Chapter Twelve
T
he high and wide Montana sky was a startling blue, lit by a bright morning sun. A twin-engine Beechcraft bearing the Triple C insignia on its door sped down the runway. Buckled in the passenger seat across the aisle from Cat, Jessy gazed out the window at the rolling grassland whipping by.
Unlike Cat, she couldn’t summon any enthusiasm for this shopping trip to Dallas. Logic told her it was necessary, but as far as she was concerned, it was one of life’s unpleasantries that had to be endured.
With the engines roaring at full power, the plane’s nose lifted. A moment later the craft was airborne, the land falling away beneath it. Somewhere around eight hundred feet it began a banking turn to the south.
“I’ve been thinking,” Cat said.
“About what?” Jessy asked when Cat failed to continue.
“We will actually need two outfits. One for the auction, and another for the open house the day before.”
“What open house?” Jessy stiffened. “No one said anything to me about having one at The Homestead.”
“I don’t mean it literally. But a lot of the buyers will want to come the day before the auction to look over the sale stock and decide which they want to bid on. People will probably be coming and going most of the day. In that sense, it will be a bit less informal, but we still need to dress appropriately.”
There was that word again, Jessy thought with an inward sign, but she managed to joke, “I guess jeans and a shirt wouldn’t be appropriate.”
Cat laughed, as Jessy knew she would. “Don’t you wish.”
“Don’t I, though,” Jessy agreed with a rueful smile and automatically glanced out the plane’s window again. This bird’s-eye view of the land on which she was born was one she never tired of seeing. And she had cow-boyed for too many years not to instinctively watch for the unusual.
Intent on the ground, she almost missed the aircraft sweeping across the eastern sky. But its movement caught her eye. Leaning closer to the porthole, she took a second look then hurriedly unbuckled her belt and scrambled out of her seat.
“What’s wrong?” Cat frowned.
Jessy didn’t bother to answer as she made her way up the aisle to the cockpit. “Jack.” She tapped the pilot on the shoulder and pointed to his left. “Do you see that helicopter off your wing?”
He turned his head in that direction and nodded. “Got it.”
“Try to raise somebody at the ranch and tell them a helicopter is flying on a course toward the Wolf Meadow range.”
“Will do,” he promised and glanced at his copilot. “Get on the horn, Andy. Frank still might be in the hangar area.” Over his shoulder, he said to Jessy, “If we can’t get Frank, we’ll patch a call into headquarters.”
“Thanks,” she said and turned away.
The minute she stepped into the cabin, Cat’s eyes were on her, a mixture of curiosity and concern in her expression. “What’s wrong?”
“I spotted a helicopter that might be headed for Wolf Meadow,” Jessy explained, returning to her seat. “Jack’s going to make sure Ty knows about it.”
A grimly determined look stole over Cat’s features at the news. “Maybe at last we’ll find out who bought the land.”
“I don’t have a good feeling about this.” She hadn’t from the moment they learned the government was not renewing their lease.
“We’ll get it back,” Cat stated. “Whatever it takes, we’ll get it back. After all, what good is it to anybody? We have it completely landlocked. Their only access to it is by air.”
“Maybe whoever bought it wants to turn it into a nature preserve.” That seemed to be the general consensus of the attorneys.
“Do you believe that?” Cat eyed her closely.
Jessy shook her head. “No.” But she couldn’t put her finger on why she felt so certain about that.
“Neither do I.” Cat replied then sighed rather grimly. “With any luck, we’ll learn the identity of the new owner before the day’s out.”
But something told Jessy that any satisfaction to be gained from solving the mystery of the new owner’s identity wouldn’t last long.
Up front, the copilot climbed out of the right seat and stepped into the cabin doorway while the plane continued to climb to its assigned altitude. “Thought you would want to know we passed on the word about the helicopter. Ty is going to check it out.”
“Thanks,” Cat said and glanced at Jessy. “It won’t be long now.”
“We received word that there might be some clear-air turbulence up ahead. Better make sure you keep your seat belts fastened,” the copilot added in warning.
As far as Jessy was concerned, she didn’t need to be warned of impending trouble. She sensed it.
There were few curves in the dirt ranch road as it followed the undulations of the rolling plains. With his foot pressed hard on the pickup’s accelerator, Ty drove as fast as he dared.
He ducked his head low to scan the sky ahead of him, making sure the chopper was still in sight. Fighting through the glare of the rising sun, he caught a glimpse of it still some distance ahead of him but lower than before. It was descending. A quick check of its angle confirmed Ty’s suspicions—its landing point would be well north of the road on the Wolf Meadow range.
But exactly where, he couldn’t tell. The helicopter was too far away yet. Which made it all the more important for him to keep it in sight as long as possible.
As the helicopter swooped lower, the land’s natural rise and fall soon made it difficult for Ty to keep the craft in view. Then it disappeared completely. Cursing his luck, Ty tried to gauge how far north of the road it had been at his last sighting of it. Close to a mile was his best guess. Next he attempted to triangulate where a line from that point would intersect the road. It wasn’t an easy task without landmarks to guide him.
As he approached the imaginary junction, Ty spotted a fence gate just ahead. Slowing the pickup, he pulled into it, stopped, hopped out of the cab, and dragged open the gate. Back in the truck, he removed the binoculars from their leather carrying case and laid them on the seat beside him then switched the pickup into four-wheel drive and took off.
Speed was no longer important; only finding the helicopter was. At the crest of each rise, Ty pulled up and made a one-hundred-and-eighty-degree sweep of the country before him with the binoculars. It was a rough and broken land, dotted with low mesas and gouged with wide coulees.
