Cattle Baron's Daughter

by S. Dionne Moore

  Ryan tightened his fists and turned away. “Sometimes it’s better for a man to ride alone.”

  ❧

  Josephine’s dark eyes were on Olivia as soon as she entered the store. She didn’t ask what had transpired between them, but Olivia could see the question in her eyes. Troubled more than she liked by Ryan’s parting words, Olivia knew the man meant to do something. Soon. Revenge seemed such a harsh thing, but convinced as he was that her father had had something to do with the death of Martin Laxalt, or even that Jay Sattler was the one who pulled the trigger. . . .

  “If you want to choose between these colors”—Josephine wrestled the bolts of chambray onto the section of counter Papa Don had allotted her—“we’ll be done with all this.”

  Olivia reached out and cupped her hand over the older woman’s. Josephine’s dark eyes snapped to hers.

  “He’s hunting my father, isn’t he?” She held the woman’s gaze, waiting for the least flicker of guilty knowledge.

  Josephine’s shoulders slumped. “He is a good boy, but he cannot accept what is beyond his control.”

  “And what is that?”

  The older woman tried to withdraw her hand. “We are friends. I—”

  “If my father has done something wrong. . . If he is guilty of this thing, this murder, I must know.” She swallowed. Disbelief raged in her mind. Her father would never shoot another man. Ryan Laxalt was crazy.

  Josephine’s shoulders quivered. “I do not know what your father has done. I know my husband is dead. Shot by a man who remains faceless. How can I accuse him of a deed that I did not see?”

  “Your son seeks the truth.”

  Josephine’s eyes closed. “He is full of anger. But anger makes you blind.”

  “You don’t want to find out who killed your husband?”

  Something cold and fearful tightened Mrs. Laxalt’s features. “I fear the finding will get him killed.”

  Olivia digested those words. “I can’t believe that my father would kill anyone.”

  “It is often hard to believe the worst of those we love.”

  “Your son—was he not with your husband when all this happened?”

  “He returned after his papa was killed. Ryan has been away these past years. He left before your mama took sick.”

  Hard as she tried, she could not remember Ryan Laxalt as a boy. Not from socials or church or any other town events. But her world had been narrow as a child, and she expected there was much she had been oblivious to.

  “He was a Texas Ranger for many years,” Josephine said. Olivia did not miss the small smile of pride Josephine allowed herself. “Brought down many bad men.”

  Olivia recalled her uncle talking about Texas Rangers, Indians, and the outlaws they brought down. He’d been fascinated with all things West, and Olivia had often thought that if he’d had his druthers, he’d leave Aunt Fawn, move from Philadelphia to the West, and never look back.

  She didn’t know whether the fact was directed at her as a warning or as a passing comment meant to showcase a mother’s pride in her son. Whatever the reason, Josephine said nothing more. She bent her head to the task of cutting yardage, her hands whisking wrinkles from the fabric as she cut.

  nine

  Directly after her fitting, Olivia went to the newspaper and tried to engage Marv in a conversation on the whereabouts of Tom Mahone. Maybe he had picked up news of the Laxalt murder and the underlying tension in the territory.

  Marv’s world seemed focused around placing paper onto an easel of sorts. Olivia watched the man in silence, mesmerized by the machine itself, if not the man’s focus on his work. Marv glanced up at her before taking down two sticks with a thick blackened pad at one end. She saw why the brown end was stained when Marv moved to a tray and daubed a bit of stiff black ink on the ends. With movements sure and fast, he worked the paste between the ends of the sticks until it was smoother; then he patted it onto a tray of letters. He lowered the easel with the paper onto the tray and shoved it beneath a large, heavy-looking section. He pulled a handle once, then again, and rolled the platform back out. When he peeled the easel section back from the tray of letters, Olivia gasped at the wonder of seeing the process to make a printed paper.

  As many times as she had read the papers in Philly or enjoyed the books, she had never seen the process. “How wonderful!”

  Marv lifted the paper from the easel and held it carefully, brows knit.

  Olivia slipped over to see the paper he held. “Will you show me how to do that?”

