her, her braids soaked through, caked with mud and the dead men’s blood, one green ribbon gone, the other no more than a straggling wet string.
“I didn’t want them tied,” she told him, eyes wild as the storm that raged around them. “They would hate that, being tied. But they were falling over. They shouldn’t be left to lie there in the mud…”
He knew he should dismount, get down to her, where he could pull her free of death, and hold her. That he needed to tell her some nice lies, to reassure her that it would be all right. Because that was what a man did at a time like this, he looked after the young ones and the females. And Steph was both.
But as he sat there astride his horse, looking down at her in the mud, before he could act on what he knew he should do, she looked up at him and she said, “Get the pickup. I’ll wait here. I’ll wait with them…”
“Steph—”
“Get it.”
“You sure?”
She nodded. Lightning turned everything bright white. “Just go on.” Thunder cracked, so loud it sounded like it was inside his head. She commanded, “You get it. Get the pickup now.”
Time jumped. They were lurching through the mud in the pickup, the two dead men in the bed in back. Steph sagged against the window on the passenger side, covered in mud and their fathers’ blood. She had her eyes closed. She opened them and glanced his way. He thought that he’d never seen eyes so old.
And then, with only a sigh, she shut them again.
And all at once he stood in the front room of the ranch house, holding his mother as she sobbed in his arms, calling for his father, yelling at God to please, please take her, too…
Grant lurched up from the pillows. The breath soughed in and out of him, loud and hard. He stared into the darkness, he whispered, “No…”
It took a few minutes. It always did.
He sat, staring, shivering, panting as if he’d run a long race, shaking his head, repeating that one word, “No, no, no, no,” as, slowly, the past receded and he came to know where he was. Slowly he realized that it was over—long over, that terrible day nine years ago.
Eventually he reached for the bedside lamp. The light popped on and he blinked against the sudden brightness. He was covered in sweat.
For several more minutes once the light was on, he sat there, unmoving, staring in the general direction of the dark plasma television screen mounted on the opposite wall.
He reminded himself of the things he always forced himself to recall when the dream came to him: that it had all happened years ago, that he’d caught up with the other two rustlers himself and seen that they paid for what they’d done.
Things had been made about as right as they could be made, he told himself. There was nothing to do but let it go, forget the past.
Still, though, occasionally, less and less often as the years passed, the dream came to him. He would live that awful day again.
And maybe, he thought for the first time as he sat in his king-size bed, satin sheets soaked through with his sweat, staring at nothing…
Maybe that was right. Good.
Maybe it wasn’t bad to have to remember the brutal murder of two good men. To remember how senseless it was. How cruel and random.
Maybe now and then, it was right and fitting to take a minute to mourn for John Clifton and Andre Julen and all that had been lost with them.
To live again his mother’s grief and pain.
And to remember Steph. Twelve years old. Taking it on the chin, stalwart as any man. Propping up the dead men with her own young body.
Steph.
Brave and solid as they come on the day her daddy died.
Chapter Eight
The offices were formally closed the next day for the holiday. Grant went down there anyway. He had a few calls to make and some e-mails to return.
Then there was an issue with the concierge. He dealt with that. And head of housekeeping needed a little support with an angry guest who felt her room had not been properly made up and refused to be pacified until she’d talked with the manager. He gave the guest a free night and let the supervisor deal with the employee in question.
It was ten-thirty when he got back to his suite and dragged out the big box Arletta Hall had dropped off last week, the one with his costume inside. He took off the lid and stared down at a pair of ancient, battered boots, a grimy bandanna, an ugly floppy hat and some dirty pink long johns.
He was supposed to be a gold miner—a tribute not only to Thunder Canyon’s first gold rush over a century before, but also to the gold fever that had struck two years ago, when somebody found a nugget in an abandoned mine shaft after a local kid fell in there during a snowstorm and the whole town went wild looking for him.
All right. Maybe old-time miners did run around in dirty long johns. Maybe they were too wild with gold fever to bother wearing pants. But the damn thing was a little too authentic. It actually had one of those button flaps in back so a man wouldn’t have to pull them down when he paid a visit to the outhouse. And in front, well, if he wore that thing by itself around Steph, no one would have any doubt about how glad he was to see her.
Something had to be done. And fast.
Arletta’s chunky charm bracelet clattered as she put her hands together and moaned in dismay. “Jeans? But I really don’t think jeans are the look we should be going for…”
Behind him, Grant heard a low, husky chuckle and knew it was coming from Steph. “They’re old, these jeans,” he reasoned. “Nice and faded and worn.” He’d borrowed them from the groom at the stables, the same one who always had a hat to loan. “And I want to be a more responsible kind of gold miner. You know, a guy who remembers to put on his pants in the morning.”
“Oh. Well. I just don’t think we want to go this way….” Arletta moaned some more, all fluttery indecision. Townspeople milled around them, busy getting ready to play their own parts in the parade.
Grant leaned down to whisper in the shopkeeper’s pink ear—she was a tiny little skinny thing, no more than four feet tall and she smelled like baby powder. “Listen, Arletta,” he whispered low. “If you think I’m running around in dirty long johns with no pants, you’ll have to find yourself another prospector…”
“Oh, dear Lord. No. We can’t have that.” She sucked it up. At last. “It’s all right. Those jeans will just have to do.”
He gave her a grin. “Arletta, you’re the best.”
“Oh. My.” She simpered up at him. “You charmer, you…” She tugged on the dirty bandanna around his neck. “There. That’s better. And the hat looks just great, I must say—and tell me now. What do you think of the float?”
They turned to admire it together. It consisted of a papier-mâché mountain topped with sparkly cotton snow. A miniature prairie lay below, complete with split
