Texas Lily (46 page)

Besides worrying about Cade, Lily didn't like this talk of titles. Jim hadn't been a man who had much concern for bits of paper. He was a man who knew the sun and the soil and how best to apply them. He would trust other men to be as honest as he was. If there had been any problem with the title to their land, he would never have known it, but she kept that fact to herself.

"I'm willing to take Mr. Austin's word that this land was ours for the taking, but tell me more about the land in Bexar. Haven't those people lived there for decades or longer?" she asked.

"They're lazy, shiftless Mexicans, Lily," Ollie replied with scorn, ignoring the fact that his host was half that maligned breed. "They can't do anything right. There's no surveys, no written records that anyone can find, nothing to show what belongs to whom. I hear Houston is ready to see them cleared out if he gets the presidency. There's those that are ready to clear them out now. A new republic doesn't need that kind around."

Travis hurriedly shoved an overlarge piece of bread into Juanita's mouth when she opened it, Lily had insisted that Juanita take her rightful place at the table when they returned here, but this was one of those times when she would regret it. When Juanita chose to speak, she had a vocabulary that could singe the hairs off a mule skinner.

Oblivious to the rage boiling up around him, Ollie looked around for his bottle and, not finding it, scratched his head in puzzlement and rambled on. "Well, anyway, it's been a fine meal, Lily. I do appreciate your invitation. I wouldn't worry too much about these land-jumping claims, especially if, like Cade said when you got married, the land is in your name and not his. If they're after Tejanos, just imagine what they'd do with an Indian. Well, let me leave you folks to your work..."

He seemed to look around in bewilderment one more time for the nearly full bottle, which would have made an excellent end to the meal, but he retained enough manners not to mention its absence. Lily smugly stood in front of the child's bed with its ruffles hiding a lump and waved farewell as Ollie departed.

She then turned to the two men standing solemnly behind her. "Where's the damned deed? If it burned with everything else..."

No one wanted to consider that notion.

Chapter 36

Cade overruled the confusion that ensued by the simple expedient of talking louder.

"Lily, where did Jim keep the deed?"

"He kept all his important papers in a metal box under one of the floor planks. I think it was that one over by the fireplace."

Since the area she pointed toward was an area that had suffered the most damage during the fire, Cade turned to Travis. "Was there anything down there when you had those planks replaced?"

Travis scratched his head, trying to remember even as Juanita began searching for loose boards.

"I wasn't always here while they were working. Nobody told me about any box."

"Lily, I'll send Roy in to pull up the planks. Travis and I are going to ride out and take a look around. I don't like the way Ollie was plying that whiskey bottle. Something's meant to happen, and they don't want us ready for it."

Cade gathered up his rifle and ammunition as he spoke, and Lily felt the first real heartbeat of fear. "Maybe it would be safer if you stayed here instead of looking for trouble?" she suggested, knowing in advance that she would be refused.

Cade gave her an impatient look. "I'm sending someone over to Langton's. He ought to at least be warned if there's trouble brewing. You can go over there if you get worried."

Like hell she would. Lily kept her sentiments to herself as she watched the men gather instruments of war and head out. She would be damned if they would push her out of events this time. This was her home, and she would defend it as fiercely as they.

Roy had been eating in the bunkhouse with the men, but he appeared now with a crowbar and began prying at the planks under Lily's direction. It didn't seem possible that the men would have nailed new planks over a metal box and left it undisturbed, but they would have to see. If it wasn't there, then someone had removed it without informing Travis. That did not bode well at all.

While Lily worried over the deed, Cade directed his men to their positions with the authority of a general before a battle. Some of the hands had been hired since the rebellion and didn't understand the need to jump when Cade said jump. They tended to argue, but they shut up when Cade swung his rifle up and unrolled his whip. No one had ever seen Cade use the rifle or whip, but just looking at the big man wielding them was sufficient to convince them he would. The new men rode out with the same haste as the old.

Cade turned to Travis, who waited on his horse for his orders. "I have to stay here near the women and meet any unexpected visitors. You'll have to be the one to go to my father. If there are strangers around, he'll know. Do you think that smooth tongue of yours can get the message across?"

"I know about as much Spanish or Apache as you know Latin, but if those brothers of yours are around, I'll make myself understood. The fiendish little devils know about as much English as I do, I'd wager."

Cade hadn't really thought about it, but it wasn't a wager he'd take. His brothers were clever enough to keep their mouths shut and let the white men make fools of themselves. He nodded and let Travis ride off across the prairie toward the woods and river.

Cade was essentially alone now. He'd never really learned to rely on the help of others when there was trouble. If everyone followed orders, that was well and good, but he didn't intend to count on them. Ollie was a bumbling ass, but someone had put him up to this, and he didn't have much trouble imagining who or why. They had made a mistake in sending Ollie, though. If someone had come here and said the de Suela claim was being stripped, Cade would have ridden out today and left the ranch practically undefended. Instead, they had sent a man whose interests were here and not in Bexar, and he had concentrated on Lily and not Cade. That was a major tactical error.

Humming to himself, Cade rode out to the pasture where part of the cattle herd had been gathered. There were several young and restless bulls in the herd. They ought to be cut out and separated sometime. Now was as good a time as any.