  For the first time, Marv looked right at her, his hazel eyes were sharp, even hard. “Not for a woman. It’s messy work and hard.”

  “I could help put the paper in the easel thing—”

  Marv turned away and stepped toward a rack with other papers spread across it. Frustrated with the man’s terseness, she was tempted to turn and leave, but she worked here now, and she might as well get used to Marv’s silence—and he might as well get used to her presence.

  A little desk in the corner suited her purposes for the present, but without Tom’s guidance, how would she know what to write about? She went to the pages hanging along a drying rack. Dozens and dozens. They all seemed the same, but deep into the rows, she found a page that wasn’t. The paper was dry, and the date was from a month ago. The editor was listed as Jon Pembroke. She read the articles, little tidbits of town news, but it was the column on page two that bit deeply into her heart. Her father’s name appeared then disappeared beneath a layer of other names. Names she remembered from childhood. They were referred to as barons on the pages before her, and the writer was linking them to the death of a man. Bolder than the rest of the article was the notice right below it, posted by her father and spouting a warning that rustling from the big ranches would not be tolerated and would be dealt with swiftly.

  Marv was suddenly there beside her, his hand on her arm. “I’ll take that, miss. Mr. Mahone wouldn’t want you to have seen this.”

  She whirled on him. “Why?”

  “It’s Jon’s words. They didn’t quite see eye to eye on things.”

  “Jon?”

  “The old editor. Loved this paper and working for the town.”

  “He’s—he’s. . .dead?”

  Marv shrugged, but he wouldn’t look at her. “Left town real fast. Mr. Mahone’s the editor now.”

  “What do you know about this?” She pointed to the article on the second page. “About this murder.”

  “Sheriff Bradley never arrested anyone. Said there was evidence only that George had rustled from Bowman’s ranch, discovered during the roundup.”

  “Did you know the man?”

  “The sheriff?” Marv grimaced. “Not much of the law in that man, if you get my meaning.”

  “I meant the man accused of rustling.”

  “Knew George real well. Good man. Trying hard to make a living. It’s not right—” He stared down at his feet. She waited for him to finish.

  “I’ve said too much.”

  “But it’s not right for a man to steal another man’s cattle, right?”

  Marv held her gaze, eyes pinpricks. He held out his hand for the paper. “No. Now if you’ll just let me have that. . .”

  Olivia surrendered the sheet. Marv’s dialogue was the most he’d ever said to her. His barely constrained anger was evident even in the way he walked, each step more a stomp. It didn’t seem like a good time to introduce herself so he would stop calling her “miss” either, but being faced with more evidence that her father, and some of the big ranchers, were not held in high esteem added to her already troubled mind.

  Olivia wandered out onto the street before she formulated what she could do, if anything, with the information. Where was Tom Mahone in all this, and were George’s murder and the Martin Laxalt “rustling” charges related somehow? Landry’s was busy when she stepped inside, but Phoebe took one look at her face and motioned her through the dining room to the kitchen. Her friend’s hand on he
r shoulder directed her to a chair. Cold lemonade was pressed into her hand. She sipped at the drink, watching the owner’s blurred movements as he expertly cooked and filled orders. His nod in her direction was the only acknowledgment of her presence.

  Olivia processed the article again. The realization that her father’s warning might have led to George’s and Laxalt’s deaths was sickening. Her mother would have been appalled and, had she lived, never would have allowed her husband to go to such lengths to protect his interests.

  “You look pale as the moon.”

  Olivia blinked and raised her head. Phoebe’s wan smile gave her courage. “I just read an old paper from a month ago about a man’s death. George was his name. But there was something else, too. My father had penned a warning against those bent on rustling.” She tried to formulate the question that rose in her mind about the whole thing—the simmering anger of Marv and the sudden departure of the old editor coupled with the deaths of two men.

  Phoebe glanced over her shoulder. “I’ll be back for the lunch crowd, Mr. Landry.”

