Read Lone Star 01 for Free Online Page B

it’s too bad you didn’t know this before buying out Mrs. Waldemar.”
    â€œI haven’t. My only interest is to protect the investment Starbuck has in her herd. In all your herds, if possible. But are you ranchers truly serious about forming a vigilante committee?”
    Melville gave a laugh, short and bitter. “I was pure bluffing. The big ranchers don’t need to, they’ve got their own guards. And the smaller ranchers are afraid that to fight back would goad the rustlers into wiping them out, man, woman, and child. So all they’re willing to do is stand pat like sheep, doing nothing ‘cept bleat and leak in their pants, if you’ll pardon the expression, Miss Starbuck.”
    â€œJessie.”
    â€œAll right, but only if you call me Daryl. And don’t get me wrong, but I can’t see how you hope to help the lady, Jessie.”
    â€œFirst, by riding out there this afternoon for a talk.”
    â€œWon’t make it before dark, I’m afraid, and the Flying W isn’t much set up for overnight guests. Or are you already expected?”
    â€œNot especially, no. I’d better wait till tomorrow morning.”
    â€œWell, you can leave word with her crew that you’re coming,” he said caustically, thumbing toward a knot of horses tied in front of the saloon. “Crews are like mavericks, they have to be taught who’s boss and be ridden on short rein. Otherwise they run wild.”
    Melville moved through the batwings without holding them open for Jessie; it never dawned on him that a rowdy saloon would be a place she’d visit. She followed anyway, her curiosity piqued by his comment about the Flying W crew, and stood unobtrusively along the wall by the entrance. The Thundermug was aptly named, she thought.
    Melville was brushing between the mostly empty tables, thrusting toward the card tables and chuckaluck layout clustered near the rear. It was far too early for much action in the saloon, not even any drink-caging bar girls around yet, and what patrons there were seemed more interested in boozing than gambling. Only a small group of players and kibitzers were gathered at a single smoke-obscured card table, and from what Jessica could see of it, there didn’t appear to be any high-stakes excitement going on.
    The drinkers were mainly in two separate clumps at the shiny mahogany bar that stretched along one wall. The nearer men were sullenly quiet, a ferret-eyed watchfulness on their lanky, stubbled faces, a challenging bravado to their display of bristling weapons. The other bunch were nondescript cowpunchers, wearing pistols out of habit, the tools of their trade the rope and ring and branding iron. It was from them that Jessica heard the dull roar of talking and laughing, the clink of glasses and bottles.
    Behind the bar, two white-aproned tenders were busily pouring. Brackets and chandeliers reflected in the polished backbar mirrors, and gleamed against the huge portrait of a buxom reclining nude. Seated on a high stool next to the nude, presiding over it all, was a frog of a fellow with slicked-down balding hair and a handlebar mustache, a nugget chain looped across a flowered vest, a torpedo cigar clenched in his gold-capped teeth.
    He, Jessie surmised, would be Halford, one of the owners. And the boys happily lapping up his rotgut would be Mrs. Waldemar’s crew. Melville was right—they were going to have to learn some loyalty and earn their keep. Before Jessica or anyone else would have a prayer to saving the Flying W, those men would have to be out there riding, and riding with everything they had. And the more Jessica looked at them and considered their failings, the more incensed she became.
    Finally, beyond endurance, Jessie strode up to the crew. “Drink hearty,” she snapped in a cold, cutting voice. “Because this’ll be the last drink you’ll have on the Flying W payroll.”
    Startled heads turned.