Texas Bride Page 5

  "Nobody will believe him. Besides, he'll probably be gone in a few days, and everybody will forget he was ever here. I don't see any point in getting everybody upset over nothing. Everybody's already worried enough about the rustling and Reconstruction."

  "And well they ought to be," Ida said, her mind diverted. "Only last month Uncle Fred was saying ..."

  Hetta knew Uncle Fred's worries by heart. She was worried about Owen, and upset with herself for worrying about him. She shouldn't care about his attempts to sully Mr. diViere's reputation, about whether he wanted to buy a ranch or spy for Mexico, about what the townspeople might do to him. She most certainly shouldn't have noticed that his working clothes were even more attractive on him than his fancy suit. The sooner she put him out of her mind, the better.

  But she reluctantly admitted that for reasons completely beyond her, Owen Wheeler had insinuated himself into her consciousness, and she couldn't get him out. And he'd done so without even trying.

  "I think I'll go out to the ranch today," Hetta announced as she stood up to begin clearing away the breakfast.

  "What for?" Ida asked.

  "I haven't been there in a long time. I ought to see how things are doing, talk to Tom Manly."

  "What's he going to tell you?"

  "He promised to make a count of my cows."

  "There aren't enough to rebuild your house."

  "There may be with what Mr. diViere pays me for the ranch."

  "Has he paid you yet?"

  "No, but I asked your uncle to write to him and demand payment. I'll take my ranch back if he doesn't."

  "Uncle Fred doesn't know when to expect him back."

  "I don't care if he comes back or not. I just want my money."

  "I'm sure you'll get it. Uncle Fred has great faith in him."

  Owen's accusations were making Hetta wonder. Mr. diViere had said he'd try to get the army to drive the bandits back into Mexico, but the army hadn't come and the bandits were worse than ever. "I'm going out to the ranch and look around."

  "I'm sure nothing's changed," Ida said.

  "I'm feeling restless," Hetta said. "I feel like I've got to go to the ranch or bust."

  "Do you expect me to get my own lunch?"

  That kind of treatment usually made Hetta angry, but this morning she felt her anger slide away. Ida was a very lonely woman. It had to be difficult to be the richest woman in town and think no one was good enough for you. She was a prisoner of her privilege. At least Hetta was only a prisoner of poverty.

  "I'll leave you a cold lunch," Hetta said.

  "Seen anything you like?" Myrl asked Owen.

  "Not yet," Owen answered.

  "This is some of the best grazing land in Texas."

  They had stopped under the shade of a pecan and cottonwood grove along a dry creek bed. Owen had wanted to keep going, but he realized Myrl needed to rest. The old cowboy's presence was the reason ranchers had given Owen permission to ride anywhere he wanted.

  The open plain stretched before them, mile after mile of grassland broken up by a few clumps of trees along stream beds or a ribbon of woodland bordering the Nueces River and its tributaries. An incredible variety of unfriendly plants--cactus, mesquite, catclaw, dwarf oak, huajillo, black brush, and others--covered the plain, sometimes in impenetrable thickets.

  "I don't see enough cows," Owen said.

  "What makes you say that?"

  "I worked on a ranch long enough to know how many cows a piece of land can carry. I ought to see twice as many as we've seen today."

  "I told you we had rustlers."

  "Cortina hasn't been in this part of Texas in more than a year. It's not anybody coming over the border from Mexico. You've got rustlers right here."

  "Who do you have in mind?"

  "Laveau diViere."

  "Tell that story in town, and you're liable to find yourself in a fight."

  "So you're saying Laveau has set himself up as some kind of local savior."

  "Something like that."

  "Everybody buying into it?"

  "As long as he keeps the Reconstruction out."

