Beckett's Birthright. Bronwyn Williams

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      So Shem had picked out her name and registered it with the same deliberation he would have given the offspring of one of their prize bulls, although with a different set of authorities.

      Delilah Burke Jackson. She’d been named for her father, even though he’d shown no more interest in her than he did the least of his seasonal hires. By the time she’d cut her first permanent tooth, she had accepted the fact that if a father couldn’t love his only child, there was no point in hoping anyone else could. Since the day she’d first reached that conclusion, she had made her own rules.

      “And to hell with everyone else,” she muttered now as she jumped Demon over a low fence. “To hell with you, too, Elias Chandler,” she added for good measure.

      She had known who he was before she’d gone out to the barn. Shem had already told her about the man who’d been hired as his replacement now that he was so crippled up with rheumatism. Chandler was from Oklahoma Territory, for heaven’s sake. What the devil was he doing here in the East, hiding out from the law?

      He looked dangerous enough. All tawny, like one of the big cats she’d seen once in a traveling zoo, with the same watchfulness. Same color hair from what she could see under that battered black hat. She didn’t know about his eyes, but she did know his hips were about half the size of her own.

      Not his shoulders, though. Those were massive. She always sized up a man’s strength, as men were always the ones in positions of authority. Some of those men from the western territories were said to be barely civilized. She’d read all about the Wild West in the books she’d made a policy of reading once she’d learned that they were frowned upon for young ladies.

      At least he didn’t carry a gun. Not where anyone could see it. It was easy, though, to picture him riding the range, a pair of six-shooters strapped on his sides.

      Most of the men who worked on the Bar J wore straw hats in the summer, hunting caps in the winter. Chandler wore a broad-brimmed hat that looked as if he’d been using it as a feedbag, or at least to polish his boots. It was black. Everyone knew which men wore the black hats and which ones wore white.

      Leaning forward, she stroked the big bay stallion and murmured soft endearments. “We don’t like him, do we, love? We don’t like his looks, don’t like his ways, don’t like…”

      Listen to you, woman! You don’t like the man’s looks? Why? Because he’s bigger than you are? Because he’s so blasted good-looking?

      Or because he hadn’t tried to hide the fact that he disapproved of her? Even worse, that he found her amusing?

      By the time she returned to the paddock, Elias Chandler was nowhere around. She was both relieved and disappointed. She knew from experience that men found both her size and her attitude unattractive—which only served to make her attitude worse.

      Well, that was just too damned bad, because she fully intended to take over the running of the Bar J now that her father’s health was failing. Sooner or later she was going to have to deal with all of her father’s employees. They would either work with her or she would pay them off and send them on their way.

      Shem, no matter that she loved him dearly and owed him more than she could ever repay, was no longer up to the job. If he approved of Chandler, then she would just have to try and get along with the man until she was ready to take over.

      Eli, watching from the window of the office when she rode in a few hours later, couldn’t help but notice the easy way Jackson’s daughter handled the high-strung stallion. Both the lady and her mount looked as if they’d been ridden hard. The horse was lathered, the lady flushed, her hair flying loose behind her.

      She slid down and walked him into the yard. When one of the older hands offered to rub him down, she shook her head. Good for her, he thought. It was a mark in her favor that she took care of her own horse.

      He turned back to the books spread across the scarred oak desk. They were going to need a few more temporary hands once the fields dried out enough to plow. The Bar J was considerably smaller than some of the ranches he’d worked on out west, but here in the east, the land was so rich it didn’t take thousands of acres to feed a decent-size herd. They could grow all they needed to winter the stock and still have plenty of land left for summer pasture.

      If Jackson would pay decent wages, he might get better quality help. Trouble was, you couldn’t argue with him without setting him to coughing and wheezing. Eli didn’t like the man, but he didn’t want to be responsible for his death.

      By the time he finished the payroll, lined up the week’s work and tracked down the receipt for the repeat bill, his hand was cramped, his shoulders stiff, and his eyes hurt. He rarely stayed this long in any job, especially one that entailed so damn much bookkeeping. But until he knew what his next move was going to be, his best bet was to stand pat. No point in haring off on a dead-end trail. Besides, he liked the place. The land was rich, water was plentiful and the buildings sufficient. The stock was damned fine, too—as good as any he’d been privileged to work with, and he’d worked with some of the best.

      He figured he could give it another month. Meanwhile, he’d keep his eyes open for a man he could begin training to take his place. Streak wasn’t interested. Reading wasn’t his strong suit, and in these modern times, especially in the East, reading was a requirement.

      He’d about made up his mind that if by midsummer he still hadn’t picked up any new leads, he would move on anyway. Try some other venue. Might even ride down Charleston way, to see how his namesake was getting on. Who was to say he wouldn’t find what he was looking for down in that neck of the woods? Charleston had its share of gamblers.

      Funny thing, now that he thought about it—the description of the man who had kidnapped Rosemary and another man, one who had come to his rescue in a knife fight nearly five years ago, weren’t all that far apart. Both men were slim, about five foot eight with a liking for fancy clothes. Lance didn’t have a streak of white hair—at least, he hadn’t the last time Eli had seen him, but that could have changed.

      Tilting back his chair, Eli stared out the dusty window and considered the first time he had met Lance Beckett. Eli had been two months shy of his twenty-fourth birthday and had just inherited roughly five thousand acres of barren land, a big, two-story house and all the money his grandfather had accumulated selling land to the railroads.

      Knowing, or at least suspecting, that there was more to life than could be found in Crow Fly, Oklahoma Territory, he’d headed east to do some sight-seeing before settling down.

      He’d gotten as far as Fort Smith, Arkansas—with a few educational stops along the way, such as a whorehouse boasting a cement bathtub that held half a dozen people—when he stopped at a saloon to wash the trail dust from his throat. He’d barely taken a sip of his watered-down whiskey when the fight broke out. Before he knew what was happening, he and a city dude dressed like an undertaker were backed up against a wall, taking on a mob of angry hog farmers.

      At six foot three, Eli weighed right around two hundred pounds, depending on whether or not he’d been eating regularly. The undertaker was considerably smaller. Eli remembered seeing him at one point standing on the bar hurling pickled eggs and kicking at the ham-size hands that tried to grab his fancy high-top shoes.

      Even as tough as he was, Eli hadn’t thought too much of their chances—two men against more than a dozen—especially after some little weasel jumped up onto his back with a knife in his СКАЧАТЬ