Three years ago, after Bert had been diagnosed with inoperable prostate cancer, she’d become his nurse. Even when pain had made him rail and curse and fling dishes of food against the wall, she’d remained patient and devoted. His death had set her free, but there’d been no talk of her leaving. Callie was family, and this was her home.
“So how was the rodeo, Lexie?” She dabbed a bit of homemade strawberry jam on a warm biscuit.
“Fine, mostly. The bulls did their job. Whirlwind bucked off a good rider.” Should she launch into an account of everything else that had happened in Kingman—most of it bad? Not yet, she decided. Her sister was dealing with enough trauma. If anything, Tess would want to talk about who might have opened the gate to the bull pasture.
“Fine, mostly?” Callie asked. “Did something happen?”
“Nothing that can’t wait,” Lexie said.
Ruben walked in, his face and hands damp from washing at the outside pump. The boys would have told him about the lost bull. That would account for the somber look on his face—gaze lowered, jaw set—as he took his seat and dished a modest amount of food onto his plate. His arrival completed the ranch family at the table. The two hired boys would have their breakfast in the kitchen after the morning chores were done.
Aaron took a second helping of bacon. “Man, you should’ve heard those coyotes last night. Made a racket fit to raise the dead. Good thing I decided to call you, Tess.”
“Yes, thank you for that.” Tess looked drained, her breakfast barely touched. Lexie imagined the toll it had taken on her sister, having to shoot that spirited young bull to end its torment.
Tess took a sip of black coffee and cleared her throat. “All we can do now is make sure it doesn’t happen again,” she said in a level voice. “Any suggestions?”
“Those coyotes are bound to come back,” Aaron said. “I could lend the boys a couple of rifles and let them pick the varmints off. They might enjoy that.”
“They might. But the boys have other work,” Tess said. “As for coyotes, there’ll always be more, and they’ll do what they were born to do. If an animal’s injured or weak, they’ll attack it. Our job is to keep our cattle safe.”
“We could put chains and padlocks on the gates,” Lexie suggested. “But it seems to me that what we need most is to find out who’s responsible.”
“I know we’ve pretty well cleared the boys,” Aaron said. “My bet is that some of those bucks on the res got a hankerin’ for fresh beef. When they snuck over to get some, things got out of hand, and they took off.”
Ruben had been quietly eating his breakfast. Now he laid down his fork and fixed his gaze on Aaron. “I will ask around,” he said. “But my people aren’t cattle thieves. Even if they were, they wouldn’t go after a bull. And they wouldn’t leave the gate open.”
Lexie took a deep breath. It was time. “I think somebody might be trying to hurt us,” she said. And she told them about the note she’d found on her windshield.
“So you threw the note away?” Tess shook her head. “What were you thinking, Lexie?”
“I know I should’ve kept it.” Lexie met her sister’s earnest gray eyes. “At the time I didn’t give it much thought. But what are the odds that the person who wrote the note was the one who opened the gate?”
“I’d bet on it,” Tess said. “But who would come all this way in the dark just to cause trouble for us?”
“Maybe somebody who was being paid,” Lexie said as the puzzle came together in her mind.
“Paid?” Tess’s mouth tightened. “You’ve been watching too much late-night TV, girl. Who would pay someone good money to hurt us?”
“Brock Tolman,” Lexie said. “He wants to buy Whirlwind. And it wouldn’t surprise me if he wanted the ranch, too.”
* * *
Shane drove his ten-year-old Chevy pickup under the wrought-iron gate and up the half-mile-long driveway to the heart of the 9,000-acre Tolman Ranch. The ranch’s outer landscape was untouched desert, where sixty-year-old saguaros with upraised arms towered over natural gardens of cactus, paloverdes, boulders, and a spring with a waterfall that nourished birds and animals. Driving through on his way to the house, Shane had seen deer, foxes, and javelinas out here, as well as hawks and golden eagles.
A quarter mile in, the land opened into grassy pastures with stout metal fencing, where the pedigreed Tolman bucking bulls grazed and exercised. Other pastures held cows and calves, heifers, and younger bulls. On the far side of the pastures were corrals and chutes, a stable and paddock for horses, a hay barn, equipment sheds, and a small arena.
The house, set on a low rise, was a rambling structure of wood, stone, and glass. The broad, covered porch that wrapped around two sides offered a view of the pastures and the bulls that were Brock Tolman’s passion. In his twenties he’d invested a modest inherited fortune into high-tech stocks. He’d made enough money to retire in his thirties and do what he’d always wanted to do—raise bucking bulls.
As Shane drove up to the house, Brock rose from his chair on the porch and set the bottle of Michelob Gold he was holding on a side table. At the age of forty, he was a muscular 6’4” with chiseled features and a close-clipped beard, and he moved like a man who wouldn’t step aside for anybody.
Shane had long since learned that Brock was exceedingly private. He’d been married and divorced years ago, but he never spoke of it. And any women in his life were kept discreetly out of the picture.
“I take it you didn’t make any more progress with the Champion girl.” He stood on the edge of the porch and waited for Shane to join him.
“That depends on what you call ‘progress.’ I turned on the charm, but she wasn’t buying what I was selling.”
“Well, sit down and tell me about it, if there’s anything to tell.” Brock motioned to the empty leather chair next to his. As if summoned by some secret signal, the old man who served as his cook and butler appeared with an open beer, which he handed to Shane before shuffling back into the house.