Ralph Compton the Empire Trail (The Trail Drive Series) - Softcover

Über die Autorin bzw. den Autor

Ralph Compton stood six foot eight without his boots. He worked as a musician, a radio announcer, a songwriter, and a newspaper columnist. His first novel, The Goodnight Trail, was a finalist for the Western Writers of America Medicine Pipe Bearer Award for best debut novel. He was the USA Today bestselling author of the Trail of the Gunfighter series, the Border Empire series, the Sundown Rider series, and the Trail Drive series, among others.

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CHAPTER ONE

I'm supposed to be afraid . . . of this?"

Andrew Pierce Buchanan looked at the orange a moment longer, then squeezed it in his big bare hand. The rind gave easily and pulp and juice oozed around his fingers. He opened his palm, turned his hand over, and let the fruit drop to the rusty red dirt. Then his dark brown eyes returned to Chester Jacob, the man who had given him the fruit.

"You proved absolutely nothing except that you're a stubborn man-a good man, don't mistake my meaning, but one without a good head for business."

The speaker, Chester Jacob, pulled the drawstrings on the canvas sack. He threw it back over the shoulder of his brown suit.

"And you, my friend, are like my kid brother used to be," Buchanan said. "Always impressed with things that are new."

Buchanan's young, devoted Australian shepherd, King, came romping over, following the strange scent. The six-foot-three rancher lowered his hand to where the dog could lick it.

"He don't seem so fond," Buchanan said as the dog turned elsewhere.

"They're for people," Jacob replied with frustration. "Oranges are not just new, Andy. They're vital, alive."

"Not so alive," Will Fremont chuckled. The foreman of the AB Ranch was standing beside Buchanan. Each laugh caused his outsized chest to expand and contract like a blacksmith's bellows.

"That was one," said the disgusted Jacob. "Imagine thousands."

"That's what I'll have to, friend," Buchanan said. "Imagine them. They're not coming. Not to my land, anyway."

"Like Indians, they will surround you before you know you're in danger," Jacob said.

"Then you will have the satisfaction of knowing that you warned me and I didn't listen."

"Besides, boss needs something to rope," Fremont said. "He loves throwin' a lariat. Can't do that with an orange."

The agent for Widmark Shipping sighed and hoisted the sack over his shoulder. The man was a fit, bronzed statue in a brown suit that had been battered about the seams by constant travel and too-little darning.

At least he doesn't have to worry about being stopped by the hands-up crowd and robbed of his clothes, Buchanan thought. There were still outlaws, renegade Rebels among them, who dogged the routes he took.

Fremont was watching the dog and chewing on a dead cigar. "Boss, you remember that hailstorm that smacked us about, oh-four, five years ago?"

"Summer of '65, right after the war. What about it?"

"Yes, what does that have to do with anything?" asked Jacob, taking out his impatience on the shorter man.

Fremont puffed on the cigar, with no success. He was glaring at Jacob and did not seem to notice.

"Those hailstones tore heck out of the silo, the barn, and the house Andy had built. Even worse than the quake that came right before. Roof of the sod shed looked like Old Greyback turned a scatter gun on it." He had pointed at the distant mountain, then looked down at the mash even the dog had abandoned. "If this 'dangerous' orange of yours fell from the sky, this is what woulda happened."

Buchanan and Jacob both looked at the speaker with confusion, Jacob with impatience as well.

"I am pretty sure, Fremont, that Chester meant a different kind of fearsome when he showed us the orange."

"I know that. I was making a metaphor for the purpose of educatin'."

Buchanan grinned. "Next time I see Miss Sally, I will report to her that you can both read and philosophize."

"Among my other attributes." Fremont inflated and winked.

"For the love of Pete," Jacob complained.

The three men were standing under a charitable spring sun at the strong oak gate that stood below the sign of the AB Ranch, a five-hundred-acre spread established by Buchanan in 1852. That was the year the U.S. government drew up the San Bernardino meridian, a survey that had helped to divide public and private parcels. Then just twenty, he was working as a cowboy up north, in the San Joaquin Valley. He had paid $1.01 an acre using money he had inherited when his mother, Rachel, died.

The shipping agent looked down at the sweet remains where flies were now beginning to cluster. "I did not mean, Mr. Fremont, that you should fear this as some kind of . . . of celestial thunderbolt. What I meant is that this fruit can either be an instrument of your financial ruin or your salvation."

"We're doing okay, ain't we?" Fremont asked his employer.

"We're not starving."

"What about your herd?" Jacob pressed.

"They're eating, too," Buchanan replied.

"But farther out than before. Double-D hands say they saw Reb Mitchell making his rounds wider than before."

"Grasses grow on their own time, not mine."

Fremont said, "Double-D hands and rustlers were also ridin' wider than before. Dawson tries every way he can to hurt every small ranch he can."

"Then, for God's sake, get out before there's bloodshed," Jacob said. He shook his head. "Mark me, one way or the other, the Valencia orange is coming to this region, and soon."

"The appetite for beef ain't goin' anywhere either," Fremont said.

"But there's still a glut-"

"I am just gonna have to ride that out."

"-and you're farther west than Wyoming and Texas, so you still have to walk your herd in. How many pounds do they lose each drive? That's cash they're shedding."

"Train'll be here someday soon."

"Another wait you have to 'ride out.'"

"Maybe not. I got another notion in the meantime, one that may cure the problem entirely."

"Involving cattle?"

Buchanan shrugged. "That's what we raise here."

"That's my point. I have an option for you, too, Andy. The state is going to subsidize orchards and there will be more and more of them. They'll come in and then go out on Mr. Widmark's boats. Even now he's up north commissioning a ship with one of those fancy screw propellers so he can scoot across the Pacific. If not for cleaning and feeding beef, I'd say the Far East was a market for you-but it isn't."

"And you'd need more ice than cow to ship carcasses, I know. I talked to the clipper captains along the Golden West's route. Asked me if I could get them guano. Big demand for that, too."

"There is?" Fremont said.

"Fertilizer," Jacob informed him without turning from Buchanan. "You're always ahead of me, and you're always thinking. Which is why I've come to you, to give you a chance to become part of something else before everyone else."

"Including Dawson?" Fremont asked.

"He's a different case," Jacob said. "Some ranchers do that as a means to empire building."

"Thank you," Buchanan said. "I mean that, Chester. But groves and vineyards are a little tame for me. And for my men, too, I think. We're family."

"I bet it wouldn't take much to convince Joe to switch to whittling," Fremont said. "Give him more time for Bible studies." The foreman made a fist and swung it up and down. "What do you call those sticks on ships?"

"Belaying pins?" Buchanan said.

"If you say so. Or a big longhorn steer scowlin' out at the water."

"Figureheads," Buchanan...