A Rancher's Vow

“Congratulations!” He slapped the groom on the back. “You have yourself some new wife there.”

“Thanks.” Grinning like an idiot, Chance Quarrels pumped his hand. “I think so, too.”

“So what are your plans? Where are you gonna settle down?”

“Right here on the Curly-Q, of course.”

“Hmm. I thought your pa had a full house right now, with your brother Bart and his kids.”

“We’ll be staying with Pru’s sister until we work something out.” Chance was obviously distracted. “Listen, I’d better get back to Pru before she accuses me of deserting her again.”

“You go on then.”

Smiling to himself, he watched the unsuspecting cowboy hurry to his new wife’s side—he was a fool in love with no thoughts but those prompted by his youthful libido.

They would all be unsuspecting today, he knew, looking around at the crowd of more than a hundred. A day of celebration. Of giving thanks.

No one would be thankful before the night ended, however. He’d see to that.

He chuckled to himself as he moved to his vehicle through the knots of relatives and friends and neighbors, well-wishers all. They were also lambs, so to speak, without a suspicious thought in their heads.

And why should there be any doubt-sayers on such a glorious mid-November day?

He swept his gaze over the grounds until he found his real quarry. Emmett Quarrels. Look at him smiling, puffing out his chest in pride…

The fear of God had not been put into the old man yet. Unbelievable as it seemed, Quarrels was not getting the message that his situation was serious.

This message would be closer to home and delivered right under his nose. Under everyone’s noses. He’d be right in their midst and no one would be able to point a finger his way. No one would even suspect him.

That was the beauty of his plan.

From the back of his vehicle, he dug out the special wedding present that he’d hidden under a tarp and strolled along the buildings with the elegantly wrapped package tucked under one arm. No one even looked at him twice.

A very unique wedding present, indeed, he thought with a wry laugh.

They’d all get a blast out of it later.

Chapter One

The dog’s eyes no longer held suspicion when they gazed at him, but still she remained curled on the floor, shoulder wedged against the passenger seat, as Reed Quarrels pulled his truck onto the washboard dirt road that signaled the start of Curly-Q land.

He soon stopped, hopped out and swung open the metal pipe-and-wire gate to his past.

The dog limped along behind him and stopped to sniff around a twisted cypress. Reed didn’t rush her. Who knew how long she’d been starving and sick and wounded. He didn’t mind giving her a few minutes of privacy.

Fetching a jug of water from the back of the truck, Reed poured himself a cup. He took a long swallow and looked out over the New Mexican land he hadn’t seen in more than a year and which, a lifetime ago, he had mistakenly assumed would be his to run. He’d smartened up more than a dozen years ago, though, and had gone his own way.

Worn cedar and barbed-wire fences surrounded yellowing grasses. A handful of mostly white-faced cattle grazed nearby, and there were more, he knew, in the canyon below. Nearly sixty thousand acres of rich, volcanic-based grasslands as far as the eye could see were broken down into manageable, gated pastures. Reed swept his gaze over the high desert country—almost seven thousand feet—across the long-deserted mining area in the foothills, to the Sangre de Cristo Mountains in the distance.

Closer—only a few feet away—the dog was staring at him expectantly. Reed refilled the cup and, hunkering down to her level, held it out. Her pointed nose dipped into the water, but her gaze never left his face.

“You trust me a little, huh?” he murmured.

In answer, her tail moved slightly, an imitation of a real wag.

“Poor girl.” He stared at her ragged, infected ear and only hoped she would trust him enough to let him take care of it later. He hadn’t tried touching her yet. “You’ve had a rough time, haven’t you? But your luck just changed. You can count on me to take care of things.”

Despite the hamburger he’d bought her earlier, the dog had a hungry look that he figured would stay with her a spell. So he fetched a piece of jerky from his jeans jacket. She practically swallowed it whole.

“That’ll have to do you for a little while. Shouldn’t eat too much all at once anyhow. You’d be sick.”

He rose and moved toward the pickup. The dog jumped in ahead of him and settled back on the floor. She’d ridden there all the way from the truck stop where he’d found her. Not that she’d come to him right off—she’d been terrified and he’d had to wait her out—the reason he’d missed his own brother’s wedding. Well, the ceremony, anyway, the celebration was undoubtedly just starting.

Or was the dog an excuse?

If not the dog, would he have found another reason to delay his homecoming?

Not because of Chance, though…

Reed moved the pickup to the other side of the fence, got out, closed the gate and clambered back behind the wheel, a ritual to be repeated all over the large ranch.

Howard Siles had summoned him in person. Pa’s lawyer had located all three of the Quarrels boys—each the sole fruit of one of Emmett Quarrels’s three disastrous marriages. The lawyer had given Reed the good news-bad news that had cut past his reluctance to bring him home.

The Curly-Q had been turned into a family corporation because Emmett Quarrels was dying.

Pa dying…

Reed could hardly believe it. The old man was too ornery to die.

But Chance was back. And Bart. Reed had called the ranch and had talked to his older half brother the week before only to learn that life on the spread wasn’t rosy. Lots of bad-luck incidents, as Pa liked to call them, one after the other, and the Curly-Q was broke, the mortgage in arrears.

Bart hadn’t elaborated, but Reed was uneasy, nevertheless. A sense of doom which he tried shaking away, hung over his head. The old feelings were crowding him, nothing more. He needn’t allow his imagination to run away with him over a couple of accidents.

So why didn’t he feel more relaxed?

The pickup lumbered past the scale house where cattle on the way to market would be weighed before being shipped off to auction. No cows or calves in the corral now, Reed noted. He hoped the calves hadn’t all been sold off. Beef prices were too damn low. They’d undoubtedly get more per pound in the spring, and the calves would be yearlings and weigh a lot more, as well. They were lucky that the heart of the protected canyon was prime grazing land, even in winter.

Reaching the piñon and ponderosa pine–limned rimrock, the road dotted with dark green cedar, rusting scrub oak and grayish juniper bush, Reed started the descent into the canyon cut by Silverado Creek, which twisted and turned and rushed across the Curly-Q. The vehicle dipped and bounced its way down hairpin curves, while red dust swirled around him.

The buildings spread out below, and beyond them, people spread out like a colony of ants. The wedding celebration was in progress.

As if nothing were wrong…

Things were wrong or he and his brothers wouldn’t have been summoned home, and Reed knew in his gut that the wrong went beyond Pa’s illness. If things didn’t come together right quick, the Curly-Q would be a thing of the past. But Bart was a lawman at heart, and Chance had been content alternating between day work and rodeoing for years. He was the only one who’d ranched all his life.

Now that Pa was incapacitated, Reed figured that without him, the spread would fast go back to desert. Or become part of another ranch. Or be divided and built on—another fancy housing development like that Land of Enchantment Acres he’d seen on the other side of Silver Springs. Ripe pickings for foreigners, he thought. Those southern Californians would move right in.

The Curly-Q needed him.