MAGGIE OSBORNE
The Best Man
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To the two Georges in my life. I love you both.
Prologue
This here is my last will and testament, me being Joe Roark, owner of the King’s Walk Ranch located seven miles south of Klees, Texas.
The thing is, none of my three daughters is worth a sick spit. Not a one of ’em ever showed a lick of interest in the ranch that paid for all them fancy dresses. I’d as soon leave all of them nothing but a hearty good riddance, but if I do that, then everything I worked my whole life for will go to my fourth wife, Lola Fiddler Roark, and she ain’t worth a sick spit either, her being the most recent and the most annoying of my wives.
This here lawyer fella, Luther Moreland, says I can leave my ranch and my worldly goods to charity and cut ’em all out if’n I want to, but that’s a hell of a thing, now ain’t it? That a man should work his whole entire life to benefit some charity folks who don’t know his name and don’t care, and who don’t know what a hard thing it is to have daughters instead of sons. Even if the worthless women in this family sell the ranch and spend the gains of my sweat and labor on furbelows, which is exactly what I expect, at least it will be family driving a stake in my dead heart and not strangers.
I been thinking about this problem ever since I got sick and I got some things to say about it.
If I got to choose between my useless daughters and my worthless wife as to who gets to squander the fruits of my life’s work, then I guess I’d pick my own blood, my daughters. They been disappointing me longer than Lola, but a man expects more of his wife, so though the period has been shorter, Lola’s caused more than her share of misery and upset and I aint happy about that or her.
So here’s what I come up with and Luther says I can do it. I leave my ranch, my money, and all my worldly goods to my worthless three daughters, but they got to earn it. They got to prove they’re as good as the men I wish they’d been. They got to walk in my boots and learn what ranching means, learn what it meant to be me, Joe Roark.
Luther’s going to write this up in big legal words and write separate pages with the details, but here’s the gist of it, and now I’m talking directly to Alexander, Frederick, and Lester, my daughters. If you three want to get a penny of my estate, then here’s what you got to do. You girls got to drive a herd of longhorns to market in Abilene, Kansas. The three of you got to deliver and sell 2000 beeves at the end of the drive. And you got to work that drive like you was the men you should have been.
Luther will explain everything, and he’ll release enough expense money to cover the journey and hire on a trail boss, a cook, and nine drovers. A successful drive requires at least twelve hands, so you three got to make up the difference. This aint going to be no cakewalk, it’s a work trip. If any one of you aint got what it takes to join up and work your share, then you forfeit any claim on my estate.
If those what join in the cattle drive fail to get them steers to Abilene and sell 2000 of them, then my fourth and worst wife, Lola Fiddler Roark, gets everything.
May the best man win.
Chapter 1
Listening to the talk around town, Dal Frisco could believe that Joe Roark’s funeral was the biggest event to happen in Klees, Texas, since the war ended five years ago.
As every business in town was closed as tight as a new bottle of whiskey, and he had nothing to do until the interviews began Monday, Dal stood on the hotel porch and watched Roark’s hearse roll past. From the line of buckboards, horses, and gigs, it appeared that no one in the county wanted to miss seeing Roark lowered into the ground.
Actually, he supposed that included him. It wasn’t every day that a dead man offered the living a second chance. When he considered Roark as a possible benefactor, he felt like he ought to join the procession to the cemetery and take his hat off for the man. He was shaved, shined up, and sober; and there wasn’t anything else to occupy his time.
By the time he overtook the tail end of the cortege, most of the buckboards and wagons had reached the cemetery. Falling into step behind the mourners, Dal angled around for a view of the gravesite when he reached the assemblage. He didn’t care about seeing Roark’s expensive brass-fitted casket, but he did want a look at Joe Roark’s daughters.
He spotted them at once and knew who they were because they had the polished look he expected from a rich man’s daughters, and because they were the only seated mourners. When the first prayer began, Dal pulled off his hat and held it against his chest. He gave Roark’s casket a passing nod, then turned his attention back to the daughters.
They looked like delicate, high-strung types who carried smelling salts in their fringed wrist purses. He could have believed they were society women who had never set foot on a working ranch. If Dal had been a lot less desperate, he would have turned his butt around and headed back to San Antonio.
The same dispiriting thought had crossed his mind yesterday when he’d recognized a half dozen other trail bosses in town, undoubtedly sniffing around the Roark job like he was. No right-thinking employer—even three ignorant women—would trust a herd to Dal Frisco if he could hire Shorty Mahan or W.B. Pouter. He should just turn around and walk away. He might have done it except he suddenly noticed a detail he’d missed on the initial once-over.
One of the daughters was sitting in a wheelchair.
Shock stiffened his shoulders and he stared. Accepting three greenhorn, coddled society women as hands on a cattle drive lay just barely within the realm of imagination. If he hired experienced men, the best of the best, to fill out the outfit, he figured he might be able to take up the slack and work around the women. Maybe. If he was luckier than he’d been in the past. But putting a woman in a wheelchair in the middle of a cattle drive would be sheer insanity. No trail boss in full possession of his senses would consider such an invitation to disaster.
