Roughstock (A Gail McCarthy Mystery) (9 page)

We both regarded the gelding with appreciation. Of course, I'd seen him before; he was the only horse I'd ever seen Bronc ride. Big for a Quarter Horse, all of sixteen hands, he was dark gold with a black mane and tail and black socks, and had the pronounced black dorsal stripe and zebra stripes on his legs and withers that were typical of buckskins. Despite Bronc's comments about the yellow stud and his ornery disposition, I thought Willy looked kind, and I knew he was a hell of a rope horse.

"Willy's got a nice eye," I said.

"Willy's a good one, all right. This sucker doesn't have a mean bone in his body. I had him standing out in the field here until he was four years old, just never had time to ride him. Then one day I got in a little early and saw him standing there and I said to myself, Well, I guess I'll ride the son-of-a-bitch.

"So I took him down to the bullpen and I saddled him and damned if he didn't act like he'd been saddled every day of his life. So I just hung that snaffle bit in his mouth and climbed on. And off he walked, easy as pie."

I smiled and agreed. "Some of them are like that."

I doubt Bronc even heard me; he was rolling now, absorbed in his story, a trait I knew others found tiresome. I enjoyed listening to him, though-his stories seemed to bring another, earlier world to life.

"So after I rode him around the pen a couple of times I just reached over and opened the gate and out we went. I rode him around that little twenty-acre hay field right over there" -Bronc waved a hand at a level area off to his left-"and then I just kicked him up into a lope. He never even humped his back. Two days later I took him on a gather."

He looked back at the buckskin gelding as he spoke and slapped the horse's neck in a gesture of rough affection. He wasn't exactly petting him, not by my standards, anyway, but Willy seemed to take it as meant and neither threw his head nor sidled away, just stood there unmoving, as if to say, "I'm used to the old fart."

Bronc stepped up to the horse and, resting one arm on his back, stood there looking over the buckskin rump across the darkening barnyard. The barns and employee houses surrounded us, hulking silvery-gray shapes in the winter dusk. Even though the natural hollow of the land and the buildings diminished the wind, it was still a long way from warm. In fact, I was shivering inside my jacket, but I wanted to keep Bronc talking.

"Where's Travis?" I asked tentatively.

Travis Gunhart lived in one of the two employee houses-Bronc lived in the other.

"He went to town." Bronc was staring off toward the adobe ranch house, suddenly looking very much an old man. The cold, rapidly dimming light, I wondered, or the fact that his usually animated face was still for once? Bronc had to be, what? Sixty-five? Around that, I thought, though he usually impressed me as looking more like fifty.

"I can hardly believe Jack's gone," he said at last, as if talking to himself. His eyes drifted to the south, where the sea, hidden now in the gathering darkness, murmured endlessly. "There's always been a Hollister on this ranch, ever since I've been here. And that's forty years."

Poor old man, I thought sadly. He's outlived his life. Everyone who mattered to him is dead. Feeling ghoulish, but still wanting to know, I asked, "What will happen to it? The place. Will it be sold?"

Bronc snorted, his old inimitable self in the turn of a second. "Goddamn developers. No, the sons-of-bitches won't get it. It goes to the state."

"To the state," I parroted stupidly. "Why's that?"

"Jack's will," Bronc said briefly. "He left the ranch to the state, to be part of Bonny Doon State Park. Wanted them to preserve it the way it is now. Like the Wilder Ranch and the Coe Ranch."

"Oh," I said blankly, wondering what this meant. "Jack left everything to the state?"

"No, not every thing, just this one little old five-hundred-acre ranch. The home ranch, we called it. Jack owned land all over California. All over Nevada and Oregon and Washington, too. But that's all part of the rest of his estate. It's just the Hollister Ranch that goes to the state."

"So who gets the rest of his estate, do you know?"

"Oh, I know all right." It was too dark to see well, but from the sound of his voice Bronc's old eyes were bright. "Jack showed me his will when he made it, right after he got a divorce from that last bitch. A couple of years ago it was." He was abruptly silent.

He was baiting me, I thought. He knew I was curious and so was deliberately withholding the information, just to make me ask.

