by Forsaken
He left Dewey long enough to bag the boy’s clothing and load it and the specimens he’d taken into the patrol SUV before he returned to the house.
When he walked in, he found Madison Conner putting clothing outside the bathroom door. She gave him a look that made it clear she didn’t like him interfering with what she considered her business.
Since arriving in the state a few weeks ago, Jamison had learned how independent Montanans were—especially ranch women. Behind the often weathered suntanned skin he’d glimpsed an iron-strong will. He’d never seen more capable women.
Whether hauling trucks loaded with ranch supplies, feeding dozens of ranchers at brandings or jumping in to help with every chore on the spread, there was little these women didn’t know how to do—and well.
This was the first ranch woman, though, that he was about to butt heads with.
He took note of Maddie Conner’s clothing from her loose-fitting large flannel shirt and jeans. Her boots were as worn as her hands, and both were a sign of a hardworking rancher. There were fine lines around her cornflower-blue eyes. The set of her jaw bespoke of a stubbornness born of living in a man’s world. But while she might hide her femininity under a lot of attitude and loose clothing, there was kindness in her face that the years and her lifestyle hadn’t yet eroded.
As she straightened the stack of clothing she’d left for the boy he glimpsed a deep sadness in her expression, which she quickly masked. She made a swipe at an errant lock of her hair. It was long, the dark red of cherrywood with a few streaks of silver woven through. It surprised him to realize she was probably close to his own age.
As if sensing him watching her, she checked her expression and gathered up her thick mane. With nimble fingers she trapped it again in the large clip that held her hair off her neck. He couldn’t help noticing how pale and soft the exposed skin appeared.
“Yes?” she asked, irritation in her tone as her gaze met his.
“I need to ask you a few questions,” he said, embarrassed that she’d caught him staring at her. “You’re Dewey’s legal guardian?”
She gave him a grave nod. “Come into the kitchen,” she said, turning her back on him. She appeared reconciled to the questions and his being there, but definitely not happy about it. “The sooner you get your answers, the sooner I can see to my shepherd and flock.”
Jamison followed her into a sunlit yellow kitchen that looked as if it, like the bathroom, hadn’t been remodeled since the early fifties. The table was large and long with curved metal legs and a yellow checked top that matched the counter. The cabinets were knotty pine and the floor was a familiar linoleum pattern reminiscent of another era.
“How do you take your coffee?” she asked as she pulled down several mugs from the cabinet.
“Black.” He heard the shower shut off. “You said your tender’s name is Dewey Putman?” he asked as he produced his notebook and pen.
Maddie could tell by the way he said “tender” that he had no idea what that was. She put a cup of hot coffee in front of him. A pot was always on at most ranches. Hers was no different since she never knew who might stop by. Not that she got much company anymore. Her own fault for being so contrary, her husband would have said and would have been right.
She was too worried to sit, so she leaned against the counter, cradling her coffee mug, soaking in its warmth. She tried to remember the deputy’s name—something odd, she thought. All she could recall was his last name. Jamison.
“Dewey worked as the tender,” she said. “His job was to take care of the camp while Branch, that’s my sheepherder, took care of the sheep up in the high country for three months this summer.”
“The high country?”
“Back in the Beartooth Mountains—that’s where I graze a couple thousand sheep. The tender moves camp as needed. He cooks, comes down for supplies when they run low—”
“Would they have been running low?”
She shook her head. “Branch just took the sheep up to the grazing area four days ago.”
“And that’s where this boy has been?”
She nodded.
“When was the last time you heard from your sheepherder?”
“Four days ago when I helped take the sheep up. That was the last time I saw either of them until...” An image of Dewey’s horse, then the boy flashed into her mind. She gripped her mug tighter as she lifted it to her lips.
“Your sheepherder is named Branch?”
“Branch Murdock.”
Jamison looked up from his notebook. “His parents named him Branch?”
She gave a shrug. “That’s the name I’ve been putting on his paycheck for almost twenty-five years. Before that my mother wrote the checks.”
“Did everything appear normal when you left them up in the mountains?”
Maddie hated to admit she’d had misgivings about giving the boy the job. “Dewey’s a little green, I’ll admit, but I figured he’d learn well enough from Branch.”
“So the boy hadn’t been a tender before?”
“No.”
“How old is he?”
“Sixteen.” She saw the deputy’s eyes widen. “Plenty of men his age are doing a lot harder ranch work than being a sheep tender.” She knew she sounded defensive, but the deputy unnerved her with his intent silver gaze.
“If you’re his legal guardian, then where are his parents?”
“Divorced. I don’t know where his mother is off to. His father works odd jobs that take him north to the Bakken oil fields for long periods of time. That’s why Chester asked me to give the boy a job and made me his guardian.”
The deputy studied her for a long moment before he asked, “Has Dewey been in trouble before?”
“Who says he’s in trouble now?” she snapped, and looked away, angry with herself, Dewey and the situation. If this man would just let her talk to Dewey and find out what had happened up in those mountains, she could get this cleared up before Deputy Jamison jumped to the wrong conclusion.
“You might as well tell me if the boy’s been in trouble,” Jamison said. “I’ll find out soon enough.”
Silence stretched between them until she finally broke it. “Dewey got into some dustup at school. His father thought spending the summer in the mountains, away from his friends...”
“What kind of...dustup?”
