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Blood Ties
by Sigmund Brouwer

When Clay Garner, a newly appointed FBI agent, arrives for the first time in Kalispell, Montana, he immediately finds himself caught up in a disturbing chain of events. A train derailment, the brutal murder of an Indian woman, an intrusive and calculating local Sheriff, and a group of angry and defensive ranchers. Even when Clay is shot by an unseen assailant, the Sheriff refuses to pursue the case.

Twenty years later, when Garner returns to Montana, burned out by too many years of police work and too many grisly murder scenes, he is looking for peace and quiet. He's looking for a way to rebuild his faith in man and God. He marries beautiful and headstrong Kelsie McNeill, the daughter of a local rancher he has known years earlier. They have a child, but then their lives are shattered when Kelsie and their son are kidnapped.

Suddenly, it all comes back. The Indian woman found dead with a feather in her mouth and the cryptic note that taunted him: "The feather is your warning. Remember the eagle leaves a feather when it takes its prey. I am your watcher. Forever."

Using every trick he has learned in his long years with the FBI, and with the help of a wise and spiritual ninety-year-old Indian, George Samson, Clay Garner begins tracking the kidnapper, the Watcher, knowing that the lives of his wife and son are at stake, and so is his own.

Blood Ties is one of the most dramatic tales ever penned by this gifted Canadian writer. It is a spell-binding story, with remarkable twists and turns, and surprises that make every page an adventure.
Amazon: Blood Ties Chapters: NOT AVAILABLE
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1996, 304 pages paperback, Hard Cover, Adults

Chapter 1

      In room 27 of the Bluebird Motel, Doris Samson screamed soundlessly into the duct tape across her mouth. Smelling her cheap, rose-based perfume, the Watcher drifted back into boyhood, remembering another woman-white, and much older than this frightened Flathead Indian. The Watcher remembered how as a boy he had breathed in the smell of cloying rose perfume during long, frightening nights.
      In the Watcher's memory, those nights were never far away. Nor was the old woman...

      Her perfume had overwhelmed him when she surprised him and pulled him onto her lap. She held him tight, burying his face in the wrinkled cleavage exposed by her half-open housecoat.
      "Little Bobby, I love you," she crooned, holding him so firmly he could not push himself away. "I love you so much. Mommy just wants to hold you again."
      She finally relinquished her smothering grip, and he was able to draw air.
      "I am not little Bobby!" He squirmed to get out of her lap.
      She squeezed his face between her hands. If she was aware that it hurt him, it didn't show in the tender love on her face.
      "Little Bobby, it's all right. We're together again. Let your mommy give you love."
      "I am not little Bobby!" He wiggled his head, trying to pull loose from her hands.
      She Ieaned forward and kissed his forehead. With the blond wig over her gray hair, the makeup she'd applied with shaky hands, and the light dimmed low enough, she might indeed pass for thirty years younger.
      "Little Bobby, let me help you into your pajamas."
      "My name is not Bobby! My name is-"
      "Hush," she said, pulling his face into the wrinkled valley of her chest. "Hush, little one. First I'll bathe you. I'll wash you everywhere. Then 1'll dress you in your favorite pajamas. We'll spend the night together. Oh, yes, we'll spend the night together."
      She rocked the little boy back and forth. "And it will be like you were never gone.

6:30 a.m.

