Free Roughstock (A Gail McCarthy Mystery) by Laura Crum Page A

there" -Bronc waved a hand at a level area off to his left-"and then I just kicked him up into a lope. He never even humped his back. Two days later I took him on a gather."
    He looked back at the buckskin gelding as he spoke and slapped the horse's neck in a gesture of rough affection. He wasn't exactly petting him, not by my standards, anyway, but Willy seemed to take it as meant and neither threw his head nor sidled away, just stood there unmoving, as if to say, "I'm used to the old fart."
    Bronc stepped up to the horse and, resting one arm on his back, stood there looking over the buckskin rump across the darkening barnyard. The barns and employee houses surrounded us, hulking silvery-gray shapes in the winter dusk. Even though the natural hollow of the land and the buildings diminished the wind, it was still a long way from warm. In fact, I was shivering inside my jacket, but I wanted to keep Bronc talking.
    "Where's Travis?" I asked tentatively.
    Travis Gunhart lived in one of the two employee houses-Bronc lived in the other.
    "He went to town." Bronc was staring off toward the adobe ranch house, suddenly looking very much an old man. The cold, rapidly dimming light, I wondered, or the fact that his usually animated face was still for once? Bronc had to be, what? Sixty-five? Around that, I thought, though he usually impressed me as looking more like fifty.
    "I can hardly believe Jack's gone," he said at last, as if talking to himself. His eyes drifted to the south, where the sea, hidden now in the gathering darkness, murmured endlessly. "There's always been a Hollister on this ranch, ever since I've been here. And that's forty years."
    Poor old man, I thought sadly. He's outlived his life. Everyone who mattered to him is dead. Feeling ghoulish, but still wanting to know, I asked, "What will happen to it? The place. Will it be sold?"
    Bronc snorted, his old inimitable self in the turn of a second. "Goddamn developers. No, the sons-of-bitches won't get it. It goes to the state."
    "To the state," I parroted stupidly. "Why's that?"
    "Jack's will," Bronc said briefly. "He left the ranch to the state, to be part of Bonny Doon State Park. Wanted them to preserve it the way it is now. Like the Wilder Ranch and the Coe Ranch."
    "Oh," I said blankly, wondering what this meant. "Jack left everything to the state?"
    "No, not every thing, just this one little old five-hundred-acre ranch. The home ranch, we called it. Jack owned land all over California. All over Nevada and Oregon and Washington, too. But that's all part of the rest of his estate. It's just the Hollister Ranch that goes to the state."
    "So who gets the rest of his estate, do you know?"
    "Oh, I know all right." It was too dark to see well, but from the sound of his voice Bronc's old eyes were bright. "Jack showed me his will when he made it, right after he got a divorce from that last bitch. A couple of years ago it was." He was abruptly silent.
    He was baiting me, I thought. He knew I was curious and so was deliberately withholding the information, just to make me ask.
    All right, I'd ask. "So who gets it?"
    Bronc held his silence a moment, playing it out, but I wasn't really worried. He liked talking more than he liked not talking. After another second he grinned, his teeth a brief flash of white in the dusk. "His ex-wives."
    "His ex-wives. My God. Why?" As the words left my mouth I realized my comment was hardly tactful, but the shock behind it was certainly genuine. How many people left millions and millions of dollars to be divided among their ex-spouses?
    "Didn't have anyone else to leave it to, I guess." Bronc's voice was noncommittal. Why not you, I thought instantly, or Trav, but this time I kept it to myself. For a second we were quiet. Then I asked, "What will you do?"
    "Why, move in with you, of course. If you'll have me." Again the flash of teeth. Bronc laughed. "Naw, honey, I can stay here. Jack wrote it that the state had to let me live here till I died,