“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 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