Texas Homecoming Read Free

gang of outlaws?”
    “Putting together a roundup crew,” Cade said as he dismounted. “I knew an old corncob like you wouldn’t be any help.”
    His grandfather rebuffed Cade’s attempt to hug him. “None of that! I won’t have a grandson of mine acting sentimental as a woman.”
    “Nothing sentimental,” Cade said, hoping his eyes didn’t glisten too much. “I just wanted to see if there was anything inside that shirt besides skin and bones.”
    “I got a lot of miles in me yet. Your uncle Jessie and me kept them damned squatters off our land. That’s more than most people around here can say.”
    A man emerged from the brush behind Cade. Cade turned with a smile to greet his uncle and had to struggle hard to control his expression. He would never have recognized Jessie Wheeler. His right sleeve was empty, and he walked with a bad limp. He seemed to have aged at least twenty years.
    “One of them damned gangs of scallywags caught him,” his grandfather said. “Woulda killed him if I hadn’t come up on them. They’s all dead now, the sons of bitches. I didn’t bury them neither. Let the varmints have ’em.”
    Cade felt guilty he hadn’t been here to help his great-uncle.This wasn’t Jessie Wheeler’s ranch. He shouldn’t have had to suffer to protect it.
    His uncle also backed away from Cade’s attempt to hug him. “When did you start taking up women’s ways?”
    “When I started losing friends faster than I could find them.”
    “Things aren’t much better here,” his grandfather said. “In the old days you could let a man sell your cattle along with his and know he’d pay you before winter set in. Now there’s people here that’ll steal you blind.”
    “Things will be better now,” Cade said, turning and beginning to walk toward the house. “We’ll start branding as soon as we find the horses.”
    “There’s plenty of stock around,” his grandfather said, “but I don’t know if you can catch them with those skinny-rumped mares you’re riding.”
    “They’ll make good breeding stock.”
    “For what?”
    “Riding horses.”
    “A mustang’s the only horse a man needs for riding in this country.”
    “I’m not talking about men. After things settle down a bit, women will want their own horses.”
    His grandfather snorted. “Not decent women. They know their place.”
    One of the many things Cade and his grandfather disagreed on.
    “What’s been going on since I left?” Cade walked between his grandfather and uncle. The others followed, still mounted. “Any of the old hands still here?”
    His grandfather snorted scornfully. “They couldn’t stick it out. One of them got killed by the bunch of scallywags that caught Jessie, and the rest of them took off. I toldthem one decent Texan could handle a dozen of that trash, but they was running too fast to hear.”
    Cade was too happy to see the familiar outline of the house as it came into view to argue. Everything looked in need of repair, but it was all there—house, bunkhouse, corrals, even the lean-to for the milk cow and the chicken coop. He felt a tremendous sense of relief. His first concern had been his family, but his home had been in his thoughts, too. The way it had been, the way he wanted it to be. He’d told himself that when the war was over, no matter the outcome, he’d have a place to go back to, a way to provide for his grandfather and uncle if they were still alive. He’d have a way to build the kind of life he wanted for himself and the family he hoped to have.
    “We lost the milk cow to one of those gangs, but I stole her back.” His grandfather’s dry cackle made Cade realize just how old he really was. “They never expected an old man to come after her. They attacked one of the other gangs, sure they’d took her.” He laughed again. “They never did come back here looking for her.”
    Cade noticed some chickens around the side of the bunkhouse, wondered what had become of the garden. He