Free Ryan's Hand by Leila Meacham Page B

Bill drove the jeep to the freight office where to her relief the two big boxes from Boston were awaiting her. Without a word, Bill loaded them into the back of the jeep with her other luggage, then looked impatiently at her standing beside the vehicle tying on her head scarf. “Let’s go, miss. We’re late enough already.”
    With Cara clutching the side of the jeep with one hand and her scarf with the other, they tore off down the road leading out of the airport. They headed west on a wide modern interstate for a few miles until Bill turned left onto a two-lane highway. The wind tore at Cara’s scarf, stung her eyes and cheeks, and carried away all attempts at conversation. Finally, receiving no response, she fell silent, trying to make as much as possible of the terrain they were passing through. Still in its wintry pall, it was indeed a bleak-looking landscape. Little vegetation grew from the hard, sandy ground, and what there was appeared stunted and sparse. She recognized the gnarled mesquite trees that Ryan had described to her. “They won’t bud until the last freeze is over,” she remembered his telling her. “Everything else out there can be fooled by Mother Nature, but not the mesquite.” Cara had no idea what mesquite looked like when in bloom, but since there was not a single speck of color on the barren landscape, she deduced that winter was not yet over.
    She was managing to hang onto her seat and the scarf until Bill turned off the highway across the open plains. “Shortcut!” he yelled, driving the jeep at full speed. Cara glanced back in alarm at the boxes jostling around on the backseat. If Bill hit a bump, they could easily be bounced over the side of the jeep onto the hard ground, and already they seemed to have had all the abuse they could stand. One look at the grim satisfaction on the young cowboy’s face, the malicious delight he was taking in her discomfort, and the whole picture became clear.
    “Stop this jeep this instant!” she shouted, and when he ignored her, she simply reached for the keys and jerked them out of the ignition. The jeep ground to a halt, and Bill turned to her in stupefaction. “Now you listen to me, you ill-mannered smart aleck!” Cara exploded. “You need reminding of a fact you seem to have forgotten. I own half of La Tierra Conquistada, and you will drive this jeep at a sane speed and get us to wherever we’re going in one piece, or I may have to exercise a prerogative of my position that I’d just as soon not. Do I make myself clear?”
    Bill looked across at her uncertainly, trying to decide if she was bluffing. The furious brilliance of the violet-blue eyes convinced him she was not. “Yes, ma’am,” he conceded gruffly, and held out his hands for the keys.
    Ultimately, out of the vast ocean of nothingness, there appeared in the far distance a white sprawling structure that momentarily gave the young Bostonian an impression of the Taj Mahal planted in the middle of the Sahara. The suddenness of its appearance was relieved by the beginning of a fence, made not of wood but of white steel pipe, which suggested that civilization was not far off. The white fence contrasted peaceably with the green winter pastures it bordered. In them here and there, groups of healthy-looking russet-colored cattle grazed placidly.
    As all of this came into Cara’s awed view, the jeep reached a well-paved road that ran beside the fence, and Bill turned left, heading, Cara supposed, to a drive that had access to the shining edifice sitting in the middle of the plains.
    “Is this where the ranch begins?” she asked.
    The young cowboy shot her a disgusted glance. “You been on La Tierra since we left the airport,” he stated scornfully, but he could not conceal the note of pride Cara heard in his voice. She recalled that Ryan had spoken of the loyalty and devotion of the cowhands to the ranch. Many of them, she remembered, represented the fourth generation to work at La