by Laura Crum
A person could love this, I thought. A person could love the ocean, too; it was possible. Many people did. It was no doubt some fault in my own nature that rendered it forbidding.
I don't know how long I stood there, staring and thinking. Long enough that I started to get cold. I was in the process of running the zipper on my sweatshirt up to the top and tying my hood firmly over my head when Gunner pricked his ears. His gaze was focused back down the trail, in the direction from which we'd come. His body stiffened.
In a second I saw what his more acute senses had foreseen-a horse and rider coming up the trail. Bronc, I realized a moment later. Bronc and the newly dark brown, bobtailed Willy.
For a second, indecision rushed over me. I'd come out here for a solitary ride, to think, not to talk to Bronc. But here he was. He'd seen me, certainly. I could hardly dive Gunner into the scrub and gallop off at this point. So I held still, patting Gunner's neck to reassure him, awaiting Bronc's approach.
He rode up to me quietly, nodding in greeting. He'd been out checking cattle presumably; Willy was carrying saddlebags and there were two ropes tied to the saddle.
"Hi, Bronc," I said.
"Well hello, sweetheart." He didn't look at me as he said it; he was scanning the pasture, his eyes sharp under the brim of his cowboy hat.
"You out doctoring?" I asked him.
"Yes, ma'am. A couple of those young calves had the scours this morning. I found one and gave him a shot of penicillin, but I can't locate the other."
For a second we were quiet, both of us looking over the Hollister Ranch, before he fixed his hard, old eyes on my face. "You ever figure out who killed Jack?"
"I'm working on it."
"So what've you come up with?"
"You said you could give Travis an alibi," I began, and he glanced at me sharply.
"I don't think that's true," I went on.
"The kid had nothing to do with it." Bronc's voice was harsh, an old man's voice. "You don't know one thing about it if you think Travis had anything to do with killing Jack."
For a long moment Bronc stared steadily at the ranch below us. "Travis hasn't got anything in the world but that ranch," he said slowly. "When he came here he was just sixteen, and he'd run away from some big city back east-Chicago, he said. I guess his mom was dead and his dad knocked him around a lot. So he just run away. Came out west to be a cowboy." Bronc chuckled.
"People used to say he was really Jack's illegitimate kid."
"People say a lot of things. Jack was sterile like I told you. When he was married to the first one there was a lot of carrying on about it. I knew."
Bronc leaned off the side of Willy and spat reflectively. "Travis never did want anything to do with his family; maybe that's what got the talk going. People figured Jack must be his real dad, 'cause the kid didn't have anyone else.
"But I remember like it was yesterday the morning that boy came walking down the drive. He was wearing a clean shirt and jeans and carrying a little bag no bigger than one of these saddlebags. Everything he owned was in that bag. I was cutting up a big old dead oak in the front pasture and he walked right up to me and asked for a job."
I could see it in my mind, such was Bronc's storytelling; the kid, poor but clean, the old man out in the pasture, working.
"Now I wouldn't've hired any old bum who walked down my driveway, but this looked like a good kid and I thought I could use some help that day. So I said, 'I'll give you a day's work.' " Bronc shook his head. "And damned if he hasn't been here ever since."
"Did you hire him to stay on or did Jack?" I asked curiously.
"I did. Jack left all that sort of thing to me." Bronc's chin lifted. "Trav's all right, sweetheart. I know that boy; he may have a temper, but he hasn't got any meanness in him. Travis could no more have shot Jack than he could've jumped over the moon."
"Did you know he was seeing Laney? Jack's ex."
Bronc laughed, a short, sharp bark. "Is that right? Well, I wouldn't mind seeing her myself."
“It gives him a motive, though. Laney's inheriting a lot of money." I waited, watching for Bronc's reaction.
He just looked steadily at me. "What I'm telling you is that Travis wouldn't do anything to hurt Jack, or to hurt his own chances of staying here on this ranch. He hasn't got anywhere else to go."
"What if," I said slowly, "he knew Jack was about to sell the ranch to some developers?"
For a second Bronc's impassive eyes were startled, but the expression was gone as fast as it came. "Wouldn't make no difference. Travis wouldn't have killed Jack."
