LONE STAR AND THE BORDER BANDITS
A Jove Book / published by arrangement with
the author
PRINTING HISTORY
Jove edition / September 1982
Fourth printing / June 1983
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eISBN : 978-1-101-16887-5

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Chapter 1

“You don't really need to ride the fencelines today, Ki,” Jessie Starbuck said. “I'm sure Ed's kept everything in good shape while we were gone.”

“Of course he has,” Ki agreed. “Ed's a good strawboss. I never worry when he's in charge while we're away.”

“Then rest today, Ki,” Jessie suggested. “The fence will still be there tomorrow.”

“Oh, I'm not tired, Jessie.” Ki paused and added, “Besides, when I ride line, I see more than the barbwire. I see the sun and the sky and the range.” He lowered his head for a moment and then looked up at Jessie again, his dark eyes glowing between the almond-shaped ovals of their lids. “Sometimes I even think I see more than what I'm looking at. Does that make sense to you?”

“Yes,” Jessie replied thoughtfully.

She understood Ki's need for an occasional period of solitude. Line-riding gave him time to meditate with the Japanese half of his ancestry and to reconcile it with the American half. Her eyes swept the broad, ridge-broken range that stretched in a seemingly endless expanse away from the buildings and horse corrals of the Circle Star. In the slanting light of the early-morning sun, the sparse prairie grasses that covered the earth rippled gently in response to the small breeze.

Without looking at Ki, Jessie went on, “Alex taught me that there's a lot more to this place than someone can take in at a glance.”

“You're sure you don't want to go with me?”

“No. I'm going to stay here this time. Besides ...”

Ki nodded when Jessie stopped short. Just as Jessie understood his feelings, Ki grasped what she did not want to put into words. Riding the fenceline would take him past the ravine where Alex Starbuck had died, cut down by a hail of bullets from the guns of a band of hired assassins. Even now, the place of her father's death was still the one spot on the ranch that Jessie avoided going near.

“I'll be back in plenty of time for supper,” he said. He lifted one hand in a half-wave, half-salute as he wheeled his horse and started at a fast walk away from the corral.

During the periods when both he and Jessie were at the ranch, Ki took his duties as foreman very seriously, and on any Texas ranch in the 1880s, keeping fences in shape was a job that had no end. Though barbwire had been in use for several years before Alex Starbuck began fencing the Circle Star range, it was widely disliked.

In the time that had passed since then, barbwire had gained respect, but no liking. Fences were still cut by trail-drive hands, who resented the detours they had to make around what had been open range. Footloose cowpunchers in search of jobs snipped the strands so they could travel in a straight line from ranch to ranch. Rustlers cut big sections out of fences when they were making off with a stolen herd.

Ki counted himself lucky when he'd ridden half the morning without having to tighten a sagging strand or splice a cut. He'd made mental notes of two or three skewed fence-posts that would need attention later, but his ride had been uninterrupted until he saw that company was ahead.

Less than three miles away, where a solitary mesquite bush had struggled through enough dry summers to attain the status of a tree, a half-dozen cowhands were riding across the range. Their course was at a right angle to the Circle Star fence. Ki looked along the line of wire; even at that distance he could see where the barbwire strands sagged to the ground between two of the widely spaced posts that separated Starbuck range from that of its south-western neighbor, the Lazy G. Touching his toe to the flank of his horse, Ki speeded up.

It was obvious to Ki that if he could see the Lazy G hands, they could see him. Holding his irritation in check, he followed the custom of the country and waved a greeting to the riders. When he received no wave in reply, Ki frowned and toed his mount into a distance-eating lope.

He'd covered half the distance to the approaching band when the riders veered suddenly and headed for the old mesquite. Ki saw that he was too far away to cut off the trespassers before they reached the tree, and he changed his direction to meet them. The cowhands were closer to the mesquite than Ki was, but he was near enough by now to see details. One of the six riders was gagged with a bandanna. The man's wrists were lashed to his saddlehorn, and his horse was being led by one of the other riders.

Ki could see only one reason why a bunch of hands would be escorting a bound and gagged man to the only big tree within twenty miles. He kicked his horse to a gallop.

In spite of his speed, the cowhands reached the tree first. Ki was still two hundred yards away when one of the Lazy G men began uncoiling his lariat. By the time Ki got within calling distance of the tree, the man holding the lariat had made a loop and dropped it over the neck of the helpless prisoner.

“Ho!” Ki shouted. “Stop what you are now doing!”

His words had the effect Ki hoped they would. The cowhands around the prisoner suspended their preparations for the hanging, and wheeled their horses to face Ki. He reined in when less than a dozen yards separated him from the stony-faced group. Though all the horses the cowpunchers rode bore the Lazy G brand, Ki found himself facing strangers.

“I do not need to ask what you men are planning to do,” Ki said. He kept his voice low, pitched just high enough to carry to them. Long ago, Ki had observed that forcing a man to listen to a softly pitched voice drew his attention more effectively than did an angry shout.

“Who in hell are you, busting in like you got a right to stop us doing whatever we feel like?” one of the group snarled.

Ki looked closely at the men. He hadn't seen them on the Lazy G range before, but that wasn't unusual, for he and Jessie were often away from the Circle Star, and sometimes for long periods. Cowhands on the neighboring ranches as well as on the Starbuck spread had a common affliction: itchy feet. They came unannounced, worked until they'd earned enough money to carry them somewhere else, and moved on.

“I am the foreman of the Circle Star,” Ki said. “You are on Starbuck land, so you will listen to me.”

“Like hell we will! This sonofabitching rustler's going to be decorating that mesquite tree before he's five minutes older!”

Another of the cowhands, who'd been studying Ki's features, said, “Hey, you're some kind of greaser, but you damn sure ain't no Mex.”

Ki ignored the remark. He looked from one to another of the five men, trying to read in their glowering faces how firmly they were committed to their purpose. At the same time, the Lazy G hands were studying him, trying to determine what kind of man he was. Ki's dress was just different enough from theirs to arouse their curiosity. He wore the same kind of faded jeans and the same kind of loosely fitting cotton twill shirt, and like all but one of them, Ki had on a vest over his shirt.

There the resemblance stopped. Ki's vest was leather, with creases and scuffed areas that denoted age and long use. Instead of the high-heeled, pointed-toed boots the Lazy G hands wore to a man, Ki's feet were shod in canvas slippers with rope soles. All the cowhands had on broad-brimmed Stetsons. Ki wore no hat, but had a sweat-stained cloth band tied around his head below his thick, glossy black hair. His slightly flattened nose and the epicanthic folds that gave an almond shape to his opaque black eyes betrayed his Japanese blood.

Ki waited until the Lazy G men had finished scrutinizing him before asking in the same low tone he'd used before, “Which of you is in charge?”

“We're all in charge, greaser,” the man who'd spoken first replied contemptuously. “But seeing as Clem Petty called my name out first when he sent us to cut calves outta the nursery range, I guess I'm sorta the strawboss.”

“Then order your companions to remove the noose from that man,” Ki told him, nodding toward the prisoner. “Miss Starbuck would not wish to have a helpless person murdered on the Circle Star.”

“Bullshit!” the strawboss snorted. “This ain't no murder, it's a execution!”

“That's handing it to him straight, Snag!” one of the Lazy G hands put in. “Don't take no lip from the greaser!”

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