The Cowboy

by Joan Johnston

  Owen stood his ground. “I’m not through—”

  “I sure as hell am!”

  Callie saw that her father intended to shove the Texas Ranger out of his way as he stomped past him, but Owen deftly stepped aside, and the two avoided coming to physical blows.

  Callie tugged her Stetson down low on her forehead, aware as she did so that her hand was shaking. She stuck her hands in the back pockets of her Levi’s to hide her agitation, eyed Owen ruefully from beneath the brim of her hat, and ventured, “That went pretty well, all things considered.”

  Owen, who had the tall, lanky look of all the Blackthorne men, along with a shock of black hair and piercing gray eyes, shook his head and chuffed out a laugh. “I figure it’s a good day when no shots are fired.”

  Callie caught herself smiling but sobered as the enormity of the loss struck her with renewed force. “Are you sure there isn’t any way to trace those four fillies without a brand?” she asked. “Freckles Fancy has such a distinctive blaze. Surely you could send out a description that would get her recognized.”

  Owen sighed and resettled his hat. “There are a hundred thousand horses in Texas with distinctive blazes. My suggestion is to brand what you have left that hasn’t been branded. It won’t prevent theft, but it’ll give us a better chance of recovering your stock if this ever happens again.”

  Callie lifted her gaze to meet Owen’s. “You think this might happen again?”

  “Face it, Callie. You made yourself an easy mark. If you don’t do something to improve the situation, what’s to keep the thieves from coming back to help themselves again?”

  “I can’t figure out how they managed to get in and out without getting caught the first time,” Callie replied. “Unless they had the kind of help my father suggested.”

  “You’re barking up the wrong tree if you think my family had anything to do with this.”

  “You did it all right!” a childish voice behind Owen accused.

  Owen stepped aside as Callie’s ten-year-old son Eli took an angry step forward. The boy glared at Owen, his hands clenched at his sides. Callie drew a sharp breath, wondering if Owen would see the resemblance, so obvious to her, between her son and Owen’s brother Trace.

  Eli was tall for his age but rail thin, with narrow shoulders and big feet he had yet to grow into. His eyes were the same sky blue as her own, but his sharp cheekbones and square jaw and slash of mouth were all Blackthorne.

  Callie had been careful over the years to ensure that Eli did not cross paths with any Blackthornes. She had convinced her family that Nolan Monroe was Eli’s father with the story that they had slept together when she was home from college for the long Christmas holiday. But Owen knew about her relationship with Trace.

  Callie held her breath as Owen surveyed the boy from top to toe, expecting him to ask why she’d kept Trace’s son a secret from him. Owen merely observed, “A man can cause a lot of harm making accusations without proof.”

  “You’re a Blackthorne. That’s all the proof I need!” Eli retorted.

  “Eli! Apologize to Mr. Blackthorne.”

  “I won’t!”

  “I’m sorry, Owen,” Callie said. “Ever since Nolan died—” Callie felt the sting in her nose that warned of tears. She closed her eyes to hold them back, but there was nothing she could do to stop the quiver in her chin. The thickness in her throat made it painful to swallow.

  Every time she thought she was over Nolan’s death, something like this would happen to remind her how much she missed him. Nolan had not been her first love, but she had grown to love him. And he was the only father Eli had ever known.

  Callie opened her eyes in time to see the stricken look on Eli’s face before he glowered at Owen and said, “This is all your fault!”

  Callie understood her son’s behavior. Eli had been mad at the world since his father’s death, and the Blackthornes made a convenient target for his anger. But there was no way the Blackthornes could be blamed for Nolan’s death from colon cancer. “Go back to the house, Eli.”

  “Gram says to tell you breakfast is on the table,” Eli said. “You’re not invited,” he spat at Owen.

  “Eli!” Callie said, appalled at her son’s rudeness.

  “No Blackthorne is ever gonna sit at our table, Mom. Grampa says they’re all lying, cheating—”

  “That’s enough!” Callie said, cutting off her son. “Go back to the house. I’ll be there as soon as I’ve finished here.”

  Her son shot a look of disdain in Owen’s direction, then turned and stalked away.