     Clay Carner stepped out of his Chevrolet sedan in the parking lot of the Bluebird Motel. He had no difficulty figuring out which was room 27. A sheriff's car was parked at an angle directly in front. One deputy, tall and massively fat, stood in the open doorway of the room, facing inside. Another sat behind the steering wheel of the sheriff's car, lips close to the radio mike he held in one hand.
      There were no flashing lights, however, and no rope or yellow tape cordoning off the parking stalls and sidewalk outside the room. At 6:30 a.m., perhaps, the deputies cared little about any risks from curious bystanders. Or, he thought, the deputies had just arrived and hadn't had the time yet to mark off the crime scene. Or the deputies were sloppy or uncaring, or both.
      Clay decided they were sloppy and uncaring. They'd parked the sheriff's car so close to the room that any evidence found on the asphalt beneath would be suspect at best, and at worst, disallowed in court.
      The deputy turned as he heard Clay's footsteps. Recognition came a half moment later.
     "Hoover's boy," the deputy said derisively.
      Clay ignored the sarcastic tone. A man didn't scrabble his way this far from West Virginia coal country without thick skin. Clay also knew in this situation his special agent's badge worked against him. He was twenty-six; that was the second strike. As an outsider meddling in their jurisdiction, he knew the ball had crossed the plate long before he'd had a chance to step up to bat.
     "Who's the investigator in charge here?" Clay asked.
      "Not you, hillbilly." Slowly, the deputy used his tongue to shift a wad of chewing tobacco from one cheek to the other.
      "Who's the investigator in charge?" Clay pushed back a flare of temper. Gangly, knobby at the joints, big-nosed, and just starting to fill his frame, he'd borne plenty of insults during his awkward teens. Work-hardened knuckles might have been a solution at county dances ten years earlier. Now, however, a fistfight would only mean paperwork and a reprimand in triplicate.
      "Come to step your FBI shoes over everything?" the deputy responded, pushing back his wide-brimmed hat.
      "Who's the investigator in charge?" Clay was the same height as the deputy but probably a hundred pounds lighter. He didn't flinch, however, as he stared into the deputy's deep-set eyes.
      The deputy spat a stream of tobacco juice onto the toe of Clay's polished right shoe.
      "I'll look forward to the day we meet and you aren't wearing a badge," Clay said quietly. "I'll invite you to try that again."
      "Then what? You gonna-"
      "Back off, Two Car." A hatless man, past fifty, barrel stout in a flannel shirt, suspenders, and blue jeans, squeezed between the deputy and doorframe into the sunlight. "Here's the situation, Mr. FBI. I got called from a warm bed at six. Had an entire day planned flyfishing on the South Fork. Instead, I get this stiff, a real bleeder. If you had any brains, you wouldn't add to my considerable irritation."
      Sheriff Russell Fowler wore his gray hair in a military crew cut and had a small balding circle on the top of his skull. Clay knew this, because at six-foot-one, he looked down on Fowler's five-feet-eight inches-a fact that almost certainly had brought a fourth strike into play during their first meeting the day before.
      "I'll remind you the same as yesterday. I have no interest in scratching dirt like roosters in a circle," Clay said. He spoke slowly, acutely aware that his West Virginia accent, with consonants polished like stones in running water, set him apart as surely as did his badge. He was too proud, however, to deny his heritage by snapping his vowels short. "I believe this here"-here came out in two syllables-"is a matter that involves the Federal Bureau of Investigation."
      The deputy in the sheriff's car stepped out silently and joined the first deputy in staring at Clay.
      "A matter for the FBI. I find that of particular interest," Fowler said. "Not only do you manage to get here a half-hour after we do, but somehow you already know enough about the crime to tell us who's in charge."
      Fowler rubbed his nose, then grinned. "With knowledge like that, we should check your fingernails for blood, boy. Maybe it was you gone knife crazy in there, instead of one drunk Indian against another."
      "I doubt it was a knife," Clay said, wondering why Fowler had tried to mislead him.
      "No?" Fowler's voice lost its insolent tone and became threatening. "I don't like it that you're so certain for someone who has no business here."
      "How many knife fights have you tended to, Sheriff?" Clay asked.
      "Over thirty years? You obviously don't limit your useless questions to train wrecks."
      "Then you know enough to recognize the marks a knife leaves." Clay regretted his first question, knowing it had sounded like a challenge. But he wasn't going to back down now.
      "I know the marks. And I'll bet my pension you ain't seen real blood or real death since graduating, Special Agent Clay Garner. One year out of the academy, and most of that year on backdated draft dodger files." Fowler's grin returned. "Don't let the size of this state fool you, son. Took just one phone call to find out exactly how you've spent your time in Great Falls. You've been no closer to blood than a paper cut or a stapled finger."
      To Clay Garner's frustration, he couldn't truthfully argue with the sheriff. After years of undistinguished traffic duty as a state trooper, his fledgling FBI career had not yet been much: Nine weeks training in Quantico, Virginia; a brief swearing-in ceremony, devoid of the presence of J. Edgar himself; immediate transfer to Great Falls, Montana, and its backwater office of three; and fifty-four weeks of 25s-the Selective Service Act cases that meant trying to locate local draft dodgers-mainly by telephone, with all fifty-four weeks in discomfort because of J. Edgar Hoover's enforced personal dress code: dark business suit, white shirt, dark conservative tie, dark socks, black shoes.
      Clay Garner hated his suit. He'd spent the previous two days visiting ranches and Indian reservations and had been greeted with suspicion or laughed at outright because of the cheap suit that barely reached his bony wrists. Only bankers and lawyers wore suits in this county, and both were welcomed like scorpions in a sleeping bag. Thinking of his age, badge, assignment, accent, and dress, Clay doubted he could deliberately find any more ways to make his job any more difficult in the Flathead Valley.