  Owen knew he was up against a clever man, but he hadn't imagined just how cleverly Laveau would use his affiliation with the Union army. Owen knew the army wouldn't come this far inland, so Laveau must have hired some soldiers to help him carry off the deception. Owen would have expected Texans to turn on Laveau the moment they heard he'd fought for the Union, but they were even more angry at the treatment they were receiving at the hands of the army of occupation. Army tribunals had replaced civil courts. Union soldiers seemed to take an almost sadistic pleasure in demeaning or ridiculing Texans. Many had lost virtually everything they owned. Yet they were not only denied services paid for by their own state taxes, but also often publicly humiliated when they came hat in hand to beg some favor. Owen was beginning to realize that the truth might not be enough to hang Laveau. That realization only served to make the thirst for revenge burn more hotly inside him.

  "There's rustling going on, and it's not Cortina's bandits. I followed Cortina's trail from San Antonio, and he hasn't been within a hundred miles of Pinto Junction the whole time."

  The old man seemed to sag. "I've had a suspicion something was wrong."

  "What's the name of the ranch we're coming up on next?" Owen asked.

  "The Gwynne spread."

  "Hetta Gwynne?"

  "Yep. DiViere uses it to hold the herds he's moving to Mexico. He says he's a cattle buyer, which is why he's gone all the time," Myrl added.

  "Let's mount up," Owen said, heading for his horse. "I want to see this ranch."

  "Tom Manly don't like nobody poking around."

  They rode out. The sun beat down on them mercilessly. Owen looked forward to the coming of winter, relief from the sun, rain to nourish the parched land. The only streams with water in them were spring fed.

  "He probably doesn't want anybody knowing the ranch has the best water in the county," Myrl said.

  "How did it go to ruin?"

  "Pure neglect. Patrick Gwynne spent anything he made on liquor and women. Wouldn't have had anything to spend if Hetta hadn't learned to do half his work for him."

  Owen's lingering irritation at Hetta faded. He knew what it was like to have a worthless parent. He could only imagine what it was like to be a young girl left to do difficult and dangerous work. Maybe he couldn't blame her for jumping at Laveau's offer, but he could blame her for becoming a willing accomplice to his thievery.

  But maybe she didn't know Laveau was a thief. He'd fooled the rest of the town. Why couldn't he have fooled a young woman forced to work as a maid to have food to eat and a roof over her head?

  Owen told himself it was a foolish waste of time to feel sympathy for Hetta. She disliked him, distrusted everything he said, and had a fixed prejudice against men like him. Not that Owen was interested in her. She had a nice figure and he liked her spunkiness, but she wasn't pretty enough to hold his attention for more than a few minutes.

  "Hetta said she wants to rebuild her place, live on the ranch again one of these days," Owen said.

  Myrl harrumphed. "Not if she marries William Tidwell. He'll never live out here."

  "Why not?"

  "He's worked in his parents' store practically from the time he could walk. He doesn't know how to do anything else."

  "Maybe she'll marry someone else."

  "She'd better take William, dull as he is. She's too plain to catch another man."

  Owen felt an urge to tell Myrl that Hetta wasn't all that plain, that the young men of Pinto Junction could do a lot worse, but he was too surprised that he even wanted to go to Hetta's defense to say anything.

  "I thought Laveau was paying her to use her ranch."

  "He is. If he can remember to do it."

  Maybe Laveau's scorn of anyone he considered beneath him would provide Owen with a vulnerability he could exploit. If there were enough people who'd been treated badly, he might get
Ida Moody's uncle to start asking questions.

  "Tell me more about Hetta's ranch."

  "You can forget buying it. She wouldn't sell if she was down to her last nickel."

  "I don't want to buy it. I just want to know why Laveau wanted it instead of one of the others."

  It took a while and repeated questions before Owen got his answer. It wasn't the water or the grass, though they were some of the best in the area. It wasn't even the size. It was the position. The Gywnne ranch, following a stream that flowed to the Nueces, was long and narrow and cut all the way through the county.

  It provided a perfect escape route to Mexico for cattle rustled from ranches in the north and east.

  He wondered how much Hetta knew about her ranch. If it had been any other woman, he'd have said little or nothing, but Hetta had worked her ranch in her father's stead. Owen wasn't interested in Hetta, but he was beginning to respect her too much to want to see her involved with Laveau.

