Gun-Shy Bride

Ruby finished her cigarette, stubbing it out angrily and then cleaning the ashtray before hiding it again under the counter. “Your father didn’t leave because of that stupid poaching charge.”

“Why do you say that?”

“Trace had gotten off on all the other tickets Buzz had written him. He wasn’t afraid of Buzz Crawford. In fact …”

“In fact?”

Ruby looked away.“Everyone in town knew that Buzz was gunning for your father. But Trace said he wasn’t worried. He said he knew something about Buzz….”

“Blackmail?” McCall uttered. Something like that could get a man killed.

LUKE CRAWFORD FOLLOWED the drag trail through the thick cottonwoods. Back in here, the soft earth hadn’t dried yet. The wind groaned in the branches and weak rays of sunlight sliced down through them.

The air smelled damp from last night’s storm, the muddy ground making tracking easier, even without the bloody trail to follow.

It was chilly and dark deep in the trees and underbrush, the dampness making the April day seem colder. Patches of snow had turned to ice crystals on the shady side of fallen trees and along the north side of the riverbank.

Luke hadn’t gone far when he found the kill site. He stopped and squatted down, the familiar smell of death filling his nostrils. The gut pile was still fresh, not even glazed over yet. A fine layer of hair from the hide carpeted the ground.

Using science to help him if he found the poachers, he took a DNA sample. Poachers had been relatively safe in the past if they could get the meat wrapped and in the freezer and the carcass dumped in the woods somewhere.

Now though, if Luke found the alleged poacher, he could compare any meat found in a freezer and tell through DNA if it was the same illegally killed animal.

In the meantime, he’d be looking for a pickup with mud on it and trying to match the tire tracks to the vehicle the poachers had been driving.

Pushing himself to his feet, Luke considered who might be behind the poaching. It generally wasn’t a hungry Whitehorse family desperate enough to kill a doe out of season. In this part of Montana, ranchers donated beef to needy families, and most families preferred beef over venison.

Nor did Luke believe the shooters were teenagers out killing game for fun. They usually took potshots from across the hood of their pickups at something with antlers after a night of boozing—and left the meat to rot.

As he followed the drag trail to where the poacher had loaded the doe into the back of his truck, he studied the tire tracks, then set about making a plaster cast.

While it dried he considered the footprints in the soft mud where the poachers’ truck had been parked. Two men.

After taking photos and updating his log book, he packed up, and glancing once more toward McCall’s cabin, went to give the rancher his assessment of the situation before filing his report.

Luke knew his chances of catching the poachers were slim. Not that his Uncle Buzz would have seen it that way. Buzz Crawford had built a reputation on being the toughest game warden Montana had ever seen.

But Luke tended to write more warnings than tickets and knew he couldn’t solve every crime in the huge area he covered. He didn’t have the “kill gene,” as his uncle often told him, and that explained the problem between him and Buzz.

The problem between him and McCall Winchester, his first love—hell, the only woman he’d ever truly loved—was a whole lot more complicated.

MCCALL WAS STILL CONSIDERING the ramifications of her father possibly blackmailing the former game warden. “If Trace had something on Buzz—”

“I don’t know that for sure,” Ruby hedged. “Your father really didn’t need to blackmail anyone. His mother and the Winchester money would have gotten him out of any trouble he got into.”

Not this kind of trouble,McCall thought.

But she knew what her mother was getting at. Whitehorse was a small town and deals were made between local judges and some families. McCall also knew the legendary Buzz Crawford. He wouldn’t have taken well to blackmail.

“So if my father wasn’t worried about this poaching charge …” And apparently he hadn’t been, if he’d gone hunting the next morning on that ridge. “Then why did you think he ran off?”

Ruby waved a hand through the air. “I was pregnant and crazy with hormones, out of my mind half the time, and Trace …”

“You fought a lot,” McCall guessed after having seen how her mother’s other relationships had gone over the years. “Did you have a fight the morning before he … disappeared?”

Ruby looked away. “Why do you we have to talk about this? Trace and I were both young and hotheaded. We fought, we made up.” She shrugged. “There was no one like Trace.” She smiled as if lost for a moment in the past.

And for that moment, Ruby looked like the pregnant young woman in love that she’d been in the few photographs McCall had of her—usually in uniform, alone, at the café.

The moment passed. Ruby frowned. “No matter what you’ve heard, Trace didn’t leave because of you.”

“So did he take anything when he left—clothes, belongings?”

“Just his pickup and his rifle. He would have made a good father and husband if his mother had stayed out of it. Pepper Winchester has a fortune, but she wouldn’t give him a dime unless he got out of the marriage to me and made me say my baby was someone else’s. What kind of mother puts that kind of pressure on her son?”

McCall didn’t want her mother to take off on Pepper Winchester again. Nor was she ready to tell her mother what she’d found up on the ravine south of town without conclusive evidence.

She got to her feet. “I need to get going.”

“You sure you don’t want some tuna casserole? I could get Leo to dish you up some for later. You have to eat and it’s just going to get thrown out.”

“Naw, thanks anyway.” She hugged her mother, surprised how frail Ruby was and feeling guilty for upsetting her. “I didn’t mean to bring up bad memories.”

“All that was a long time ago. I survived it.”

“Still, I know it wasn’t easy.” McCall could imagine how hurt her mother must have been, how humiliated in front of the whole town, that her husband had left her pregnant, broke and alone. McCall knew how it was to have the whole town talking about you.

“It wasn’t so bad,” Ruby said with a smile. “Within a couple of weeks, I had you.”

McCall smiled, feeling tears burn her eyes as she left, her hand in her pocket holding tight to the hunting license—the only definite thing she had of her father’s—unless she counted his bad genes.

WORD ABOUT THE BONES FOUND south of town had traveled the speed of a wildfire through Whitehorse. McCall heard several versions of the story when she stopped for gas.

Apparently most everyone thought the bones were a good hundred years old and belonged to some outlaw or ancestor.

By the time McCall left Whitehorse, the sun and wind had dried the muddy unpaved roads to the southeast. The gumbo, as the locals called the mud, made the roads often impassible.

McCall headed south into no-man’s-land on one of the few roads into the Missouri Breaks. Yesterday she’d driven down Highway 191 south to meet Rocky. But there were no roads from the ridge where she’d stood looking across the deep gorge to the Winchester Ranch.

Getting to the isolated ranch meant taking back roads that seldom saw traffic and driving through miles and miles of empty rolling wild prairie.

Over the years McCall had thought about just showing up at her grandmother’s door. But she’d heard enough horror stories from her mother—and others in town—that she’d never gotten up the courage.

The truth was, she didn’t have the heart to drive all the way out there and have her grandmother slam the door in her face.

Today though, she told herself she was on official . Of course one call to the sheriff would blow that story and leave her in even more hot water with her boss.

But already in over her head, McCall felt she’d been left little choice. Once the report came back from the crime lab—and she gave up the hunting license—it would become a murder investigation and she would be not only pulled off the case, but also locked out of any information the department gathered because of her personal connection to the deceased.