Pete (The Cowboys) Read Online Free PDF Page A

this ranch.’”
    “A crabby old coot, wasn’t he?”
    “You told him you didn’t like him and wouldn’t have his filthy cows if he gave you every square inch of the place. Mama said it wasn’t a smart thing to say, especially with you having a shiftless pa and your ma being dead as well as disowned by her family for marrying your pa, but I was proud of you.”
    She was besotted. And any fella with a shiftless pa, a dead brother, and a disowned ma was a fool to throw a whole ranch in the teeth of a rich uncle. He didn’t know how he was going to tell her the silly fellow was dead.
    “It must be terrible to be the last one in your family. Sometimes I feel lonely, too. That’s why I was so glad you agreed to marry me. I couldn’t think of anything else.”
    “A man of honor couldn’t do anything else,” Pete said. “Now I’d better unsaddle my horse and turn him out in the corral. Want to come with me?”
    Thank God Anne was young, nervous, and willing to talk. He didn’t want a chattering female on his heels, but if he could keep her at it long enough, he might learn enough to keep both their necks from being put into the noose. Apparently Peter hadn’t been on the ranch in years, hadn’t made a very good impression when he was here, and hadn’t been much of a success in business, so Pete could depend upon everybody thinking him something of a dolt. That wasn’t going to do his pride any good, but he figured he could stand it until he found his money and left.
    And he would leave. He was anxious to get to Colorado. Or maybe he’d go to Arizona or New Mexico. He liked the freedom to wander from one place to another, and he was tired of bitterly cold winters. Arizona sounded good.
    He couldn’t leave without doing something about Anne. She was a pretty young woman, charming, trusting, and really rather adorable. She was too young for a twenty-nine-year-old miner, even if he did look five years younger than that, but she was just the right age for some fuzzy-cheeked cowpoke eager to start his own spread.
    So Pete let Anne walk with him to the corral, chattering away about everything that had happened since Uncle Carl died. He was going to have to ask her why she called this guy her uncle when she hadn’t mentioned being related to him at all. He stopped her when she mentioned the rustlers.
    “Whoa! Back up to the rustlers,” he said. “I want to hear more about that.”
    “I told you about them in one of my letters.”
    Damn. He wished Peter had had enough sense to keep all those letters together. Knowing Anne as he did already, she must have written him at least a hundred times. “I told you I’m terribly forgetful. I couldn’t concentrate. You know, the business failing and all of that.”
    “I guess it would be hard to worry about things here when you had creditors beating on your door demanding payment. Where did you hide?”
    “Hide?”
    “When they came after you. Uncle Carl said when your pa lived here, he used to go off to the hills where nobody could find him. He’d take a saddlebag full of whiskey and not come back until he’d drunk it all up.”
    “It wasn’t as bad as that,” Pete said. “I’d pay them a little something. It would keep them off my neck for a few weeks.”
    The ranch was well appointed. The corrals were constructed of sturdy poles, pine and cedar. A couple of roomy sheds were piled high with hay for the winter. The bunkhouse was a large structure of sturdy logs. There was even a blacksmith shop and a low, rambling barn. Clearly the Tumbling T was a successful ranch. The large amount of glass used for windows was further proof of old Carl’s success.
    “Let’s get back to those rustlers.” They’d reached the corral. “When did it start?”
    “I’m not sure. Uncle Carl didn’t like to talk about business until after Dolores and I left the room.”
    Uncle Carl wouldn’t have gotten away with that if Isabelle had been around. She’d have filled his ear