  "Do you come this way often?" Owen asked Myrl.

  "Nobody comes this way often. Tom Manly has made it clear he doesn't want people poking around."

  "That's an odd way to treat your neighbors." Owen pointed to a horse grazing close to the half-burned ranch house. "Does he live in the house?"

  "Nobody lives in it."

  "Then why would he be here?"

  "You can ask him just before he orders us off the place."

  Owen was curious about the Gwynne ranch, but he didn't plan to challenge Manly if the fellow refused to let him ride through. He'd ask Hetta for permission. She wouldn't want to give it, but she would, just to prove she wasn't afraid of anything he might find out.

  A couple of well-used trails connected a few of the ranches to Pinto Junction, but there wasn't anything like a road between the ranches. Owen and Myrl rode through the grass, flushing out sparrows, an occasional hawk, and causing small animals--mice, rabbits, and a young gray fox--to scurry out of their path. But he didn't see any cows. He was beginning to wonder if Laveau had fooled Hattie, offering to protect her ranch when he really meant to rob her of everything she had.

  No, that didn't seem right. If he was using this as a passageway for his stolen cattle, the last thing he'd want would be for Hetta to start asking questions. If he had set up an elaborate rustling operation, he would make certain all the important cogs stayed in place.

  But if that was the case, where were the cows?

  There were hoofprints everywhere. At some time in the recent past a large number of cows had been held on this ranch.

  "Grass has been grazed down low," Myrl observed.

  Owen nodded. "I wonder what Hetta would say about that."

  "Why don't you ask her?"

  Owen looked in the direction Myrl pointed. Hetta had just appeared on a rise a little distance behind the ranch house.

  Chapter Five

  Hetta wished she hadn't come out to the ranch. It hurt every time she had to look at the ruin of her home, knowing she couldn't do anything to change it. She was becoming more impatient with her exile in town, with her position as Ida's friend--and servant. She supposed it was her independent nature, which had been fostered by years of being on her own, but she was finding it more and more difficult to appear to be content, thankful.

  Maybe that was part of the reason she'd been so irritable with Owen. He had the freedom she wanted, and seeing him waste it made her angry. She didn't know what he was doing, but she doubted he wanted to buy a ranch. He was probably using that as an excuse to gamble and flirt for a while before moving on. Consequently, she wasn't the least bit happy when she saw Owen and Myrl riding toward the house. She was even less glad of the feelings that sprang up unbidden.

  There was no rational explanation for it, but she experienced a flush of pleasure. And excitement. Could she have been hoping she would meet up with him? Surely she couldn't be that stupid!

  As Owen and Myrl walked their horses toward her, they had plenty of time to see every part of the ruined house, the neglected outer buildings, the thorn-covered bushes that had grown up in what had once been her mother's yard. Hetta felt the heat of embarrassment burn her cheeks, and that made her angry.

  "You shouldn't be out here alone," Owen said when he reached her. "It's not safe."

  His comments caught her off guard. She didn't know what she'd expected, but not concern for her safety.

  "This is my ranch," she said, her ire beginning to deflate. "I'm safe enough here."

  "No woman is safe by herself."

  "Do you think I'm so weak that--"

  "You don't even have a gun. What would you do if you ran into bandits?"

  It was difficult to remain put out at a man who seemed genuinely concerned for her safety. Not even William had been so worried about her. She didn't understand why Owen should be different.

  "Tom Manly is around somewhere," she said.

  "Somewhere's not here, but you're safe now. Tell me about your ranch. You don't have to worry I'll to try to buy it," he said when she hesitated. "Myrl said you wouldn't sell. So you can come down off that potato hill and show me around."

  "This isn't a potato hill."

  "It looks like the ones we had in Virginia."

  "This isn't Virginia."

  "I know. Virginia was never this hot. And not every plant comes equipped with thorns."

  "It's how they keep from being eaten," she said.

  "I don't want to eat them."

  She repressed a bubble of laughter. "Longhorns do."

  "I'm not surprised at anything those miserable creatures do."

