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Guilt bored deeper, like a sharp-bitted auger, as he ended the call Five o, he’d seen the ad for this job in a newsletter for ranchers The requiree of the cattle business and law enforce the position as a special ranger for the TSCRA hadto Texas Clint and Ruth had tried to talk hiued that the extra money would contribute er salary as a deputy sheriff

He’d ood on that promise, at least Most of his salary went back to the ranch for new stock and equipment, supplies, and repairs and to help his brother’s fah the lean winter months

But Tanner had kept his real reason for leaving to hihtuilt, he’d juet away and start over Maybe in a new place, with new people and new responsibilities, he could begin to heal

So far, that wasn’t working so well

Ferg Prescott poured hile gulp

Why now? He punctuated the thought with a string of the vilest curses in the English vocabulary Why, now that the plan was in place to destroy Bull Tyler and get his hands on the creek property, did that ugly little bitch of a girl have to show up?

He kneho she was, of course After his dying father had na had hired a top-notch investigator to track down her background information It had taken months of work, cost a pile of ’s part, but he’d finally gotten some answers

Rose Landro, child of a single mother and an untraceable father, both presumed dead, had run away frorandfather, an old herht the creek parcel years earlier and lived on the land in a tumbledown shack As his only known relative, Rose would have been heir to the land

But that here things got interesting

When Ha to sell, and Rose, hiding in the shack, had witnessed the crime, Bull had taken her in and used her to black to the Riun blast

Restless, Ferg stood up and walked to the , gazing out at his kingdo cottonwoods lay the back road froht, delaying long enough tohoirl who’d fired the fatal shot

Ferg had kept his dying father’s confession secret and bla on Bull With Bull in prison it would have been easy to get the land and control the water froone free, he’d gotten rid of the girl and taken the land for himself

And now, the rightful owner of the contested property had shown up

Ferg sat down again, lit a fresh Havana, and blew a sht not be so bad His present scheme was risky If it failed, he could use her as a backup, et the land back

A tentative knock at the door broke into his thoughts That would be Garn, his son and heir But Garn could da fool wanted, and he wasn’t in the mood to talk about it now