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Just when he thought he would give anything to break that quiet, the wind came up. A dust devil spun off to his right, appearing to come out of nowhere, and then it was all around them. The wind blowing off the snowy peaks was icy cold and unforgiving. It quickly became a dull roar that was as grating as the silence had been.
As they rode deeper into the mountains, the gale shrieked. It lay over the tall grass and whipped the pine boughs. He caught glimpses of the terrain ahead, a tableau of sheer rock cliffs and grassy bowls above the tree line.
With a start, he realized he’d never been this far from civilization before. He could feel the temperature dropping as they ascended the mountain. The day wore on with the gentle rocking of the horse and creaking of his saddle.
He didn’t know how far they had ridden, only that the air had gotten colder as the weak spring sun inched its way to the west and finally dissolved behind the farthest peak.
While he’d ridden a horse before, never had he ridden one for this long. He was growing weary of being in the saddle, when Maddie reined in ahead of him. As she dismounted, he glanced at his watch. There was still at least an hour of daylight. “Why are we stopping?”
“This is where we spend the night,” she said without looking at him.
He glanced around. She’d stopped at the edge of a stand of pines under a sheer rock face. Ahead there was nothing but wide-open windswept country and more mountain peaks as far as the eye could see.
“I was hoping we might get far enough that we could see the sheepherder’s camp before dark,” he said.
“In the first place, we don’t know where that is,” she said, still not looking at him as she began to untie her saddlebag. “Second, this is where we make camp for the night.”
He couldn’t help himself. “There isn’t a better place to camp?”
Maddie finally turned to look at him. “This is where we make camp,” she repeated. “Why don’t you make yourself useful and scare up some wood for the fire.”
“Yes, ma’am,” he said and slid down from his horse. The ground felt good beneath his feet. His posterior ached from the hours in the saddle, but he wasn’t about to mention that to the woman. Nor did he let himself limp in her presence until he could stretch out his legs again.
“Don’t go too far,” she said, reaching for his reins. “There are grizzlies up here with heads the size of semi steering wheels.”
“Are you trying to scare me, Mrs. Conner?”
She chuckled as she led the horses down a small slope that ended in a spot below the rock cliff. Looking closer, he made out what appeared to be a lean-to deep in the pines out of the wind. Closer, the pines at the edge of the stand had been twisted from years of wind and bad weather into grotesque forms.
Jamison set about gathering firewood. By the time he joined her down by the lean-to, she had unpacked their gear and the food she’d brought.
This close to the cliff, the wind was no longer buffeting him. It felt good to get out of it for a while, even though he could hear it in the tops of the pines overhead. The boughs moaned and swayed back and forth in a sky that was losing light fast.
He felt the cold chill of the upcoming night and looked to the mountains ahead, wondering where the sheepherder would be spending it. Or if he was in any shape to care.
CHAPTER FIVE
“I SUPPOSE YOU don’t know how to make a fire,” Maddie said as the deputy dropped his load of firewood next to the ring of charred rocks. The ground inside the ring was blackened from other fires. Jamison wondered how many times she’d made camp here, how many fires had burned to ashes to the sound of the wind overhead.
“Actually, I do know how to build a fire,” he said, kneeling next to the fire ring.
She glanced at him, pretending surprise. “They taught that at the fancy summer camps you went to?”
“You don’t like me much, do you?” he said as he set about getting a fire started.
“It’s nothing personal.”
He chuckled at that. “I shouldn’t take you calling me a greenhorn personally? Or that you make fun of the way I was brought up?”
“You are a greenhorn and you were privileged.”
“But it’s more than that,” he said, looking up at her.
Her eyes were the deep blue of the sky they’d ridden under all afternoon. Her expression softened. He could see the fear even before she voiced it.
“I don’t like you coming up here to make a case against Dewey.”
“If Dewey is innocent—”
“You’re already convinced he’s not.”
“I have my doubts about his story, yes.” He lit the small kindling under the larger logs. The flames licked at the dry wood and began to crackle. “I don’t make assumptions. What I know is that Dewey’s lying about something and he’s terrified, not to mention his clothing was covered in blood. Also, according to Dewey, your sheepherder is apparently missing.”
“Once we find Branch...” Maddie looked past the fire to the peaks in the distance “...I’m sure he’ll clear this all up.”
Jamison heard the hope and saw the worry. It mirrored his own.
Maddie cooked a simple meal that they ate around the fire, both quiet, both lost apparently in their own thoughts. The only sound was wind high in the pines and the soft crackle of the fire as darkness seemed to drop over them without warning.
Jamison had never seen such blackness. Up here in these mountains the dark appeared to have a life of its own. It became a hulking beast crouched just beyond the glow of the campfire.
While it made him uneasy not knowing what was out there—maybe whatever had scared Dewey Putman so badly?—Maddie seemed content here. Jamison had little fear of the animals. It was humans and what they were capable of that kept him awake at night.
The fire flickered, casting golden light on Maddie’s face, and he glimpsed the beautiful woman she’d been when she was younger. It was nothing like the quiet beauty she had now, though. There was a tranquil magnificence in her that sneaked up on him. That she was capable and self-assured only added to that beauty.
