Texas Pride: Night Riders Read Online Free PDF

with him for the next hour. What do you say to a stranger you’re hoping will leave and never come back? Apparently Ivan didn’t have a problem. He asked about the grass, the trees, the bushes and the vines. He asked about the soil. What rancher knew anything about soil? It was just dirt. Texas was covered with it. At least she understood his concern about water.
    “I have more than enough water,” she told him. “The creek is fed by a spring that runs all year. We have a well for the house and a windmill that pumps water for the corrals.”
    “The soil is equally important,” Ivan insisted. “It determines what kind of grasses grow, how nutritious they are, and how plentiful. All of that determines how many cows you can support per acre and how much they will weigh.”
    “I know that,” Carla said, irritated he would think she was either ignorant or stupid. “If you’d wanted to know that, why did you ask about clay and loam and all that other stuff?”
    “My family owned the same land for five hundred years. We had to take care of our soil, replenish it, so it would last year after year.”
    She couldn’t imagine any ranch lasting five hundred years. Her father had had three different ones since coming to Texas. Once the Indians and the buffalo were gone, there would be millions of acres of new land available for settlement. No one thought about replenishing the soil. It was too poor to bother.
    “Will you tell me about your family?” Ivan asked.
    “Why do you want to know?” He was a stranger, a foreigner—an aristocrat if she could believe what he told Danny—who wouldn’t understand anything as ordinary as a farmer’s son who dreamed of owning his own ranch in what was considered the uncivilized West.
    “Everything.”
    “That would take longer than it will take us to reach town.”
    “Then only as much as you want to tell me.”
    She didn’t want to tell him anything, but his smile was doing awful things to her resistance. Why couldn’t the sun be in her eyes? Then she wouldn’t have to see him. “My parents came to Texas more than twenty years ago. They had to move twice, but they managed to increase their holdings despite three wars.”
    “My family lost everything in three wars.”
    It was hard to feel sorry for a family she didn’t know, especially when the only member of that family she did know was determined to take half her ranch, but she could understand how Ivan felt. She just wished he could find another ranch to steal. “Maybe they’ll get some of it back someday.”
    “My sister has. That’s why I must return to Poland.”
    She was so busy being angry she’d forgotten that, but she supposed it wasn’t important. It didn’t matter why Ivan wanted to take half her ranch—just that he did.
    “Tell me about Mr. diViere. Why are you working with him?”
    “I used to think he was my friend. He repaid my trust by stealing my money.”
    “Didn’t you try to stop him?”
    “He took it when I was sleeping. I did not see him again for seven years. When I did, shooting him would have been doing a murder. I do not want to go to prison.”
    “But there must be some law, a judge, some court—”
    “Laveau was the only one who knew I had money or where it was hidden. He has a way to charm even the most wary. He has even attempted murder.”
    “Then he can be arrested, tried in court.”
    “Laveau betrayed his troop to the Union army. Because of that, he is given the protection of the army here in Texas. Even the Reconstruction government protects him.”
    Another sin to be laid at the feet of the rascals who had taken over the capital in Austin. “Where is he now?”
    “I don’t know.”
    “When will you see him again?”
    “Never. All the legal arrangements have been left in the hands of a lawyer called Lukey Gordon.”
    “Lukey would never do anything illegal.”
    “It’s not illegal to transfer property from one person to another.”
    “It is when that person