Sadly, she had no mandate concerning the syndicates themselves. Their organization was far too big, and too experienced, to be brought down easily. But if she could shut down this one pipeline, it might save a few lives at least. That made it worthwhile.
She was fairly certain why her colleagues were so interested in the Big Spur ranch. They’d wanted her to scout out security precautions, and they were very interested in a grain transport station far on the eastern side of the property. It contained a silo and a building where trucks were parked. They’d paid particular attention to it, noting that the cowboys seemed not to use it at the present time. They wanted to know when it was used, for what and how often.
They also wanted to know when cattle sales were promoted on the ranch. She’d mentioned this to a contact and been told that perhaps they had a client who wanted to purchase purebred cattle along with drugs.
It sounded very odd to Josie. In fact, the colleague from theDC office sounded very odd. He was supposedly involved in shutting down these operations, but he was far less helpful than an old, retired Texas Ranger whose acquaintance Josie had met at a local strip mall café a few weeks ago.
Not revealing anything about herself, she’d asked about cattle rustling in the area. The elderly man had been delighted to drink coffee with her and impart knowledge. In fact, he’d been a special deputy whose chore it was to find and arrest cattle thieves. His knowledge was less current, but he was a wealth of information about how rustlers worked, where they carried their stolen goods and how they could be tracked in some less than obvious ways.
“Please tell me you aren’t going into the rustling business, Miss Josie,” he teased. “I’d hate to see you locked up.”
She pursed her lips and laughed. “Orange is not my color,” was all she said.
She wasn’t wearing the handgun she carried when she traveled. He was. He had what looked like a .45 handgun in a hand-tooled holster on his hip.
He got the allusion, and grinned.
“I like that gun,” she said.
He chuckled. “Me, too. It’s old. It’s a Ruger Vaquero single-action revolver. And I’m wearing it because I belong to the Single Action Shooting Society at our gun club. We have a meeting in about an hour to plan an event.”
“An event...?”
He smiled. “We dress up like old-timey cowboys or lawmen, and we have places set up where we practice on set targets in different venues.”
“That sounds like fun,” she said, her eyes bright.
“It really is. If you stick around long enough, you ought to come to a meeting. It’s for all ages. You don’t have to be old, in other words,” he teased.
She grinned. “I’m not much for guns,” she said with a straight face. “But I appreciate the invitation.”
“Anytime,” he said.
They drank coffee in a companionable silence. She’d met him in this very café and started up a conversation several weeks ago when she first arrived in Percell. The nice old man had been similarly dressed, but without the gun belt and six-shooter. They’d become fast friends. Without revealing anything about her presence in the town, she’d asked questions about locals. He’d been vocal about the sudden increase in drug trade in the area. Nobody knew where it was coming from, although they had suspicions. He mentioned that some ranches far away on the border had become overrun with gun-wielding drug mules, even some high-level executives of the drug world, looking for access points or hubs.
“Surely, they wouldn’t come to a small place like this,” she’d ventured. “And we’re nowhere near the border.”
“You’d be surprised,” he replied. “Dallas isn’t far away and it’s a major drug hub for distribution. There’s a good highway between Dallas and El Paso, and it’s a major drug smuggling route as well. Small areas like this don’t have big government law enforcement offices. We don’t even have a police force here. Just the sheriff. And if there’s a murder or some big crime—don’t hold your breath that they’ll ever be one here—the Texas Rangers will come in and investigate.”
“Is the sheriff a good guy?” she asked.
“One of the best. Dunn Marlowe. He has a sort of shadowy past, but he’s honest as the day is long, and he never backs away from a fight.” He chuckled. “Had a big-time bully here when he first came to the county. He thought the new sheriff would be a pushover, so he walked into our one bar, where Marlowe was having a beer after work and picked a fight.”
Her eyebrows arched. “What happened?”
He laughed. “I was there when it happened. Never will forget it. The bully weighed maybe three hundred pounds, and he was tall with it. He threw one punch at Marlowe. Marlowe sidestepped the punch, whirled around like lightning and kicked him in the head. He went down so fast... !”
Now she was really interested. “Martial arts?”
“Oh, yeah,” he replied. He leaned forward. “He doesn’t advertise it, but he was special forces overseas. Damned gutsy guy. Anyway,” he continued, setting back in his chair, “the bully picked himself up off the floor and came at him again. Marlowe just sighed, did a roundhouse right into his gut, brought him down, flipped him over and cuffed him. The bully did several months for assault on a law enforcement officer. When he got out, he actually went to the sheriff’s office and apologized and shook the sheriff’s hand. ‘No hard feelings,’ he said, and they’ve been friends ever since!”
She laughed. “I’d like to meet that sheriff.”
“You should come to one of our meetings, then,” he told her. “He’s president of our gun club.”
She lifted her coffee. “Well, I’ll be,” she said, and finished her drink. She was remembering what the ranger had told her about small towns and their lack of serious law enforcement, and the uptick in drug trafficking. Her two colleagues had assured her that they had suppliers who traded cattle for drugs, and that was why they wanted so much information on Big Spur. Rustling some cattle seemed a quick way to score.
She sighed. Maybe it was. Maybe she was overly suspicious about things. It had happened before. She checked her gun to make sure it was loaded. She put it back into its cross-draw holster and sat down, tapping her foot with uncharacteristic impatience. She’d learned over the years that most of her job was waiting for people, for things, for events. It wasn’t the glamorous lifestyle outsiders imagined. She was patient, to a degree. Butsometimes it was agony to sit and hope for results. She’d rather have been outside, in the thick of things, regardless of the danger.
