from a resale shop. Of all times to be pregnant, now wasn’t the best.

Catalina walked with her to the door. “I’d stop by this evening and check out your Mr. Bryson myself, if I didn’t have to work. Why don’t you bring him by Leon’s tonight, if you get a chance.”

“Don’t think that a smoky bar is the place to be at this time.” She ran a hand over her belly, the thought of cigarette smoke making the acid churn.

“I guess not. Then give Reed a kiss for me, will you?” Catalina laughed at the killer look Mona gave her. “Okay, be that way. Keep him all for yourself.” She glanced at the white truck pulling into a parking space several yards away. “Look out, there are the Lang Oil speculators from hell.”

“Damn.” Mona ducked behind Catalina. “Between Teague and Lang, they’re as persistent as a heat rash in the summer. Kuhn was pushing Lang as a potential buyer for the Rancho Linda. Not that I’d let that happen. Not as long as I’m still breathing.”

Catalina fluffed her bleached-blond hair and smacked her lips together. “Let me take care of them, you can sneak out through the kitchen.”

While Mona darted back into the diner, Catalina said, “Hello, gentlemen, come back for some of Dee’s apple pie?”

Hurrying through the kitchen, Mona almost slipped on the greasy floor twice before she made it to the back door. But she didn’t feel like listening to a sales pitch when she had bigger issues.

With the Lang Oil Exploration people inside Dee’s Diner, Mona hurried down the sidewalk to her pickup, shaking her head. Catalina had it all wrong about Reed Bryson. Dating and kissing were at the bottom of Mona’s list of things to do when she had a ranch to save.

Then why did Reed’s full lips come to mind when Catalina had mentioned kissing?

REED RODE BESIDE Fernando, slowing his horse the closer they came to the broken fence. The other two ranch hands would be here shortly with the pickup and tools to mend the fence.

Last night’s search for clues and evidence had yielded nothing. He wanted to go over the area again in the light of day. Assuming the sheriff and his crew of deputies hadn’t disturbed the ground too much.

When he was within a hundred yards he reined in his horse. “Let’s walk the rest of the way.”

Fernando nodded and climbed down from his horse, dropping his reins to the ground. The gelding munched on the prairie grass, his tail twitching like a metronome, swatting at horseflies.

“Miss Mona didn’t need this to happen.” Fernando stared ahead at the mutilated fence line and off into the distance as though he might spot the missing cattle.

“Does anyone need to be robbed?”

“No, but her being with child makes it twice as hard.”

Reed agreed silently. “Any idea who the father is?” He asked the question before he could catch himself. Internally, he rationalized that if the father of the child had a bone to pick with Mona, he could be a suspect in the current situation. What better motive than to ruin Mona Grainger to make her own up to the paternity of her child?

“No. As far as I know, she hasn’t told anyone. None of us knew she was even dating.” He turned his attention to Reed. “Why did you leave the sheriff’s department?”

“I had my reasons.” Reed squatted in the dust and stared at the disturbed ground.

“You worked as a police officer in Chicago before that, didn’t you?”

That bit of information wasn’t hush-hush. Folks in small towns could rarely keep a secret. With a new man in town, word was bound to get around. Especially with a big mouth like Sheriff Parker Lee. “Yeah.”

“The Texas panhandle is a long way from Chicago.”

In more ways than one. If not for his mother, Reed wouldn’t have come back. “I grew up in these parts. Came back because of family.”

Fernando nodded. “Family is important.”

Some of them.

“Miss Mona swore on her papa’s grave she’d keep the land in her family. It meant a lot to him and her mother. She wants to have something to pass down to her child.”

“What if her child doesn’t want it?” Too often ranches were sold to big corporations when the children showed no interest in eking out a cyclical living on the land. As an only child, Reed had vowed to leave the panhandle rather than work alongside a father who couldn’t stand the sight of him. As soon as he’d graduated high school, he’d left, swearing never to return.

Funny how life came full circle and more often than not, he found himself eating his own words. Never say never. As much as he resented his father, Reed couldn’t deny his mother anything. When she’d had a stroke, he’d flown home to take turns with his father, sitting by her side in the hospital. When he’d had to leave to go back to Chicago, she’d begged him to stay.

In the end, he’d returned to be closer to her.

Reed shook off the past and focused on the smashed prairie grass all around. “Look here.” He pointed at holes in the dirt, spaced evenly in a wide circle. “Looks like they had portable corral panels.”

“Sí.” Fernando straightened. “They cleaned up well, didn’t they?”

“Too well. I don’t see tire tracks or hoof prints anywhere around.” He stood. All he found were a few footprints probably left by the sheriff’s team who’d investigated the site last night.

“As if they raked it before leaving.” Fernando crouched next to the loose barbed wire. “Look at this.”

Reed joined him for a closer examination. On one of the barbs was a tuft of coal-black human hair and a bloody patch of what looked like scalp. “Someone has a scrape on his head that’s pretty deep.”

“Sí.” The old Mexican nodded farther along in the dust. “They missed a track.”

The telltale print of a dog’s paw stood out as clear as a signature. Whoever the rustlers were, they had a herd dog. Every rancher on the plains had herd dogs.

An engine’s roar alerted him to the approach of a vehicle from the direction of the ranch house.

The ancient red-and-white ranch truck, with the fading sign of Rancho Linda on its side, lumbered across the grasslands, lurching to a stop next to the fence. Chewy, Jesse’s border collie, hopped out of the back and ran around the area, sniffing at the tracks.

While Dusty and Jesse unloaded tools from the rear, Reed walked the fence line, bending to inspect the snapped posts.

Dusty dug the blades of a posthole digger in the dirt beside Reed and brushed his gloved hands together. “Won’t take long to fix this fence. Jesse and I can handle it, why don’t you and Fernando check for any loose steers.”

Reed had intended to do just that, but he’d changed his mind. “No. I’ll help here, if you don’t mind.” He stared past Dusty to the foreman.

Fernando nodded and walked across the dirt to his horse, silently climbing into the saddle. He crossed over where the fence should have been and turned to his right. Following the remaining line of wire and posts, he disappeared over a rise.

Reed lifted his hat, brushed the sweat from his brow and grabbed the posthole digger Dusty had left beside him. Ten minutes later, he lifted the last clump of dirt from the hole and set the implement to the side. His muscles burned with the honest effort of physical labor. He hadn’t known how much he’d missed it until today.

While he fitted a post into the hole and packed dirt around it, Jesse grabbed the tool and went to work on the next hole, twenty feet away.

Jesse, Dusty and Reed worked at mending the fence. Several wooden posts had been snapped as if run over by something big. Some of the thin metal T-posts had been bent double. Dusty was able to straighten one, but the others snapped off, rust and weather making the metal brittle.

Wielding the posthole digger, Jesse dug through the hard earth, making a hole deep enough for another wooden brace post they’d brought along in the back of the pickup.

The constant sound of metal clanking against metal rang in Reed’s ears. Dust kicked up by their heels smelled of Texas and cattle.

Dusty pounded a new T-post in the ground with the heavy post pounder that fit over the post like a giant metal sleeve. He pushed the pounder up and off the post, letting it fall to the ground at his feet. “Going to Leon’s tonight, Jess? They’re having a wet T-shirt contest, from what I hear.”

“No.” Jesse raised his arms high and slammed the sharp blades of the posthole digger into the hard-packed dirt.