Chapter Thirty-Six
As soon as they stepped into the house, Ellen looked around. “Where’s Bobby?”
“At my house,” Travis said. “We weren’t sure we’d be able to get through and we didn’t want him walking. He lost his shoes.”
“Is he okay?”
“Yes. He’s great,” Travis said.
“Uncle Travis found Cleo,” Jake said. “She had kittens.”
“Bobby must be so happy.”
“Timber and Titan are with him, the house is secure. He’s safe,” Travis said. “What is this about Mitchell Robinson?”
Before Ellen could explain, she saw Penny getting up out of her chair after taking a fierce hug from Avery. “You doing okay, Grandma?” Ellen asked, concerned about the dark circles under her eyes.
“I’m tired. But I’m okay.” She kissed Ellen’s cheek. “I’m proud of you. Now you and Travis figure out how we’re going to prove that Mitchell Robinson, that bastard, is behind all this.”
Penny hugged the boys, including Ryan, then hugged Avery again. “I’m glad you’re back in one piece,” she said, then shuffled down the hall to her room.
Ellen turned to Margery. “I’m going to take you upstairs, back in bed. You need sleep.”
She got Margery settled, checked her blood pressure again—elevated, but not as high as before—and brought her water. She was asleep almost before Ellen left the room.
She let Whiskey out of her room. He ran circles around her feet and jumped up to lick her.
“We’re okay,” she told him, giving the dog a hug, mostly to reassure herself.
She went downstairs. Ryan and Jake were looking down at Sam, who lay on the dining-room table, still unconscious.
Travis was checking the bandages she’d put on.
“You did a good job here, Ellie,” Travis said.
“Is he going to make it?” Ryan asked.
“I don’t know,” Ellen said honestly. “I did what I could. He needs a hospital, but until the rain and lightning stops we’re not going to get a lifeline out here.”
She put a quilt over him, and a pillow under his head. Then they all went into the kitchen. “Travis, I need to get Bobby.”
“He can stay with me tonight.”
She desperately wanted to see and hug her son, but she knew that going there and back would be foolhardy, especially in the dark.
Travis could see that she was still worried. “I’ll bring him home as soon as the sun comes up.”
“You’re right,” she said. “He’s safe with you.”
“We need to figure out what Robinson is up to,” Travis said.
Ellen, Travis, Jake, Avery, Ryan, and Lyla all sat in the kitchen; Ellen took the seat where she could also observe Sam, who was still unconscious on the dining-room table.
She began. “Brock and Rena were hired by Mitchell Robinson to steal the original sales or lease contracts for right-of-way that were signed last week. Coulter, Baldwin, two others. Brock said that there was a clause that shouldn’t have made it in, likely something related to what they could do with the land under the terms of the right-of-way.
If the clause disallowed mineral rights, then that might explain why Robinson wanted to change the terms. But George Coulter would never have signed it with that clause, so either Robinson was trying to deceive him, or he let him sign the right contract, but planned a bait and switch. ”
Jake got up and went to the kitchen desk. “I told you that Clive brought over a contract that they want you to sign by Sunday, so they can file it first thing Monday, a trade of eight hundred acres for the two hundred acres between their property and what they leased from the Coulters.”
He put the contract in front of Ellen. She hadn’t read it yet, and the words were swimming in front of her, she was so tired.
The house shook in the wind, and she wondered if Brock and Rena were okay out there.
Maybe she should have let Travis try to apprehend them …
But they were desperate. Brock might have shot her brother-in-law.
He would have. They had been in survival mode, and while he had also helped her by giving her information, he could have acted without thinking and killed Travis or one of her children.
Ellen couldn’t lose anyone else.
“Before he left, he told me there was a copy of everything in his truck that he left at the Coulters’ house. I want to go get it.”
“Now?” Travis said.
“Yes. What if Mitchell knows he had something? What if he’s going to try to cover everything up?”
“Or that criminal was lying to you,” Travis said. “While the rain’s letting up, the wind is a hazard in itself. When Jake and I were coming out here, a tree branch damn near broke the windshield.”
She didn’t want to wait, but they were right. She couldn’t put anyone else in danger.
“First thing in the morning,” she said. “Crack of dawn, I’m going.”
“I’ll go with you,” Jake said.
She almost said no, but just nodded. “Okay.”
Dawn was only hours away. Then she started thinking as she glanced at the impossibly generous contract—eight hundred prime acres of farmland for two hundred grazing acres. It made no sense.
