The Best Man (Blue Heron, #1) by Maggie Osborne
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To the two Georges in my life. I love you both.
Prologue
This here is my last will and testament, me being Joe Roark, owner of the King’s Walk Ranch located seven miles south of Klees, Texas.
The thing is, none of my three daughters is worth a sick spit. Not a one of ’em ever showed a lick of interest in the ranch that paid for all them fancy dresses. I’d as soon leave all of them nothing but a hearty good riddance, but if I do that, then everything I worked my whole life for will go to my fourth wife, Lola Fiddler Roark, and she ain’t worth a sick spit either, her being the most recent and the most annoying of my wives.
This here lawyer fella, Luther Moreland, says I can leave my ranch and my worldly goods to charity and cut ’em all out if’n I want to, but that’s a hell of a thing, now ain’t it? That a man should work his whole entire life to benefit some charity folks who don’t know his name and don’t care, and who don’t know what a hard thing it is to have daughters instead of sons. Even if the worthless women in this family sell the ranch and spend the gains of my sweat and labor on furbelows, which is exactly what I expect, at least it will be family driving a stake in my dead heart and not strangers.
I been thinking about this problem ever since I got sick and I got some things to say about it.
If I got to choose between my useless daughters and my worthless wife as to who gets to squander the fruits of my life’s work, then I guess I’d pick my own blood, my daughters. They been disappointing me longer than Lola, but a man expects more of his wife, so though the period has been shorter, Lola’s caused more than her share of misery and upset and I aint happy about that or her.
So here’s what I come up with and Luther says I can do it. I leave my ranch, my money, and all my worldly goods to my worthless three daughters, but they got to earn it. They got to prove they’re as good as the men I wish they’d been. They got to walk in my boots and learn what ranching means, learn what it meant to be me, Joe Roark.
Luther’s going to write this up in big legal words and write separate pages with the details, but here’s the gist of it, and now I’m talking directly to Alexander, Frederick, and Lester, my daughters. If you three want to get a penny of my estate, then here’s what you got to do. You girls got to drive a herd of longhorns to market in Abilene, Kansas. The three of you got to deliver and sell 2000 beeves at the end of the drive. And you got to work that drive like you was the men you should have been.
Luther will explain everything, and he’ll release enough expense money to cover the journey and hire on a trail boss, a cook, and nine drovers. A successful drive requires at least twelve hands, so you three got to make up the difference. This aint going to be no cakewalk, it’s a work trip. If any one of you aint got what it takes to join up and work your share, then you forfeit any claim on my estate.
If those what join in the cattle drive fail to get them steers to Abilene and sell 2000 of them, then my fourth and worst wife, Lola Fiddler Roark, gets everything.
May the best man win.
Chapter 1
Listening to the talk around town, Dal Frisco could believe that Joe Roark’s funeral was the biggest event to happen in Klees, Texas, since the war ended five years ago.
As every business in town was closed as tight as a new bottle of whiskey, and he had nothing to do until the interviews began Monday, Dal stood on the hotel porch and watched Roark’s hearse roll past. From the line of buckboards, horses, and gigs, it appeared that no one in the county wanted to miss seeing Roark lowered into the ground.
Actually, he supposed that included him. It wasn’t every day that a dead man offered the living a second chance. When he considered Roark as a possible benefactor, he felt like he ought to join the procession to the cemetery and take his hat off for the man. He was shaved, shined up, and sober; and there wasn’t anything else to occupy his time.