He definitely should’ve filled the propane bottles. David had used the last of the fuel to heat water for his shower, so there wasn’t enough left to even kick on the furnace when the wind picked up during the night, whistling around the nose of the trailer with an occasional gust that made the whole rig shudder.
David layered on a sweatshirt and sweatpants, tossed an extra sleeping bag over the top of his bed, but he still couldn’t stay warm. When he did sleep, he dreamed the old dreams. Muddy appearing, then disappearing again into the darkness, always out of reach. Or worse, maimed, bleeding, a broken leg dangling, his eyes wild with pain.
Awake, David fought the urge to toss and turn. Every movement disturbed the blankets, letting cold air leak into his cocoon. His body ached from curling into a ball to conserve body heat, his brain from trying to fathom how Muddy had ended up in Browning, and what Mary thought she could accomplish by running home. All she’d done was delay the inevitable.
It was inevitable. He would not leave without Muddy.
His mind bounced to the possibilities. A future that had suddenly opened up wide. Even if Muddy was no more than eighty percent of his old self, David’s chances of scoring that big win were much, much better.
This had to be a sign, right? His luck had finally turned. If he had an exceptional Fourth of July run, he could crack the top fifteen in the world standings. Even a halfway decent streak would put him within spitting distance.
By six o’clock, the ache and the cold had penetrated clear to his bone marrow. The sun was well above the horizon, so he crawled out of bed, laced up his running shoes, forced his body through a few painful stretches, and then jogged west out of town. The mountains gleamed pink and gold in the morning sunlight, and he drank in long gulps of air, sweet as cold spring water. His muscles warmed, the kinks unwinding step by step.
After twenty minutes, he dropped to a walk. As his pulse slowed, he opened up his senses to let the sheer lushness of the countryside permeate his ragged soul. At its best, eastern Colorado wasn’t this vibrantly green. So many shades, from the yellow tinge of the baby poplar leaves to the near-black of pine needles in the distance.
He’d followed a narrow local highway that hugged the curve at the base of a ridge to the beginning of what passed for foothills, nothing more than a couple of bumps at the base of the mountains. To his right, the ground flattened into grassland scattered with clumps of brush, cut by a winding creek, knee-deep with grass.
Horse heaven. No wonder Muddy looked so full of spit and vinegar.
David drew in a deep lungful of air and held it, sorting out the myriad aromas. Damp, rich earth, hints of sweetness from the star-shaped purple wildflowers blooming in the road ditch, a tantalizing whiff of peppermint, all sharpened by the cool edge of mountain air.
A house sat off to his right at the end of a narrow dirt driveway. David paused to admire the tipi in the front yard, banded top and bottom with black, with a herd of crudely painted buffalo racing around the broad white stripe in the middle. As lawn ornaments went, it beat the hell out of his mother’s concrete garden gnomes. There was a neat pole barn and a securely fenced pasture, but no animals in sight. Hobby farmers, no doubt. Worked in town, had a dog, a couple of cats, maybe a horse that functioned mostly as yard art. There were a million just like this in Colorado.
Behind it all, the mountains reared up, a fortress of solid rock, jagged and impenetrable. A threat to frail human endeavors even in the golden morning light.
When David turned and started back toward town, he could see nothing but prairie rolling over hills and bluffs clear to the eastern horizon. If he didn’t glance over his shoulder, he could almost imagine the Rockies weren’t looming over him. Mountains or plains. No middle ground here on Blackfeet Reservation.
Back at the fairgrounds, he dug a set of barbells out of his trailer and pushed his sluggish body through lunges, squats, presses, and curls, then finished off with the stretches and abdominal exercises that kept his back in working order despite the time he spent hunched underneath the horses he shod.
Panting from the last set of crunches, he toweled sweat from his face, enjoying the ache of fatigued muscle. Of all the things he regretted during his two lost years, the way he’d let his body go was near the top of the list. Beer and self-pity…not exactly the diet of champions. In the past few months he’d slowly regained his stamina and strength and trimmed off the last of the belly that had crept out over his belt.
He stripped to the waist and scrubbed off sweat, his nipples contracting to pinpoints at the cold insult of the washcloth. He definitely needed to fill those propane bottles and fire up the hot-water heater. That extra layer of fat he’d been packing would’ve come in handy right about now, but he was much happier with what he saw in the mirror these days.
