Read Mistletoe Man - China Bayles 09 for Free Online

bought
it and two hundred acres, on a contract of sale. Only a small part of the land
is arable, though."
    "Two hundred
acres?" I was surprised. Their farm was bigger than I had thought.
"How much did that leave Swen-son?"
    "Oh, five or six
hundred acres, I guess. The way I understand it, the land had been in his
family since before the First World War. They used to run cows, but that was a
long while ago. Carl doesn't do any ranching. Just those goats."
    "Goats."
Aunt Velda made a rude noise. "All them goats is good for is to—"
    "At the time we bought," Donna said,
"we didn't have a lot of money. Terry had just—" She stopped,
coloring, and looked away. "Aunt Velda loaned us the down payment. But
there wasn't enough for the survey. We put it off until we could afford
it."
    I nodded. In a
settled area, where every foot counts, the first thing a potential home buyer
does is to get a professional survey to check out the boundary markers. It's
not that formal in the country, where surveying is expensive. People tend to go
by landmarks and old fences, and spend the money on a survey only when it
becomes a problem.
    "But we did really well last
year, financially speaking," Donna went on. "We added anemones and Ranunculus as
a winter cash crop, and that brought us some new accounts—a couple of big
florists in San Antonio. We also tried painted daisies and scabiosa and Ammi bisnaga, which got to be over six feet tall, with really
pretty lacy green foliage which is perfect for bouquets. We got the idea from
Pamela and Frank Arnosky at Texas Specialty Cut Flowers, over in Blanco.
They've been a big help, even though we're competitors." She stopped, and
brought herself back to her subject. "Anyway, we did well enough to be
able to pay off the note in a few months." She smiled dryly. "That
was a big surprise for Carl. He probably figured all along we'd go broke and
quit."
    "Which would
leave him with everything you'd already paid on the note, and the land to
boot," I said. It was an old trick. Sell a few acres of marginal land to
an unpromising buyer; then, when he fails to make the payments, call the note
and take back the land. It doesn't happen so much anymore because banks and
other lending institutions have gotten into the act, but there are parcels of
land around Pecan Springs that have been sold a half-dozen times and still
belong to the same guy. Swenson had probably needed money, and when the
Fletcher sisters came along with their goofy idea of growing and selling
flowers, he'd seen an easy mark.
    Donna stirred her
coffee. "But what jolted him even more was what happened when we got the
property surveyed, three months ago. When we bought the place, he told us that
the boundary line was twenty yards below Mistletoe Spring, along the old
fence. Well, it turns out to be forty yards above the
spring, which takes in the whole top of the ridge, including the pecan grove.
Of course, he didn't believe it, so he hired his own surveyor, who put the line
in the same place." She bit her lip, remembering his reaction. "He
was really mad about it. He swore he was going to get the whole farm back—which
of course he can't do, as long as we're making our payments."
    Aunt Velda cackled. "Mad? You bet
yer boobies he was mad! Why, he came roarin' over here like a bull that's had
his nuts cut." Donna shook her head at her aunt's language, but the old
lady paid no attention. "That don't matter none, though," she added,
patting Donna's hand comfortingly. "He'll forget all about it when they
hoist his ass up to the ship and put him to work."
    "I suppose the
spring is valuable," I hazarded, beginning to see why Swenson might have
been angry. In Texas, a source of water can be worth a great deal of money, and
conflicts over water can be as fierce as those over oil.
    "It's even more
valuable now that we've cleaned it out," Donna replied. "Some years
back, one of the Swensons apparently decided to plug Mistletoe Spring in order
to increase the flow