“Boy stuff, I would imagine.” She glanced toward the sound of footfalls in the hallway. “I don’t really know,” she said quietly then turned as Dewey filled the open kitchen doorway. “Come have some coffee,” she called, moving to get him a mug.
Dewey came meekly into the kitchen, wearing her son’s clothing. He looked enough like her Matthew that it felt like being kicked by a horse. She already felt sick at heart as it was for Dewey, for his horse, for whatever had frightened him and maybe worse, whatever he might have done.
“Sit,” she ordered, and turned away to cut the chocolate cake she’d made only that morning. She’d planned to take the cake to the stock-growers’ meeting she had later in the afternoon, but all her plans would change now.
Dewey pulled out a chair at the end of the table, and she placed a slice of cake and a mug of coffee in front of him. She automatically reached for the sugar and cream because that was the way Matthew had always taken his coffee. Dewey ignored both and began to slurp up the hot coffee as if dying of thirst.
The deputy was watching the boy closely. She felt her chest tighten at the thought of what kind of trouble Dewey might be in. “Dewey—”
Jamison cut her off. “That cake looks awfully good, Mrs. Conner. Mind if I have a piece?”
Maddie tried to still her impatience as she sliced the deputy a large portion and topped off his coffee even though he hadn’t touched it. She desperately needed to know what had happened and what she was going to have to do about it.
“Mrs. Conner here was just telling me—”
“Maddie,” she interrupted.
Jamison shot her an annoy
ed look before turning back to the boy again. “Maddie was just telling me you were hired on as the sheepherder’s tender.”
Dewey nodded but kept his eyes on the cake he was in the process of devouring. He acted as if he hadn’t eaten in days. She realized with a start that Branch wouldn’t have let the boy go hungry—that was, if he’d been able to take care of the two of them.
Did that mean something had happened to Branch? Her stomach dropped at the thought. What of her sheep? She’d been hanging on to the ranch by a thread for so long...
“Son, can you tell me what happened?” the deputy asked.
The fork froze in Dewey’s hand, and then slowly he began to scrape the crumbs from the plate, never taking his eyes off the table, before dropping his fork and washing the cake down with the rest of his coffee.
“How about we start at the beginning?” Jamison said. “For the past four days, you’ve been up in the mountains with the sheepherder, is that right?”
Dewey nodded.
“Where is Branch now?” Maddie asked, ignoring the warning look the deputy shot her.
“I don’t know,” the boy said, dropping his voice and his head.
The deputy cleared his throat. “When did you last see him?”
“Just before bed last night. He said he’d been having trouble sleeping. The noises were keeping him up.”
“The noises? You mean the sheep?” the deputy asked.
Dewey lifted his head and frowned at the silly question. “Branch was used to the sheep. He said he could tell if they were happy or scared just by the sounds they made at night.”
“Then what was keeping him up at night?” the deputy asked.
“The strange sounds...” Dewey glanced back down at the table “...the...crying.”
Maddie couldn’t help herself. “Crying?”
“I’m not making it up,” the boy said, lifting his head to plead his case with her. Tears filled his eyes, and he began to tremble again. “I swear. We heard awful...crying on the wind.”
“You have heard the sound of wind or a coyote calling at night, haven’t you?” Maddie asked in exasperation.
“It weren’t no coyote,” the boy snapped. “It weren’t just the wind, either. It was...something else. Even old Branch was spooked by it.”
“Are you sure Branch didn’t just wander off?” the deputy asked.
“Maybe. His horse was missing this morning. I called for him and looked all over.”
Maddie doubted Dewey had done much searching for the sheepherder given how scared he was.
“How did you get the blood on you?” the deputy asked.
The boy wagged his head without looking up. “One of the lambs. She was hurt. I tried to help her.” He was close to tears again. Maddie remembered her son at that age, so tough and yet so tender, a boy on the edge of manhood doing his best to measure up. If only Matthew was here now, she thought with that unbearable grip at her heart.
“How did you and Branch get along?” Jamison asked.
“Fine,” he said to his empty plate.
Maddie took the plate and cut him another slice of cake. She could feel the deputy’s irritation with her, not that she gave a damn as she slid the second slice of cake in front of Dewey and refilled his mug. She noticed the deputy had hardly touched his cake or his coffee.
“I would imagine with only the two of you up there all alone, you might have had disagreements on occasion,” the deputy asked.
Dewey said nothing as he dived into the cake and coffee she’d set before him. She felt torn between wanting to shake the truth out of Dewey and wanting to protect him. All her instincts told her that the boy needed protecting.
“Branch hard to get along with, was he?” Jamison asked.
“Meaner than a rabid dog when he drank.” The kid, realizing he’d just spilled the beans, shot Maddie an alarmed look and quickly gulped out, “Not that he drank usually.”
Maddie groaned.
“If you had something to do with Branch going missing up there—”
“I didn’t!” he cried. “I swear. I don’t know what happened to him.”
She felt her stomach go tight with fear as a thought hit her. “Where’s Branch’s dog, Lucy? That dog would never have let him out of her sight.”
Dewey shook his head and began to cry.
“Son,” the deputy pressed. “If you know something, you have to tell me.”
“I don’t know. I’m telling you. I...I don’t know anything.”
“I’ve had enough of this,” Maddie said as she shoved off the kitchen counter.
Dewey looked up, startled, as if he thought she planned to beat it out of him.
“I have two thousand sheep up in those mountains, and I can’t be sure anyone is watching them,” she said to Jamison.
“Right 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 ro
ll 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.”
