How's it going with Clyde anyway?" She glanced over to
watch as Cindy now seated Jed and Leah in the opposite
corner with Jed's back now facing her so he wouldn't be able
to see when Clyde returned to sit down. Well, she'd just have
to make a point of walking by Jed's table with Clyde at her 4214Melody Carison
side after they finished their meal. Why did this keep hap-
pening? She thought about what her mother had suggested
about Jed's insecurity with relationships. Well, this certainly
wouldn't help anything!
"There you are," said Clyde as he eased himself into the
chair next to her. "Thought maybe you'd skipped out on
us."
"I'm sorry, Clyde. I was working on an article and totally
forgot the time."
"It's okay." A faint smile played upon his timeworn fea-
tures. "Gavin and I have been having us a real interesting
little chat."
Her brows raised with curiosity. Clyde sounded surpris-
ingly congenial. "What's up?" she asked. Just then the wait-
ress approached to take their orders, forcing Maggie to wait
to hear what was going on between the two men.
"Why don't you tell her about your idea, Gavin," said
Clyde as soon as the waitress got it all straight and left.
"Well, this whole darn thing with TS Development has
really got me irked," began Gavin. "I've read all your arti-
cles in the back papers about it, and I've talked to various
folks in town as I'm selling ad space to them. And I just kept
wishing there was some way to put a stop to all their non-
sense."
Clyde grinned and rubbed his hands together. "Come on,
boy, now let's get to the good part."
"Anyway, as I just told Uncle Clyde," Gavin smiled
across the table at his uncle, "I was out walking the dogs on
your property the other day, just before dark. And as we
were heading north, through the open meadow, it suddenly
occurred to me that this wasn't all your property. I remem-
bered how you'd mentioned one time that you only pur-
chased twenty acres with the old homestead. Well, I figure
that leaves about another three hundred acres still sitting to
the north of you."
"That's a pretty close estimate," said Clyde. "I had the
land divided by the county last spring in order to sell the old Looking for YouAllMy Life215
house as an enticement to get a certain L.A. reporter out here
to run the Pine Cone for me."
"I didn't know you owned more acreage out there," said
Maggie. "I just assumed that twenty acres was all the land
that had been left. I knew that you'd sold a lot of timber land
way back."
Clyde chuckled. "My parents used to own almost every-
thing out there, clear into town. Like Arnold Westerly's