  “Lot of hate in that kid,” Owen murmured. He turned and sought her gaze. “Kind of hoped you’d be the one to put an end to that.”

  Well, he hadn’t forgotten she’d once loved a Blackthorne. Owen had discovered her relationship with Trace during his sophomore year at Texas A&M University in College Station, when he and his twin brother Clay had driven down to Austin one weekend to visit Trace and caught Callie in his bedroom.

  “I’ve done my best to convince Eli the Blackthornes aren’t the devil in disguise,” she said. “But it hasn’t been easy when his grandfather blames all his troubles on your father.”

  “Even when the accusations aren’t justified,” Owen pointed out.

  “Don’t defend Blackjack to me,” Callie retorted. “Your father has done enough harm over the years to warrant the black name he bears, and my brother lives in a wheelchair because of you!”

  Owen’s gray eyes flared with anger. And pain. It was the pain that made her wish back the words she’d spoken. But it was too late for that.

  “How is Sam?” Owen asked at last.

  He’s an embittered, antisocial alcoholic.

  Callie held her tongue. They wouldn’t be making a TV movie-of-the-week anytime soon featuring Sam Creed coping nobly with his paralysis. Sam had railed violently and vehemently against his fate ever since he’d woken up in the hospital and learned he would never walk again. But she would never betray her brother’s shortcomings to anyone outside the family. Especially not to the man who had made Sam so much less than he could have been.

  “Sorry I asked,” Owen muttered when she didn’t answer.

  Owen had already turned to leave when she said, “Sam’s become something of a computer whiz. He keeps himself busy doing the ranch paperwork.” When he’s sober.

  Owen managed a smile over his shoulder. “I’m glad to hear it. I’ll call you if I get any word on your stolen stock.”

  Callie spent the time it took her to walk the distance from the horse barn to the ranch house trying to regain some measure of inner calm. It was a losing battle.

  The official visit from Owen Blackthorne had brought the past barreling back, and all her fears along with it. Callie had managed to avoid Trace Blackthorne during the three months he’d been back at Bitter Creek, but if he stayed around, it was inevitable that she would meet him again face-to-face. How would he look at her? What could she say to him?

  Callie knew she had hurt Trace when she married Nolan, but she hadn’t known what else to do. If she had remained single, it was too likely Trace would have figured out Eli was his son. As badly as Sam had coped with his paralysis, marrying Trace had been out of the question. And she had refused to take the chance that Trace would settle for having Eli, if he couldn’t have them both.

  She had made a good life with Nolan Monroe. She’d learned to love Nolan for his kindness and his gentleness and his unwavering support. But she’d missed the passion she’d shared with Trace. Nolan Monroe was not the other half of her soul.

  On his deathbed, Nolan had urged her to tell Trace about his son, but Callie had been careful never to promise she would. She was afraid of what Trace might do if he ever found out the truth. What if he wanted custody of his son? In this part of Texas, the Blackthornes generally got what they wanted. She would never give up her son. And she could never marry his father. So what choice did she have but to keep Eli a secret from Trace?

 
“ ’Bout time you showed up,” her father said as she crossed the wooden back porch and shoved open the screen door. The hardwood floor creaked as she stepped inside the kitchen to be greeted by the smell of bacon and strong, black coffee. The house was old, and had become more decrepit in the years since Sam’s accident, when they’d been so pinched for cash. But Callie loved every curling piece of flowered wallpaper, every water-stained ceiling, and every warped floorboard of it.

  The original Three Oaks, built even before the days of the Texas Republic, had been a cotton plantation along the Brazos River, but the Southern mansion where the first Creed ancestors were born and had died had burned down during the Civil War. Southern Major Jacob Tyler Creed had built a new house similar to the first Three Oaks but much farther south, on the small bit of land along Bitter Creek that was all he had left after a man who called himself, “Blackthorne, without the mister,” had stolen his inheritance.

  The two-story antebellum mansion where Callie had been born, with its tall columns across the face and porch on the second floor, was situated near a stand of live oaks that provided wonderful shade in the summer. The kitchen was large enough to accommodate an immense trestle table, which was filled now with her family.

