Paper Sheriff by Luke; Short Page A

repeat it. That’s the way crazy rumors start and it wouldn’t look good coming from the wife of the Sheriff.”
    Without turning Callie said in a voice that held a quaver of what Reese thought was anger, “Who would I tell it to? I never see anyone.”
    â€œYour family for one.”
    Now Callie turned and Reese saw that the color had fled from her face. “Then you shouldn’t have told me,” she said angrily.
    â€œYou asked what had happened and I told you. Now keep it quiet.” There was an edge of anger in his own voice but he didn’t realize it was there until after he’d spoken.
    â€œYes, master,” Callie said sardonically.
    Reese thought wryly then that it had taken them less than ten minutes to get back to the edgy, suspicious and defensive relationship of two weeks ago. And why hadn’t she said anything about the Hoad Land & Cattle Company? He sipped at his drink and suddenly found that he didn’t want it. What in God’s name was the use of their living together when each day they destroyed a little more of each other? But what galled him and shamed him was the realization that he was as much to blame as Callie.
    The next morning Callie waited until Reese left for work and then swiftly she changed from her dull dress into a divided skirt, one of Reese’s old shirts and riding boots. At the corral Sam obligingly got her horse from the horse pasture and saddled up for her. Afterwards she headed south for her father’s spread. It was a sunny morning holding little wind. Every stock tank and every depression still held water from last week’s torrential rain. The sleepless night, however, had dulled her sensibilities and she was blind to the sleek cows and their fat calves she saw, even to the newly replenished graze.
    To an impartial observer approaching it, Ty Hoad’s Hatchet Ranch would have seemed a sorry affair that held an indefinable aura of failure. The buildings were in bad repair and the sod-roofed house and shadeless yard had a hard-scrabble look about them. The ranch with its poor range had changed hands three times in the last ten years. If a man owning it caught an easy winter and a wet spring, he could make out, but normally he fought a hard winter and a dry spring and summer. Afterwards he started looking for a buyer.
    The buildings were two single-storey log houses connected by a dog run. They were built of huge cottonwood logs by the original builder who sacrificed the pleasure of shade and greenery to the necessity for shelter. The old stumps still pocked the area between the house and the sagging, jerry-built outbuildings of the corrals. No successor, including Ty, had bothered to plant anything.
    Callie dismounted, loosened the cinch of her saddle and, turning her horse into the corral, strode swiftly among the stumps and past the bunkhouse where Ty’s two Mexican cowhands bedded down. She even passed the open door to Ty’s and Buddy’s shack, heading for the spot where she knew she would find her father.
    Turning the corner, she saw her father seated on the dirty shuck mattress of the rusted iron bedframe. Here, on the north side of the house, there was always shade. Ty spent a good part of his days there and slept there at night, preferring it to the airless and almost furnitureless cabin.
    Ty, dressed in his ill-fitting range clothes, did not look up from mending a bridle as Callie came around the corner, crossed before him and sat down on the bed.
    â€œI saw you coming,” Ty said.
    â€œPa, we might be in trouble,” Callie said without preliminaries. She spoke so quickly that Ty, after spitting through his already stained moustache, looked up. “Where’s Buddy?” Callie said then.
    â€œHim and Orv left early for town yesterday. Ain’t seen him since. What trouble?”
    Callie told him then of her conversation with Reese last night. They had both been feisty, she said, after