Bum Steer

Twenty-two head of Black Angus, gone in the night. And that was the least of it.

Somebody walks onto fifty-five acres on Cypress-Rosehill Road while the whole county is watching the Texans. They back a trailer up to the pens in the dark, honk twice, and drive off with twenty-two head of cattle. They leave behind the three black-and-white Belted Galloways that nobody could ever sell.

The land belongs to the Cowboy, the silent man at Friday-night poker who never asks anyone for anything. Now he's asking Carl Weller.

Carl knows people, not cows. But he can read a tax bill. Without cattle, the Cowboy's pasture gets taxed like a shopping center, and a polite buyer on Post Oak is waiting with an offer on cream paper. Then a young ranch hand turns up dead. A man with an easel starts painting the Belties from across the road. And two storms in the Gulf begin to circle each other.

From the sale barns of Brenham to the post-oak country of Grimes County, Carl follows a trail of cut ear tags and calm voices on the phone toward someone who never gets their hands dirty, until the water starts to rise.

BUM STEER is the fifth Carl Weller mystery: a character-driven story about loyalty, land, and the people who show up when it counts.