Summer Breeze (13 page)

"He refused, of course. Would
you
want to get stuck with Pauline?"

Rachel giggled and shook her head. "Lands, no. She used to push me down during recess. I never liked her very much."

"Well, her disposition hasn't gotten any sweeter. Hannibal is a very nice man. Handsome, too—very tall, with golden hair and kindly blue eyes." Caitlin winked. "Not that I'm given to looking, you understand. I have eyes only for Ace."

Rachel couldn't recall ever having seen Caitlin so happy. "Is he good to you, Caitlin?"

A soft, dreamy look filled Caitlin's eyes. "Good to me? He treats me like a queen. I love that man more than life itself, I truly do."

En route to Amanda Hollister's place, Joseph and David chose to bypass town by riding across open country through budding witches'-broom, newly blossoming clover, and more rocks than they could count. Spring was in the air, even though the March temperatures were still chilly enough to make both men shiver when the wind picked up. Joseph thought about tugging his coat free from the straps at the back of his

saddle, but each time he started to reach for it, the breeze would slacken.

The sign over Amanda's main gate laid no claims to grandeur, stating only her name, followed by RANCH. As they followed the dirt road toward the house, Joseph took visual measure of the fenced pastures, trying to guess how large a spread it was.

"It doesn't appear that she has much land," he finally commented.

"A quarter section with open range," David replied. "When I went to the courthouse last night, I looked at her deed, too, along with other records of interest. I'm thinking the stories about her quarrel with Henry are true. She can't have been very happy about being left out of her brother's will. Two thousand acres, versus a mere one hundred and sixty? Even with open range for her cattle to graze, it's a big step down for a woman who worked most of her life on a larger spread that she hoped to partly own someday."

"You can bet her father didn't manage to increase his original homestead to encompass that much land without plenty of help from his kids."

"Amanda and her younger brother, Peter James, were his only children. Their mother, Martha, died in twenty-seven, when Amanda was eight and Peter was six. Their father, Luther, never remarried."

"So it was left to only Amanda and Peter to help their pa work the spread."

David nodded. "And according to what Doc told me, Peter inherited his mother's weak constitution, so the giant's share of the work fell to Amanda."

"But the old man left the ranch lock, stock, and barrel to the brother?"

"Yep. Even so, Doc claims that she remained loyal to the family and continued to work like a man, carrying much of the load because Peter was never very robust."

Joseph shook his head. "Peter—he was Henry Hol-lister's father. Right?"

David nodded. "And he only outlived his and Amanda's father by nineteen years. He was about sixty when he died."

"And he made no provisions for his hardworking sister in his will?"

"Nary a one. He left everything to Henry, consigning Amanda to live on her nephew's charity.

She was sixty-two at the time, getting up in years and no longer able to work as she once had. I can't say that I blame her for petitioning Henry to grant her at least a monthly income from the ranch."

"But he refused."

"Flatly." David shrugged. "That was when she moved out and never spoke to him again. Doc says she had a small trust from her grandmother. She used that money to buy this place."

"What goes wrong in some families that they value the boys over the girls?" Joseph couldn't imagine it. "I'd never cut Eden off without a dime."

David grinned. "If there were anything for us to inherit, I wouldn't, either. We're lucky, I reckon.

There'll be no haggling in our family when Mom passes on. Everything she has came to her from Ace. It'll rightly go back to him."

Joseph mulled it all over for a moment. "It sounds like Henry Hollister was a selfish man." As Joseph spoke, he remembered the pain he had seen in Rachel's eyes and instinctively knew that Henry had been a kind, just man and a wonderful father. What had gone wrong in the family that a faithful, hardworking female relative had twice been denied her rightful inheritance?

"Maybe so." David pushed up the brim of his hat to meet Joseph's gaze. "Only, no matter what the provocation, what kind of person would kill her own flesh and blood? We've got to remember that it wasn't only Henry who died. His wife and two children went with him, one of them a little girl who wasn't yet six. Read between the lines when we talk with Amanda. Watch for any sign of insanity. Maybe you're right, and it runs in the family."