"I still don't think you can give him an alibi, Bronc," I said gently.
"Sweetheart, you are barking up the wrong tree." Bronc's voice was hard. "I'm telling you Travis didn't do it."
"I think Travis is lying," I said quietly, watching Bronc the whole time. "I think that's why he's been so upset. I think he was over at my house last night, trying to scare me into staying out of this."
"Travis had nothin' to do with killing Jack." Bronc wouldn't meet my eyes.
"Okay," I agreed equably. "Maybe he didn't. Maybe he's trying to protect you. He knows you weren't on the ranch, because he was. He's afraid you were up in Tahoe."
There was a long moment of silence. Bronc's eyes flicked at mine and then away again. Shit. Why had I said it? I'd been thinking of this since yesterday, but I hadn't meant to put it directly to Bronc. I'd only meant to go on a ride and look at the ranch, see if I could understand any better.
Bronc's face had the appearance of carved oak, lined and brown, the same wooden consistency. Nothing in his eyes that I could read.
"The way I figure it," I went on deliberately, "you killed Jack to keep the ranch from being developed into housing tracts." Put baldly like that, it sounded ridiculous.
Still staring at Bronc, I tried to imagine what was in his mind. Grief? Anger? He seemed beyond all that, sitting there on his horse with his cowboy hat pulled low on his forehead, his coiled ropes at his side. More an icon than a man, an image welded to a tradition, the symbol of a way of life.
Eventually he smiled, or what passed with him as a smile. I'd noticed before that though he laughed and joshed and flashed those teeth a lot, he never really smiled.
"Are you gonna turn me in?" He said it almost lightly.
I gazed back at him. Maybe I should have been frightened, but I wasn't. It seemed impossible to be afraid of Bronc; we'd spent too much time sitting on arena railings together, teasing each other. I couldn't believe he'd hurt me.
Not answering his question, I asked him another. "Why'd you do it, Bronc? I mean I know why, sort of, but how could you? Jack was your friend."
Bronc turned his face away from me and looked back down at the ranch. For a long moment I thought he wouldn't answer, then he cleared his throat roughly.
"You didn't know Jack Hollister," he said, not taking his eyes off the ranch. "Didn't anybody know Jack Hollister but me."
TWENTY-SIX
What do you mean?" I asked him.
"Jack wasn't like people thought he was." Bronc kept not looking at me as he spoke, directing his talk to the ranch and the ocean beyond. "Ever since I've known him, ever since he was a kid, he could fool people. He had this nice way about him and he liked to make people like him, but Jack didn't really care about anything.
"I found that out early, right after Len died and Jack inherited the place. First thing he did was sell all Len's horses. Shit. Len worked his whole life to develop that horse herd. He loved those horses. Second only to the way he loved the ranch. Well, I already knew Jack wouldn't listen to anything, so I never said a word, I just asked him if he'd let me keep a couple of 'em. And he said sure; one thing about Jack-he liked to give people things. It made him feel good."
Bronc patted Willy's neck briefly. "One of those mares I kept was his mother. But anyway, about Jack, I don't know if I can make you understand how he was. He never cared about the land or the livestock except to make money on 'e
m, and he never gave a damn about any human being that ever lived, except as how that person made him feel good. And he never had any heart. Not from day one.
"I remember that first summer I worked here, I was teachin' him to ride colts and he was the most athletic son-of-a-bitch I ever laid eyes on. It all came natural to him. He rode those crooked, wicked suckers like it was as easy as a stroll in the park. And then one of them-a little grulla gelding it was-got ahead of him and doubled back and dumped his ass on the ground. And that great big kid just got up and walked off. He comes back five minutes later with Len's gun, and damned if he didn't want to shoot that horse."
Bronc leaned over and spat. "I knew all about Jack from that first summer, knew what he was and how different he was from his old man. Len was a good man, and Jack was his only kid; I guess Jack's marna died in childbirth, that's what I heard, anyway. So Len gave that kid any damn thing he wanted. And it just plain ruined Jack."