      "Knife wounds," Clay continued, refusing to rise to Fowler's bait. "Look for stab, puncture, or slice. Double-edged or single." Stiff-suited and stiff-lipped, Clay would not concede this was memorized book knowledge, taken from grainy black-and-white textbook photos.
      "Take notes," Fowler said to the deputy in a condescending tone. "Now we're getting a lesson from a graduate."
      "As you well know," Clay said, "the corkscrew was still in the body."
      "President Nixon himself don't interfere with my investigation and get away with it," Fowler said angrily, "let alone some wet-behind-the-ears ugly duckling with a memo from Hoover. If you stepped so much as a hair into this room before we got here-"
      "George Samson called me.
      "Samson? How's he know? We haven't notified him yet." Fowler's face was blotched with red patches from barely contained anger.
      "Clerk at the front desk saved you the trouble." Clay thought it interesting that Russ Fowler had no need to ask who George Samson was. "Same clerk who probably called you. From what I understood from George, the clerk knew his granddaughter. The clerk also saw enough to know it wasn't a knife that killed Doris."
      "George Samson don't know you from Adam. What's he calling you for?"
      Clay had been asking himself the same question, a fact he was not going to share with Russ Fowler. "As you might recall from yesterday's conversation, my assignment here is the train derailment adjoining his property. I interviewed George last evening. He called my motel room a half-hour ago and asked that I come down here."
      "We've got this investigation under control," Fowler said, not budging from his position.
      "Mr. Samson seemed to think you might be less than thorough. I find that interesting, especially in light of your less-than-thorough approach to the train derailment investigation."
      "The derailment was an accident, and I refuse to waste time on it. George is a crazy old Indian who belongs in a Wild West show. And you belong back in Washington. This is beyond your jurisdiction. Clear this investigation site, or I'll make sure you don't last another week with that tin badge."
      This was something Clay understood. Intimidation. It usually meant the intimidator had something to hide-fear, maybe, or guilt.
      Clay was also a stubborn man. If these local boys had treated him with any courtesy, he might have left them to their work and gone to his, futile as it was. Instead, he smiled and held his ground.
      "I had an interview scheduled with Doris Samson later today, Sheriff. So her mysterious death ties this into my train investigation. Also, this is a non-white murder victim. That, too-"
      "Non-white?" the first deputy echoed in disbelief. "Some Flathead squaw gets stuck like a frog, and you want to talk like a government clerk?"
      Clay would not give them the satisfaction of knowing how badly he wanted to shuck his starchy role and respond like the backhills boy he'd left behind. Instead, he chose his language carefully. "Doris Samson is from the Flathead reservation. That, too, makes it my business, according to federal statutes that grant FBI jurisidiction in government and Indian reservation matters."
      "Get someone in Washington to send me a memo to that effect, son," Fowler said, thumbs hitched behind his suspenders. "I can always use more toilet paper. In the meantime, why don't you just get into your car and leave us to our work."
      "You're barring me from stepping inside the room?"
      "I'm telling you this is local sheriff's business. I don't even want you peeking inside the doorway."
      It was almost comical, Clay thought, the way the two deputies shifted to block the doorway, like two boys playing king of the hill and daring Clay to try to take the top.
      Clay Garner drew a deep breath. An unsolved murder and an interjurisdiction dispute, all before his first cup of coffee.
      "Sheriff," he asked, "do you have a photographer on the way? Coroner? Crime techs?"
      Sheriff Fowler shook his head. "You been watching too much television, son. This one won't be tough to solve. Tonight, some brave will get drunk and tell his pals about a squaw who gave him so much grief he had to shut her up for good. We'll hear, track him down, and sweat it out of him. Case closed. Not that anyone cares."
      Clay studied the sheriff. Clay had his first tingle of excitement, as if an instinct he didn't know he possessed was coming to the surface. "From what Mr. Samson told me," Clay said, keeping his slow drawl even, "whatever you have in this motel room didn't happen because a drunk lost control."
      "Son, not only did you get beat good with an ugly stick when you was little, someone knocked the hearing out of your skull. I just said nobody cares about a dead Indian."
      "I do."
      "Your point being?"
      "Obstruction of justice. Another federal statute that puts this within FBI jurisdiction. Unless you deal with this crime scene properly, I will investigate and charge you and your deputies with said violation." Clay winced inside at how pompous he sounded. But at his age and level of inexperience, he had little else but rules, his badge, and the weight of the organization to give him confidence and authority in this unusual situation.
      Fowler watched Clay to see if it was a bluff.
      Clay reached into his suit pocket. Much as he hated the jacket, it was handy for holding a notepad and pen. He pulled out his notepad, flipped it open, and recorded the time and date.
      "Fowler," Clay said, looking up briefly. "F-O-W-L-E-R?"
      "Boys, let him inside," Fowler said after a long pause. He directed his next words to the largest of the deputies. "Two Car, get back on the radio. Make the calls for a forensic tech to be flown in from Missoula. If they squawk, tell them the FBI will cover the expenses."
      Fowler lifted his jowly face to look at Clay again. "Right, Mr. Special Agent?"
      "Right." Clay knew he'd be lucky to get this one past the paper pushers. But he was angry and stubborn, and if he had to, he'd pay for this himself before letting Fowler find an excuse to file this as just another knife fight.
      "Go on in," Sheriff Fowler told Clay. "It ain't pretty. You know the rules. Don't touch anything. If you feel queasy, make sure you get clear into the parking lot before losing your breakfast. Be a real shame, wouldn't it, if you messed up all your fine evidence?"

