Chapter 13 - The Matador Contract
San Angelo was louder than Josephine expected.
Wagons rattled over packed streets.
Cattle bawled from distant stockyards.
Hotels overflowed with merchants, ranchers, drummers, and men determined to become rich before supper.
Josephine and Harrison arrived near dusk.
They found Nathaniel Price above a tailor shop.
He was eighty years old and nearly blind.
When Harrison introduced himself, the lawyer removed his spectacles.
“Samuel Croft’s boy.”
“Harrison.”
“I know.”
Price smiled.
“You look like him when he was angry.”
Josephine said, “Then you must recognize him often.”
Harrison glanced at her.
Price laughed.
“I like her.”
“We need to ask about Matador.”
The laughter stopped.
Price locked the door.
“Who told you to come?”
“Gideon Furlong.”
Price’s expression darkened.
“That name has caused your family enough trouble.”
“You know him?”
“No. I know what Samuel wrote.”
He opened an old cabinet.
From the back he removed a sealed envelope.
Harrison stared at his father’s handwriting.
Price placed it on the table.
“Samuel gave me this two weeks before he died.”
“Why?”
“He discovered someone was buying land around Ironstone through shell companies.”
“Matador?”
“Before it used that name.”
Harrison opened the letter.
Samuel described pressure from financiers attempting to buy his water rights.
A name appeared repeatedly.
August Bellweather.
But another name appeared too.
Eleanor Croft.
Harrison stopped.
“My mother?”
Price nodded.
Josephine remained very still.
Harrison’s mother had left Texas when he was seventeen.
He rarely discussed her.
“What did she have to do with Bellweather?”
Price spoke gently.
“Your mother inherited shares in Bellweather Land & Cattle.”
Harrison stared.
“What?”
“Her father was one of the original investors.”
“How many shares?”
“Enough to matter.”
“Where are they?”
Price looked directly at him.
“That is the question Samuel wanted answered.”
Josephine understood.
“If Mrs. Croft owned part of the company that became Matador…”
“She or her heirs may still hold an ownership interest.”
Harrison sat.
“Matador has been trying to steal land from one of its own owners?”
Price smiled grimly.
“Corporations have done stranger things.”
“Where’s my mother?”
“You don’t know?”
“No.”
Price frowned.
“She wrote Samuel after she left.”
“He never told me.”
“She moved to Colorado.”
“Is she alive?”
“I don’t know.”
Josephine watched Harrison absorb twenty years of unanswered questions in seconds.
Price continued.
“Samuel suspected Bellweather concealed Eleanor’s ownership after she departed.”
“Why?”
“To consolidate control.”
Josephine asked, “Would those shares matter now?”
“If properly documented? Considerably.”
“How considerably?”
Price looked at Harrison.
“Potentially enough to make you one of Matador’s largest private shareholders.”
Silence.
Harrison laughed once.
The sound held no humor.
“This is insane.”
“Money often is.”
Price handed over copies of incorporation records.
“There is something else.”
Josephine had learned to hate that phrase.
“What?”
“Samuel negotiated an option.”
“For?”
“To purchase additional Bellweather property if the company ever attempted to acquire Ironstone through foreclosure.”
Harrison blinked.
“My father planned for this?”
“He feared it.”
“Is the option valid?”
“If Matador is legally the successor corporation and if the triggering actions can be demonstrated…”
Price smiled.
“It might be.”
Josephine leaned forward.
“What property?”
Price unfolded a map.
One hundred ten thousand acres surrounding Ironstone.
Harrison stared.
“That’s most of Matador’s holdings in the county.”
“Yes.”
“At what price?”
Price pointed.
A fixed price from eighteen years earlier.
Thirty thousand dollars.
Josephine nearly laughed.
Today the land was worth several times that.
But thirty thousand dollars might as well have been thirty million.
Ironstone barely had enough for its bank payment.
Harrison rubbed his forehead.
“We can’t use it.”
“Maybe not.”
Josephine kept staring at the map.
“What is the deadline?”
Price looked at her.
“You think there’s a way.”
“There’s always a way until arithmetic proves otherwise.”
“Ninety days after foreclosure activity begins.”
“When did the bank alter Harrison’s terms?”
Price calculated.
“Seven weeks ago.”
Josephine's pulse quickened.
They had approximately forty days.
Forty days to find thirty thousand dollars.
If they did, Ironstone could buy land surrounding it at an eighteen-year-old price.
Ironstone would become more than one hundred eighty thousand acres.
Possibly the biggest ranch in that region of Texas.
Harrison noticed her expression.
“No.”
She looked at him.
“You don’t even know what I’m thinking.”
“Yes, I do.”
“What?”
“You’re trying to find thirty thousand dollars.”
“Correct.”
“We don’t have it.”
“Correct.”
“We are still trying to make the bank payment.”
“Also correct.”
“Josephine.”
She smiled.
“You should learn that saying my name like that never works.”
Price chuckled.
Then someone knocked.
Three times.
Price went pale.
He opened a desk drawer and removed a small pistol.
“Who knows you came here?”
Harrison stood.
“No one.”
Josephine thought of one person.
“Gideon.”
Another knock.
Price called, “Who is it?”
A voice answered.
“Man who owes Ironstone more than he can repay.”
Gideon.
Harrison opened the door.
Gideon entered.
Bruised.
Exhausted.
Holding the missing payroll box.
He placed it on the desk.
“Didn’t steal it.”
Harrison looked at him coldly.
“Then explain.”
“Someone attacked Caleb and took the box. I followed.”
“Why run?”
“Because the man was heading here.”
“To Price?”
Gideon nodded.
“Matador knows about Samuel’s contract.”
Josephine looked at the money.
“All of it?”
“Every dollar.”
Harrison’s anger remained.
“You could’ve told us.”
“No time.”
“That excuse is getting old.”
“I know.”
Gideon turned toward Price.
“They’re moving tomorrow.”
“Moving what?”
“Matador’s county assets. Bellweather plans to transfer them to another corporation.”
Price went still.
“If he does, Samuel’s purchase option may become impossible to enforce.”
Josephine looked at the map.
“How long?”
“By noon tomorrow.”
Harrison stared.
“We need thirty thousand dollars by noon?”
Price shook his head.
“You need to legally exercise the option by noon.”
“What does that require?”
“A deposit.”
“How much?”
“Ten percent.”
Josephine smiled.
“Three thousand.”
They had that.
Harrison understood.
“If we exercise tomorrow, we have time to finance the balance.”
Price nodded.
For the first time, the impossible plan became merely improbable.
Josephine looked at Harrison.
“We buy it.”
“Josephine—”
“We buy it.”
He stared at one hundred ten thousand acres.
Then at the woman who had arrived at his ranch carrying a skillet.
Harrison began to smile.
“Fine.”
Gideon exhaled.
Price prepared papers.
And before sunrise, Josephine Pickett helped Harrison Croft execute a contract that could make Ironstone the biggest ranch either of them had ever imagined.
But when Harrison reached for the pen, Josephine stopped him.
“Not yet.”
He frowned.
“Why?”
“Because if Ironstone buys this land, we need to decide who Ironstone belongs to.”
May you like
That question would change both their lives.
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