Lawless - Diana Palmer

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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.”

      “You can’t stay awake twenty-four hours a day,” she pointed out.

      “They might come back and try again.”

      She couldn’t be sure of that. “You just keep your eyes open and watch your back,” she told him.

      “Somebody mad at you, is that it?” he wanted to know.

      “Something like that. Thanks, Hob. You take care of yourself, and lock your doors at night.”

      “You, too, Miss Crissy. Sure you won’t sit a spell?”

      She smiled. “I’ll come back when I can. But I’m up to my ears in movie people right now. I have to get back home.”

      “We heard they was going to make a movie at your ranch. You going to be in it?”

      She laughed. “Not me! See you, Hob.”

      “See you.”

      She got back on Tobe and turned him toward the dirt road that led back to the ranch. It was disconcerting to think that Jack Clark and his brother John might have been responsible for two attempts on their livestock. They might try again, and they couldn’t afford many losses right now, not even with the added revenue the movie shoot would bring in. They needed a new direction or they were going to go under.

      Specialization, she thought, was the only answer to their problem. They could do what Cy Parks did and raise purebred livestock—but that required a hefty bankroll up front that they didn’t have. They could do what a few other producers had done and try marketing their own brand of organic beef. But that would entail upgrading their production methods and finding a buyer who wanted quality organic beef...maybe an overseas buyer, because those profits were really high, according to Leo Hart, who sold organic beef to Japan.

      If only horses could fly, she thought, and laughed at her own whimsy. Judd had tried that angle already, and failed. They were told that their cattle weren’t lean enough for the high priced markets, that they were fed too much

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