All right, I'd ask. "So who gets it?"

Bronc held his silence a moment, playing it out, but I wasn't really worried. He liked talking more than he liked not talking. After another second he grinned, his teeth a brief flash of white in the dusk. "His ex-wives."

"His ex-wives. My God. Why?" As the words left my mouth I realized my comment was hardly tactful, but the shock behind it was certainly genuine. How many people left millions and millions of dollars to be divided among their ex-spouses?

"Didn't have anyone else to leave it to, I guess." Bronc's voice was noncommittal. Why not you, I thought instantly, or Trav, but this time I kept it to myself. For a second we were quiet. Then I asked, "What will you do?"

"Why, move in with you, of course. If you'll have me." Again the flash of teeth. Bronc laughed. "Naw, honey, I can stay here. Jack wrote it that the state had to let me live here till I died, and anything on the place that's portable-livestock, vehicles, whatever-is mine."

"What about Trav?" Bronc's face seemed to shut down at that. "He can stay here, too," he said briefly and, I noted, uninformatively.

But my mind was already shifting back to what I saw, suddenly, as the all-important question. "Jack's wives-ex-wives I guess-do they know what they'll inherit?"

"Uh-huh. The damn fool went and told them."

"Why?" I asked, completely nonplused.

“
It was Jack's way. He wanted them to know he did right by them. I think he felt guilty. Damn fool."

"Guilty?"

For a second I thought Bronc wasn't going to answer, but then he said, "Jack couldn't have kids, you know. He was sterile."

I shook my head. I certainly hadn't known. Was this, I wondered, what Lonny had meant by "talk"? I'd always thought the gossip was about Travis being Jack's illegitimate kid. But somehow I didn't like to come right out and say this to Bronc.

"Well, it ruined him." Bronc was still talking. "He couldn't get it out of his head. I sometimes thought all his running around was on account of that. Either way, I think he never felt he'd done right by his wives, whether because he didn't give 'em kids or he ran around on 'em, I don't know."

"What were Jack's first two wives like?" I asked curiously.

"Well, Karen, the first one, she was a nice girl, a ranch girl. But she couldn't stand Jack's philandering. Maybe if she'd've had kids it would have been all right, but I don't know. She got fat and bitter in just a few years and a few more years later she'd had enough.

"Now Laney, the second one, didn't have a mean bone in her body, but Willy, here, was a little smarter than she was. She lasted almost ten years, but she got tired of Jack playing her for the fool finally; it was just too goddamn obvious. She stuck him for a whole lot of money in the divorce, more than Karen got, by a long shot. Had a smart lawyer, I guess. I hear she lives in a big house down in Capitola now."

Was this a motive, I wondered. Did the long-gone Karen just want her fair share? Or did Laney want more? All of the wives had a motive, since, supposedly, all of them had known about Jack's will. Including Tara, the only one of the three I knew. Knew and detested.

"What about Tara?" I asked Bronc, and got my strongest reaction yet.

"That goddamn Tara was purely a bitch." Bronc spat on the ground to emphasize his words. "I never hated a woman worse than I hated her."

"Do you think she killed him?" It just seemed to pop out of my mouth.

Bronc didn't answer. For a minute he stared at me and then he turned away and untied Willy from the hitching rail. "I'd better get to feeding."

"Bye, Bronc," I called after him as he headed to the barn. "You going to Freddy's tomorrow?"

He stopped for a second and looked back at me. "Might as well."

"I'll see you there," I told him.

"You bet. And if you get tired of that big lunk you're running around with, you just let me know." Bronc chuckled briefly and led Willy into the barn; I could hear the click as an electric light turned on, spilling yellow light out the door to where I stood. Following the broad lit swath to my pickup, I jumped in and cranked the heater up to full blast.

It was black dark when I pulled into my own driveway and got out of my truck. I could hear Blue whining on the other side of the door; I'd left him in the house since I hadn't felt I'd have any time for him in the course of the endurance ride, and he was eager to be let out. Walking
him
down the steps to the small yard I'd fenced by the creek, I noticed with a pang how stiffly he was moving. Even a year or so ago I would have left him in the yard with its sturdy doghouse, but between age and arthritis Blue couldn't take the cold anymore; the slightest drop in temperature caused him to shiver.

