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A heavy breath came from him. “All right. I’ll go with you.” With a gesture of irritation, he shoved the papers onto his desk, then reached for his hat to jam it onto his head and follow her out of the room. Tara was instantly at his side, subtly attempting to detain him. “It’s business, Tara.” He sharply brushed aside her veiled protests and left the house with Jessy.
Not a word was exchanged as he climbed into the passenger side while Jessy slid behind the wheel. With smooth efficiency, she put the truck into motion and swung it away from The Homestead and onto the ranch road leading east from the headquarters. She showed him no more of her face than the strong-boned lines of her profile, her skin tanned brown and sun creases spreading out from the corner of her eye.
For a long time, the only sounds were the rush of wind over the truck and the loud hum of the motor. Behind him, a rifle rattled in the gun rack mounted across the cab’s rear window, a fixture in nearly every ranch vehicle. The grass-covered plains yellowing under the summer sun were a blue smear outside his window as the truck sped along the road. Ty thoughtfully rubbed his mouth, his mustache scraping the top of his finger, as he tried to guess at the unknown destination.
“Where are we going?” he finally asked after they had turned onto the highway, then shortly turned off of it again to bump along a rutted, overgrown track.
“We’re almost there.” She was equally abrupt.
The rutted tracks disappeared into a tangle of thistle-choked weeds. The truck bounced to a stop when it ran out of trail in the middle of nowhere. Jessy switched off the motor and climbed out of the pickup without explanation. Impatiently, Ty put a shoulder to the passenger door, opening it and swinging down.
A debris of rotted, broken wood and torn strips of black tarpaper was scattered about the weeds. It appeared to be an old dumping ground for trash. Ty looked around him with an expression of disgust and scantly concealed irritation for being brought here.
“Watch where you step,” Jessy advised him when he started forward. “There’s an old cistern buried around here somewhere.”
“What is this place?” His glance sliced to her.
“This is where your grandmother
used to live,” she told him. “She was a homesteader.”
Ty looked again at the scattered debris. He knew little about his grandmother, other than the fact that she had died shortly after his father was born. There was so little he knew about his family’s background. Jessy was more knowledgeable about his family’s history than he was. It grated nerves that were already irritated.
“In those days, they called them honyockers or nesters.” Her gaze was turned out to scan the sparse and scrubby plant life. “I wanted you to see what the plow did to this land. It used to be covered with grass—as thick and tall as the grass you find today on the Triple C.”
His glance ran over her tight-lipped and angry expression. She stood tall beside him, stiff with resentment. When she turned her narrowed and clear-eyed look on him, he noticed again the strength in her features, clean of any makeup.
“Look at it,” she ordered. “Because this is what happens when you rip up this earth. It’s eroded and windburned; not even the weeds can hold it together. Three hundred acres could maybe support one cow.”
“It needs to be seeded . . . reclaimed.” Ty conceded the land was in sorry condition, more desert than plain.
“Do you think it hasn’t been tried? Millions of acres of land were torn up like this.” Her voice vibrated with her effort to keep it controlled. “The native grasses wouldn’t come back. New kinds have been planted; some of the hardier ones have taken hold, but it takes a lot of care and work and water. It’s been fifty years and there’s still places like this. Are you willing to destroy the land for the coal underneath it? Destroy it not just for your use but your children’s, too?”
“Dammit, Jessy! I don’t have any choice!” he snapped under the increasing pressure of her censure. “I need the money to keep the ranch going.”
“What ranch?” she argued. “There won’t be anything left when they finish gobbling up all the coal. What are you saving, a place that will be a scrub desert in thirty years?”
“You don’t seem to understand.” He tried to control his temper.
“No, you don’t understand!” Jessy retorted. “You are doing it for money—for profit. It’s business, you say. It’s progress. You’ve been given a legacy, Ty. A tradition that has prided itself on caring for the land and people. You’re going to lose both because you think money is more important. People built this ranch. The only way it could ever be destroyed is from the inside. And you’re the core of it. If the heart is no good, the rest of it will slowly die.”
It was a long moment before Ty offered any response. “You’ve made your point,” he said.
In silence, they made the long drive back to the ranch headquarters. Her words hammered in his mind all the way. When Jessy dropped him off at The Homestead, nothing was said; simple courtesies seemed superfluous at this point.
Tara attempted to besiege him with questions, but Ty stayed in the house just long enough to get the keys to the single-engine aircraft, then left again. After taking off from the runway, he flew over the site picked for the jointly ventured coal plant, surrounded by rolling, grass-covered terrain with its rich deposit of low-sulfur coal inches below the surface. The road surveyors were colored dots in the grass, their vehicles the size of a child’s toys viewed from the plane’s altitude.
Banking the plane to the east, Ty continued his flight over the scrub prairies where grass struggled for survival against the erosion of wind and rain, and against the sturdy weeds. Then he changed his course to fly to the Stockman place.
A large green blanket of carefully nurtured grass offered a marked contrast to the black coal pit with its haze of dust and crawling machinery. But the reclaimed area suddenly appeared small when compared to the trail of chewed-up earth the monster shovel had devoured as it followed the underground coal seam.
When he returned to The Homestead, there was a lift to his shoulders and more authority in his rolling stride. He went straight to the study, called his father at the hospital, and advised him of his decision to break the contract with Dyson.
“I’m glad.” His father’s voice sounded choked, but it came back strong. “What are you going to do now that you won’t have that money?”
“Cut down to a bare-bones operation.” Ty told him some of his plans, to which his father added his suggestions. Together they arrived at a workable program. It wouldn’t solve the ranch’s financial woes, but it gave them a chance to ride it out to better times.
“What about Dyson?” his father questioned. “He’ll fight you—son-in-law or not.”