  Her friend motioned her to follow. Olivia got to her feet and followed Phoebe up the back steps to her apartment. She made herself comfortable in the same chair she’d sat in on her previous visit, and her eyes searched the face of the woman in front of her—the angle of Phoebe’s shoulders, the lines beside her eyes. Olivia’s fingertips went cold. With a mixture of dread and acceptance, she realized that the emotion on Phoebe’s face could only be identified as anger. And she thought she knew whom the anger was directed at.

  ❧

  Ryan knelt beside the gate. Traces of the crime were long gone, but he’d still returned to the spot where Bobby Flagg, foreman of the Laxalt ranch, had discovered the body of his father. Because of his worry over his mother and attempts to keep a firm hand on the roundup—no, he admitted, because of his anger at the deed—he’d allowed himself to believe his father a victim. Now, touching the very dirt that he imagined held vestiges of his father’s spilled blood, Ryan wondered if it was possible that his father had rustled cattle. That had been the accusation. Laxalt head counts had been up in spite of the hard winter of 1886–87 and the drought of the previous summer. Bobby had assured him that his father had worked hard to bring water in from the low-lying, spring-fed pond at the far end of the Lazy L.

  Ryan’s spine stiffened. The gate where he stood was about half a mile from that pond. Thirsty Sattler cattle could have smelled the water and bunched against the fencing, doing damage in their desperation for a drink. He swung into the saddle and debated. He could look at the fencing around the pond or he could talk to Bobby.

  It took him an hour to find the foreman, but when he slid from the saddle, Bobby was there with a ready grin on his ruddy face.

  “Cody and Ty are working ten head from the brush down there. Got their hands full.”

  Sweat streaks showed on the man’s face. He helped it along by smearing the back of his leather-clad hand across his forehead, leaving a dark stripe of dirt.

  “Looking like we can head out in a few more days.”

  Ryan nodded slowly, pondering Bobby’s words. “Sounds good,” he said, “I wanted to ask you something about that pond. Place where you found—” He squinted into the sun and swallowed over the bulge of emotion wedged in his throat.

  “Pond was a major player summer of ’86. Only place that had any water at all. That it was on Laxalt property nettled everyone. Sattler and Bowman both tried to claim it was theirs before that summer, but they got downright nasty about it when the drought hit. Let their cows push against the fence and break through. Me and Martin finally realized we’d always have to maintain a hard patrol on that section.”

  “Was he patrolling when he got shot?”

  “No. Not that far away from the pond. Ty was over there that night. Said he heard a shot but thought it was one of Sattler’s men shooting a critter of some sort. They’d been doing it throughout the day.”

  Bobby shifted in the saddle. “Me and the men went into town the other night for a drink and to look over the crowd for hands to hire. Heard some talk about you.”

  Ryan gave a stiff nod. “Expected as much. Whatever’s said, just don’t let my mama hear.” Josephine Laxalt would prefer to think of her son as honorable.

  Bobby inclined his head. “I was hoping it might help tame Sattler and Bowman some.”

  Ryan doubted it, and he already knew what Bobby’s opinion of the big ranchers was; they’d discussed it as soon as Ryan had arrived on the ranch. Everything congealed into a ball of frustration, tight and hard, deep in his stomach. He gripped the reins and funneled his rage into action. “Need an extra hand?” He was already turning the mustang toward the hollow where his men struggled to bunch the cows.

  “Sure, boss. Can always use an extra hand.”

  ten

  “I’ll be leaving town shortly. Starting up a little ranch of my own over by Bowman’s. He’s already given me trouble.”

  Olivia tried to process all that Phoebe was saying. Her friend would be leaving Buffalo. To start her own ranch. Alone?

  Phoebe’s eyes took on a glint. “I’m partnering with Jacob Isley. He’s got himself a little house out there already. It was my idea to use his land for cattle. He’s wanting to farm it, but I convinced him otherwise.”

  “You’re marrying him?”

  Phoebe pursed her lips. “I’m not the marrying sort. At least not yet. Might settle down someday. But that piece of land is big enough to hold us both, and there’s an outbuilding where Jacob’s already set up his things.”

  Olivia opened her mouth.

