down next to the dog. She remembered when Branch had adopted the puppy. Just the thought of the two of them crossing the ranch yard, Lucy still a puppy, running hard on her short legs to keep up with Branch’s long stride, broke her heart.
As she put her arm around Lucy, she heard the deputy dismount and come toward them, his boots crunching on the rocky ground. Not his boots, she reminded herself. Her husband’s. That thought shot like an arrow through her heart.
Her husband.
The loss often hit her out of the blue as if until that moment, she hadn’t realized Hank was gone and never coming back.
She blinked back tears as she knelt by the dog. “It’s all right,” she whispered to Lucy, even though she suspected it was far from it.
Picking up Branch’s coat from the ground, she held it close. The coarse wool smelled of a strong mixture of tobacco, campfire smoke, sheep and dog. She breathed in the familiar scents that would always remind her of Branch as she looked out across the mountain—just as Lucy was doing. There was no sign of her sheepherder—or her sheep.
“May I see that?” Jamison asked and held out his hand for the coat.
She hesitated, feeling protective and afraid, but grudgingly she handed it over to him and watched as he went through the pockets then checked the fabric. For bloodstains? Bullet holes?
He didn’t seem to find anything of interest, she saw with relief. She watched him sniff one of the pockets, then the other one.
“He took his tobacco with him and whatever tool he carried in his other pocket,” the deputy said.
“A knife. He always carried a pocketknife.” She watched as he shook out several flakes of loose tobacco from the one pocket. The wind caught the stray tobacco leaves and sent them whirling off over the side of the mountain on a downdraft.
Jamison turned the other pocket inside out to show her where the pocketknife had worn a hole in the fabric. “Why would your sheepherder leave his coat here and take everything else with him?” he asked as he eyed the dog.
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