“Why this land?” Ellen said, holding up the contract.
“I’ve been thinking about it all day, ever since Clive came by. I might know,” Travis said. “Jake, go get the map of northern Cooke County. Your dad always had one in his desk.”
Jake nodded, left the room.
“What are you thinking?” Ellen asked him.
“They need your two hundred acres because—if I’m right—it gives them a straight path north. Or, rather, a straight path south.”
“You’re confusing me,” Ellen said, “but I’m exhausted.”
Jake came back with the map and Travis laid it on the table.
“First,” Travis said, “I’ve been reading about all of Verdacorp’s dealings ever since Mitchell started the company when his dad moved to Dallas.
John had been skeptical, thinking they were going to disrupt farming in the area.
He was more concerned about price manipulation or exclusive contracts that would force smaller farms out of business. ”
Ellen nodded. “It’s why we started expanding into crops the Robinsons didn’t grow, and why we bought the Mendoza farm for the pecan orchard.” Though that hadn’t gone as well as they had hoped.
Travis nodded. “Then after what Verdacorp did in the Panhandle—acquiring a lot of land, then leasing it back to the farmers for farming but selling right-of-way to the utilities while retaining the mineral rights that they leased to the oil companies for pipelines, John was worried they were going to do the same here.”
“But our terrain is completely different than the Panhandle,” Jake said. “We’re wetter, we’ve got more diverse farming and a smaller region. Any pipeline is going to greatly disrupt dozens of farmers.”
“And there aren’t any big oil operations around here,” Ryan said. “Just the Sudduths with their four pumps, you can’t even see them from the road.”
“A couple farms have a pump or two going,” Travis said, “but you’re right, it’s small scale and they’re not getting rich off it. You know, Grandpa thought of doing it.”
“Really?” Ellen said. “I didn’t know that.”
“When John and I were little, he hired a surveyor and was going to put one right next to Whisper Creek, within sight of the barn, because there was potential. Grandma put her foot down because she didn’t want to see it when she was feeding the chickens.
I think that was the only time we ever saw Grandpa Milton and Grandma Penny argue about anything. ”
Ellen grinned. “And Grandma won.”
“She usually did,” Travis said wistfully.
“Anyway, what Verdacorp is doing here is similar to what they did in the Panhandle, only on a smaller, more strategic scale.” He spread out the map, which already had some pencil markings on it and writing in John’s small, neat block letters.
“John was tracking the land Verdacorp was buying. His theory was that Mitchell didn’t actually have a solid plan at first, that he was just buying land to have the land.
But when he started pressuring John to sell, John became more invested in figuring out what he was up to. ”
Travis started reshaping the outlines that John had started. Ellen knew what the pencil colors stood for: green was McKenna land; red was Verdacorp land; and blue was owned by other farmers.
As they watched, Travis nearly doubled the size of Verdacorp land and marginally increased the McKenna land. Ellen saw a shape come to life. It was a strip of land going northeast all the way to the Red River, going southwest all the way to Whitesboro.
“I didn’t realize he’d bought that much land,” Ellen said. “It’s not all farmable, and it’s an odd shape.”
“Long and narrow, the skinniest parcel is this strip here along US 377. And now I know why.”
“Why?” Jake said. “You can’t farm like that. He’s dividing small farms to the point they won’t be able to make a living.”
“Because of this.” Travis tapped Marietta, Oklahoma, which was parallel to a point on the Texas boundary.
“Marietta is one of the biggest natural gas outfitters in the area. And I didn’t know why Mitchell had bought into the industry, other than as an investment.
There is a network of pipes all over the country, but there’s a new facility opening in Plano—and if you draw a line from Marietta to Plano, it goes through Whitesboro—and it goes through all the land that Verdacorp has acquired. ”
“They’re going to put in natural gas pipes?” Ellen said. “That has to cost a fortune, and there are already existing pipes.”
“Not in this area. Here’s the catch. A bill just passed Congress to invest in natural gas and oil production and distribution in the entire region, from the Canadian border down to the Gulf. The author of the bill is Congresswoman Jeanne Culvers.”
No one had to say anything. Jeanne Culvers represented their area, and Mitchell Robinson was her biggest contributor. He held a fundraiser at his ranch every year—Ellen had just gotten another invitation today in the mail, which she’d promptly tossed in the trash.
She got up and looked in the recycling bin in the mudroom. There it was. She picked it up, brought it back to the table.