11:14 AM

      "Here's a twenty," Harold Hairy Mocassin told Johnny Samson. "Go in and buy some gum. Got it? Costs a dime. Make sure you keep all the change. Then meet me down at the hotel in five minutes. I'll show you a good time then."
      "I don't get it," Johnny said, folding the money and placing it in the back pocket of his blue jeans. "You wrote a phone number on the twenty. How does that double our money?"
      Harold Hairy Moccasin stubbed out his half-smoked cigarette on the sole of his work boot. They were standing in sunshine two doors down from a five-and-ten store on a street with little pedestrian traffic. It was past eleven o'clock, a time crucial for Harold in two ways. Enough of the morning had passed that Harold expected the cash register in the five-and-dime to carry a necessary reserve of cash; the Kalispell Hotel bar was open and waiting for their triumphant entry with some of that cash.
      "Johnny, there's plenty you don't get," Harold said. "Blame it on your grandfather. It ain't hard to tell this is your first day alone in the white world. You stick with me, man, and you'll get an education worth something."
      "Hey, man. You watch what you say. My grandfather-"
      "Be cool, Johnny Samson. Be cool. All I'm saying is there's two worlds. You know the hills. Now you get to know the streets."
      Johnny Samson drew a deep breath. Harold Hairy Moccasin, in a deerhide jacket, was short, skinny, with a half-dozen straggling long chin hairs. At nineteen he had been out of boarding school long enough to have grown his braided hair below his shoulders. He had his own truck, a '64 Chevy, and he'd been with a dozen women already, even had a couple of children, if a person cared to believe him.
      About a hundred years earlier, Harold was proud to tell people, a Crow named Hairy Moccasin had scouted for Custer. Hairy Moccasin had not been suicidal enough to stay put when he saw the odds at the Little Bighorn, and as a result Harold was able to include himself among the great-great-grandchildren who bore the scout's name. The privilege of such a background more than made up for the dignity he lost when people called him Hairy instead of Harold.
      Johnny was honored that a person of Harold Hairy Moccasin's stature would give him any attention at all, let alone invite him into town to celebrate Johnny's seventeenth birthday with his older sister, Doris. Johnny would have felt less honored if he'd known Harold Hairy Moccasin had designs on Doris and that Harold intended to lubricate the day's celebration as much as possible with their twenty dollars doubled.
      "Nothing can go wrong, Johnny. You're just buying a pack of gum. They can't stop Indians from doing that. Just be sure to use the twenty I gave you."
      "Yeah," Johnny said. "I'll be sure.
      "And don't look my way when you leave. Got it? When I walk in after you, she can't know we're together."
      Johnny Samson nodded in agreement,
      Johnny left Harold and walked the short distance to the storefront. He wore cowboy boots, jeans, a jean jacket, and a Stetson. Johnny's hair was longer than Harold's, but Johnny had been raised in the hills, not in a boarding school, and no one had ever forced him to cut his hair like a white man's.
      The doorbells jangled as Johnny let himself into the store. He stood for a moment, letting his eyes adjust to the darkness. The store window was jammed with cheap merchandise, so little sunlight made it through, and the light fixtures were cheap and far between.
      Johnny approached the cash register. A brown-haired girl his age stood behind it. She had waxy white skin, pimples, and square glasses, which added pudginess to an already overly pudgy face.
      "Gum," Johnny said. "I need some gum."
      "It's on the shelf beside you," she said in a tone of voice that indicated he was an idiot for not noticing.
      Why was he so nervous he couldn't see the gum himself? Harold was the one taking a risk. Right?
      Johnny Samson grabbed a pack of Wrigley's Juicy Fruit and threw it on the counter. He dug Harold's folded twenty out of his back pocket as the girl regarded him in silence. She handed him the change, and he left the store, turning toward the Kalispell Hotel. As instructed, Johnny did not look behind him for Harold Hairy Moccasin.
      Five minutes later, Harold Hairy Moccasin met Johnny at the curb in front of the side-door entrance to the hotel. Two older Indians sat on the curb, heads down to keep the sunshine out of their eyes.
      Harold was eating from a one-pound bag of raisins as he joined Johnny Samson.
      "Raisins?" Johnny asked. He badly wanted to know if and how Harold had doubled their money as promised but felt more compelled to ask why Harold had stopped at a grocery store when all Harold had talked about the entire morning was whiskey and draft beer.
      "Raisins," Harold confirmed. "Man, don't you know nothin'?"
      "I know I don't eat raisins. When I was little, one of my cousins told me whites made them by catching flies and pulling off their wings and legs. I never touched them since."