* * *

The summer sun was sinking slowly behind the line of trees on the distant horizon when a piercing whistle split the air. Cade’s men waiting in the dry pine needles and old leaves of the forest along the low-lying ridge looked around in puzzlement for the source of the sound. Several mounted up, and others checked their rifles while watching the road below them.

To their incredulity, their boss on his gray gelding came riding down the road, calmly cracking his whip over a herd of young bulls. Red lifted his hat to scratch his head and whistled to himself.

"Hell, ain't never seen one damned man ride herd on the sons of bitches like that. Think he's plumb gone out of his friggin' haid?"

The rest of the men watched Cade keep cool command over some of the meanest, most rambunctious animals on the range. Their bellows of rage echoed clearly as Cade forced them in the direction he had chosen and not one to their liking. The man had to be loco.

"Look. Over there," Jack whispered to Abraham, nodding in the opposite direction.

Down the road from town rode a cavalcade of horsemen and a single wagon. The riders were heavily armed. The wagon contained surveying equipment. They rode hell-bent for a collision with the animals stampeding just around the bend.

For stampeding they now were. Whereas Cade had maintained full control over the bulls up to this point, he seemed to have suddenly misplaced his magic spell. The animals were screaming their fury and galloping flat-out along the path of least resistance—the open road.

Abraham chuckled and swung up on his horse. "That man ain't gonna need us. He done got full charge of the sit-che-a-shun."

And so it seemed. The rampaging bulls charged straight ahead, tossing their horns and scattering the trespassing horses and their riders off the road and across the prairie as each bull broke from the pack after a different target. The wagon horses screamed and raised their forelegs and broke into a wild gallop that sent the wagon careening through baked-mud ruts. Tools flew everywhere. The driver leapt for his life. And the wagon itself finally smashed into splinters as the horses attempted to escape on either side of a live oak.

The small group of ranch hands in the trees rode down to help when they saw Cade stop and make inquiries of the driver. They arrived in time to hear Cade say, "Poor timing on both our parts. My men were just gathering some rogue cattle. Are you hurt? My wife can see to that bump, if you like."

The driver staggered to his feet and cursed raggedly, but the motley collection of cow herders riding down on him prevented more than that. He spit to check a loosened tooth, then glared at the massive Indian in denims and blue work shirt.

"You don't run bulls on the road, you fool." He looked around to locate his scattered surveying equipment. "Have your men gather up my tools. They're too valuable to lose."

Helpfully, Jack leaped down beside a shiny piece of metal on a wooden stick. An ominous crack followed his landing, and the surveyor spun around in fury just as Jack bent to pick up the now-mangled tool. "This yor'n?" he inquired, handing it back.

The rest of the equipment was gathered in much the same manner. By the time a few of the armed riders escaped the rampaging bulls, the surveyor was in near-hysterical tears, ranting and stamping his feet in the road at the bent and mutilated equipment collected in the remains of the wagon bed.

Cade still sat majestically upon his gelding, surveying the destruction with calm authority. He lifted a questioning look to the furious horsemen jerking their mounts to a halt before him.

"You're going to pay for this, Injun," one burly scout snarled.

"I'm going to pay?" Cade glanced out over the prairie, where the dust rising over the grass was the only indication that his cattle had ever been present. "You just drove my herd halfway to Galveston and you think I'm going to pay? I'd suggest you check your maps. This is a private road. You're trespassing. I think it's time I had a few explanations."

The click of rifles caused the intruders to glance around them nervously. The previously inept lot of cow herders now sat in their saddles, backs straight, rifles cocked, and held deceptively loosely in their hands.

"There ain't no such thing as a private road," the surveyor blustered.

"Is it on your maps?" Cade leaned over his horse's neck to inquire. "Check your maps, and if you're any kind of land agent at all, you'll see that this piece of land is square in the middle of property deeded to Jim and Lily Brown in the fall of 1824. Jim cut this road to get his cattle down to the San Antonio highway. That makes it a private road, gentlemen, and I can't think of one good reason why you should be on it."

The burly rider recovered fastest. Unfastening his rifle from his saddle, he held it in hand but raised it no farther when half a dozen guns rose in response. Still, he sat confidently as he replied, "That's the reason we're here. That deed ain't worth the paper it's written on. This land wasn't Austin's to sell. It belongs to another land grant, and Mrs. Brown is the one who's trespassing. The true owner wants the place surveyed and prepared for sale."

Cade still didn't bother lifting his weapon, but the tension in his muscles was evident. "I can guess who that imaginary owner is. Tell Ricardo to give up and I won't add his scalp to my collection. Otherwise I won't bother wasting my time with the law and the courts again. I'll have his scrawny neck instead. I'll make him sorry he ever messed in my wife's business."

The other man bristled at the threats. "I don't know any Ricardo, mister. I'm just doing my job. If you don't keep out of our way, we'll have the law after you."

Cade smiled, and the men around him stared in astonishment. Cade never smiled, and they hoped he never smiled again. The look was pure malevolence, and they glanced at the intruder to see if he shivered as they did when Cade spoke.

"Try it, gentlemen," was all he said. Turning his horse, he rode away, leaving his men to get across the message that trespassers had better turn back.

* * *

By the time Ralph Langton caught up with him, Cade looked more like a tired farmer than a menace. The other rancher kicked his horse to ride beside Cade.