Even though Joseph had made the same observation last night, he bridled at the suggestion now.

Rachel wasn't normal, living as she did. He wouldn't go so far as to say that. But she didn't strike him as being crazy, either. By hiding away, she'd found a way to feel safe, and now she clung to her seclusion like a drowning animal did to a log in a raging stream.

At a very young age, Joseph had learned to be a survivor, and so had everyone else in the family.

His father's untimely death had left them without a breadwinner, and the land swindle had rendered them penniless. Supporting the family had fallen to Ace, an eleven-year-old boy, so their circumstances had grown a whole lot worse before they got better. In order to
survive, they'd done whatever they had to do, just as Rachel was doing now.

When they reached the end of the road, Joseph saw that Amanda Hollister's house was as
neat as a tumbler of straight whiskey. Green shutters bracketed the windows, and a
veranda spanned the front of the house. Comfortable-looking wicker chairs flanked a
swing, and several flowerpots were strategically placed to get sunlight. Nary a one hosted a
plant that had sprouted any blooms yet, but that was Colorado for you. Spring didn't come
until almost summertime, and summer died young.

As Joseph and David tethered their horses to the hitching post that ran the length of the
front flowerbed, a man came around the corner of the house. He had the look of a ranch
hand, his faded Levi's dusty from working with livestock, his gray, collarless shirt stained
with sweat. His honey brown hair glistened like bronze in the sunlight, and his fine-featured
countenance creased in a warm smile.

"Howdy," he called out. "How can I help you?"

Joseph and David flashed each other a grin. After their reception at the Pritchard place, it
was nice to get a friendly greeting.

The man's arresting blue eyes dropped to David's badge, and his eyebrows shot up. "Oh,
boy." He thrust out his wrists. "Cuff me and get it over with. I've been found out."

David chuckled, and introductions ensued. The hired hand said he was Amanda Hollister's
ranch foreman, Ray Meeks.

"Have we met?" Joseph asked as he shook Meeks' hand.

Ray squinted thoughtfully. "Not that I recall. I'm sure I would remember if we had."

"You look familiar, somehow," Joseph said.

Meeks shrugged and smiled. "We've probably seen each other in town at one time or another.

You look sort of familiar to me, too." He hooked a thumb over his shoulder. "Miss Hoilister is around back." He motioned for David and Joseph to follow him. "If you want to talk to her, I hope you don't mind a little dust. We're breaking some broncos, and she insists on supervising."

Flashing a good-natured grin, he added,
"God love
her. She needs to leave the horse training to us
men,
but she won't hear of it."

Joseph
had no idea what to expect. Given the fact that Amanda Hoilister had motive to have killed Henry and his family—and also to want Rachel dead—he
had
a picture inside his head of a wicked old crone with calculating eyes and warts on her nose.

Instead, as they walked toward the breaking arena, Joseph saw that she was a much older version of
Rachel, a
small, fragile woman of about seventy, with
delicate features,
large, expressive blue eyes, a coronet
of white
hair that had undoubtedly once been blond, and a
bad
case of
palsy
that
made her entire body
tremble. She
sat facing the corral in a wheelchair, head
ducked to
see through the rails, her divided riding skirt
following
the unladylike sprawl
of her
legs. Fists knotted, she pounded on the arms of
her
chair.

"Stop
swinging that lariat at him, you damned fool!

Make him afraid of it and you'll ruin him forever as a cow pony!"

Joseph seconded that opinion; the man
was
a damned fool. Chasing the terrified horse around the corral, the hired hand swung the rope like a whip, hitting the animal on its tender nose and rump.

The poor, confused mustang flinched and darted, trying frantically to escape.

The sight made Joseph furious, and he wanted to put a boot up the man's ass. Sadly, there were more incompetent horse trainers than there were good ones, and it was the horses that paid the price. Too many greenhorns went into a corral thinking to mimic the technique of a good trainer, but taming a mustang wasn't that simple. Horses were large, very powerful animals and could be dangerous when cornered. Proper handling demanded a lot of experience, a host of little tricks, a measure of good sense, and a lot of compassion.