      "Eat them and your blood clots better," Harold replied with a superiority granted by knowledge. "Nobody can say Harold don't think ahead."
      Harold maintained his master-to-pupil tone. "See, tomorrow I sell blood. Four bucks a pint, man, that's what you get. Thing is, they don't let you donate more than once every six weeks. It's hard to make money that way. And they got this test to make sure your blood's thick. There's an easy way to beat that, though. Eat plenty of raisins, and next day you pass the clotting test. I go in every ten days, give 'em a different name. To them, we all look alike. Raisins cost me fifty cents; I get four dollars, plus plenty of cookies and Kool-Aid. Good business, I figure."
      Johnny nodded, not sure why he was smiling. Could it be healthy for a person to give away that much blood? But if Harold Hairy Moccasin moved that easily through the white world, Johnny needed to pay attention.
      "You get another twenty dollars?" Johnny asked, knowing he had more to learn from Harold Hairy Moccasin.
      "Close enough." Harold discreetly unfolded a handful of bills. There was no sense flashing wealth with the bar right up the steps, not when so many friends somehow always managed to appear to share good fortune.
      "Did you use a gun?" Johnny was amazed.
      Harold grinned and puffed out his chest. "I case the stores downtown. See, when a cashier gets a large bill, she's supposed to put it on top of the register when she makes change. That way there's no mixup. Some places though, the cashier's lazy, throws the bill in right away. She can never be sure what you just handed her. Like in the store we just visited."
      "Yeah?" Johnny wasn't following. He didn't want to show it though.
      "You went in," Harold said, "bought gum, gave her the twenty, got nearly twenty back. I waited a few minutes, bought a candy bar, gave her a dollar bill. She gave me change and closed the drawer. I tell her, look, I been ripped off, what happened to the rest of my money? She says what do I mean? I say I gave her a twenty. She says no, it was only a buck. I tell her I know for sure because I had a girl's phone number on it. I close my eyes and tell her the number, like I memorized it. She looks at the bill on top of the stack of the twenties, sees the one you gave her, and it's got the phone number I wrote down when we were standing outside. I tell her it ain't right, trying to rip off an Indian. She's all sorry, gives me another nineteen bucks to make up the difference."
      Johnny shook his head, half in admiration, half in worry. "Kind of like stealing but different."
      "You sound like the Flatheads I left behind. Too respectable. Me, I figure nothing you take from the whites is stealing. Think what they took from us. Maybe you should spend less time with your grandfather, hang out with some of us braves who ain't scared to fight for the old ways."
      Johnny Samson wondered what to say to that-he loved his grandfather-but he didn't have to worry about a reply. Harold Hairy Moccasin already had him by the arm and was pulling him up the steps into the Kalispell Hotel.
      "Let's get this celebration started," Harold said, already dreaming of Doris Samson and a variety of possibilities with her. Some were saying she'd changed her ways, but Harold was optimistic the rumors about her and church weren't true. "She knows you're in town. She'll find us or we'll find her, I promise."
      Inside the hotel, they walked down a narrow corridor to the barroom. Nobody challenged Johnny for age identification, which raised his esteem for Harold, who had earlier told him not to worry about it. The bartender, however, cigarette hanging on his lip, took a little wind out of Harold's impressive momentum to this point.
      "Hey, Harry Hairy" he called as they stepped into the yeasty smell of old, spilled beer soaked into wood floors. "No money, no service."
      Harold shrugged it off and tried to get back into his role of master by throwing a ten carelessly onto the bar. There were maybe a half-dozen other people in the room, all nursing drinks at tables with Formica tops. They were wise-getting drunk too early meant waking up sometime in the evening with too much time to kill until the next morning, wasting all the booze it had taken to get them senseless in the first place.
      "Couple of whiskeys with beer chasers," Harold said. "And I told you plenty of times already, it's Harold.
      "Sure thing, Harry Hairy."
      Johnny was watching carefully. He expected Harold to get angry at this white insolence, but instead Harold accepted the drinks meekly.
      Harold showed Johnny how to gulp a whiskey shooter and follow it with draft beer. Johnny learned fast.
      In fact, within the hour, he had guzzled four whiskey shooters and six beers and was well on the way to being drunk for the first time in his life when a Blackfoot Indian he did not know sat down beside him and asked if he was Johnny Samson because if he was, his sister Doris had been murdered and word was out that the sheriff had already put her in a body bag and the FBI was out looking for her friends, relatives, and boyfriends.