"So it was all right to kill him?" These were my first words since Bronc had started talking and he rebutted them with a flash of anger.
"Honey, you don't understand. I spent a lifetime with that son-of-a-bitch, and I don't know how to tell you what I knew about him. Only interested in Jack and playin' the goddamn big rancher-never gave a shit about anyone or anything else. That will he made, leavin' the ranch to the state-it was just because I asked him to. He didn't care about the ranch, but he always wanted me to like him. All his life he wanted me to think he was a big man, like everyone else did, and he knew I didn't. He was always trying to impress me."
"Didn't that make you like him a little?"
"Hell, no. I felt sorry for him sometimes, but mostly I felt sorry for ever' living thing he carne in contact with."
"So why'd you stay with him?"
"I didn't stay with him. I stayed on the ranch. Len, Jack's old man, he loved this ranch. He was raised on it, his daddy built it, and he told me more'n once how much it meant to his pa. I got to where I loved it, too. I wasn't goin' to leave it to Jack. Len didn't understand about Jack. Like most folks, I guess, he wanted to see the best in his kid. But I knew Jack would let the old place fall apart. He just didn't give a damn."
"But you went team roping with him. You hung around with him."
Bronc was silent awhile, looking down on the ranch, his hands folded quietly over the saddle hom. "Honey, it's hard to make you understand," he said at last, his voice rough. "It's like we were married to each other. One of those deals where you've been together forever and you more or less hate each other, but it's the only life you know."
Wind flurried in the pampas grass with a paperlike rustling, causing Gunner to cock a watchful ear. I thought about bad marriages and how they could be when people, for whatever reason, elected to stay and endure.
"I still don't understand how you could have killed him," I said finally.
"What the hell do you care? You didn't give a damn about Jack."
I was silent. In a sense, Bronc was right. I knew Jack as well, or as little, as I knew dozens, really hundreds of other people. He was just one of the many human beings who were part of the background of my life. Since his death, I'd been forced to recognize how slight that sort of knowing was. In fact, it was clear to me that I probably wouldn't have liked Jack if I had known him better. It had been shocking to think of him being killed, but no, I hadn't felt any grief over Jack.
I had felt a sense of dismay, though, and a strong sense of wrongness. This shouldn't have happened were the words that formed themselves in my mind.
"Murder is wrong," I said flatly. Simplistic, I know, but what else could I say? "To kill someone, other than to save your life, or protect someone else's, is wrong."
Bronc leaned off to one side of Willy and spat. "What about those bastards I killed in Korea?" I shook my head. "That's different," I told him, and was aware of how lame it sounded.
He waved his hand at the view in front of us. The old ranch, weathered in its hollow, the sheer hard drama of the rough coastline. "Isn't this worth more than most of the damn human beings you know?"
I had no answer. I stared at the land, graceful and harsh, and knew that to him it held the depth and power of home. What was it worth? My own childhood home, an apple farm in the Soquel hills, had been developed into housing tracts. What would I have done to save it? Killed another human being in cold blood?
"You shouldn't have killed Jack," I said finally. "You can't go around killing people, no matter how noble your motive is. It's just plain wrong. I can understand why you did it, but it was still wrong."
Bronc snorted. "What's wrong is to tear up this piece of land and build condos over it. And there purely wasn't any other way to save it. I tried. I argued with that son-of-a-bitch until I was blue in the face when he first told me what he planned to do. He wouldn't hear a word I said. Then, not but two weeks ago, I asked him if he still planned to sell the ranch. It's a done deal, he told me, I'll be signing the papers next week when I get back.
"Over my dead body, I told him, and he said, Well you better hurry up and die then. Oh, he thought it was all a big joke. You'll like this place I'm buying in San Benito County, he told me.
"Well, I looked him right square in the eye and said, I can't let you do this, Jack, your daddy would turn in his grave if he knew you would do something like this. You can't stop progress, pardner, was all he said." Bronc spat again. "The hell I can't, I told him. I can stop you. And Jack, he just turned and walked off. He signed his own warrant as far as I was concerned."
"But how could you actually kill him?"