If he lived, this spring he would be fifteen. If he lived. I watched him stump around the yard, then urinate awkwardly by half squatting-he could no longer manage to lift a leg-and a knot twisted in my stomach. Blue looked very old and fragile, and he was getting weaker. Some day soon, the time would come.

I could hardly bear the thought. Blue had been a part of my life for so long I almost couldn't imagine who I would be without him. Was this the way Bronc felt about Jack, I wondered suddenly. As if he himself were incomplete, no longer the same person, now that Jack was gone.

Of course, Bronc hadn't acted very upset about Jack, but then he wouldn't. Men like Bronc felt that to show or even acknowledge emotion was a sign of weakness. Bronc's whole way of being demanded that he deny all vulnerability and be tough and carry on. Yet the old man had been grieving in his own way. I had felt it in my gut, though he'd given no overt signs.

And Travis, I wondered, how was Travis taking it? Bronc said he had gone to town. Was Trav even now at some bar, drinking himself under the table?

Blue stumped up to me and sat, leaning against my leg. I squatted down next to him and put my arm around him, rubbing his chest. He leaned harder, showing his appreciation, but I noticed he didn't smile. That dog "smile," an open-mouthed, happy pant, hadn't been on his face in a long time. Another sign.

I walked slowly up the stairs, accommodating myself to Blue's pace, and let both him and the cat into the house, then went straight to the refrigerator and poured myself a glass of wine. Call me weak-minded, but reminders of mortality always make me want a drink. First that talk with Bronc about Jack, and now the obvious fact that Blue was getting near his end.

At the moment what I wanted was to forget, and I chose the time-honored method. Three glasses of wine, a scanty dinner of soup and bread, and I rolled into bed in the pleasant stupor of mild inebriation, no longer worried about death or anything else.

TEN

At
eight o'clock the next morning I was driving down the road to Lonny's, Blue sitting on the seat beside me, alive for one more day, anyway. Turning into Lonny's narrow driveway, I pulled up next to his bam. Automatically my eyes skimmed over his two horses, Burt and Pistol, finishing their breakfast hay in the corral nearest the bam, and moved on to the next corral. There were two horses in this pen, too, one bay, one light brown, heads down, nibbling at the last few pieces of alfalfa. I climbed out of my truck, fetched two halters from the bam, and went to catch them.

Heads lifted at my approach, ears pricked forward. Gunner, the bay, nickered, a deep huh-huh-huh sound, and walked to meet me. A second later Plumber gave his shriller, higher-pitched nicker and followed Gunner in my direction. I leaned on the gate, watching them.

Gunner looked more like one of the Budweiser Clydesdales than the well-bred Quarter Horse he was. His winter coat was especially thick and shaggy and he grew long feathers on his fetlocks, just like a draft horse. With his heavy black mane and tail, big white blaze and high white socks, he would have fit right into the beer wagon team.

Of course, I could have prevented all this shagginess by keeping him blanketed and in a stall. But I felt horses were happier living in a more natural way, and in the mild Santa Cruz climate a few oak trees were adequate shelter for animals who had been allowed to grow their winter coats.

So Gunner and Plumber lived here in their half-acre pen on Lonny's property, next to the corral where he kept Burt and Pistol. The pen was built of brand-new metal pipe panels-panels that had, as it happened, eaten up most of my savings account. But pipe fencing is one of the safest and most trouble-free sorts available for horses, and I felt it was worth the investment.

Plumber edged up to greet me as I blew into Gunner's nostrils, and I rubbed the cocoa-colored gelding on his forehead, tracing the small white star, at which Gunner pinned his ears jealously. Plumber was much neater-looking than Gunner; his winter coat was fairly short and shiny, and he didn't tend to grow long hair under his jaw or on his fetlocks. Since he seemed to stay just as comfortable as Gunner during winter storms, I was at a loss to understand nature's ways on this issue. It seemed to me that the main result of all that excess shag was to make Gunner a lot harder to clean up.