2:01 p.m.

     At age forty-four, along with holding considerable power over two local banks, James McNeill ruled seventy-two hundred acres of Flathead Valley foothills, fifteen hundred head of grazing and feedlot cattle, one hundred horses, thirty employees, two bunkhouses, an eighteen-year-old son, a nineteen-year-old nephew, and a sixteen year-old daughter. In turn, he was ruled only by the memories of his wife, Maggie, buried three years earlier after succumbing to a brief and painful fight with bone cancer.
      James sometimes found himself at a loss to deal with Kelsie, his daughter, in direct contrast to the ease of dealing with his son and nephew. His son, Michael, loved the ranch in the same way he did, and they rarely found cause to disagree. As for Lawson, James had become his nephew's legal guardian a week after the boy's tenth birthday, following a house fire in which he had lost his mother. The decision to adopt Lawson had been easy. Lawson's mother had been Maggie's sister, and family was family. Now best friends with Michael, Lawson proved to be amiable company for James and was smart enough to listen carefully on the few occasions when James felt pushed hard enough to raise his voice. A day didn't go by that James wasn't grateful both boys had ignored any fool notions about going down to San Francisco and joining the long-haired movement of hippies, communes, and dope-smoking.
      But Kelsie?
      James sat at the dining-room table, facing business ledgers and a mid-afternoon coffee, which cooled untouched as he looked through the ranch-house picture window. With the panoramic view of much of the valley below, he had eyes only for the activities at the horse corral near the main barn, some hundred yards down from the house.
      He spotted Kelsie leaning against the wood railing, mesmerized by three cowboys who whooped and hollered as they took turns riding green horses to a standstill. One of them, a good-natured neighbor boy named Rooster Evans, was not even part of the ranch but showed up often to throw a hand in with work, simply to be close to Kelsie. The other two cowboys were ranch hands, paid to work, not to perform in front of his daughter, who had been standing there for nearly two hours.
      Lord, James thought, how he wished for Maggie. She would be able to talk girl things with Kelsie. Whenever James tried, he fumbled so badly it embarrassed both of them.
      What James wanted to do was to go down there and order Kelsie to leave and let the ranch hands get on with their work. he knew it would be futile, though. Kelsie, a dreamer so much like her mother, also had her mother's stubborn streak. If he told Kelsie not to do something, it would only give her more determination to do so. If he told her to stay away from the cowboys, that would only add to her romantic notions of true love. And James was sure she'd set her heart on one of the cowboys-he just didn't know which one.
      Of course, he could wait until she made it clear who she was dreaming over, then ask that cowboy to stay clear of her. But he knew that even the most resolute young cowboy would have difficulty staying away from her.
      At sixteen, Kelsie looked twenty-one, almost identical to Maggie in a wedding photo taken nearly three decades earlier. She had the same shoulder-length blonde hair, same slim waist, same heartbreaking smile.
      Kelsie, like her mother, did not have a model's flawless cheekbones and skin. Instead, her eyes were slightly wider and rounder, slightly farther apart than they should have been. Her mouth, too, was slightly too wide. The not-quite-perfect symmetry had a startling effect, as did her green eyes and the pouting curve of her lips.
      While Kelsie's fashion choice tended toward work jeans and men's shirts, the bulky clothing was incapable of hiding the considerable promise of a body far too developed for the peace of mind of her father, who with great clarity remembered the passion he'd never lost for her mother and her giving, loving body. He also remembered his wild cowboy days before meeting Maggie and becoming a one-woman man.
      James hoped Kelsie was as innocent and unaware of men's glances as she seemed to be. He told himself, as he watched her leaning against the corral, it would be far worse at her age if she already possessed enough feminine wiles to realize her best chance at landing a cowboy was to pretend to ignore him instead of mooning about in such an obvious fashion.
      Still, as he remembered so well, cowboys and young women were a dangerous combination.
      He'd have to think of something, and soon.

7:45 p.m.