He splashed water over his hair and mashed it into submission. A haircut was high on his agenda the next time he got home, but it still didn’t seem right to wear a dusty cowboy hat to a lawyer’s office. He was dressed and pacing his cramped living quarters when Galen’s pickup rattled into the fairgrounds at ten minutes to nine.
As David stepped out of the trailer, Galen rolled down his window to extend a large foam cup of coffee.
“I got sugar and stuff, case you need it.”
“Black’s fine, thanks.” Darn fine, in fact, David realized at the first sip. From the espresso stand at the concrete tipi, maybe?
“Climb in,” Galen said.
David shoved a bag of cattle ear tags and a binder overflowing with papers out of the way to make space in the dusty cab. A generous coating of dog hair on the seat suggested the usual passenger was of the four-legged variety. Galen had dressed up for the meeting in a blue plaid shirt and a denim jacket with a multicolored medicine wheel embroidered on the front, although he wore the same battered black hat.
David had dug out one of his winter shirts, a heavy brushed-cotton in dark navy that his sister had bought him because she said it made his eyes look blue. Whatever. He usually didn’t wear it after the first of May, which accounted for why it wasn’t in the laundry hamper with all the rest of his decent clothes. His jeans were clean, at least, but nearly worn through at the knees.
Maybe they’d think it was a fashion statement.
Galen didn’t comment on David’s clothes or anything else as he drove into town, weaving through the same bustle of cars, pickups, and RVs. The street guy and his dog were huddled alone on the cracked concrete in front of the boarded-up gas station, soaking up the intermittent sunshine.
The attorney’s office was in a long, nondescript building a few blocks off Main Street. Galen parked on the street out front, and they walked inside to an office that was equally tired and dull. No plush carpets or gleaming wood here, just steel government-issue desks and scratched filing cabinets.
A woman popped out of her chair as they entered. David had to look twice and still might not have recognized Mary if it weren’t for the freckles. Yesterday, his vision had been too blurred by anger to register much of anything in the few moments they’d squared off. His memory had painted her as wiry and hard-faced, not petite and…well, pretty damn cute, though he had a feeling she wouldn’t like that word much.
She stared at him, blinked once, then again, as if she didn’t quite recognize him, either. “Something wrong?” he asked.
“Uh, no. You’re just a lot…um…cleaner.”
“I tend to be that way when I’ve had time to take a shower,” he said, scowling.
Her face flushed. Her gaze slid down to his chest and away, her blush deepening. Nervous? Or scared? She should be both after taking off with his horse like that, but she was so petite he felt like a goon looming over her. She’d tried to look all serious and grown up in a tailored black jacket over a white shirt, with black jeans and dressy boots that added a couple of inches to her height, but she was still a little bitty thing.
Without the baseball cap, he could see her hair was cut short, sort of feathery on the sides and spiky on the top. It was lighter than he’d expected, with gold streaks that matched the flecks in her eyes, which were the kind of brown that could veer toward green in the right light. The freckles scattered across her face nearly blended with her tawny skin, as if her color came from a tan, not her heritage.
She didn’t look Native. Not like Galen, Kylan, and the girlfriend, with their dusky skin and inky-black hair. Mary looked more like a golden-eyed pixie. She lifted her pointed chin and their eyes locked. Held.
A part of David’s brain that had been dormant for a very long time perked up and drawled, Well, hello. What’s this?
Oh, hell no. He hadn’t looked twice at a girl in months, and now his man parts decided to pay attention? No. Nope. Uh-uh. Not this woman. That was plain stupid. So why couldn’t he look away?
She blinked again and then gave a slight shake of her head as if she’d felt the same jolt. Turning on her heel, she marched to the interior office door. “Yolanda is waiting for us.”
Nice butt, that rogue voice muttered in his head.
Not much wider than the span of his fingers. And dammit, there he went again, but he couldn’t help sneaking another look before Mary plopped into a chair and he was forced to redirect his attention.
The woman behind the desk was not small, in height or girth. She offered a brisk smile that matched her handshake. “Yolanda Pipestone, attorney at law. And you’re David, of course.”
Three chairs were lined up in front of her desk. Mary had taken the far one. Galen settled into the middle, a protective buffer between Mary and David, who wedged his big frame into the third.
