CHAPTER TWENTY-TWO
CHAPTER ONE
JACK DIDN’T WANT ANY TROUBLE. He couldn’t afford any. That was why he decided to keep walking right past the Range Rider bar and the blaring Western music, through the darkness that shrouded the long-ago abandoned buildings of his hometown.
A sliver of moon hung over the top of the mountains among a plethora of stars in a midnight sky bigger than any he swore he’d ever seen. He could smell spring in the pines and on the snow-fed water as the creek rushed past town.
When he was a boy he used to imagine what Beartooth, Montana, had been like in the late 1800s. A gold-rush boomtown at the feet of the Crazy Mountains. Back then there’d been hotels and boardinghouses, a half dozen saloons, livery stables, assaying offices and several general stores.
Once the gold played out, the town died down to what it was today: one bar, a general store, a café, a church and a post office. Many of the original buildings still stood, though, ghostly remains of what once had been.
As isolated as the town was, Beartooth had survived when many Montana gold-rush towns had completely disappeared. Towns died off the same way families did, he thought, mindful of his own. His roots ran deep here in the shadow of the Crazies, as the locals called the wild, magnificent mountain range.
Over the years two stories took hold about how the Crazy Mountains got their name. Native Americans believed anyone who went into the frightening, fierce winds that blew out of the inhospitable rugged peaks was crazy. Another story was about a frontier woman who had wandered into the mountains. By the time she was found, the story went, she’d gone crazy.
Jack believed being this close to all that wildness could make anyone crazy. His great-grandfather used to tell stories about gunfights and bar brawls on this very street. Of course, his great-grandfather had been right in the middle of it.
Blame the mountains or genetics—this was his family legacy. Trouble was in his genes as if branded to his DNA. But hadn’t he proven tonight that he could change? He’d been tempted to stop in for just one beer at the Range Rider. Why not, since it was his first night back in town?
But a two-year stint at Deer Lodge, Montana State Prison, for rustling a prized bull, had made him see that it was time to break some of those old family traditions. Didn’t matter that he hadn’t taken the bull. He’d been living as wild and crazy as the wilderness around Beartooth and it had caught up with him. He’d just made it easy for whoever had framed him.
He’d had two years to think about who’d set him up for the fall and what he was going to do about it. Or whether he was going to forget the past and move on with his life. Not that prison had been that bad. He’d spent those couple of years on the prison’s cattle ranch, riding fence, chasing cattle, doing what he had since he’d been old enough to ride.
But now he was back in the only place that had ever been home.
A pickup roared past with a glow-in-the-dark bumper sticker that read: Keep Honking, I’m Reloading. Jack breathed in the night and the scent of dust along the narrow paved road, which turned to gravel just past the abandoned filling station and garage at the edge of town.
As the truck’s engine roar died off, he heard raised voices ahead, coming from the alleyway between the Branding Iron Café and the skeletal stone remains of what had been the Beartooth Hotel.
As his eyes adjusted, he saw a man standing in the ambient light of the café sign. At first he didn’t see the second figure. Jack caught only a few phrases, just enough to realize the man was threatening someone he had pressed against the stone wall of the café. It was too dark to see who, though.
“I’ve been looking for you,” the man said. “I just didn’t expect to find you here.” The voice didn’t sound familiar. Even after being gone for two years, Jack figured he probably still knew most everyone in this part of the county. Few new people moved here. Even fewer left.
Good sense told him to keep walking. Whatever was going on, it had nothing to do with him. The last thing he wanted to do was get involved in some drunken fight in an alley his first night home.
Earlier tonight he’d moved his few belongings into a small log cabin on the edge of town in the dense pines. The place was habitable and only a short walk from the café and the Beartooth General Store. It would work fine for the time being. He wasn’t sure he was ready to go out to the family homestead just yet.
Walking on past the alley, Jack congratulated himself on staying clear of trouble tonight. He would have kept going—at least that’s what he told himself—if he hadn’t heard her voice.
“Let go of me.” Definitely a woman’s voice. “I already told you. You have the wrong woman. But if you don’t leave me alone—”
Jack had already turned to go back when he heard a smack and her cry of pain. With a curse, he took off down the dark alley.
The man turned when he heard Jack’s boot soles pounding the hard-packed earth, coming fast in his direction. “Butt out. This isn’t any of your bus—” That’s all the man got out before Jack hit him.
The man was a lot bigger than he’d appeared from a distance. He had the arms of someone who’d spent a lot of time lifting weights. Jack caught sight of jailhouse tattoos on the man’s massive arms below the sleeves of his dark T-shirt, and swore. He was already thinking that getting beat up wasn’t exactly what he had in mind for his first night home. That was if he didn’t get himself killed.
The man staggered back into a slice of darkness, rubbing his jaw. He’d lost his Western hat when Jack had hit him. The hat lay on the ground between them.
“You just messed with the wrong man, cowboy,” the stranger said.
Jack couldn’t have agreed more as he braced himself for the man’s attack. He’d been in his share of fistfights in his younger days and figured at thirty-one he could still hold his own—at least for a little while. He just hoped the man wasn’t armed. That thought came somewhat late.
But to his surprise, the man looked past him in the direction of the woman, then turned, retreating into the pitch-blackness at the back of the alley. Odd, Jack thought, since the man hadn’t even bothered to pick up his hat. Was he going to get his gun? Jack didn’t want to find out. But a moment later, a vehicle door opened and slammed, an engine revved and the driver took off.
Jack leaned down and picked up the Western straw hat from the dirt before turning to the woman. “Are you all right?”
As she stepped away from the wall and into the diffused light from the café’s sign, he was taken by surprise. She appeared to be close to his own age, and definitely not someone he knew since she was dressed in jogging gear. No one in Beartooth
