The Cattleman (Sons of Texas Book 2) by Anna Jeffrey

Author:Anna Jeffrey [Jeffrey, Anna]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Anna Jeffrey Books
Published: 2014-09-14T21:00:00+00:00

Chapter 16

On the way back to the guesthouse, after long minutes of silence and crawling over the two-track trail across the pasture, Pic’s passenger said, “You have an unusual name, too.”

“Pic? I guess it is. I’ve never run across anybody else with the same name. It’s short for Pickett, my mom’s maiden name. My other name is Charles. I like Pic better. I can’t see myself as Charles. Or Chuck or Charlie either.”

“I can’t see you with one of those names either.” She laughed. He hadn’t heard her laugh and she sounded like a little girl.

More silence followed while she looked out over the empty prairie. For some reason, they hadn’t even seen a cow up close. Too hot. They were probably all bunched up somewhere in the shade.

“Oh, there’s an oil well,” she said and Pic looked across the prairie at a see-sawing pump jack in the distance. “That one was developed last year,” he said.

“How many oil wells do you have?”

Pic almost said a hundred or so before something told him not to answer that question. No doubt she would have an opinion about it. “I don’t know. That’s my dad’s domain.”

“That’s why your family is so rich, isn’t it? Y’all have been lucky. And you probably don’t care that products made from oil are destroying our planet.”

Pic flinched. “That’s propaganda,” he said sharply.

“No, it isn’t. Look what drilling for oil did in the Gulf of Mexico just a few years ago. There’s science that—”

Pic’s hands tightened on the steering wheel, but he schooled himself to reply in a neutral tone. “Ma’am, are you gonna give up driving your car? Or the million uses for plastic products or wearing clothes made out of synthetics?”

“Of course not.”

“Then we don’t need to be having this conversation. Just stop and think about what you’re saying. It’s not even logical to think that human beings can destroy the planet. And it’s arrogant. Nature is monumentally more powerful than puny little humans. I see it every day and it humbles me.”

Her pink lips pursed. He could almost imagine her lower lip poked out. “You probably have those gas wells, too,” she said petulantly.

He looked at her, trying to not let his irritation turn to anger. “The ranch is in the Barnett shale area, yeah. So what?”

“Fracking is poisoning our drinking water.”

“You know what? We’ve got dozens of water wells on this ranch and not a damn one of them has bad drinking water. And we know that because we constantly test them. There’s not a water well on this place that I’m afraid to drink from.”

Silence. That suited him fine. Every subject was a contest with her, even it if was something she knew nothing about.

Long minutes passed. They were almost back to the guesthouse and he could hardly wait to get there.

“This is really a big area with nothing in it,” she said. “How big is your ranch?”

He hesitated again. The Double-Barrel’s land ownership as well as its drilled wells were public information.

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