Angel Creek Read online

  Lucas had knelt on the ground, rocking his brother in his arms. What had he wished, this young boy who hadn’t had time to live much? Had his wish been something simple, a wish that it would stop hurting? Or had he wished for a girl’s kiss, for his own future, for the pleasures that he hadn’t yet been able to taste? Lucas didn’t know; he only knew that in the last instant before death Jonah’s eyes had held more life than ever before.

  The Double C had soaked up Cochran blood as well as Indian blood. Cochrans lay buried in its soil. And now Lucas was the only Cochran left.

  His dreams centered around the Double C, just as they always had. That was what had led to the rift with his father. Maybe if Jonah hadn’t died Lucas wouldn’t have felt so raw, so violent, but that was a big maybe, and he’d never let himself fret about it. The simple fact was that a ranch could have only one boss, and the two remaining Cochrans had butted heads time and again. Ellery had been content with what he had, while Lucas had wanted to enlarge.

  The Double C had, after all, belonged to Ellery, so Lucas had been the one to go. Father and son had made their peace, but both knew two stallions just couldn’t live in the same pasture. They regretted the break but accepted that, for both of them, it was better that Lucas lead his own life away from the Double C. They had written and even visited a couple of times in Denver, but Lucas hadn’t returned to the ranch until Ellery’s death.

  He hadn’t spent those ten years living in the lap of luxury. He had supported himself in various ways: as a cowhand, gambling, even as a lawman for a while. He knew ranch work inside out, and he was handy with a gun, but that alone hadn’t kept him alive. A cool head, sharp eyes, and iron determination had served him well. Luke Cochran wasn’t a man to mess with; he didn’t let anything stand in his way when he wanted something. If the cost was high—well, he was willing to pay it if he wanted something bad enough. There wasn’t much that could stop a man who was willing to pay the price, in blood or money, to get what he wanted, and he knew it.

  But with Ellery’s death the Double C had become his. It was already profitable, but he meant to make it even more so. Colorado was on the brink of statehood, which would open up a gold mine of opportunities to a man smart enough and tough enough to take them. He hadn’t spent all of those ten years working at rough jobs; for the past two he had been in Denver, working with the territorial governor to secure statehood, learning how power worked, instantly seeing the vast applications of it. He had been part of the convention that had met in Denver the previous December to draft a constitution, and it was due to be voted on in July.

  The value of statehood to the Double C was almost incalculable. With statehood would come settlers; with settlers would come the railroads. The railroads would make it infinitely easier for him to get his beef to market, and his profits would soar. He wanted the Double C to be the biggest and the best. It was all he had left now; the soil embraced his family in death even as it had sustained them in life. And as the Double C became richer he would work within the lines of contact he had already established in Denver. The two would feed each other: The Double C would make more money, and he would have more influence in Denver, the more influence he had in Denver, the more he could sway decisions that would affect the Double C, thus making it even richer.

  He wasn’t ambitious for the political aspect of it, but he needed to make certain the ranch would continue to prosper. He was willing to pay the price. The ten years out on his own had taught him some hard lessons, finishing the process of hardening that had begun in boyhood. Those lessons would come in handy now that he had an empire to build.

  An empire needed heirs.

  He wasn’t in any real hurry to tie himself down, but he hadn’t been back long before Olivia Millican, banker Wilson Millican’s daughter, had caught his eye. She was pretty and cool and refined, socially adept and always well-mannered. She would be a perfect wife. A woman like her had to be courted, and Lucas was willing to do it. He liked her; he figured they would get along better than most. In another year or so she’d make him a fine wife.

  But this year he’d be busy putting his plans into action.

  There were so many things that he wanted to do. One of them was improving the herd, bringing in new bulls, trying new crossbreeds to produce a hardier steer without losing any quality in the meat. He also wanted to try different grasses for grazing, rather than letting the herd graze on whatever happened to be growing.

  And he wanted to expand. Not too much right away; he didn’t want to start off by overextending himself. But after producing a better herd he wanted to produce one that was bigger as well, and that meant more land for grazing, more water. He well knew the value of a good source of water; it could mean the difference between life and death for a herd. Many a rancher had gone under when the water dried up.

  Building the ranch up would give him the solid base he needed to fulfill the rest of his ambitions. It was the first step, the most necessary step.

  He had a good water source now, a small, lazily moving river that wound around the ranch. It had never gone dry that he could remember, but there had been a couple of summers when it had slowed to little more than a trickle. It had always rained before the situation became dire, but someday the rain might not come in time. Rainfall wasn’t heavy in Colorado anyway; most of the water came from the snowcaps. A good year depended more on the winter snows than the summer rains, and it hadn’t snowed much this past winter. A smart rancher always had more than one water source, just in case. Some streams would continue to run while others dried up.

  One of the things he’d argued about with Ellery was the need for another good water source, Angel Creek specifically. Angel Creek and the river on the Double C came from the same source, a larger stream that divided in two and flowed down opposite sides of the mountain. But at the point of division the bed of Angel Creek lay lower than the other riverbed. Thus what runoff there was from the mountain during the dry weather would flow into Angel Creek, leaving the other dry until the water level in the stream rose enough to overflow into the higher riverbed.

  Lucas had wanted to claim the narrow Angel Creek valley just for its water, but Ellery had refused, saying that the Double C had enough water to take care of its own, and anyway, Angel Creek was on the other side of the mountain with no good way to herd the cattle across it. They’d have to be moved around the mountain, and that was too much trouble. Besides, the valley was too small to support a large herd. Lucas had disagreed with his father’s reasoning.

  Angel Creek. Lucas narrowed his eyes, remembering how lush the valley was. Maybe it would be Cochran land after all.

  He sought out his foreman. “Toby, didn’t someone settle on Angel Creek some years back?”

  William Tobias, who had been ranch foreman as far back as Lucas could remember, grunted an affirmative. “Yep. Nester by the name of Swann.” A slight curl to his lip indicated how much he disliked even saying the word “nester.”

  Lucas grunted back, a scowl settling on his face. Like all cattlemen, he didn’t care for nesters or the fences they put up on what had been open range. But maybe the nester on Angel Creek would consider selling. From what he’d seen of nesters, though, they were as hardheaded as mules.

  Maybe this one would have more sense. It was worth a ride over to Angel Creek, at least, because he’d never know unless he asked.

  A man on horseback could pick his way through any of the narrow passes, though trying to move a herd over them would have been stupid. Lucas eyed the sun and calculated that he had plenty of time before nightfall to ride over there and back, so there wasn’t any point in waiting.

  He wasn’t optimistic about talking the nester into selling, and it put him in an irritable mood. If Ellery had listened to him, Angel Creek would already be his. Or he could have claimed it for his own before the settlers had started moving in if he hadn’t been too young and hotheaded to plan ahead. Looking back and realizing what he should have done was just a waste of time.