When that scan turned up nothing, he traveled on to the next vantage point and glassed the area again. Still nothing. On his third stop, he spotted the chopper on the ground approximately a half-mile northeast of him. It had landed a short distance away from windmill eleven near the base of Antelope Butte.
With its location pinpointed, Ty drove in an easterly direction until he reached the dim trail, used by Triple C hands to service the windmill. After he turned onto it, it was a more-or-less straight shot to the site.
Within minutes the butte face loomed before him, but Ty’s gaze was centered on the two men standing near the helicopter. Leaving the overgrown trail, he aimed the pickup toward the two men, taking his measure of them. The taller of the two, in shirt sleeves and aviator glasses, Ty quickly dismissed as the chopper pilot and centered his attention on the second man, dressed in jeans, a leather jacket, and a black cowboy hat.
Observing Ty’s approach, he said something to the pilot and split away from him, moving forward to meet the truck. At a point of his choosing, the man stopped, dipped his head down, and waited for Ty to stop.
With a grim kind of eagerness for the coming meeting, Ty switched off the engine and climbed out of the pickup. Rounding the hood of the truck, he walked toward the hatted figure, mildly annoyed that the man had yet to look up.
When Ty was only steps from him, the man slowly raised his head, giving Ty his first good look at his face.
Recognition splintered through Ty like an electric shock. It was Buck Haskell.
“I expected either you or your pa to show up,” Buck stated with a smile. “I’m kinda’ sorry it’s you.”
“What are you doing here?” Ty demanded and shot a quick look at the second man by the chopper.
“My job.” Buck’s smile deepened, but his eyes had a watchful look to them. “I told you last week I’d be starting any day.”
“So you did.” Behind him, the windmill groaned a protest as a stiff wind tugged at its tied-down blades. Ty ignored it.
“You do realize you’re on private property,” Buck reminded him. “Technically you’re trespassing.”
Unconcerned, Ty smiled. “Technically, maybe. And maybe I’m just doing the neighborly thing by coming to meet the new owner.” He nodded in the direction of the man by the helicopter. “Is that him?”
“Nope. That’s the pilot.”
“So where’s your boss?” Ty challenged.
“Over there.” With a sideways bob of his head, Buck directed Ty’s attention toward the butte.
Making a half-turn toward it, Ty stared in surprise at the couple seemingly intent on studying the stretch of land at the base of the bluff some distance from the windmill. For a moment he was stunned that he had failed to notice them before now, then realized that he had been too intent on the helicopter to look far beyond it. Coupled with the fact that both the man and the woman wore tan-colored clothes, his oversight was understandable. The man was hatless, exposing a head of iron-gray hair. But the woman wore a beige scarf that fluttered in the wind. With their backs to him, there was little more that Ty could discern about either of them.
“I’ll go introduce myself,” Ty said to Buck.
“I think I’ll come along.” Buck’s smile had an amused quality that Ty didn’t like.
“Suit yourself,” Ty replied and struck out across the grass toward the couple, indifferent to whether the older Buck could keep up with the pace Ty set.
Buck remained only a half a stride behind, saying nothing, his smile never faltering. When they were less than twenty feet from the couple, Buck called ahead, “Sorry to interrupt, but you’ve got a visitor.”
As one, the man and woman turned and Ty had his first glimpse of Tara’s raven hair and jet-black eyes. Ty stopped dead in his tracks, a fury surging through him.
“You bought this land,” he thundered the accusation.
Contrition swept her expression. “Ty, I’m sorry. I tried a hundred times to tell you—”
Without waiting to hear more, Ty pivoted on his heel and headed back toward his truck, anger vibrating through every muscle.
“Ty, please.” Tara ran after him. “Let me explain.”
“I’m not interested in your explanations.” He pushed the words through his teeth, his voice low and curt.
“It’s not what you think,” she insisted and moved into his path, forcing him to stop. “Just listen to me for one minute please. Then if you still want to leave, I won’t stop you.”
He studied her with cold eyes, his attitude hardened by her act of betrayal. “I suppose you’re going to tell me that you don’t own the land.”
“Technically, I don’t, but in fact I do, since I am the sole shareholder of the corporation that holds the title to it.”
“Then there is nothing more you can say that I care to hear.”
When he started to move by her, Tara reached out to stop him. “You don’t understand,” she protested, her eyes dark with entreaty. “The whole thing began as nothing more than a lark. Your father has tried for years to get title to this land without success. It became a challenge of sorts. I wanted to see if I could do it.”
“Then you must be feeling very proud of yourself about now.” Ty looked at her with nothing but contempt in his eyes.
“How can I when it has made you so angry.” Her own expression was full of pain, but Ty was unmoved by it. “Don’t you see—I always knew you were going about things the wrong way. The days when the government sold land to individuals is gone. It’s no longer interested in divesting itself of property, regardless of the price that might be offered for it.”
“You didn’t seem to have any difficulty buying it,” Ty reminded her.
“I didn’t buy it, at least not with cash. I traded for it.”
In spite of himself, her answer snagged his interest. “You traded?”
“It wasn’t exactly an even swap either, considering the exorbitant sum I had to pay for the other tract of land adjacent to one of the national parks. But I knew there were certain officials in positions of authority who wanted to see it come under government control. From there, it wasn’t difficult to get them to agree to an exchange.”
“Very clever. But then you have always been clever.” There was nothing in his tone of voice that made it a compliment.
“But not clever enough to keep you.” The look of abject regret Tara gave him failed to tunnel through his defenses as it had done little more than a week ago.
“Fortunately.” Ty had no pity for her.
She dropped her glance. “I had that coming.”