Tombstone Courage by J. A. Jance Read Free Book Online Page B

going to settle this thing now. Today!”
    Burton Kimball prided himself on being a patient, reasonable man. In fact, Linda, his wife, insisted he was far too patient for his own good. She blamed her husband’s overly forebearing nature for the fact that their two children, a boy of ten and a girl eleven, were spoiled rotten. Now, though, faced with his uncle’s unyielding bull-headedness, Kimball’s much-touted patience was beginning to fray.
    â€œCall her attorney. Tell him to have her meet me tonight,” Harold repeated. He paused and frowned. “Wait. Where should we go? I can’t have her coming to the house.”
    â€œYou could always do it here in my office, I suppose,” Burton allowed grudgingly, pulling out a pen and making a few quick notes on a yellow pad.
    But Harold shook his head. “No. That won’t do. It should be someplace else, someplace neutral.”
    Burton Kimball sighed. “All right then, how about the hotel dining room over here at the Copper Queen? That won’t be all that private, though. But what makes you think she’ll agree to come, especially on my say-so?”
    â€œI know Holly,” Harold said. “Once she realizes she is going to win, she won’t be able to resist. Tell her to meet me there at six.”
    Now it was Burton Kimball’s turn to shake his head. “Six is too late. If you’re serious about settling out of court, then do it early enough in the afternoon so Judge Moore can remove the case from tomorrow’s docket.”
    â€œI am serious,” Harold Patterson returned resolutely. The two men’s eyes met and held across the younger man’s paper-strewn desk. Burton looked away first.
    â€œOkay, okay,” he said. “So you’re serious. But you’d better give me some idea of what you have in mind. That way, when I call Holly’s attorney, he can decide whether or not it’s even worthwhile to get together.”
    â€œI already told you. Everything she asked for. Tell the lawyer that.”
    â€œUncle Harold,” Burt objected, “you’re a better businessman than that. You never start negotiating by giving somebody everything they want. Besides, she’s demanding half the ranch.”
    Harold Patterson seemed suddenly very interested in the cleanliness of his fingernails. “So?” he asked innocently.
    â€œSo what about Ivy?” Burton demanded suddenly, his eyes alight with sparks of anger. “What about the daughter who didn’t run away from home? What about the one who stayed on and helped you look after the ranch? The one who took good care of her mother? Is this the thanks she gets?”
    Angered, Burton let his voice rise in volume. “And what the hell good is half a damn cattle ranch the size of the Rocking P? Half isn’t going to be enough for both of you to make a living or even for Ivy by herself, for that matter. And which half does she get? The part with the house and the well so she’ll still have a damn roof over her head? Or does Holly expect her sister to pitch a damn tent somewhere up on Juniper Flats?”
    One of the few pleasures Harold Patterson found in being old was the ability to abandon an unpleasant current of conversation in favor of drifting back over the years. When the lines of the present became too harsh and glaring, when he tired of the bright colors and loud noises, he sometimes immersed himself in the cool, dim shadows of the past.
    He did it again in that moment. When he looked across Burton’s desk, he didn’t see an angry forty-five-year-old professional lawyer with a loosened silk tie knotted halfheartedly around his neck or the monogrammed cuffs of the stiffly starched white shirt. What he saw instead was a shirtless, towheaded seven-year-old boy—a barefoot child wearing nothing but a pair of Oshkosh coveralls cut off just above the boy’s scrawny knees.
    Both of those bare