told you—”
“Look,” she interrupted, “I know a lot more about cattle and hoofprints than you do. And more about the ranch and pastures, too.” She was being a bit repetitious. He knew that, hadn’t forgotten it. But still…
“I get all that,” he told her. “And I’ve already told you why it’s not a good idea for you to come.”
“I’ll prove otherwise,” she insisted, contradicting him again. She began moving forward quickly, her head down.
But they weren’t going to learn more now. Not here. Tomorrow he’d hurry in the same direction and hopefully find something helpful.
Maybe even those missing cattle…
“Hey. Look at that.” Melody had stopped and was looking down to what was undoubtedly more cattle hoofprints. Only, she bent and reached for something, then stopped. She looked up at him again. “I doubt that any cow dropped that,” she said.
“What?” he asked. He kneeled down beside her…and stared.
She was pointing to an area within a hoofprint, in dirt between fronds of tamped-down grass, and something small and shiny gleamed from it.
“What is that?” He resisted the urge to grab and examine it—and was glad she hadn’t done that, either.
“It looks like some kind of silver charm,” Melody responded in a somewhat hushed voice. “It could have been there before any cattle walked or stampeded around here through the fence during this rustling, but I’ve never seen anything like it in any of the pastures.”
“I think,” he mused, “and I may just be reaching for something helpful to identify some suspects and get this thing resolved, but you just might have found our first piece of evidence.”
Melody was impressed, though not surprised, when Casey took a couple of pictures with his cell phone, then pulled vinyl gloves from his pocket, picked up the charm and stuck it into a small plastic bag he also carried.
Clearly, he was prepared to do his job, wherever it led him and whatever evidence he happened to find.
The charm was the kind worn on necklaces or bracelets, and appeared to be silver. It was in the shape of the letter G.
“Does this look familiar to you?” He held the bag containing the charm toward Melody.
She shook her head. “Not at all.”
But that inspired her to continue studying the ground in that area, and Casey did, too. Neither of them found anything else other than more hoofprints.
“Do you think the charm was dropped by one of the rustlers?” Melody asked the deputy as they finally gave up.
“Anything’s possible,” he said with a shrug of his wide shoulders as he shot a wry look in her direction. A frustrated look. She wished she could do something—identify the charm, find something more helpful, to ease that frustration.
But she was frustrated, too. And no solution came to her.
“Let’s head back now,” he said, shoving the bag into his pocket. “Maybe we’ll figure things out better tomorrow.”
“Absolutely,” she said, hoping it was true.
The walk back to the ranch house was a lot faster than the one to the damaged fence. But going in this direction, they didn’t need to check for any indication of where the cattle were or who’d rustled them through that fence.
Or whether there were any more charms on the ground.
Not until tomorrow.
And, yes, she would be going along with Casey. It was important to her to do the best job possible here. This ranch had become her refuge after leaving her past behind, and she adored its cattle. She intended to help to save the stolen ones. Period.
She had to give Casey credit for not grumbling or protesting when she said, as they started back, “So I assume that, as the first person to find evidence in your crime investigation, I can come along tomorrow and continue to help you.”
“I assume so,” he said resignedly. He shot her a crooked sideways smile. “And, yeah, we can do the kind of stakeout you described.”
She couldn’t help smiling back and was careful not to make it appear she was gloating. Or at least not too much.
Besides, Casey was one good-looking guy, so it wasn’t hard to smile at him.
Not that she had any intention of allowing her goal of helping to find the missing cattle by working with this guy turn into any kind of personal interest in him.
She’d learned her lesson not too long ago. It was why she had left her Texas home and found a job here, in Arizona, as a ranch hand, after her ugly, depressing divorce.
She knew now that it hadn’t been the smartest thing to marry her high-school sweetheart, Travis Ellison, and follow him to Dallas. They’d only been married a couple of years before Travis, who’d become a big-city banker, had left her for a colleague, a much younger woman named Loretta Lane.
What had made it even more heartbreaking was that Travis had told Melody she was a “country girl,” and he needed a “real woman.”
Whatever that meant, it had hurt. A lot. She had sometimes suspected the worst about Travis before then, that he was cheating on her, but since she’d thought she loved him, she’d stayed with him, hoping they could work things out. At least she’d tried, but it had also hurt that he didn’t seem to care.
That insult had finally led to the inevitable end of their relationship.
And, if being a skilled and happy ranch hand meant she was a country girl, then that was fine with her.
She realized she’d somehow sped up even more as she allowed her thoughts to go—as they often did these days—in that painful direction.
“Hey, what’s your hurry?” Casey called as he caught up with her again. “Got a hot date tonight?”
She slowed a bit and turned to look into his face. His expression was teasing, yet she read some curiosity there, too. “Yeah, sure. With some horses. I need to make sure they’re taken care of, and also want to figure out which’ll be best on our stakeout.”
“Right. Good idea. But you do understand, don’t you, that I’m planning to stay out there till I—we—find those missing cattle? You can return to your place at the ranch anytime, of course, but—”
“And you’ll love it if I quit, won’t you? Well, don’t count on it. I’m in this to win, too. Those cows…well, they’re kind of my wards now. They’re mine, though I don’t own them and just care for them. That’s my job and my vocation. And I’ll do anything to bring them home safely.” Including argue with him, to save the cattle she cared for.
She