  Phoebe crossed to her, and the anger came back into her expression. “Bowman’s not playing nice. He’s already threatened Jacob. Your father was out there with him one day, trying to convince Jake to take the buyout he was offering. A generous sum, but we aren’t aiming to sell and move just because someone was getting too big for their britches and thinking we should.”

  “You said my father wasn’t a nice man.”

  Phoebe plucked at the material of her skirt. “They’ve gotten clannish. Going around small ranches and making all kinds of accusations.”

  “But. . .why?”

  Phoebe didn’t respond. She crossed to a table and began yanking pins from her hair. It fell around her shoulders in a stream that she brushed with long, languid strokes. Olivia met her eyes in the mirror, begging her friend for an answer.

  “It might be best”—Phoebe twisted her hair and inserted a pin—“if you use that reporting job to do some serious reporting.”

  Olivia couldn’t grasp what Phoebe meant.

  Her friend sighed and set the brush aside, facing her. “Tom Mahone is on their side and was hired to skew public opinion against small ranchers. Maybe he thinks by hiring you, you’ll report what he wants you to.”

  “Why would he think that? He doesn’t know me.” Indeed, their talk had been superficial at best during the journey west.

  “He knows you’re a Sattler.”

  ❧

  Ryan leaned against the mustang’s heaving side and uncinched the saddle then rubbed along the place where the cinch strap had lain. The horse’s hard run had done him good—made him feel alive in a way he hadn’t since coming to Buffalo, or since finding out his father was dead. No, murdered. He needed to remember that.

  Bobby, Ty, and Cody had retired for the evening, joking about how to prepare the fat rabbit Ty had shot into the dust on their ride back from the west field. The men were dusty and tired but in good spirits and confident of the fact that the really hard work was almost done.

  Ryan wanted to join them. They shared laughs as they built a small fire to roast the rabbit on, and he felt the pull to shed the yoke of responsibility and eat with them rather than endure the too-polite conversation, or even the pervasive disagreements, eating with his mother would offer.

  The rattle of a distant wagon brought him alert. The men, too, heard it and turned to scan the horizon. Bo
bby’s steps took him a few paces into the clearing where he could get a better view of the approaching people. Ryan interpreted the hard look Bobby sent his way. His foreman feared his father’s murderer might be coming back.

  He crossed to the man. “Not in a wagon. They’d be on horseback.” He knew who was in the wagon and sought to further reassure Bobby. “My mother insisted on riding back here with that Sattler woman.”

  Bobby’s shoulders relaxed, and he let out a low whistle. “Heard she was back. She was just a sprout when she left. Took her mama’s death real hard.” The man shrugged and turned away. “Not sure how to feel about having her here.”

  Ryan didn’t miss the irony of his mother riding with a Sattler, and neither did the men. Wasn’t that the whole reason he’d cautioned her against whatever friendship she was developing with Olivia? “I’ll make sure this is the last time she feels welcome here.”

  Bobby stopped, his broad back a barrier. “Whatever your mama wants is okay with me.” He turned his face in profile, and his words drifted over his shoulder. “Olivia Sattler is a pretty one, but she’s a Sattler just the same.”

  eleven

  Ryan was at his mother’s side as soon as Olivia brought the wagon to a halt. He reached up to help his mother down, not oblivious to the smile on her face that wilted as soon as she saw him. He hated to think his mother might actually be enjoying Olivia Sattler’s company while dreading his.

  “Now go help Olivia down.”

  “No need.” He let the words sink in, and waited for Olivia’s whiskey eyes to meet his. “She won’t be staying.”

  “I invited her for supper, Ryan.”

  He clenched his jaw tight, disgusted. His mother’s hand touched his elbow and squeezed hard against his biceps. He never would have thought she possessed such strength in her hands.

  “You can eat with the men tonight.”

  It was her own brand of rejection. A standoff of wills. She would not back down from befriending Olivia, and he would not back down from insisting she was the enemy. What played out in Olivia’s expression caught him square in the chest. She lowered her eyes and picked up the reins. Her left hand drifted to release the hand brake she had just set. Every line of her body seemed cowed with disappointment. Just once she glanced his way, and he saw the sheen in her eyes. His mother’s hand left his elbow as Olivia lifted the reins.