Janet Dailey - Calder Born, Calder Bred

CALDER BORN, CALDER BRED

by JANET DAILEY

Author of CALDER PRIDE

Ty Calder was a stranger to the mighty

empire that was his legacy--the ranchlands that rose to meet the Montana skies. He learned the ways of ranch life from young Jessy, who knew the land like her own heart.

But Ty worshiped dark, glamorous Tara,

scion of the new "corporate West," of vast power and big money. Tara lured Ty on,

greedy to be mistress of the Calder kingdom.

Yet when her world rushed in to plunder the fortune beneath the prairies, it was Jessy who fought for Ty, defying death to save a birthright that was CALDER

BORN, CALDER BRED

Volume No.bled of The Calder Saga

Books by Janet Dailey

Calder Born, Calder Bred

Stands a Calder Man

This Calder Range

This Calder Sky

JANET DAILEY is the author of scores

of popular and uniquely American novels, including such bestsellers as The Glory Game; Silver Wings, Santiago

Blue; The Pride of Hannah Wade;

and the phenomenal Calder saga. Since her first novel was published in 1975, Janet

Dailey has become the bestselling female author in America, with more than 300,000,000

copies of her books in print. Her books have been published in seventeen languages and are sold in ninety countries. Janet Dailey's careful research and her intimate knowledge of America have made her one of the best-loved authors in the country and around the world.

This book is a work of historical

fiction. Names, characters, places, and incidents relating to nonhistorical figures are

products of the author's imagination or are used fictitiously. Any resemblance of such

nonhistorical incidents, places, or

figures to actual events or locales or

persons living or dead is entirely

coincidental.

Cover photo by Ric Ergenbright

Cover design by Jim Lebbad

CALDER BORN,

CALDER BRED

I

Wanting to belong isn't easy

When they're making it rough instead.

And the hardest of all is knowing

They're all Calder born--and Calder bred.

The windswept Montana plains rolled with empty monotony beneath a freeze-dried sky.

Along a fence line that stretched into the far-flung horizon, old snow formed low drifts. A

brooming wind had brushed clean the brown carpet of frozen grass that covered the rough-and-tumble roll of the plains and held the thin layer of soil in place.

There was no room in this bleak, rough country for anyone not wise to its ways. To those who understood it, its wealth was given. But those who tried to take it eventually paid a brutal price.

Its primitive beauty lay in the starkness of its landscape. The vast reaches of nothingness seemed to go on forever. Winter came early and stayed late in this lonely land where cattle outnumbered people. The cattle on this particular million-acre stretch of empty range carried the brand of the Triple C, marking them as the property of the Calder Cattle Company.

A lone pickup truck was bouncing over the frozen ruts of the ranch road, just one of some two hundred miles of private roads that interlaced the Triple C Ranch. A vaporous cloud from the engine's exhaust trailed behind the pickup in a gray-white plume. Like the road, the truck seemed to be going nowhere. There was no destination in sight until the truck crested a low rise in the plains and came upon a hollow that nature had scooped into the deceptively flat-appearing terrain.

The camp known as South Branch was located in this large pocket of ground, one of a half-dozen such camps that formed an outlying circle around the nucleus of the ranch, breaking its va/s into manageable districts. The term "camp" was a holdover from the early days when line camps were established to offer crude shelters to cowboys working the range far from the ranch's home

buildings.

There was a weathered solidness and permanence to the buildings at South Branch, structures

built to last by caring hands. Stumpy Niles, who managed this district of the ranch, lived in the big log home with his wife and three children. A log bunkhouse, a long squatty building set into the hillside, was not far from the barn and calving sheds in the hollow.

The truck stopped by the ranch buildings.

Chase Calder stepped from the driver's side and unhurriedly turned up the sheepskin collar of his coat against the keening wind. Like his father and his father's father, the reins of the Triple C Ranch were in his hands. His grip had to be firm enough to curb the unruly, sure enough to direct the operations, and steady enough to ride out the rough patches.

Authority had rested long on his shoulders, and he had learned to carry it well. This land that bore his family's name had left its mark on him, weathering his face to a leather tan, creasing his strong features with hard experience, and narrowing his brown eyes which had to see the potential trouble lurking beyond the far horizon. Chase was on the wrong side of thirty, pushing hard at forty, and all those years had been spent on Calder land. It was ingrained in his soul, the same way his wife, Maggie, was ingrained in his heart.

The slam of the pickup's passenger door sounded loudly. Chase's glance swung idly to the tall, lanky boy coming around the truck to join him, but there was nothing idle about the inspection behind that look. This sixteen-year-old was his son. Ty had been born a Calder, but he hadn't been raised one, something Chase regretted more than the trouble that had driven Maggie and himself apart nearly sixteen years ago.

Those had been long years, a time forever lost to them. Her father's death had aroused too much bitterness and hatred toward anyone carrying the Calder name. He hadn't tried to stop her when she left; and he had made no attempt to find out where she went. There had been no reason to try

--or so he had thought at the time. But he hadn't known of the existence of his son until the fifteen-year-old boy had arrived, claiming him as his father. As much as he loved Maggie, at odd moments he resented that she had never told him about Ty. During their years of separation, Ty had grown to near manhood in a soft

environment of southern California.

All this land would be Ty's someday, but precious years of training had been lost. Chase was nagged by the feeling that he had to cram fifteen years of experience into Ty in the shortest period of time possible. The kid had potential. He had try, but he was only greenbroke, like a young horse that wasn't sure about the rider on its back or the bit in its mouth--or what was expected from it.

With school out of session for spring break, Chase was taking advantage of the time to expose Ty to another facet of the ranch's operation--the ordeal of spring calving. For the regular cowboys, it was a seven-day-a-week job until the last cow had calved in all the districts of the Triple C Ranch. Since Stumpy Niles was

shorthanded, Chase had brought Ty to help out and, at the same time, learn something more about the business.

As he stopped beside him, Ty hunched his shoulders against the bitter March wind rolling off the unbroken plains. In a comradely gesture, Chase threw a hand on his son's shoulder, heavily padded by the thick winter coat.

"You met most of the boys here when you worked the roundup last fall." Chase eyed his son with a hint of pride, not really noticing the strong family resemblance of dark hair and eyes and roughly planed features. It was the glint of determination he saw, and the slightly challenging thrust of Ty's chin.

Ty's memory of the roundup wasn't a

pleasant one, so he just nodded at the information and held silent on his opinion of "the boys." They had made his life miserable. The worst horses on the ranch had been put in his string to ride.