  “Is that sonofabitch gone?” Sam demanded when he spotted her.

  Callie shot Sam a reproving look, the reason for which became apparent when her four-year-old daughter Hannah parroted, “Is that sun-bitch gone?”

  Callie crossed and lifted Hannah out of her brother’s lap. She glared at him over Hannah’s head, noting his brown eyes were bloodshot before he guiltily dropped his glance. “Yes, he’s gone,” she said as she settled her daughter into the youth chair next to Sam’s wheelchair.

  “Would you bring some more butter to the table?” her mother asked.

  Callie watched as Eli crawled up onto one knee in his chair and stretched across the length of the table for another biscuit. She tugged his ear to get his attention as she passed by on her way to the refrigerator. “Ask Gram to please pass the biscuits,” she instructed.

  Eli dropped back into his seat with a sullen look and said, “Pass the biscuits, Gram.”

  “Please pass the biscuits, Gram,” Callie corrected. She stood by the refrigerator door, her eyes focused on her son, noting the mutinous thrust of his chin, wishing Nolan were here, knowing that Eli was testing her. His behavior had become increasingly defiant during the last months of Nolan’s illness. Since Nolan’s death, he had become nearly incorrigible. She kept hoping that if she were patient, yet persistent in demanding courtesy, his attitude would improve.

  “Stop nagging the boy,” her father said. And in the same breath to Eli, “Do what your mother says.”

  “Please, please, please pass the biscuits,” her son said in an aggrieved voice.

  “For cripe’s sake, take them!”

  Callie groaned in disbelief as her teenage brother Luke lobbed the basket of biscuits across the table into her son’s outstretched hands.

  Callie crossed back to the table with a stick of butter, unwrapped it, and dropped it into the chipped saucer they were using for a butter dish, before she settled into the chair next to her daughter.

  There were two empty seats on the opposite side of the table. One had been occupied by Nolan. The other belonged to her sister Bayleigh, who was away completing her final year of clinical work toward her degree in veterinary medicine at Texas A&M. They had both been her allies in a household that was divided by the difficult financial choices that were constantly being forced upon them. Like the one they would have to make now.

  “Your father has been telling me we can’t expect to recover the stolen fillies,” her mother said as Callie served herself a spoonful of scrambled eggs and two slices of bacon.

  “It’s doubtful,” Callie conceded. She saw Freckles Fancy in her mind’s eye, then thought of the playful filly cut up for steaks. Suddenly, she had no appetite.

  “What are we supposed to do now?” Luke asked. “I told you we should have gotten some insurance.”

  “We couldn’t afford insurance,” Callie reminded him. She heard the fear in Luke’s voice. At sixteen, her brother was old enough to understand the desperate nature of their financial situation, but still too young to be of any real help improving it. Callie took a deep breath and said, “We’ll just have to lease our pasture to hunters for the season.”

  “No,” her father said in a hard voice. “I won’t have those corporate bigwigs from Dallas and Houston tramping around my property pretending to be the Great White Hunter and mistaking my fence posts for turkeys, my trucks for wild boar, and my cows for deer!”

  Sam, Luke, and Eli laughed, and Callie couldn’t help smiling at the picture her father had painted. Actually, he wasn’t far off the mark. The corporate honchos from around the country who leased tracts of Texas pasture for hunting were likely to be novices. It was entirely possible they would lose a cow or two to a stray bullet or find one of their trucks peppered with buckshot pellets.

  But they could earn far more leasing the land for hunting than they could putting it to use merely as pasture for cattle, and the land would do double duty if it were leased, since they could still use it to graze their stock. Unlike the Blackthornes, they had no oil under their land to provide a financial cushion in hard times.

  “We need the money,” she said flatly.

  “How much can we realistically expect to get if we lease the land to hunters?” Sam asked.

  “The going rate is $10,000 per gun, per season, and that’s for a small pasture of ten thousand acres,” Callie said.

  Luke whistled, and his brown eyes lit up. “We could make a fortune, Dad. I could get a Harley!”

  “No motorcycle, Luke,” her mother said. “They’re too dangerous.”