  "You can't hate longhorns and want to buy a ranch."

  "Why not? If I wanted to have a rattlesnake ranch, would I have to like them?"

  Only an insane person would want to raise rattlesnakes. "Why would you do that?"

  "I wouldn't. But if I did, I wouldn't like them."

  He'd obviously been in the sun too long. "There's really nothing to see except the remains of the house."

  "Lightning?"

  She nodded. Nearly all the damage was confined to the roof, but it might as well have been everything. It was impossible to occupy a house without a roof.

  "I was just about to ride back to town" she said. The less she saw of him, the better.

  "Can't you stay a little longer?"

  "I left Ida a cold lunch. I owe her a hot supper."

  "Dinner," Owen reminded her. "You and I have supper. Ida has dinner."

  Ida's little pretensions had often irritated Hetta, but it made her angry that Owen would use them to make fun of Ida. Hetta moved off the small mound--she had no idea why it was there--and started toward her horse. "I have to be going. Myrl can tell you anything you want to know. He was riding over this land before there were any ranches."

  "Where's your horse?" Owen asked.

  She pointed to a buckskin.

  "It doesn't have a sidesaddle."

  "Have you ever tried to rope a steer from a sidesaddle?" she asked.

  He grinned, and her stomach did a rapid somersault. Why did the miserable man have to be so handsome?

  "I learned to ride astride from the moment I got on a horse."

  "How do you manage to mount up wearing a dress?"

  "I wear pants underneath," she said, lifting her hem far enough to expose one pant leg. "And I mount up when no one's watching."

  "You're out of luck this time."

  "I don't need your help."

  "Is she always this sweet?" he said, turning to Myrl. Owen had dismounted, but Myrl had remained in the saddle. The difference between Texas and Virginia, she supposed.

  "Naw. Sometimes she's downright snippy."

  "Warn me if you see a snippy mood coming on. I don't think we poor Virginia boys are tough enough to handle Texas snippy."

  Hetta's mind didn't know what to make of Owen, but she was dismayed that her heart--or whatever she should call the undependable part of her that controlled her emotions and feelings--apparently had decided i
t wanted all this nonsense to mean that Owen liked her.

  Her mind rejected the notion as absurd, laughable, but the other part of her saw something appealing and was going after it. She decided her only recourse was a hasty retreat. Owen's actions might mean many things, but serious interest wasn't one of them.

  Hetta walked to her horse and stooped to remove the hobbles.

  "Let me do that." Before she could stop him, Owen had dropped to his knees and untied the hobbles. "You'll get your dress caught on the thorns."

  "Then I'll just have to get it uncaught." How did he think she'd survived until he got here?

  "Always take advantage of a man's offer of assistance, Hetta. It makes the man happy and makes you look gracious and ladylike."

  That was unfair. There was no way she could look gracious or ladylike. She had grown up as a cowhand and would go back to being one as soon as she could return to her ranch.

  "Thank you," she said with exaggerated politeness. "I couldn't have done it without you."

  "See. It's not hard when you try."

  She was certain he was mocking her, but he had a way of smiling that took the sting out of his words. No matter how often she got mad at him, she couldn't stay angry. There was just enough doubt to keep her wondering. But not hoping. That would be foolish. "I'm not used to depending on anyone," she said.

  "You're depending on Laveau."

  Whenever he mentioned Mr. diViere, everything about him changed in a way she didn't like.

  "He offered me a business deal. I accepted. That's no different from what anyone else does."

  "Except you're hand-in-glove with a traitor and a thief."

  "I'm not hand-in-glove with anybody." She took hold of the reins, put her foot in the stirrup, and mounted in one swift, practiced move. "Now, if you will excuse me," she said with exaggerated politeness, "I have to be going."

  "Wait--"

  But she had already started her horse down the trail that led from her ranch into town, the same trail her father had traveled so many times. It was difficult to remember she'd ever loved him, ever looked forward to his coming home. Laveau said her father had died a hero's death, leading a charge against the enemy, so she supposed she should be able to forgive him.