She brushed back an errant strand of hair as if she felt him watching her. He saw irritation in the movement. She was a woman used to spending most of her days alone, he realized. She wasn’t used to a man looking at her—maybe especially the way he was. He found her intriguing equally in her strength—and her vulnerability.
“I really would like to know more about you,” he said as the silence stretched taut between them.
She glanced up at him, pretending to be surprised to find him sitting across from her. “Are you asking as a deputy?”
“No, I just thought since we’re going to be spending time together—”
She rose abruptly, dusting her hands off on her jeans. “Then I can’t imagine why you’d have any interest in me. We leave at daybreak. I’d suggest you get some sleep.”
He watched her walk over and pick up the saddlebags with the food she’d brought. As she moved to tie them to a rope hanging from a nearby tree, he got up to help her.
“You’re putting our food in a tree?” he asked as he reached to help hoist the bundle higher.
She refused to relinquish the rope, forcing him to step back as she finished tying it. “Bears,” she said as if he should have known that.
He glanced at their sleeping bags stretched out beside the small campfire.
“Grizzlies,” she said, and he saw the first hint of mischief in those blue eyes.
“Seems a little silly tying up a small amount of food when the bears will have us to eat.”
“I’m not worried,” she said, stepping past him toward the fire. “They’ll be full by the time they finish with you.”
He smiled as she walked over and climbed fully clothed into the sleeping bag on the other side of the fire. She lay down, her back to him.
“The woman has a sense of humor after all,” he said loud enough he was sure she could hear. He considered sitting on the overturned stump by the fire until the blaze burned out. He felt antsy, certainly not ready to go to sleep this early.
Looking up, he caught a glimpse of stars through the swaying pine boughs. The sky seemed alive with them. He stepped out of the trees so he could see the amazing sight. It was magnificent. He gaped at the ceiling of darkness and light in awe. He’d never seen so many stars. Nor had he ever seen such an expansive sky. It arced between the horizons, a midnight-blue canopy bespeckled with millions of twinkling stars.
Away from the fire, though, he was instantly cold. Even standing by it, only the parts of his body near the flames were warm. He walked back, but the fire had died to only a few glowing embers that gave off little heat.
Maddie hadn’t made a peep. He wondered if she was asleep. He thought about looking for more wood for the fire, but changed his mind.
He’d never slept in his clothing in his entire life. Even as cold as it was up here, he slipped out of the canvas coat she’d lent him, then the flannel shirt down to his T-shirt. Goose bumps rippled across his skin. He considered taking off the jeans she’d provided for him, but one glance around and he decided he might have to get up in a hurry, and would be better off at least partially dressed.
The lining of the sleeping bag was ice-cold against his bare arms, and it took him a moment to warm up. He rolled up his coat and shirt for a pillow then curled on his side to watch what was left of the fire die away. He thought about what they might find tomorrow and how he would handle it.
It kept his mind off everything but Maddie Conner.
* * *
SHERIFF FRANK CURRY couldn’t help being mad at himself on so many levels. Right now, though, it was the way he’d handled things with Lynette.
After their run-in, he’d gotten something to eat at the café, half hoping Lynette would come over and join him. She hadn’t. Too upset to go to his empty house, he’d driven over to Bozeman and gone to a movie. Now, on the way home, he couldn’t even remember what it was about.
Driving through the darkness toward his ranch east of Beartooth, he mentally kicked himself for not calling Lynette. He could have patched things up by asking her to the movie. What would it have hurt? He could have called her, apologized... But what did he have to apologize for? She was the one who’d rented her apartment over the store to J. D. West and thought nothing of it.
His chest ached at the thought of J.D. pulling the wool over her eyes. Why was Lynette so blind when it came to men?
“So what are you going to do about it?” he demanded of himself as he drove down the narrow dirt road toward home. What could he do?
Nothing right now. He felt like a single parent. He knew that was silly. But he now had all the responsibilities that came with being a single parent. Tiffany needed him since Pam had deserted her daughter. He was all the girl had now. So when he wasn’t working, he went up to the state hospital to see her.
But that wasn’t the only reason he’d stayed away from Lynette. He was afraid for her because of Pam and Tiffany. He thought that if he put distance between them, then maybe it would keep her safe.
So the situation frustrated the hell out of him when he was around her. He wanted Lynette, needed her, but right now the best thing he could do was give her a wide berth. Who knew what would happen with Tiffany’s case? What if she did get out of this?
He couldn’t forget that Tiffany was a danger to Lynette. And Pam...well, who knew how dangerous she was to them all?
When he’d found out about Tiffany, he’d tried to find Pam. Apparently she hadn’t wanted to be found, which shouldn’t have come as a surprise after what she’d done.
He’d hired a private investigator to get her number for him. He’d talked to her once—for all the good it had done. She had pretended not to know what he was talking about when he’d accused her of poisoning Tiffany against him, programming the child to kill him.
Months later he’d called again and found the line had been disconnected. Which was just as well, he told himself. He was afraid of what he would do if he knew where she was.