     Kelsie's most precious possession was a gift from her mother, a musical jewelry box with a tiny ballerina on top. When the mechanism was wound, if the lid was opened and then shut, the ballerina would spin to tinkling music. The jewelry box was velvet lined and had a false bottom an inch deep; it was Kelsie's habit to save small bills until she had enough to exchange for a fifty-dollar bill. She had four fifties in the music box now, along with her favorite Valentine's cards, a letter from Maggie, sweet poems from her brother's friend, Rooster Evans, and her first real love note, from a handsome cowboy named Nick Buffalo.
      No one knew of the note or the money or even of Kelsie's deeply sentimental and romantic side, which led her to save all that she did in the jewelry box. On a ranch with three males, she'd learned early to hide her softness and her secret yearnings.
      Instead, she confided to her diary. This, too, was a secret. It felt right that she spend time with her diary in the one spot that Kelsie and her mother had shared with no one else-under their favorite tree. While Maggie was alive, they had visited the tree often, especially on clear blue summer evenings when the day's breeze dropped to a whisper.
      The tree was a granddaddy poplar-silver, old, and dead-sitting alone on the edge of a hill two miles from the ranch house by horse trail, seven miles from any other house in the valley. Its broad trunk had been worn smooth of bark by cattle rubbing itchy hides against it. Higher up, the scars of bears' claws could still be seen; grizzlies over the years had stretched tall and ripped at the bark to mark their territory. The tree was just wide enough to allow Maggie and Kelsie to sit between its gnarled roots and watch the shadows that lengthened across the valley with the setting of the sun. There would be a special moment-the one Maggie and Kelsie always waited for in silence-when the sun dropped behind the western edge of the valley. At that moment, the light would diffuse into golden softness so pure the entire valley seemed like a new, untouched land.
      Kelsie believed fully in God and Jesus and angels, and because of it, ever since her mother had died, she often rode Saber, her black ten year-old gelding, to the tree for evening conversations with her mother. Kelsie knew Maggie was looking down on her and would appreciate hearing her thoughts on the day.
      Kelsie also shared these thoughts with her diary. She liked it best when she got to the tree early and was able to sort out her thoughts by talking to Maggie, with time after to record her thoughts in the diary while she waited for the special moment when the last fire of the sun disappeared.
      In the summers that had passed without Maggie, Kelsie discovered that when the golden light turned soft, she often strained her ears for the rush of air against angel wings, so great was her feeling of peace and the presence of her mother.
      Kelsie swayed with Saber's slow walk as they neared the tree. Her mind was on Nick Buffalo. When he accepted a glass of water she had fetched for him while he was breaking horses down at the corral, they'd shared a secret smile. Although he hadn't been able to say anything-not that he said much anyway-she knew he was thinking what she was thinking. For what they felt for each other, words weren't needed.
      It made Kelsie dizzy to daydream about Nick's lips on hers. Something like this-when the thought alone caused her stomach to tremble-had to be right, didn't it? It was a question she intended to share first with Maggie, then with her diary as she enjoyed the peacefulness of the valley below.
      As usual, Kelsie looped the ends of Saber's reins over a tree branch of a smaller poplar at the edge of the clearing surrounding the big, dead poplar. And, as usual, Kelsie grabbed a small stick as she walked toward her favorite tree.
      In the summer, because it might lead to awkward questions if she was seen with her diary going to or returning from her tree, Kelsie preferred to leave it in a hole in the side of the dead poplar. Come fall, she would take the diary back to the house and leave it in a secret spot in her room, for the weather then forced her to write there.
      Kelsie, for all her dreaminess, was still McNeill enough to have a practical streak. She always rubber-band-wrapped the diary in a plastic bag, so it wouldn't get moldy or wet or infested with bugs. There was also a reason she carried the stick. She'd reach in with it and rattle the hole first, so that she would not be surprised by a sleeping squirrel, a mouse, or by wasps or bees.
      After satisfying herself that she could reach in without getting surprised, Kelsie took the diary from its hiding spot. She pulled it from the plastic bag, then eased herself into a sitting position against the broad trunk.
      Before opening the diary, Kelsie said a small prayer, thanking God for the day and for her health and asking God to keep looking over her father, Michael, and Lawson as they tended to the affairs of the ranch.
      Her prayer finished, she spoke to Maggie for a while, telling her about the tabby with four new kittens and how James seemed to miss Maggie still. Kelsie took time, of course, as she'd done for the past week or so, to slip in a few words about Nick Buffalo, wondering if it mattered that a man had red skin or white and then answering her question by saying probably the important thing was that the man made his woman happy, which Kelsie knew by instinct would happen when she spent more time with Nick.
      Finally, she opened her diary. She gasped.
      Bent and broken, just inside the leather cover, was a feather. She plucked it out and straightened it. If she was guessing right, it was an eagle feather.
      But who could-
      The diary had been wrapped in a plastic bag and sealed shut with the heavy rubber band. Someone must have placed the feather inside her diary, which meant someone knew where she hid it. And for that matter, knew what she'd written.
      But who could-
      She had never told anyone about this tree, not even her father. It was a secret more precious because of her memories of being there with her mother.
      Kelsie stood quickly.
      The soothing whispers of breeze and leaves became haunting reminders of her isolation. Kelsie told herself it was her imagination. She told herself the silent stands of trees above and below her hillside perch contained only small birds and rabbits. But someone had followed her there once. And someone had watched her once. Because someone had found her diary, and that someone had left the eagle feather as a message to let her know she had been watched and followed.
      Never before had Kelsie been frightened to be alone in any corner of the vast ranch lands. She hadn't been scared of bears, and she hadn't been worried about getting lost.
      Fear now shivered through her.
      Was someone watching her at that very moment?

10:20 p.m.

