Read Online Texas Blood Feud by Dusty Richards - Free Book Online Page A

the living room rocker, May was nursing six-month-old Donna. She smiled at Chet as she hoisted the baby up for a better position.
    “Well, your help’s back,” he said to her.
    “Yes. I missed them.” She shook her head like she was tired of being chief cook and bottle washer. Besides nursing her own, she had eighteen-month-old Rachel crawling around, getting into everything. “I’m glad Susie brought us some help.”
    The poor girl had come from being a pampered banker’s daughter to becoming a mother of two—one was Rachel, whose birth cost Nancy her life, and the second one arrived nine months after the wedding. May still carried some baby fat. Not as pretty as Nancy, she still tried hard in Chet’s book, and did not receive a lot of help or attention from his brother—her husband.
    “Louise and I are making new shirts for the men,” Susie announced, showing him the bolt of blue denim. “We have material for dresses for the spring and even for Mother.”
    Louise stood back silent and helped unpack staples like coffee and baking powder from the wooden crates. She’d not said one word to Chet since the schoolyard, and he could see behind her darting brown eyes that she wanted to rake him over the coals again.
    “There’s a new doctor in Mason,” said Susie.
    “Good. Always can use one to them,” Chet said, making room to set his load on the table. “I understand the funeral is tomorrow. I think we should go and pay our respects.”
    “Isn’t that hypocritical?” Louise asked.
    “You don’t have to go if you feel that way,” Chet said.
    “You’re right, Chet Byrnes. I don’t have to do one thing that you tell me to do. I have wired an attorney in Shreveport and asked him what my rights were.”
    “Does that mean you are leaving, Louise?”
    “I want my sons to grow up in a more civilized place than this outpost in hell.”
    “You sure they want to leave here?”
    “They are both under eighteen and they will do as I say.”
    “Fine, when you get that letter from that lawyer, show it to me. You have not seen Shreveport in a number of years. May I suggest you go there on a visit and see it first? I understand that much of the South is still so torn up from the war, it hardly is the same.”
    “You want rid of me, is that it?”
    “No, ma’am, but you don’t know what the South is like today. We may live in hell, but there are worse places.”
    “How would I get the means?”
    “We can pay for it.” He waited for her answer.
    She turned on her heel to leave, would not look back at him, and tossed her words at him while leaving. “I will consider it.”
    Reg dried his palms on the front of his pants. “I damn sure ain’t going along with her.”
    Chet shook his head to quiet him. A trip to Shreveport might settle her for a while. At least she would not be around to harass him; let her go see the slave-free South. All those once-rich people doing their own wash on boards in tubs. She might think the ranch wasn’t so bad after all.
    The taste and quality of the food picked up with Susie back, and so did everyone’s appetite at the supper table. After the meal, he excused himself, slipped off, saddled a horse, and rode out in the twilight. The short days wouldn’t be getting longer for months.
    He rode up on the ridge under the stars, listened to the coyotes. Huddled in his jumper shell, he wished he’d worn more clothing. A new cold front had moved in and no rain. His thirsty ranch needed all the rain he could get for it.
    This mess with the Reynolds clan might hurt his spring cattle drive. People might be challenged not to use his services. Those extra thousand head paid the expenses for the drive. There was still money going north with a herd of his own, but the extra insured a profit. Time would tell.
    At the end of the ridge, he looked off across the pearl-lighted country. Better forget about seeing Marla for the night and head home. He short-loped the good horse for the