Breed True by Gem Sivad Read Free Book Online

feet, pale, drawn, and worried, but she wasn't about to let anyone present catch her unawares.
    Thank God, the woman wasn't stupid. She listened intently to the explanation, although impatient for the white men to reach its conclusion. Since she'd received his assurance that the children were being retrieved for her, she'd calmed considerably.
    He wanted the whites to get out. He had negotiating to do. This woman was no tame horse to be herded and corralled. She was as skittish and distrustful as a mustang.
    Grady Hawks looked Indian, employed Indian ranch hands, and kept separate from Texas society. His very presence made white citizens uncomfortable. He knew that if it wasn't for the water supply that he controlled, the ranchers would have looked the other way when Michaels' Eastern Consortium pushed to remove him from his land.
    It all came back to the water. Who better to control it, Grady Hawks and Dan Two-Horse, Kiowa, half-breeds, but sons of local ranchers, or Alan Michaels, a banker from back East? It was testimony to the common distrust of bankers and eastern lawyers that the cousins had won that contest.
    The Rossiter woman found a chair and seated herself across from the window. His coat still wrapped her shoulders, and it satisfied him for the moment, but he wasn't sure that she didn't intend to jump through the opening and tensed to stop her if the need presented.
    Grady could tell she attended the goings-on outside as much as in the room, as did he. Torches flickered in a night that should have been dark, which was a sure indication that there was trouble afoot.
    "Again, gentlemen"—she nodded at the room at large—"I fail to see how this affects me or the death of my husband."
    He studied her in the soft lamplight of the sitting room. Her hair was swept off her face and pinned loosely in a knot at the back of her head. She was exquisite—lush body and beautiful face with creamy skin and green eyes that were almost the color of emeralds.
    I wonder how a colt from her would look. Like his Scottish da, she had a few sprinklings of freckles splashed in gold across the bridge of her delicate nose.
    She's thinner, older … harder than I remember. He hadn't consciously kept track of her after learning she was married to the gambler, but he knew every change that the four years of rough living had brought.
    The frightened girl was gone. He faced a feral wildcat of a woman who could be any age between twenty and thirty.
    Abruptly, Grady's attention was drawn back to Judge Conklin, who was ham-handedly trying to approach his proposition.
    "Now as to that, we think you've been drawn into this to hang Grady for your husband's murder, at the same time rid you of Frank Rossiter's protection ." The judge had the decency to stumble over the last word.
    "Not, mind you, that you killed your husband, but that it has been made to look like you might have."
    To her credit, she sat, hands clasped before her, giving the judge her full attention, though he couldn't seem to make his point.
    Impatient with the judge's vague mumblings and explanations, Jewel Rossiter finally interrupted. "Judge Conklin, is there an ending to this discussion?"
    Hamilton Quince summed up the bad news succinctly. "Whoever used Hawks' knife to kill the gambler knew both of you would be in town today. Think about it. One or the other of you is meant to be found guilty."
    If those in the room were expecting missish protests or dramatic hysteria from the woman, she offered none. She might have stabbed her husband, and if so, Grady didn't care. She didn't mince words.
    "Mr. Quince, if I have been following this conversation correctly, you were involved in bringing both Grady Hawks and me to town." She swung her gaze to Hiram Potter and continued, "I'd say this man could be named a likely suspect."
    Then tiredly she stood and shrugged his coat off, ready to leave. "When will my children arrive?" she asked him, dismissing the rest of the people as