“Ty.” Cat nudged him and looked pointedly at the two men approaching them.
Their arms swung in unison, at first glance concealing the handcuffs that bound one wrist to the other. The prison had permitted Buck Haskell to attend his mother’s funeral in the company of a guard. His hat was in his hand, revealing the curly hair that age had silvered, but his features had retained much of their youthful quality, rather like a high-spirited child that refused to grow up. He faced Ty with a humble air.
“I wanted to thank you for lookin’ after my mother, and for the real fine funeral you gave her.” He glanced at the open grave. “I only wish they’d let me come home while she was alive.” The sad look, the smooth words, came too easily to the man.
“As far as I’m concerned, you killed her.” Ty could find no pity in his heart for the man. “Every time she visited you in prison, she died a little more inside for what you’d become. If I have my way, you’ll rot in that cell.”
A sudden blaze of hatred flared in Haskell’s blue eyes. “I heard someone’s grabbed a bunch of your precious Calder land and there isn’t a damned thing you can do about it. You ain’t so big anymore.”
“You’ve buried your mother. Now get off my land,” Ty ordered coldly.
Haskell took a threatening step toward him, only to be brought up short by the jerk of the handcuffs. The guard said something to him and took hold of his arm. Haskell jerked it free, the metal bracelets clanging, as he glared again at Ty, then turned stiffly to let the guard lead him away.
There wasn’t time for the relaxing of tension as the brittle atmosphere was shattered by strident honkings of a horn. Ty swung toward the sound, all his muscles and nerves coiling again. A racing pickup came to a screeching stop, tires skidding on the gravel of the cemetery road.
“They’re coming!” Repp Taylor stepped out of the cab as far as the running board to shout the warning. “There’s a bunch of them—trucks, road graders, the works!”
Before the second announcement was made, Ty was pushing away from Cathleen and breaking into a run for the closest vehicle. He cursed himself for not guessing Dyson would choose this particular time to make his move while the bulk of the Triple C was attending the funeral of one of their own. He had to stop that equipment while it was on Calder property. Once it reached government land, his chances of getting it removed were substantially lower.
No orders had to be given as men piled into vehicles, scrambling into cabs and truck beds. All were in their best suits and hats and pearl-snapped white shirts. In less than five minutes, the cemetery was choked with dust kicked up by the fast-departing vehicles. The women who stayed behind, including Jessy and Cathleen, were busy organizing themselves into groups. Although theirs was temporarily a waiting lot, they would play a role, depending on the outcome of the confrontation and how quickly it occurred.
A dozen trucks barreled over the road, traveling in a high, thick dust cloud that limited visibility to the bumper of the truck ahead of it, but there was no slackening of pace as the pickups loaded with men raced blindly to intercept the opposition. With eyes smarting from the dirt particles in the driven air, they strained for a glimpse of anything moving in the distance.
There was a pickup in the ditch, a long, scraping gash dented into its side. A cowboy limped into view beside it and waved his hat, motioning the convoy off the road and up a coulee.
“They just got by me!” he shouted as the trucks slowed and made the turn, each finding its own rough route.
Less than a quarter mile off the road, they came upon the slow-moving vehicles, led by a road grader, still on Calder land. The pickups encircled the elongated band of trucks and machinery, using the high walls of the coulee to box them in and blocking both ends. The road grader ground to a stop and sat idling noisily while the Triple C riders piled out of the trucks.
“You’re on private property!” Ty placed himself in clear view of the bunched vehicles. “Back ’em up and clear out!”
“
We’ve got a right to access!” came an answering shout.
The road grader’s diesel motor was revved, huffing and snorting like a range bull pawing the ground before a charge. The long, angled blade was inches off the ground, less a battering ram than an effective tool to push obstacles out of its way. It gathered power and began to rumble forward, taking aim on the two pickups in its path, intending to eliminate their barrier the same way it had gotten rid of the pickup they’d passed in the ditch by the road.
Ty retreated behind the first truck in its path. “They’re hard of hearing,” he said to Wyatt Yates and glanced at the rifle in the wrangler’s hand. “Maybe you can open their ears.”
The cowboy grinned briefly and began snapping off shots at the oncoming grader, bullets ricocheting off the metal blade with an angry whine. Other cowboys in the front circle joined in the black-powder discussion, armed with rifles from the pickups’ gun racks. The minute a bullet came close to the cab of the road grader, the diesel motor growled into silence as the driver bolted from the cab and raced back to the other vehicles. At a signal from Ty, the shooting ceased.
“Go back and tell Dyson he’s not crossing my land!” Ty yelled.
“He’ll cross it! Maybe not this time, but he’ll cross it!” The admission of defeat carried a warning.
It became obvious when the last vehicle had been escorted through the east gate where the ranch lane intersected the highway that the next confrontation wouldn’t be long in coming. As soon as they left Calder property, the trucks and machinery began pulling off onto the side of the road and stopping.
Ty was in the pickup Repp Taylor was driving. Repp turned to frown at him. “They aren’t leaving.”
“Neither are we,” Ty stated. For the time being, it was a standoff. But it couldn’t last for long. Neither he nor Dyson could afford to tie up men and machinery for a long period of time.
All through the afternoon and early evening, the vigil was maintained. As soon as word of the stalemate was relayed to the headquarters, the wives gathered at the cookhouse to send sandwiches, coffee, and desserts. Changes of clothing began arriving, along with bedrolls.
Ty paid little attention to the comings and goings of vehicles on his side of the fence. Restlessness pushed at him as he dragged on his cigarette and expelled the smoke from his lungs in an impatient rush. He kept watching the activity around the machinery.
“Ty?” The anxious call of his name disturbed his concentration. He glanced around as Cat came running up to him. “Are you all right? What’s happening?”
“Nothing. What are you doing here?” He gripped her shoulders to keep her from running pell-mell into him. “You’re supposed to be home.”