doesn’t mean I’m single.”
“I think it does.” He took a drink of his tea, then looked at her again. “So how much do I owe you for labor and materials?”
“Since it was a required class, I think you owe me your diploma.”
“I showed up for the report. I had all the facts and figures. Hell, we got an A, didn’t we? Can’t do any better than that.” He shook his head. “We’ll have to come up with something else. You sure don’t need my diploma.”
“And you sure have a better memory than you first let on.” She gave a tight smile. “I guess we can call it even. Being Ethan Wolf Track’s history project partner raised my lowly underclass social status a notch.”
“What were you, a sophomore?”
She shook her head.
“Freshman?”
She smiled and nodded.
“How did you get into that class as a freshman, for God’s sake?”
“I took a test. Actually, I took several. They had a hard time coming up with a schedule for me.” She lifted one shoulder. He had his muscles, she had her brain. “And you were a senior and the captain of everything.”
“You were smart. It didn’t take a test to figure that out. You were goin’ places.” He glanced around the room. “Better places than this.”
“I go where the story is. Or where we think it might be.” She tested out a coy look as she sipped her tea. “Stay tuned.”
“Do me a favor. Give me a heads-up if this place is gonna be raided. I try to stay out of trouble these days.”
“By doing what?”
“I guess you could say I’m a cowboy.”
“Like your brother?”
“Not a rodeo cowboy like Trace. A working cowboy. A ranch hand. I work for the Square One Ranch.”
She had no idea where that was, but he seemed to think the name of the place spoke for itself, so she made her usual mental note. Find out. It could lead to something.
“So you’re one of a dying breed,” she said. “I did a story on a guy who calls himself a cowboy for hire. He says he has more work than he can handle. Do you ride a horse or an ATV?”
“What’s an ATV?”
“All terrain …” She caught the smile in his eyes. “You know, vehicle.”
“Those kid toys? Couldn’t call myself a cowboy if I rode one of those things. Hell, I was raised by Logan Wolf Track.”
“He trains horses, doesn’t he?”
“He does, and so do I. I’m training a mustang right now. Entered up in a contest.” He winked at her. “Gonna win it, too.”
Déjà vu on the Wolf Track wink. She’d been on the receiving end of one or two of those babies years back, and the experience had given her the same tummy tickle that was not going to get a smile out of her now.
“You’re talking about the competition they’re running at the new Wild Horse Sanctuary near Sinte?”
“The wild horse program is pretty new, but the Double D Ranch has been there forever,” he reminded her. “I hired on for a couple of summers when I was a kid, back when old man Drexler was running it. Now it’s his daughters.”
“I know. I’ve been reading up on the place.” She took a breath, a moment’s pause. They’d been playing a circuitous game, and she’d just landed at the foot of a ladder. One person’s connections could be another person’s rungs. They could be fragile, but as a journalist, she was weightless. Most sources had no idea she’d gotten anything from them.
But Ethan Wolf Track wasn’t most sources. Sure, he’d been a source of adolescent anxiety and disappointment, but hadn’t that been his job back then? It was up to the captain of everything to teach the princess of nothing not to expect too much. Bella had always been a quick study.
Still, he owed her.
“I think it’s wonderful, the way the Drexlers have worked out a deal with the Tribe to set aside some of that remote reservation land for more sanctuary.”
The Tribe being her people and Ethan’s adoptive father’s people. Logan Wolf Track was a Lakota Sioux Tribal councilman. Ethan looked Indian, too, but she’d never asked him about his background. Everyone knew that his mother had left Logan to raise her two boys, whom he’d legally adopted—just up and left and never came back—but nobody asked too many questions. It wasn’t their way. Ethan and his older brother, Trace, were Wolf Tracks.
“Are you working on a news story?” he asked.
“I’ve been digging around.” She folded her hands around her glass and studied the two shrinking chunks of ice. “There’s definitely a story there—one that goes back a ways—but I’m looking for the details on my own. It’s not the kind of assignment I’m likely to get from KOZY-TV.”
“Why not? They don’t like mustangs?”
“They’re fine with mustangs. They don’t like digging around.”
“Isn’t that how you come up with news? Dirt sells.”
“But sleeping dogs don’t bite, and the suits at the station—such as they are here in good ol’ Rapid City, South Dakota, you know, not exactly coat and tie—they don’t want to get their business-casual clothes torn.” She ignored his quizzical look. “Let’s just say they don’t pay me to dig.” She smiled. “But it’s fun, isn’t it? You dig?”
He chuckled. “Postholes, yeah.”
“When you were hiring out as a kid, did you ever work for Dan Tutan?” The change in his eyes—quizzical to cold—was barely discernible, but it was there. “You know, the Drexlers’ neighbor.”
Oh, yeah. He knew.
But he shook his head. Interesting.
“There’s a story there,” she said with a smile. “Big-time rivalry. Maybe some political back-scratching going on that could affect Indian Country. And that’s where I come in. Like I said, strictly on my own.” Was he ready for the kicker? Timing the kicker was Bella’s journalistic specialty. “Tutan wants the leases that went to the Double D for the sanctuary, and he’s got a friend in D.C.—Senator Perry Garth.”
He stared at her. Or through her.
Perfect timing.
“South Dakota’s beloved Senator Garth. Tutan and Garth go way back. And Garth is on the Indian Affairs Committee, as well as the Subcommittee on Public Lands and Forests.”
“Politics.” He shook his head. “You just cruised past my point of interest. My story’s
