you did. Remember the safety’s on. Is Judd down there?” he asked abruptly, nodding toward the barn.
“Yes, so you’d better go straight to the equipment shed. What he doesn’t know won’t get me dressed down.”
He started to argue, but she was already trotting away.
She didn’t really need to look at the cuts to guess that Jack Clark had been around, making mischief. He might have just wanted to let the cows out, or he might have planned to steal some. But she wanted to get away from Judd and the others. If she were lucky, they’d be long gone by the time she got back. Besides, it wouldn’t hurt to make sure her theory was correct. If she could get any sort of evidence to give Cash, he could take care of Jack Clark for her.
She remembered the look in Judd’s black eyes when he’d helped Tippy Moore down from the SUV, and the way he’d let her lead him away after insulting Christabel. He hadn’t even seemed to notice that she’d been insulted, either. Her heart ached. Just as she’d dreaded, the model’s arrival marked a turning point in her life. She wished she could turn the clock back. Nothing was ever going to be the same again.
5
As Crissy suspected, the fence was cut in the same place that the other one had been, very close to the vertical brackets of the hog wire. She swung down from the saddle and examined the cuts carefully. The wire cutters that had been used both times weren’t sharp and the cuts weren’t neat and clean.
She turned, leading Tobe by the reins, and sighed angrily as she looked toward the flat horizon. Jack Clark had stolen from them, and they’d fired him with justification. But Clark had a vindictive streak a mile wide, and he wanted vengeance. Crissy was afraid that it wasn’t going to end with poisoned bulls and cut fences. She hoped that Duke Wright would have some news for Nick about the Clark brothers when he phoned him.
She spotted Hob Downey on his porch and walked up to greet the older man.
Hob was in his seventies. He’d been a cowboy all his life, until he was forcibly retired by his boss. He knew more about horses than most anybody, and he was lonely. He sat on his front porch most every day, hoping that somebody would stop and talk to him. He was a gold mine of information on everything from World War II to the early days of ranching. Crissy visited him when time permitted, but, like most young people, time was in short supply in her life.
“Hi, Hob!” she called.
“Come sit a spell, Miss Crissy,” he invited with a grin.
“Wish I had time, Hob. Nick says you saw some fellows in a pickup truck down by our fence this morning.”
He nodded. “Sure did. Skulking around like. I don’t have a telephone, or I’d have called you.”
“Was one a tall man with a bald head?” she asked carefully.
He grimaced. “One was wearing a hat pulled down low on his forehead, so I can’t say if he was bald. Couldn’t say how tall he was, either. The other fellow was wearing a shirt that could have drove a colorblind man crazy. Kept on the other side of the truck, mostly, couldn’t see him well.”
She sighed. “How about the truck?”
“Had a big rust spot on the left front fender,” he offered. “Rest of it was black with a thin red stripe. Had homemade gates, unpainted. Looked to me like they were about to collect a cow or two, Miss Crissy.”
She’d have to find out if the Clark brothers had a pickup truck, or drove one of Wright’s fitting that description, and what color it was.
“Cut that fence, didn’t they?” he persisted.
She nodded. “But don’t let that get around, okay?” she asked. “They might be dangerous, and you’re all alone out here.”
He chuckled. “I got a shotgun.”
“You can’t stay awake twenty-four hours a day,” she pointed out.
“They might come back and try again.”
She couldn’t be sure of that. “You just keep your eyes open and watch your back,” she told him.
“Somebody mad at you, is that it?” he wanted to know.
“Something like that. Thanks, Hob. You take care of yourself, and lock your doors at night.”
“You, too, Miss Crissy. Sure you won’t sit a spell?”
She smiled. “I’ll come back when I can. But I’m up to my ears in movie people right now. I have to get back home.”
“We heard they was going to make a movie at your ranch. You going to be in it?”
She laughed. “Not me! See you, Hob.”
“See you.”
She got back on Tobe and turned him toward the dirt road that led back to the ranch. It was disconcerting to think that Jack Clark and his brother John might have been responsible for two attempts on their livestock. They might try again, and they couldn’t afford many losses right now, not even with the added revenue the movie shoot would bring in. They needed a new direction or they were going to go under.
Specialization, she thought, was the only answer to their problem. They could do what Cy Parks did and raise purebred livestock—but that required a hefty bankroll up front that they didn’t have. They could do what a few other producers had done and try marketing their own brand of organic beef. But that would entail upgrading their production methods and finding a buyer who wanted quality organic beef...maybe an overseas buyer, because those profits were really high, according to Leo Hart, who sold organic beef to Japan.
If only horses could fly, she thought, and laughed at her own whimsy. Judd had tried that angle already, and failed. They were told that their cattle weren’t lean enough for the high priced markets, that they were fed too much corn and too little grass. That was why Christabel had been nudging their cattle into pastures to fatten them on grass—and had lost their prize Salers bull in the process.
But it wasn’t the grass—rather, the clover—that had killed that bull. And that cut fence was no accident, either. It was the Clark brothers. She knew it, even if Judd wouldn’t listen. Cash would. And somehow, she was going to prove it!
* * *
She walked Tobe down to the barn, noting that the big SUV was gone, and so was Judd’s truck. What a relief. At least she didn’t have to worry with company today.
But the relief was short-lived. After she’d unsaddled and brushed Tobe, and taken the rifle back to Nick, there was unwelcome news.
“Duke Wright doesn’t own a black pickup with a red stripe,” Nick told her with a sigh, pushing back the hat from his sweaty blond hair. “And he doesn’t have any cowboys who do.”
She grimaced. “I was so sure...!”
“Maybe he borrowed it,” he said.
Her eyebrows lifted. “You think?”
“Anything’s possible.” He gave her a long