  Her father’s features remained obdurate. “We’d have strangers all over the damned place.”

  “I think that’s a price we have to pay,” Callie said.

  “Never.”

  “What else can we do?” Callie asked.

  “I’ll borrow from the bank,” her father said.

  “They won’t loan us any more money. Three Oaks is mortgaged to the hilt. We’re in hock with every supplier we have. The market for beef is down, and without some form of income, now that the two-year-olds I planned to sell at the Futurity auction are gone, we’ll be lucky to make it past Christmas without going belly-up.”

  “Blackjack did this,” her father muttered. “He stole those fillies. I know he did.”

  “We don’t know that,” Callie said. “We certainly can’t prove it. Right now, we have to figure out how to replace our missing stock. And the best way to get some quick capital is to lease our pasture for hunting.”

  To Callie’s surprise, her mother took her side in the argument. “Sometimes we have to make sacrifices,” she said. “Do what’s best, even if it isn’t what we’d like.”

  The words were familiar to Callie, a refrain she’d heard all her life. Sacrifices have to be made. She had her mother as an example, who did without Vera Wang dresses or season tickets to the Houston Opera or a racy little Mercedes Benz coupe or any of the other luxuries she might have expected from life on a ranch the size of Three Oaks—which was small only in comparison to an operation like the Bitter Creek Cattle Company—and never complained.

  She admired her mother and had tried hard all her life to emulate her. “Mom’s right, Dad,” she said. “We have to do what’s necessary to survive, whether we like it or not.”

  “It’s only for a year, Jesse,” her mother said.

  “It’s only for a year, Jesse,” Callie’s four-year-old daughter chirped.

  Her father’s eyes focused on Hannah’s tiny, cherubic face, before he met her mother’s steady gaze. Callie watched her father’s shoulders sag in defeat.

  “Aw, hell,” he said. “Lease the damned land. I’ll roast in hell before I let Blackjack beat me.”

  “All right, Dad. I’ll take care of
it.” Callie had won, but she didn’t feel triumphant.

  “The Ratter S put a Notice of Auction in the Bitter Creek Chronicle,” Sam said. “Dusty Simpson ought to have some pretty good stock we can buy at bargain prices.”

  “Thanks, Sam,” Callie said.

  “We might as well pick up whatever scraps Blackjack has left,” her father muttered.

  “What do you mean?” Callie asked.

  “Blackjack stole the Rafter S from Dusty Simpson the same way he’s been trying all these years to steal Three Oaks from me.”

  “Dusty Simpson lost his ranch because he lost his leg in a car accident,” Callie said.

  “What makes you think that ‘accident’ was an ‘accident’?” her father said, lifting a brow. “You only have to take one look at your brother to know the depths the Blackthornes will sink to when they want something. The only way Clay Blackthorne could become wide receiver for the Bitter Creek Coyotes was if Sam was out of the way. So Owen took care of the matter for him.”

  “It was an accident,” Callie protested.

  “Yeah,” her father said sarcastically. “Like Dusty Simpson ‘accidentally’ lost his leg in a hit-and-run. And those four fillies were ‘accidentally’ stolen a few months before the Futurity sale.”

  Callie was disturbed by her father’s fixation on Jackson Blackthorne as the root of all evil. She couldn’t believe Blackjack would resort to such underhanded methods to get what he wanted. He was simply too rich to need Dusty Simpson’s small ranch. And though she didn’t doubt Blackjack wanted Three Oaks, he wasn’t entirely responsible for their current financial straits. As Owen had pointed out, Blackjack could hardly have much use for four two-year-old quarter horses. They wouldn’t even be eligible to enter the major cutting competitions for another year.

  But her father’s suspicions were grounded on facts. Clay Blackthorne had become the wide receiver for the Bitter Creek Coyotes. Someone had managed to get a horse trailer in and out of Three Oaks without being noticed by anyone on Blackthorne property. And the Blackthornes had ended up with Dusty Simpson’s ranch.

  “Too bad the days of frontier justice are past, when you could hang a horse thief,” her father said. “I’d pay good money to see Jackson Blackthorne jerking at the end of a rope.”