Deadly Is the Night by Dusty Richards Read Free Book Online Page A

sections.”
    â€œAnd they never offered this buyer your place to join it?”
    â€œNot to my knowledge. I have the most land but I don’t have the headquarters.”
    â€œAs I said, let me go up there and look. We, maybe, could partner on that place or something.”
    â€œI have been to that house Weeks built on Mount Lemon. He spent a fortune on it. It has running water, a boiler to heat water for bathing, and lots of glass, which cost a fortune to get freighted out here. Mexican floor tile and lots more. He made a castle out there for her.”
    â€œDid she live in it?”
    â€œFor about a year I think and then she divorced him. She left after that and went up to their north place. You know anything more about her?”
    â€œI have no idea, just rumors from the cowboys that work for me.”
    â€œGo look at my ranch. I have heard all about your ability to make ranches work.” Nye showed him the land map of the place, and Chet wondered how it became deeded land. A U.S. Government land swap that had, no doubt, been made years ago.
    â€œThat big maybe you could find a way to make it work?”
    â€œSo far I’ve made all my others work.” He rose, shook Nye’s hand, and went to find his men.
    He found them at the café.
    â€œWell, boss, what now?” Jesus asked.
    â€œI am posting a letter to my wife, telling her we are taking a few more days. Then we are riding up north of Oracle to look at a ranch.”
    â€œHow big?” Spencer asked.
    â€œThirty sections.”
    â€œWow, that is lots of land.”
    â€œAll desert the banker says. They have some jackals for headquarters. He said Weeks spent a fortune on the house up on Mount Lemon’s back side for a woman he married and who divorced him in a year. That is why the rich eastern man is buying the place. There are only four sections in it.”
    â€œHow did they get so much land in the other ranch?”
    â€œThe federal government has made some land swaps. The ranch Lucy and Shawn run was one that Bo bought for me. Obviously the government wanted some piece of land somewhere else and the owner of that got the land out here for it. Nye is satisfied the deed is good. How Weeks found it I don’t know. But he obviously got it for a song and then mortgaged it to Nye along with livestock they counted twice. The other bank got the smaller place with the great homestead.”
    â€œCounted twice?”
    â€œYeah, they did that to Nye and I bet Weeks did it to the other banker, too.”
    â€œHow?”
    â€œNye told me his bankers didn’t read the brands. They counted legs and divided by four.”
    Everyone laughed and shook their heads as full plates of Mexican food were brought over by the girls.
    â€œYou need more let us know,” the lead waitress said. “The boss says you are such good customers, to feed you more.”
    â€œGracias,” Chet said.
    She and the other girls left them to eat their lunch.
    After an early breakfast the following morning, they rode north with bedrolls on behind their cantles. Jesus had some good beef jerky and dried fruit for them to eat. Canteens full, they left Tucson behind and went around the mountains for Oracle and on north.
    This region had saguaros, prickly pear patches, lots of grass, plus yucca stalks. It also had the century plants that bloomed once in a lifetime and died. Apache squaws used to dig up the plants and make a weak beer out of the roots. Chet never knew how, but he heard stories from some Apache army scouts who told him this is what the squaws did. An occasional patch of tall gnarled cottonwood marked the watering spots for wildlife and livestock in washes and even where springs popped up.
    He was impressed when he saw several tanks of mortar and rocks had been built below a spring to water stock, too. There was plenty of grass and he liked the rangeland. The cows they saw when they reached what he considered the