     A few hours later, when Lawson McNeill reached the final crest of the winding forestry road, four other pickup trucks parked among the trees gleamed in his headlights. He parked his own truck, flicked off his headlights, and saw the glow of a campfire ahead. Obviously the others had decided the weather was so fine there was no need to use the cabin behind the campsite.
      Lawson stepped out of his truck and walked unhurriedly toward the men waiting for him. He guessed there might be a rifle trained at his chest, so he spoke.
      "Sorry I'm late," he said as he approached. "James had a few things he wanted done before I could leave."
      "Don't sweat it, son," one voice said from the shadows at the side of the fire. "Fowler's got no business calling us all together anyway on such short notice."
      Lawson spotted the dark outline of an ice chest nearby, opened it, and threw in a dozen cans of beer-minus one for himself-then found a large chunk of firewood in the grass. With one hand-he held the aluminum beer can in his other hand-Lawson rolled the firewood toward the fire. With his toe, he flipped the firewood on its end to use it as a low chair. He plunked himself down beside a familiar figure and snapped open the beer top, nodding and smiling at the six other men already seated.
      "Hey, bud."
      "Hey, Rooster," Lawson said right back, just as quietly. Even if they hadn't been neighbors, there would have been a bond between the two. All the others around the campfire were middle-aged. Rooster and Lawson, who were the same age, were the only two young wolves who had been granted the privilege of admission to the select group.
      Lawson let the flow of conversation wash over him, half listening to the talk about deer hunting, loose women, money, and local politics. The other half of his attention was on the fragrance of fresh pine and the crackle of pine sap burning in the fire. He tilted his head back for a swallow of beer. Straight above was a piece of starlit sky so black it felt inches from his face, so clear the smallest stars appeared as dust among the constellations.
      He enjoyed being at the gathering, not only because of the surroundings, but also because it filled him with pride to share the company of some of the most powerful men in the Flathead-Rooster Evans and his father, Frank, along with Bud Andrews and Freddie Dubois, who were on the county council, Judge Thomas King, and Wayne Anderson, a banker. It felt good to be a man accepted so casually by those he admired.
      Lawson was in no hurry to drink his beer. The last thing he wanted was for them to think drinking beer was important to him. These weren't the kind of men who approved of drunkenness.
      Ten, maybe fifteen minutes passed. Wayne Anderson, the banker, handed more cans of beer to Lawson and Rooster. "Can't let this stuff get warm," he said. "No telling when Fowler will get here."
      "Three minutes away," Lawson said, accepting the beer. "I'm guessing he's already crossed the Diamond Creek bridge."
      "No kidding?" Anderson said, his tone friendly, not disbelieving.
      "Heard his motor." Lawson corrected himself, trying to cover all bases. "Unless it's someone else."
      The judge slapped Lawson's back. "Hey, boys, how would you all like to be a puppy again? Back when a feller had sharp eyes, sharp ears, and a tail ready to wag at anything." The others chuckled dutifully.
      Lawson shrugged away his pleasure at the attention. By example, James McNeill had taught him well over the years. Any show of emotion was a show of weakness. And he wanted to be, if nothing else, known as James McNeill's boy.
      Within minutes, as Lawson had predicted, a new set of headlights appeared over the crest of the road. The group waited for the slamming of the truck's door. Then the judge, a skinny man with a lion's head, set down his beer and grabbed a rifle. He held it ready until Fowler called out his howdy then leaned the rifle back against a piece of firewood.
      Fowler declined an offer to sit and declined a beer. Standing above the small group, Fowler wasted no time. "I'll get right to it," he said. "You all probably heard by now about the Flathead squaw we found early this morning at the Windsor Motel."
      "Old news, Sheriff. Don't tell us this is the reason you dragged us up here."
      "Cork it, Frank," Fowler told the rancher. "The reason I dragged you up here is because we need to talk some about what this means."
      "Like what?" This from the judge, Thomas King.
      "Like how we all agreed the first rule was nothing public. How do you expect me to cover something like this?"
      "Hold on," Frank said. "Are you accusing one of us?"
      "No," Fowler said. His tone suggested a bull pawing at dirt. "I'm not going to accuse any of you. Fact is, I don't want to hear one of you did it. What I saw this morning was more than I'll accept, and I'm telling you now if I find out who did it, I'll take-"
      Fowler stopped short. A Winchester 30-30 leveled chest high has that effect on a man, no matter how sure he is of himself.
      "That sounds real close to a threat," the judge said, standing with his legs braced.
      "This ought to be good," Fowler said. "All day I've been looking for an excuse to lose my temper."
      "Tommy, put the gun down," the banker said without rising. "This is not the OK Corral. Russ here wouldn't ever do anything as foolish as make threats. Just like we don't threaten him."
      Frank burped to show his casual regard for the situation. The two councilmen watched with the same rigid silence they were famous for during town meetings and poker games. Lawson held his breath, fascinated by the palpable will of the strong men around him. The judge finally lowered the rifle.
      "Russ," the banker said, "Tommy's a little high-strung after last night's poker game. Forget his crankiness and tell us what bee is buzzing under your skirt."
      "Two things." Fowler said. "The first is this: In my business, coincidences are disturbing, because they are rarely coincidences. All of you here have a good aquaintance with Doris Samson."
      Fowler jerked his thumb in the direction of the cabin in the darkness behind them. "I don't have to remind any of you about your week-long hunting trip last fall and how Doris and three of her friends provided entertainment the entire week."
      "She's turned born-again," Rooster blurted. "Won't have nothing to do with that stuff anymore."
      Fowler paused and let his words drop slowly. "Which is the coincidence I don't like. What if someone here took that personal? Wouldn't be the first time a man took it hard when a woman said no after saying yes real easy."
      "Hang on," the banker said. "It was only a party here at the cabin. That don't mean-"
      "Second thing," Fowler said. "The FBI is in on this now. Which means-
      "Russ, you promised to handle that for us," the judge said, anger in his voice.
     "No," Fowler said. "You made the promises."
      "Which I delivered. They sent in a rookie on a short leash. You handle the rest and keep a potato sack over his head."
      Fowler didn't reply immediately. His labored breathing was audible above the crackling of the small fire. "I can't stop him from asking questions," he said at last. "And I got a bad feeling about him. He's got bulldog determination. If he learns enough to land on your doorstep, I want you warned. Which is part of why we're meeting tonight-to get some stories straight and ready for him. If worse comes to worst and it gets out she was up here last fall, we can't let it mess up the land deal."