“Well, this is a fine mess,” Yolanda said, folding her hands on the desk in front of her ample bosom, which might cause a man to miss the sharp intelligence in her eyes. “I suppose we should start by explaining how we believe your horse came to be in Kylan’s possession.”
“That would be nice,” David said, impatience layering sarcasm into his voice. Yeah, he wanted to know the whole story, but he was more concerned about where Muddy was right now.
Yolanda gave him a long, measuring look and then transferred it to Galen. “Go ahead. You know it better than me.”
“Ah-right.” Galen pulled a piece of yellow notebook paper from his shirt pocket and squinted down at it, as if to be sure he got the facts just right. “Mary bought the horse two years ago from a friend of mine named Otis Yellowhawk. Lives down in Lodge Grass just north of the Wyoming border. Otis got ’im when his granddad passed away. Old man had a whole herd running on a tribal lease down by the Pryor Mountains. Otis remembers his granddad saying his cousin Jinks left one of the horses there right before he got killed.”
“Killed?” David echoed, remembering the pawnshop in Billings, the story the woman had told about her boyfriend leaving her the saddle.
“Car wreck. Drunk. ’Bout a week after you lost your horse.” Galen fished in his pocket again, pulled out a copy of a newspaper clipping printed on white paper, and handed it to David. “He went to a team roping in Meeteetse the day Muddy disappeared, woulda been driving home through Cody about the right time with a half-empty trailer.”
“And he just happened to be the one who found Muddy?” David asked, squinting at the blurred face attached to the obituary in his hand.
“Guess so.” Galen hitched a shoulder. “He wasn’t a real upstanding citizen. The neighbors’ cattle had a habit of going missing when Jinks was short on meat, that sort of thing. Guy like him finds a horse running loose with an expensive saddle and bridle, he counts it as easy money. Far as we can guess, he hightailed it home, stashed the saddle at his girlfriend’s house, and dumped the horse out with his granddad’s herd.”
“And just left him there?” David asked.
Galen’s mustache twitched in disgust. “Knowing Jinks, he had a plan. Find a horse running loose right down the road from a big rodeo and packing a fancy trophy saddle, sure bet he’s worth a lot and somebody’s gonna be willing to pay to get him back. Too bad for everybody he ran his pickup into a bridge before he could figure out how to collect.”
David stared down at the clipping. All this time, he’d been raging at a dead man. It felt…weird. An uncomfortable stew of guilt and disappointment. “I put up posters in Lodge Grass and Crow Agency.”
Galen nodded. “Otis remembers seein’ ’em, but Jinks traded horses all the time, and you gotta admit, Muddy don’t look like much. Sure as hell if their granddad had known, he’da hit you up for the reward. No reason not to, with Jinks dead.”
And now the old man was dead, too. Nobody left to blame or to answer questions. Convenient. David looked over and caught Mary watching him. Her eyes jerked back down to her hands. His gaze got hung up on the delicate curve of her cheekbone, the pattern of freckles sprinkled across her tipped-up nose, and he scowled at his reaction. “A woman sold my saddle at a pawnshop in Billings that fall,” he said curtly. “The owner described her as young and skinny.”
Mary stiffened, snapping her head up, anger sparking in her eyes. “You’re accusing me?”
“Just saying.”
“I was nowhere near Billings at that time.”
David raised his eyebrows. “I didn’t say exactly when it was sold. Do you have an alibi for the entire year?”
“Yeah, I do.” That pointed little chin lifted another notch. “I was riding shotgun on convoys from Kandahar airport into the Helmand province. That’s in Afghanistan, in case you’re not familiar.”
David felt his jaw drop. “You were in the army?”
“The Montana National Guard. I was deployed two months before your horse disappeared, didn’t come home for ten months after. Is that a sufficient alibi?”
David couldn’t muster an intelligent response, so he shut up.
Yolanda smiled ever so slightly and then nodded at Galen to go on.
“Two years ago in April, Otis gathered up his granddad’s herd,” Galen said. “Anything that rode decent he kept, the rest he hauled to the sale barn in Billings.”
Where they were most likely sold for slaughter. David’s skin went cold at the thought of Muddy being loaded on that particular trailer.
