John glared at Collins, the cowboy who’d tried to shoot Precious.
Collins narrowed his dark eyes and glared right back. “It’s a rattlesnake. They bite people. People die.”
“It’s a defanged rattlesnake, almost blind and very old,” John huffed. “Old people should be taken care of, not threatened!”
“One bit old Harry three years ago and he died,” Collins pointed out.
“Yes, a poisonous one,” John clarified. “Precious doesn’t have any fangs. Besides that, I can pick him up and he doesn’t even rattle.” He looked around. “This spot is one we don’t even run cattle on, so what the hell were you guys doing here in the first place?”
There was an uncomfortable silence. Collins looked hunted. John homed in on that expression.
“Collins?” John addressed him belligerently.
“Harry said there was a tame rattler over here. We didn’t believe him.” He felt the tirade coming and interrupted before it could begin. “Well, the minute we got here, it started striking and rattling! We thought it was going to attack us!”
“With what?” John asked, exasperated. “He’s got no fangs! It’s like being attacked by a senior citizen with no teeth!” He glared. “You think he might gum you to death?” he added, dripping sarcasm.
“Elderly people don’t crawl on the ground and rattle at people.” Collins’s arguments were getting weaker by the minute.
“Well, from now on, Precious will be in my room, in my house,” he pointed out. “And anybody who comes in there with a gun will meet Mercedes with a hatchet.”
There was shuffling of feet. Collins cleared his throat. “Nobody’s coming in with a gun. Ever. We haven’t forgotten what happened to Henry Watts.” He looked at John hopefully. Thiswas a story most of the men had heard, but nobody inside Big Spur’s ranch house would ever speak of it.
“That story,” Collins added. “Is it true?”
John just smiled. “Come in the house with a gun sometime and see,” he invited.
Collins actually backed up a step. “Uh, we’d better get back to work.”
“Good idea for those who still have jobs!”
They all moved quickly to the trucks and Collins’s horse.
“I should look into cowboy robots,” John huffed as he put Precious lovingly in the seat next to him.
He looked after his men and shook his head. “Afraid of a defanged rattler. Precious, I think maybe I need to ask my dad for some help when I hire the next batch of ranch hands!”
They wandered off, muttering. He sighed. He’d probably gone overboard about the poor old reptile, but he’d had a rough few days and his heart was aching. He hoped he could adjust somehow to seeing Stasia with Tanner all the time. But he doubted it.
John drove around the long way to the ranch house. There had been some attempts on the cattle. Rustling still went on in the twenty-first century, although it was done with tractor trailers instead of horses these days. They’d lost several pedigree young bulls the year before. The culprits had been skillfully tracked by a Texas Ranger whose job it had been to deal with cattle thefts. The thieves were apprehended. And they learned that there was no slap on the wrist for cattle rustling, despite the modern age. They went to prison for a very long time.
He turned down one of the ranch roads past a derelict building. There were a few mesquite trees here giving shelter to a handful of heifers that John had bred to his purebred bulls the past year. The heifers, pregnant and due to deliverin the spring, were replacements for cows he’d had to cull. These would produce their first calves in the early spring; and hopefully some of them would turn into champion bulls. Big Spur’s Santa Gertrudis stock was known far and wide for its heritability traits. Cole Everett had moved into the space age with scientific analysis of what traits to breed for and the best way to obtain them. Straws of bull semen from his most coveted bulls were sold internationally, and they commanded a high price. Big Spur also did artificial insemination when it was warranted, although Cole still liked the old-fashioned way of breeding, despite the hit-and-miss efficiency of it. So he had one whole section of the ranch where he let his bulls and cows, and the young unbred heifers, do what came naturally.
John smiled. He loved his dad. The elder Everett was a third-generation cattle baron, although breeding purebred stock was fairly new on the Big Spur. Cole had been influenced by his softhearted youngest son into thinking it was far and away more profitable than running slaughter cattle. And it had been. John had helped diversify the ranch properties into investments that were slow, but steady, and found a truly gifted investment counselor to assist them. Then they’d bought stock in successful businesses and branched out into real estate. These days, Big Spur was a multimillion-dollar conglomerate, with Cole and John at its head. Although the eldest son, Tanner, had rejoined the family with his wife, Stasia, and was now administrating his own ranch, he often joined with the others in investment schemes. He had a bankroll in foreign banks from his days as a mercenary, and he used it to not only improve his own property, but to invest in others as well. Like the Big Spur, Tanner’s ranch was beginning to show real growth.
John grimaced as he thought about Stasia. He’d been crazy about her for years. While Tanner had been overseas, he’d thought he had a chance to turn her heart toward himself. Ithadn’t happened. Stasia had loved Tanner from her teens upward and had never deviated. She was a one-man woman. John had finally accepted it, but reluctantly. Right up until Tanner and Stasia’s remarriage—the first marriage had been a tragedy for both of them—he’d hoped that he had a chance.
But when Tanner had come home for good, it had been quickly apparent that Stasia’s feelings had never changed. It would always be Tanner.
John had agonized over her choice. But in the end, Tanner was his brother and he loved him. Even when Cole had refused to let Tanner on the property, it had been John who met him off the ranch and kept him informed about the people and problems Big Spur was facing. Tanner had never stopped loving Stasia—although she’d never known how he really felt. Once she did, John was out of the running forever, especially when she announced that she and Tanner were going to be parents. The two were expecting their first child the following summer. John went occasionally to visit, with all sorts of baby things, from mobiles to special music. It didn’t heal his broken heart, but the coming baby helped him get his focus back where it belonged, on the ranch.
Odalie, his baby sister, was living in New York City taking voice lessons and preparing for an audition at the Metropolitan Opera. It had been the dream of her life to sing there. Well, her mother had helped her to dream. Heather Everett had been a nightclub singer, very famous, before she married Cole, and even now she wrote hit songs for the hard rock group Desperado. They’d won two Grammys with her songs already. But Heather had wanted to sing opera. Odalie really had the voice for it. But he wondered sometimes if Heather’s failed ambition hadn’t triggered Odalie’s.
She and Stasia had roomed together in New York, where Stasia worked for a former—maybe not-so former—New Jerseycrime boss named Tony Garza. Stasia loved the art gallery owner. Odalie was his blood enemy. The two fought every time they saw each other. It had amused Heather to see them together when Tony and Odalie were in the same room, when she’d gone to New York to visit her daughter.Smoke and fire, she’d murmured. John had chuckled.
John and Odalie were the last unmarried children of the Everetts. While Odalie might secretly find Tony attractive, John had never found anybody except Stasia that he’d ever wanted to settle down with.
“Well, I’ve still got you, haven’t I, old man?” he asked the still pillowcase beside him. “No thanks to Collins,” he added under his breath. “I’m going to get Ralston to short-sheet Collins’s bed. That’ll fix him,” he muttered. “Better yet,” he mused, “worms!” That was a standing family joke. He grinned, thinking of how the prank would look.
