Read Online Fire Brand by Diana Palmer - Free Book Online Page A

the best Gaby had ever done. And once it was in print, it would be a good time to leave the area for a while, until the heat died down. She never ran from trouble, but sometimes it was advantageous to walk around it.
    Johnny Blake was delighted. He took the few unverifiable bits of information he’d been given and handed them over to Lang, the paper’s investigative reporter. Like a bulldog with a bone to chew, the veteran journalist went straight to work. Lang had contacts that none of the other reporters did. His stock of sources read like a Who’s Who of organized crime, but he always got what he needed, with enough printable sources to support the story. Other papers had tried to lure him away with everything from company cars to incredible salaries, and one of the television networks had even dangled an anchor spot at him. Lang just plugged away at his desk, amused at his notoriety, and never gave it a second thought. Gaby liked him. He was an old renegade, with a shady past and plenty of grit and style. He might not be society, but he was a reporter’s reporter. He’d clear Guerano, and Johnny Blake would have his big story for the month. The only casualty might be Guerano himself, because it was hard to undo a public accusation. With the best will in the world, the dirt stuck.
    That night as Gaby packed she worried about encroaching on Aggie’s privacy, about interfering. She really was concerned, and knew she was just going to have to risk irritating her. The next morning she put two suitcases in her little white VW convertible, left her plants with a neighbor to water, and set out for Casa Río.
    The ranch was over twenty thousand acres in size, as many southeastern Arizona ranches were. The sheer immensity of open space was staggering to Eastern tourists. Even to Gaby, who’d lived here for years, the scope of it was almost unbelievable. One mountain was crossed, ending in an endless valley. That reached to another mountain, and beyond it was another endless valley, and so on. Cattle and horses grazed lazily beyond the highway, because open range was the law in Arizona. Considering the size of the ranches, it was understandable. Fencing thousands of acres would cost a fortune, and with the depressed cattle market, ranchers would certainly be hard-pressed to come up with the kind of money Gaby imagined it would cost.
    The thought piqued her curiosity. She and Bowie had never talked about the cattle operation at Casa Río. Her dark olive eyes narrowed as she drove down the endless highway toward Tucson. She wondered about the impact of an agricultural operation on Bowie’s cattle. Not only would the enormous project use great volumes of water—which was still scarce in this part of Arizona—but it would use pesticides that would leach into the soil and add pollutants to the precious water remaining. Arizona rivers, with the notable exception of the Colorado, mostly ran only during the rainy months, when there was flash flooding. Wells provided the majority of the water in southeastern Arizona. There had already been one television special which had alleged that there were toxins in the drinking water around Tucson. Perhaps some conversations with the local U.S. Soil Conservation Service office in Lassiter might be of benefit. Gaby could see that if she wanted to do a proper job on this story, she was going to be involved in a lot of research.
    She stopped to eat in Tucson before heading south through Tombstone to Lassiter. This was familiar territory. Lassiter was bordered on the east by the Chiricahua Mountains, where the Chiricahua Apache once reigned supreme. To the south and west was Tombstone, the site of the O.K. Corral gunfight, high atop its mesa. Far to the southeast was Douglas, on the Mexican border, and to the west were the Dragoon Mountains, where Cochise’s Stronghold was located. Near Bowie’s ranch was the famous Sulphur Springs Valley, once home to