That thought stopped him cold. One man’s disaster was often another man’s opportunity.
Craning his neck, he skimmed a thoughtful glance over the crowd, looking for Mahan and Pouter. Only a desperate man would agree to take a woman in a wheelchair on a seven-hundred-mile cattle drive. And last he’d heard, Mahan and Pouter were a long way from desperate.
Feeling more hopeful, Dal stepped behind a woman short enough that he had a clear view of the daughters over her bonnet. They didn’t look enough alike to be related, let alone be sisters, he decided, but every one of them appeared more elegant in her black funeral clothing than most of the women standing around him. If Joe Roark had been the kind of man who cared about such things, he would have felt proud that his daughters were putting him down in style.
He also noticed the sisters were dry-eyed. Either they weren’t the type to display emotion in public, or their father’s passing hadn’t plucked too deeply at their heartstrings. Or it might be they were furious at the old bastard for tying their inheritance to a cattle drive.
A different man would have said the Roark daughters were beautiful, but Dal didn’t care for the patrician superiority of the blonde in the wheelchair, nor the sullenness of the one he guessed to be the youngest. The middle daughter, however, riveted his attention. Her black hair and green eyes fit the
description he’d been given of Frederick Roark, the daughter who had run off to join a touring theater company. She was definitely a beauty, and bold, too. Instead of fixing her eyes on her father’s casket, she scanned the mourners as if she were looking for someone.
Dal didn’t believe the widespread conviction that actresses were whores who could spout Shakespeare, but he did know that a woman who defied her father and threw away her reputation to run off with a touring company was defiant, willful, and reckless. This daughter was trouble.
Her slow scan of the mourners reached him and paused, probably because he was staring at her. But most men would stare, and most would experience the same shock of electric connection that he felt when their eyes met and held.
He should have looked away when she caught him inspecting her, but he met her gaze head-on, admiring thick lashed, emerald-colored eyes and smooth milky skin. A full lush mouth. Eyebrows a shade lighter than black curls framing the oval face beneath her hat.
Whatever she saw in his expression, it caused her to raise her chin a notch, square her shoulders, and narrow her gaze into a flashing spit-in-your-eye glare. He could almost hear her thinking. “Stare all you want, cowboy, I don’t give a damn about your opinion.” If it hadn’t been inappropriate, he would have laughed. Instead, he shifted his gaze to the sullen daughter.
Faint shadows circled the dark eyes she fixed on her father’s casket, but at least she was paying attention to the recently deceased. As Dal watched, a man standing behind her leaned and whispered something in her ear. She didn’t look up, but her eyelids fluttered and she stiffened. Her gloved hands clenched in her lap, then she nodded.
The man placed a proprietary hand on the top rung of her chair and touched his watch pocket. A brief victorious smile twitched his lips, suggesting he was pleased that the preacher was about to plant Joe Roark. Most likely he was Ward Hamm who, according to the hotel clerk, had commenced a serious courtship of Lester Roark.
Finally, Dal turned his attention to the sister who worried him most, the one in the wheelchair. It only took a moment to squash his hope that the wheelchair was a temporary measure. Without glancing down, she dropped a gloved hand to the wheel beside her armrest and made a slight adjustment. That kind of unthinking motion was the result of long familiarity.
Frowning, he moved a few yards so he could see her feet. One tasseled black boot peeped from her hem and her skirt lay flat on the right side, suggesting that she was missing one leg, probably from just below the knee. The question was, could she ride a horse?
Scowling, he lifted his gaze. This daughter was the aristocrat in the bunch, and by elimination, she had to be Alexander Roark Mills, the oldest of the three. For a price, the hotel clerk had informed him that Mrs. Mills lived back East in Yankee territory, and she had buried her husband last spring. The clerk had not mentioned that she was confined to a wheelchair.
Her honey-colored hair was parted in the center and swept back into a stylish knot beneath the brim of her hat. Black pearls at her throat and ears caught the weak glow of the winter sun. Although she kept her face turned toward the preacher’s droning voice, Dal had a clear view of high cheekbones, a sharp thin nose, and a firm clean profile. Unlike Frederick, this sister did not wear her emotions for all to see, but her stiffly erect posture suggested an excess of pride. This sister would be difficult to second-guess, and she would not easily admit to a mistake.
As the pallbearers lowered Joe Roark’s casket into the ground, Dal patted his vest pockets, looking for a cigar, and he gave the Roark sisters a final once-over. Not one of them looked capable of performing a task more strenuous than lifting an embroidery hoop. He doubted any of them had ever ridden a cutting horse or coiled a lariat. It wouldn’t surprise him to learn that the closest they’d been to a longhorn was the beef on their supper plates. Two years ago, he would have walked away from this job and never looked back.
Once the service ended, he stepped out of the way as the mourners filed past the seated sisters, murmured a word or two, then dropped a handful of Texas dirt on top of Joe Roark. That’s when he spotted a woman he hadn’t noticed because she’d also been seated, but on the near side of the grave opposite the sisters.