Galen checked his notes and continued. “When he saw how Muddy took to handlin’ cattle, Otis assumed Jinks had roped on him. He knew we were looking for somethin’ for Kylan, so he called me, and Mary bought the horse. He seemed to be a natural.”
A natural. Yeah, after about a thousand runs beginning when David got him as a four-year-old.
“I have the original bill of sale here, signed by Otis Yellowhawk,” Yolanda said, tapping a file folder with her finger. “Jinks did tell his girlfriend about picking up the horse. She’s willing to testify if she’s promised immunity from prosecution for selling the stolen saddle. We’re hoping that won’t be necessary.”
David took a deep breath, let it out. What did it matter? He didn’t want a fight. He just wanted Muddy. “No. I’m good. So now what?”
“That’s what we’re here to negotiate.” Yolanda took a deliberate pause, let her words sink in.
“Negotiate?” David repeated. “He belongs to me.”
“My client has invested a considerable sum of money in this horse, David. A purchase price of two thousand dollars plus two years of boarding, shoeing, and veterinary expenses.”
David felt his lip curl. “That’s a pretty small price to pay for the use of a horse like Muddy.”
“Probably true,” Yolanda said. “But for Kylan, the horse is irreplaceable at any price.”
David clenched his fists on the narrow wooden armrests of his chair. “What are you trying to say?”
Yolanda pulled a piece of paper from her folder and held it up. David recognized it instantly and grunted like he’d been punched in the gut.
“You expect me to pay the reward money in order to get Muddy back?” he sputtered, so furious he could barely speak. “That poster is four years old!”
Yolanda glanced at the missing-horse poster she held, then at him. “There is no expiration date on the offer, and I wasn’t able to find any public record of a retraction on your part.”
David swallowed, sucked in air, swallowed again. Five grand had seemed like nothing when he hadn’t even cashed the check from winning Cody. But now…
“Your client has had use of my horse without my permission for two full years,” he said, leaning forward to bounce a glare from Galen to Mary. “Soon as Kylan started roping on him, you had to know he was a whole lot more than some stray, but you never wondered where he really came from?”
They both stared straight ahead, stone-faced as the concrete tipi.
Yolanda pulled out another sheet of paper. “This is a transcript of your 911 call, the night your horse disappeared. You told the dispatcher, and I quote directly, ‘It’s my own fault. I got distracted, forgot about the fireworks. I never should have left him tied there.’”
Shame heated David’s face. “What’s that got to do—”
“By your own admission, you are at least partially culpable for the loss of your animal,” Yolanda cut in. “Given the circumstances and the time that passed between when your horse was stolen and when Mary bought him, even if she had tried, the chances that she would have been able to identify him were minimal. She purchased him in good faith and took excellent care of him. I can’t think of any reason she shouldn’t be paid the full reward…but she is willing to consider another option.”
“And that is?” David managed through clenched teeth.
“She’ll settle for half if you’ll agree to leave him with Kylan until after the National High School Rodeo.”
“That’s almost the end of July!”
Yolanda inclined her head. “If that isn’t acceptable, she’s willing to take the reward in full and turn the horse over to you immediately.”
David swiveled in his chair to glare at Mary, who still refused to glance in his direction. He met Galen’s implacable gaze instead and found no sign of the previous sympathy. Fury shot David straight up out of his chair. “You want to hold Muddy ransom? Fine. I’m more than willing to call in the state cops.”
Yolanda leaned back with a pitying smile. “This isn’t the State of Montana, Mr. Parsons. This is the Blackfeet Nation. A dispute of this kind will have to be settled in tribal court. Unfortunately, that court has a large backlog and takes a recess for the first week of July, so I wouldn’t expect your case to be heard by the judge until at least August.”
Wham! There it was. The reason Mary had run home to the reservation.
David stared at Yolanda, mind flailing. This couldn’t be right. They didn’t just get to opt out of the law of the land. But from the red haze inside his skull, he fished a memory from history class. Wounded Knee. The Pine Ridge Reservation. A standoff with the FBI because they were the only outside law enforcement with jurisdiction on an Indian reservation.
The feds wouldn’t come blazing to David’s rescue. He was just some cowboy, and Muddy was just a horse. They were on their own.
He whirled around, kicked his chair aside, and slammed out of the office.