Amanda Hollister came up out of her wheelchair. Shaking so badly that it was difficult for her to keep her feet, she advanced on the rails. "Out of there. If you strike that animal again, I'll take a whip to you, I swear." She turned to Ray Meeks, her foreman. "Cut this imbecile his pay. I never want to see him on this ranch again."

Ray sent the trainer an apologetic look and motioned for him to exit the corral. Joseph caught the exchange and wondered why Meeks felt bad. When a man couldn't do the work that he'd been hired to do, he was damned lucky to get any back pay, and the apology was his to make.

Still oblivious to the arrival of guests, Amanda Hollister grasped a post to steady herself and took stock of the men who ringed the corral, some sitting on a top rail, others leaning against the fence.

In Joseph's opinion, none of them looked highly energetic. At his place, a hired hand was expected to stay busy until daylight waned. It was Saturday, though. Maybe it was the men's day off, and they hadn't chosen to go into town.

"Does anyone here know how to tame a horse, or must I do it myself?" Amanda asked.

None of the men raised a hand. Amanda caught sight of Joseph just then. Without so much as a howdy-do, she said, "You've got the look of a horseman. Do you know anything about taming a mustang?"

Joseph shot David a wondering look, then plucked off his hat to give his head a scratch. "I know a little."

"Don't be modest, young man. How much is a little?"

Joseph almost grinned. Damned if he didn't like the old lady. She had a lot of sass in her frail old bones, and he admired that in anyone. "I've been working with horses most of my life."

"Well, don't stand there with your thumb up your butt. Get to work."

The next thing Joseph knew, he was inside the corral working with the mustang. Though relatively new to cattle ranching, Joseph knew horses and loved the animals as he did little else.

As a fatherless boy in San Francisco, he'd hired out as a stable boy at liveries until Ace had mastered the fine art of gambling and started to rake in winnings. After seeing to his family's comfort, Ace had begun spending a portion of his winnings on horses, one of his stepfather's greatest passions. As a result, Joseph had finished out his childhood like a proper young Virginian, working with the animals when he didn't have his nose in a school-book.

The first order of business was to get the mustang to stand, and that
was
tricky business. Never striking the horse, Joseph swung the lariat much as his predecessor had, only with precision, technique, and a purpose in mind, namely to shrink the equine's radius of movement until standing was the only option left to it. An hour of hard work for both him and the animal ensued.

"That's enough for today," he informed Amanda Hollister as he swung a leg over a rail to exit the corral. "He's exhausted."

Back in her chair, Amanda inclined her head at the mustang. "Exhausted, yes, but not terrified.

He's beginning to understand what you're asking of him." She turned amazingly clear and beautiful blue eyes on Joseph. "You're very good, young man. What's your price?"

Joseph dusted his Stetson on his pant leg, resettled the hat on his head, and said, "I'm not for hire, ma'am."

"There isn't a man here who holds a candle to you."

Joseph glanced at a nearby holding corral, milling with range-wild mustangs. "Wish I were available. I'd enjoy the challenge. But I have a spread and my
own
horses to train."

Her eyes sharpened with interest. "Where's your place?"

"Due north of the Circle Star."

"Nice property," she said. "You'll do well there if you put enough sweat into it."

Joseph nodded. She was familiar with the land, certainly. The Hollister place adjoined it to
the north. "Sweat's cheap."

Her brilliant gaze came to rest on David's badge. "Marshal," she said by way of greeting as
she thrust out
a
gnarled hand. "Dare I hope that this is a social call?"

David stepped forward to shake her hand. "I'd just like to talk with you for a bit if you can
spare me some time."

"Time is
a
commodity in short supply around here, but I can spare you some." She smiled
at Joseph. "One good turn deserves another. Maybe these yahoos learned something. I
know the horse did. Please, come to the house. I'll put some coffee on and scrounge up some
cookies."