The only person unaccounted for was Roark’s wife, but Dal doubted this woman could be the wife because she was wearing dark grey, not black weeds. Moreover, the auburn knot on the nape of her neck didn’t show a speck of grey as he would have expected on a woman old enough to be the mother of three grown daughters.
Then he noticed the way she held one shoulder a little higher than the other, and the way her head tilted toward the high shoulder. He’d known a redheaded woman in New Orleans who held her shoulder and head like that. He’d never forget her.
Curious, he walked through the headstones, circling around behind the sisters, delaying the moment when he looked at the face of the seated woman in grey. It couldn’t be Lola Fiddler. Joe Roark might spend a week in Lola’s bed, but he would never have married a woman like her.
But damned if it wasn’t the same double-crossing Lola Fiddler who had almost gotten him killed. She was dressed expensively and wearing more paint than she’d worn in the past; otherwise, marrying a rich man hadn’t changed her much. She was still brazen enough to show cleavage at her husband’s funeral and wear what she damned well pleased—including a smug expression that announced she didn’t give a cow chip what the good citizens of Klees thought of her.
As if she sensed someone watching, she raised her head and ran a glance over the people moving past the gravesite. Her gaze slid over Dal, then came back, and her eyebrows lifted in recognition. If she was surprised or dismayed to discover him at her husband’s interment, nothing in her expression revealed it. In fact, Dal thought he identified a flash of amusement in her eyes and the flicker of a tiny smile. His own eyes narrowed, and he bit down on his back teeth.
Slowly, he lifted two fingers to his hat brim, offering the minimum gesture of courtesy. Lola being Lola acknowledged his salute by dipping slightly forward, enough to expose a deeper glimpse of cleavage. A low hissing buzzed down the line of mourners. The widow Roark was obliging the town gossips with enough scandal to fuel tongues for a long time to come.
Dal flipped his cigar toward a fallen headstone, pushed his hands in his pockets, and glanced at the sisters again, hating it that his future depended on them.
On the other hand, the Roark cattle drive had just gotten a lot more interesting. Learning that Lola Fiddler was Roark’s widow gave him an added stake in helping the Roark sisters earn their inheritance. When he’d ridden into Klees, he’d needed this job. Now he wanted it too.
“There has to be a way that we can get our rightful inheritance without going on a cattle drive,” Freddy said again, scowling out the parlor window. In the distance she saw two King’s Walk hands riding after a half dozen longhorns. She could easier imagine herself strolling down Main Street in her shimmy and stockings than she could visualize herself chasing cattle.
“You were there when Luther Moreland read Father’s will,” Alex said from behind her “There’s nothing ambivalent about Father’s last wishes or about the list of instructions and conditions he drew up. Unless we do this, that woman gets everything.”
The heavy draperies framing the windowpanes were dusty and permeated with the odor of cigar smoke. For a moment the smoky smell was so strong that Freddy could almost believe Pa stood behind her, looking out at his land over her shoulder. Pressing her lips together, she turned away and walked to the fire flickering in the grate, extending her hands to the flames.
“Even if we agree, how can we possibly succeed?” she asked Alex and Les. “That’s what makes me so furious. Pa knew we couldn’t turn ourselves into cowhands. Lola’s going to get everything in the end.” She waved an angry hand indicating the ranch house, the barn and outbuildings, the land and the cattle. “Damn him. It isn’t fair!”
“Please.” Les raised a hand to her temple. “Pa’s two days in
the grave. If you can’t say something nice, don’t say anything. And must you be so coarse? You know swearing offends me.”
“Well pardon me. I certainly wouldn’t want to offend your tender sensibilities.” She rolled her eyes, but the truth was she didn’t care what Les thought. Long ago she had decided since everyone in Klees, including her own family, thought she was an immoral woman, she might as well behave like one, “You can quit defending Pa, it won’t do you any good now.”
“Just shut up! All you ever did was embarrass Pa or turn your back on him. You wouldn’t even live here at the ranch. Oh no. You had to have a place in town.” Les stood and clenched her fists in the folds of her skirt. “You could at least have come out here for Sunday dinner!”
“And talk to that creature he married? Do you know what they say about her in town?”
“Do you know what they say about you in town?”
“Stop it,” Alex said in a tired voice. “They’ll hear you screaming down at the barn.”
Color flamed up from Freddy’s throat. “I didn’t like you telling us what to do when we were children, and I don’t like it now!”
During the two weeks that Alex had been home, the three of them had slipped backward into childhood habits. From her lofty position as the oldest, Alex judged, criticized, and issued orders. She had rearranged the funeral plans and had decided when Luther Moreland would read the will. It had been Alex who persuaded Lola to vacate the ranch and obtain a residence in town at least until the inheritance was decided. Alex who insisted that Freddy stay at the ranch until everything was settled. Freddy and Les had stepped aside and let her take the lead.
Freddy made a sound of disgust. Alex was still lording it over them, still taking charge. It didn’t matter that the decisions Alex had made were sound, it mattered that she had come home after a five-year absence and taken control as if she’d never been gone.
The Best Man Page 1