Deadly Is the Night by Dusty Richards

back.”
    â€œWhy so cheap?”
    â€œThere is so little market over there for anything, and people need money to live on over there, too.”
    â€œNow that the Apaches are not very much of a problem, I bet you can drive them through their land as a shortcut.”
    â€œI bet so. Even hire some Apache boys to drive them is all we’d need to do that.”
    â€œHey, get your horse. I want to show you a real set of cows I have now.”
    â€œThought you’d never ask.”
    Hampt laughed. “You really must trust me. You hardly ever come by here to check on me.”
    â€œHampt, I’d trust you with my life. You know that.”
    â€œWhere’s your guardsmen today?”
    â€œSpencer is down at Oracle, picking up a wife at Diablo and taking her to the new ranch house site at the Apache Springs Ranch that he is supervising.”
    â€œWho did he marry?”
    â€œYou recall hearing about a cowboy called Roman Marcos working for JD that got hurt and died from his injuries in a roundup accident last year?”
    â€œYes, I heard about it from Bonnie’s letter to May. Big shame. He had two kids?”
    â€œYes, Spencer knew all about it.”
    â€œDidn’t he have a woman?”
    â€œShe went back to where she came from. I don’t know any more than that.”
    Hampt laughed. “Me either. Start looking and tell me I am not about to have all white-faced cattle on this ranch.” He waved his hand at the long string of white-faced young cows that raised their heads from the hay they were eating to check out the riders.
    â€œYou are coming on. They look real good, too.”
    â€œI am busting my buttons over them. Glad you got to see them.”
    â€œMy last trip to the Verde, Tom said that those range cows that were dumped up here needed to be driven out?”
    â€œWe moved three hundred head of cows plus calves I bet down into the Verde River wilderness a week ago while you were gone after that man’s wife who got kidnapped. They won’t ever find those cows down there I bet.”
    â€œEveryone agreed to do that, didn’t they?” Chet asked.
    â€œYes. Everyone agreed. All the ranchers were upset about these people that drive cattle on others ranges and don’t check on them or anything. The situation needed to be controlled.”
    â€œBet they won’t do a damn thing, either, at the next legislative meeting.”
    Hampt shook his head in disgust. “They’ve got too many paid-off legislators in their pockets.”
    â€œSee any other problems?”
    â€œNo. Now tell me more about what Spencer’s doing?”
    â€œYou know I bought a new ranch north of Oracle. One of Weeks’s outfits the banks repossessed. W Bar W is the brand. There is a man named Frisco whose family ran it even before Weeks bought it. He will stay and run it. He is married to a much younger woman he rescued in Mexico. She is a very neat lady and funny.
    â€œSpencer is building new headquarters at a new site on the place. The previous owners did not live on the ranch and they looked like many Sonoran places we saw down there, just adobe jackals and pens on a dusty flat. There was a big spring in a cottonwood canyon that we chose for the home place.”
    â€œThat woman he met on the stage left him?”
    Chet nodded. “Rebecca was not happy I guess playing the wife role. Spencer paid her fare back to where she came from. He went after the widow woman I mentioned with two kids on the Diablo Ranch he met when he was down there.”
    â€œSo your ranch operation expands some more.”
    â€œYes.”
    â€œHey, you need any help holler.”
    â€œI will. You know that I trust you and count on your leadership.”
    â€œYou know I won’t ever forget you hiring me when you came here the first time from Texas.”
    â€œHey, I feel like you are my brother.”
    â€œThat makes me feel good. Do you ever miss