now, I have bigger concerns than your sheep,” he said, getting to his feet. “I’m going to have to hold the boy until I know what happened up there. I’m afraid this warrants investigating.”
“Then you see to your investigation, Deputy. I’m going to check on my sheep.” What she couldn’t bring herself to say, let alone admit to this Easterner, was that the future of her ranch was riding on this year’s sheep production.
Not that she wasn’t even more scared out of her wits that something bad had happened to Branch. He wasn’t just her sheepherder. He was as close to a grandfather as she’d ever had. He was also her closest friend.
But if she had tried to explain it to the deputy she would have been fighting tears. And she never cried. She’d done all her crying a long time ago.
As she started down the hallway toward her bedroom, she heard him coming after her. “Mrs. Conner—”
“Maddie,” she snapped without turning around. She had no idea what had happened back in those mountains, but she was scared, sick over the pain she saw in that boy sitting in her kitchen and worried as the devil about Branch, as well as her sheep.
She didn’t have the time or patience to deal with the law right now.
Jamison caught up to her halfway down the hall and grabbed her arm, forcing her to stop and face him. “Maddie, I can’t let you go up there alone.”
“No offense, but a greenhorn like you would just slow me down.”
“I’ll do my best not to,” he said. “But I’m going with you.” His gaze softened as he seemed to notice the tears in her eyes. She wiped at them, as angry with herself as she was with him for noticing.
“Right now I’m concerned about my sheepherder. Branch has been with my family for years. He wouldn’t leave the sheep unattended. Either Dewey is wrong or—”
“Or your sheepherder met with some kind of accident.”
She connected with his gaze. “He’s my responsibility. I really don’t need your help.”
“Did you notice the kid’s knuckles?”
Maddie started. She hadn’t.
“He’s been in a recent fistfight. And that cut over his eye? He didn’t get that from falling down. On top of that, he’s lying about something.”
“You don’t know—”
“I might be a greenhorn in Montana, but I know when a suspect is lying. Before I took the job as deputy here, I was a homicide detective.”
A dark, cold lump formed in her chest. A suspect? Homicide?
“I’m sorry, Mrs.—Maddie, but I’m afraid under the circumstances, neither of us has a choice right now. You have a missing sheepherder and sheep you need to see to. But I can’t let you go up there alone and destroy what I suspect is going to be a crime scene.”
CHAPTER THREE
NOTHING MOVED FASTER in the near ghost town of Beartooth, Montana, than gossip. Even the powerful, fearful winds that blew down out of the Crazy Mountains were no match for the wagging tongues.
This morning the gossip was about Maddie Conner and the Diamond C Ranch’s young tender.
Every morning Lynette “Nettie” Benton crossed the street from her store to the Branding Iron Café to get a cinnamon roll and coffee and the latest gossip. She could always depend on the regulars to dish up tasty tidbits of news or scandal.
In fact, she prided herself on knowing everything that was going on in town. She spent much of her day at the front window of the Beartooth General Store watching the world go by. True, the world passed more like a glacier in Beartooth.
The town, in the shadow of the “Crazies,” as the locals called the Crazy Mountain range, had once been quite the wild mining town back in the late eighteen hundreds. Now, though, other than a bunch of deserted old buildings, there was only her general store, the post office, the Range Rider Bar, a community church and the café, which suited most folks in the area just fine since the larger town of Big Timber was only twenty-some miles away.
In Montana traveling twenty miles was nothing. Many traveled much farther and often on dirt roads just to get to a store—let alone to catch a flight or shop at a big-box store.
Nettie liked to say that she knew more about the people in the area than they did about themselves. And she’d never been shy about spreading what she knew, either, which was why she’d become known as the county’s worst gossip.
She didn’t mind. Let them say what they would. Most days, the tidbits she picked up weren’t all that exciting. This morning, though, she’d hit the mother lode when she’d overheard Fuzz Carpenter.
Fuzz was sitting at the front table at the Branding Iron Café with the rest of the ranchers who gathered there every morning when she heard him mention the woman sheep rancher and her young tender.
Historically sheep ranchers, in what had originally been cattle country, weren’t all that popular. While cattle and sheep ranchers now got along, it was still rare for a woman to be running a sheep ranch. Not to mention the fact that Maddie Conner didn’t take any guff off anyone—especially male ranchers who thought she needed their advice.
“Covered with blood,” Fuzz was saying. “Didn’t take more than a look in that boy’s eyes. Somethin’ bad happened back in those mountains. Mark my words.”
Nettie’s first thought was to call Sheriff Frank Curry and find out what was going on. But then she heard Fuzz say that he’d talked to some new deputy because the sheriff was out of town.
“Bentley Jamison,” Fuzz mocked with the worst impression of a New York accent Nettie had ever heard. “What the hell kind of name is that?” The ranchers all laughed. “Wait until he meets Maddie Conner.” That brought on more laughter. “I wouldn’t even want to take her on.”
Nettie was thinking about the sheriff being out of town. No doubt Frank was visiting his daughter, she thought with a chill.
* * *
SHERIFF FRANK CURRY nervously turned the brim of his Stetson in his fingers as he waited. He was a big man, a throwback from another era with his thick handlebar mustache and longish hair. He could have been a sheriff from a hundred years ago.
The nurse had told him to sit down in one of the chairs in the glassed-in solarium, but he could no more sit than he could fly. He stood at the window, looking out at the rolling land and counting his regrets. They’d been few—before a seventeen-year-old young woman named Tiffany Chandler had shown up at his door. Actually the first time they’d met, he’d caught her in his house going through his bureau drawers as brazen as any thief he’d run across.
Now, at the sound of footfalls behind him, he braced himself and turned to see his daughter and a nurse come into the room.
“Hi, sweetheart,” he said.
Tiffany looked paler than he remembered, thinner, too. She’d cut her long blond hair, hacking it short and