"Honey, I did him a favor. I've shot upwards of a dozen old horses in my life, when their time was up, and I know how to do it. I'd put a little grain on the ground, and when their head was down, eating, I'd shoot 'em right between the eyes. They never felt a thing. I just took that old twenty-two, that I kept for the horses, and I did Jack the same way. He never knew what hit him."
"You filed the serial numbers off the gun and you probably wore gloves, didn't you?"
"Yup, I bought that gun years ago, but I figured it was best to be safe."
"And the silencer? Did you make it?"
"I sure did. Made it myself, right in that shop down there, out of a piece of lead pipe."
"And you waited in that glass-fronted coffee shop until you spotted Jack gambling."
"Now that's pretty sharp of you." Bronc actually looked pleased. "I wore this big slicker I had and carried the gun in the pocket. I just sat in there and read the paper until I saw Jack in the casino, gambling with that blonde. All I had to do was wait till he went out on the deck."
"How'd you know he would be there, or that he'd go out on the deck?"
"Well, I didn't know exactly, but I knew Jack. I'd gone up to Tahoe with him before, when he went to this vet conference. He always stayed in the same hotel and he always gambled at that same casino. And every time, when we were there before, he went out on that deck to look at the lake and smoke. So I waited."
"And when he went out the back door, you went out after him and shot him." The words chilled me.
"He never felt a thing," Bronc said again, defensively. "I know where to shoot a man from my time in Korea. Right at the base of the neck. He never saw me coming and he never felt one thing. I just pitched him over the railing into the lake and pitched the gun after him and walked back into the bathroom. No one noticed anything."
I could picture him doing it all right. I felt a sudden spurt of anger. “It won't work, anyway. The ranch was in escrow. The developers will probably still end up with it. You killed him for nothing."
Bronc's eyes shot to my face and I saw instantly that I'd made a big mistake. He'd gambled everything and he wasn't prepared to lose.
"The hell I did," he said, and for the first time I was afraid.
I picked Gunner's reins up off his neck, with the vague but powerful sense that I needed to get out of here. Bronc wasn't looking at me, he was fiddling with his rope, and I kicked Gun
ner forward.
There was a whizzing sound and I flinched as something jerked my arms tight to my sides at the elbows. He'd roped me, I realized a split second later, flung the loop over my head and shoulders in the effortless, oflhand style of a cowboy corral roping horses.
I turned and looked back at him and for a moment that seemed to occur in slow motion, we stared into each other's eyes, my sense of shocked disbelief giving way to real fear. That hard, implacable quality I'd seen once before-this wasn't the Bronc I knew. I clutched the horn with one hand and stabbed Gunner hard with the right spur.
Snorting, he cleared twenty feet in one great sideways swoop; I hung on desperately and spurred him again. I could see Bronc struggling to dally as the rope ran through his surprised hands, and then Gunner bolted forward in earnest, headed for the trail back down the hill.
Clinging to the horn with one half-confined hand, my body tense with fear, I waited for the jerk from behind that would snatch me off the horse and slam me to the ground. It didn't come. I could feel the rope trailing free behind me; we'd managed to yank it out of Bronc's hands.
Gunner was galloping now, running downhill, and it took every atom of skill I had to stay balanced on top of him with my arms pulled to my sides. My grip of the saddle horn was all that was saving me, that and the fact that I hadn't lost my stirrups. Still, the lurching, catapulting nature of his headlong, downhill gallop had my heart in my throat as I struggled frantically to stay on.
He slowed slightly when he reached a level spot, and I seized the chance to wriggle and twist my arms free of the now slack rope. In another second I flung the noose over my head and picked up the reins.
Gunner slowed still more when he felt me take control, and I looked back over my shoulder. Bronc was charging down the hill behind us, loop whirling-like any good ranch cowboy he carried a second rope.
Heart pounding, I dug my spurs into Gunner's ribs, sending him forward with a jump. Once again the landscape accelerated into a jerking rush-the brushy hillside barely perceived in my peripheral vision as I focused on the trail in front of me, striving to stay with Gunner's rhythm as he plunged down the grade. Every log, every hummock assumed a major importance as I tried to keep my weight balanced in the right spot.