Bone Dry (Blanco County Mysteries) Read Free Page B

cedars, and the faster we work, the more we rake in. Comprende? ”
     
    Billy Don plucked at his muttonchop sideburns and stared out the window as the truck progressed into the ranch.
     
    “This is easy money, Billy Don,” Red continued. “I mean, people all over the county are practically shittin’ themselves tryin’ to get rid of all the cedar trees. All because of a few dry wells—which don’t make a lot of sense to me because wells do that on occasion. It’s just a matter of hydrological semantics.”
     
    Billy Don glanced over, but said nothing. Red liked to flaunt his vocabulary now and then, but Billy Don had caught Red making up phrases a couple of times. This time, though, the big man let it go.
     
    “Be that as it were,” Red said, “we gotta make hay now, before they all come to their senses. You see, Billy Don, it’s what you call a limited marketplace.” Red also enjoyed showing off his mastery of economic issues. “They’s only so much work to go around, so we need to get what we can, while we can. Plus, if this drought breaks, people are gonna forget all about clearing cedar. You foller me?”
     
    Billy Don nodded and donned a serious expression. “You think it has sumpin’ to do with horsepower?”
     
    “What’s that?”
     
    “The ‘3000.’ Maybe that’s the number of—”
     
    “Will you quit harping about that shit!”
     
    Red pulled around a copse of live oaks and spied the two bulky tree-cutting machines looming in the early dawn. The BrushBuster 3000 was truly an awesome piece of work. It looked a lot like a tractor—except for the ominous steel appendage jutting out in front. It resembled nothing so much as an overgrown lobster claw, with two hydraulic pincers that could shear a twenty-inch tree at ground level in a matter of seconds. Red loved the rush of power he felt when sitting at the BrushBuster’s controls. And the fantastic noises it made! Man, when you got that ol’ diesel engine screaming at eight thousand RPMs, and combined that with the wrenching noises the blades made when they bit into a big softwood tree like a cedar... goddamn! It sounded like you were beating a pig to death with an accordion. And the amazing thing was, it was supposed to sound that way! It sure beat anything Red had ever seen at the monster-truck rallies.
     
    Red pulled up beside the twin machines and cut the truck’s engine. “Billy Don, we’ll be working in separate areas today. That means I’m not gonna be around to watch after ya, so pay attention to what you’re doing. No screwups today, all right?”
     
    Red was referring to a minor flaw in Billy Don’s botanical skills that had caused some problems the week before. Namely, Billy Don could hardly tell a cedar tree from a telephone pole.
     
    They had been working a ranch that was home to the single largest madrone grove in Texas. The madrone was a fairly uncommon tree—now even more rare thanks to Billy Don. He had polished off a six-pack of Busch with lunch, then proceeded to level half of the ten-acre grove before the infuriated rancher shot out both of Billy Don’s tires with a twelve-gauge. Mr. Slaton had been boiling mad when he heard about it, but Red talked him out of firing Billy Don. Red had become good friends with the old guy, but boy could he get wound up tight sometimes!
     
    Both men fired up their BrushBusters, and Red watched Billy Don head off toward the northernmost pasture on the ranch. It was a damn big place. They had been working the ranch for three days solid and hadn’t laid eyes on the house or even seen another vehicle. Most owners would stop by every so often to check the progress, but not this one. Red figured the owner might live over in Austin or down in San Antonio. Maybe a fancy lawyer or doctor. Those kinds loved owning big ranches: someplace they could bring their buddies and act like a big-shot cowboy.
     
    Red was just about to put his BrushBuster in gear when a Land Rover pulled up