He figured she’d probably taken off. Done her damage to him and Tiffany and then gone off, her mission over. But to add fuel to the fire, she’d managed to tell Tiffany that the reason she was running away was because she was afraid of him. Tiffany, unfortunately, believed her mother’s lies.
Sometimes in the middle of the night when he couldn’t sleep he thought about how to find her. The fantasy—he had to think of it as that—always ended the same. It ended with him murdering Pam with his bare hands.
It was those dark thoughts that plagued him, that and worry over Tiffany. Worry also about Lynette.
“With good reason,” he muttered under his breath as he turned into his ranch. Lynette had proven she had terrible taste in men when she’d married Bob thirty years ago instead of him. Now she’d rented her apartment to J. D. West? Worse, she thought the man deserved a second chance?
He felt himself getting upset again. J.D. had gotten more chances than he deserved before he had even left Beartooth all those years ago. To think Lynette might be taken in by him upset him more than he wanted to admit.
And she thought he was merely being jealous? He let out a curse as he neared his house.
Automatically he slowed. Not that long ago, he would have been anxious to return home. He liked his small house, his few animals, the wide-open spaces the ranch provided him.
Back then he’d had a family of sorts waiting for him. A family of crows had taken up residency in his yard. He’d come to think of them as his own and had spent years studying them, intrigued how much they were like humans.
They would always be waiting for him as he drove in and would caw a welcome. He’d gotten where he could tell them apart by their greetings.
Now, though, the telephone line was empty, just like the clothesline and the ridge on the barn. Tiffany had killed one of them to get back at him. Crows, being very intelligent birds, had left. He’d learned from studying them that they would warn other crows about the danger at his house. They wouldn’t be back nor would others come if they felt threatened.
With a heavy heart, he pulled in and climbed out. The night was dark here in the valley with clouds shrouding the stars. He stood for a moment, staring up at the empty telephone wire, feeling the terrible weight of all his losses.
The sudden sound of glass breaking somewhere inside his house startled him from his dark thoughts. Drawing his gun, he sprinted toward the open front door.
* * *
MADDIE LISTENED TO the wind whipping the tops of the pines. Closer, the fire crackled softly as it burned down. The familiar sounds were comforting—unlike the sound of the deputy across the fire from her. He moved restlessly in his sleeping bag. She’d bet this was the first time he’d slept under the stars—let alone in the middle of nowhere on the side of a mountain.
She could have erected the tent that was kept here along with a few supplies. It hadn’t been all orneriness that had made her dismiss the idea. True, she hadn’t wanted to take the time to put up the tent. Nor had she wanted to expend the energy, and she’d figured the deputy would have been no help.
But those weren’t the real reasons. If she was being honest, she hadn’t wanted to be in the close confines of a tent with her worries—or the deputy. Not tonight.
She mentally cursed herself. What was she doing here with such a city slicker? He didn’t know the country. Worse, he didn’t know how dangerous it could be. What was he doing in Montana, anyway?
It irritated her that she’d had to bring him. But her other choice was letting him look for the sheep camp alone. Better to take him up here to alleviate his concerns. She desperately wanted to prove him wrong.
Jamison was the least of her problems and she knew it. She closed her eyes against the fears that had haunted her from the instant she’d seen Dewey in the back of that stall.
What had happened? She clung to the hope that when they reached the camp, they would find Branch sitting outside his sheepherder wagon whittling on a piece of pine, his dog, Lucy, at his feet, and all two thousand sheep in a grassy meadow behind him, safe and growing fatter.
It was conceivable that the boy had gotten scared when he couldn’t find Branch. When he found a dying lamb, just as he’d said, he would have foolishly thought he could save it. Failing that, he’d panicked and hightailed it out of there. It could have happened just that way, she told herself.
Which meant that when they reached the sheep camp, Branch would give her hell for hiring Dewey, something she had to admit she deserved. She’d take the deputy back down out of the mountains and get Branch a new tender, someone older, someone with experience.
Even as she thought it, she knew how hard it was going to be to find a tender. No one wanted to spend three months back in the wilds. Even sheepherders were hard to find, for that matter. Good thing Branch enjoyed it, but he was getting old—just a few months short of his sixty-eighth birthday. It wouldn’t be long before he couldn’t make the trek, she thought, refusing to let herself accept that this might be his last year—no matter what they found back in the mountains.
All good reasons to give up herding the sheep to high grazing pasture each summer season, she told herself.
She heard the deputy roll over again and felt a stab of guilt. She shouldn’t have mentioned grizzlies, but smiled even as she chastised herself for purposely trying to scare him. He was probably worried about bears and wouldn’t get a wink of sleep.
Maddie thought about telling him that she had her shotgun as well as her .357 Magnum pistol within reach. Also, she could mention that with two thousand sheep not far away, the grizzlies would rather have lamb than either one of them.
But a moment later, Jamison seemed to settle down, and as he did, she heard him snoring softly.
Irritated he could fall asleep so quickly, she snuggled down in her sleeping bag and prayed. It had been so long since any of her prayers had been answered, though, that she didn’t have much hope these would be, either.
* * *
