Invincible

His black eyes narrowed, because he knew innocence when he saw it; it was that rare in his world. “Clueless, aren’t you?” he chided.

She lifted her chin and glared back. “My father is a minister,” she said with quiet pride.

“Really?”

She frowned, cocking her head. “Excuse me?”

“Are you coming in or not?” Cash asked suddenly, and there was a bite in his voice.

Carson seemed faintly surprised. He followed Cash into the office. The door closed. There were words spoken in a harsh tone, followed by a pause and a suddenly apologetic voice.

Carlie paid little attention. Carson had upset her nerves. She wished her boss would find someone else to talk to. Her job had been wonderful and satisfying until Carson started hanging around the office all the time. Something was going on, something big. It involved local and federal law enforcement—she was fairly certain that the chief’s brother didn’t just happen by to visit—and somehow, it also involved her father.

She wondered if she could dig any information out of her parent if she went about it in the right way. She’d have to work on that.

Then she recalled that phone call that she’d told her father about, just recently. A male voice had said, simply, “Tell your father, he’s next.” It had been a chilling experience, one she’d forced to the back of her mind. Now she wondered if all the traffic through her boss’s office involved her in some way, as well as her father. The man who’d tried to kill him had died, mysteriously poisoned.

She still wondered why anybody would attack a minister. That remark of Carson’s made her curious. She’d said her father was a minister and he’d said, “Really?” in that sarcastic, cold tone of voice. Why?

“I’m a mushroom,” she said to herself. “They keep me in the dark and feed me manure.” She sighed and went back to work.

* * *

SHE WAS ON the phone with the sheriff’s office when Carson left. He went by her desk with only a cursory glance at her, and it was, of all things, placid. Almost apologetic. She lowered her eyes and refused to even look at him.

Even if she’d found him irresistible—and she was trying not to—his reputation with women made her wary of him.

Sure, it was a new century, but Carlie was a small-town girl and raised religiously. She didn’t share the casual attitude of many of her former classmates about physical passion.

She grimaced. It was hard to be a nice girl when people treated her like a disease on legs. In school, they’d made fun of her, whispered about her. One pretty, popular girl said that she didn’t know what she was missing and that she should live it up.

Carlie just stared at her and smiled. She didn’t say anything. Apparently the smile wore the other girl down because she shrugged, turned her back and walked off to whisper to the girls in her circle. They all looked at Carlie and laughed.

She was used to it. Her father said that adversity was like grit, it honed metal to a fine edge. She’d have liked to be honed a little less.

They were right about one thing; she really didn’t know what she was missing. It seemed appropriate, because she’d read about sensations she was supposed to feel with men around, and she didn’t feel any of them.

She chided herself silently. That was a lie. She felt them when she was close to Carson. She knew that he was aware of it, which made it worse. He laughed at her, just the way her classmates had laughed at her in school. She was the odd one out, the misfit. She had a reason for her ironclad morals. Many local people knew them, too. Episodes in her childhood had hardened her.

Well, people tended to be products of their upbringing. That was life. Unless she wanted to throw away her ideals and give up religion, she was pretty much settled in her beliefs. Maybe it wasn’t so bad being a misfit. Her late grandfather had said that civilizations rested on the bedrock of faith and law and the arts. Some people had to be conventional to keep the mechanism going.

“What was that?” Sheriff Hayes’s receptionist asked.

“Sorry.” Carlie cleared her throat. She’d been on hold. “I was just mumbling to myself. What were you saying?”

The woman laughed and gave her the information the chief had asked for, about an upcoming criminal case.

* * *

SHE COOKED A light supper, just creamed chicken and rice, with green peas, and made a nice apple pie for dessert.

Her father came in, looking harassed. Then he saw the spread and grinned from ear to ear. “What a nice surprise!”

“I know, something light. But I was hungry,” she added.

He made a face. “Shame. Telling lies.”

She shrugged. “I went to church Sunday. God won’t mind a little lie, in a good cause.”

He smiled. “You know, some people have actually asked me how to talk to God.”

“I just do it while I’m cooking, or working in the yard,” Carlie said. “Just like I’m talking to you.”

He laughed. “Me, too. But there are people who make hard work of it.”

“Why were you in the chief’s office today?” she asked suddenly

He paused in the act of putting a napkin in his lap. His expression went blank for an instant, then it came back to life. “He wanted me to talk to a prisoner for him,” he said finally.

She raised both eyebrows.

“Sorry,” he said, smoothing out the napkin. “Some things are confidential.”

“Okay.”

“Let’s say grace,” he added.

* * *

LATER, HE WATCHED the news while she cleaned up the kitchen. She sat down with him and watched a nature special for a while. Then she excused herself and went upstairs to read. She wasn’t really interested in much television programming, except for history specials and anything about mining. She loved rocks.

She sat down on the side of her bed and thumbed through her bookshelf. Most titles were digital as well as physical these days, but she still loved the feel and smell of an actual book in her hands.

She pulled out a well-worn copy of a book on the Little Bighorn fight, one that was written by members of various tribes who’d actually been present. It irritated her that many of the soldiers had said there were no living witnesses to the battle. That was not true. There were plenty of them: Lakota, Cheyenne, Crow and a host of other men from different tribes who were at the battle and saw exactly what happened.

She smiled as she read about how many of them ended up in Buffalo Bill Cody’s famous traveling Wild West show. They played before the crowned heads of Europe. They learned high society manners and how to drink tea from fancy china cups. They laughed among themselves at the irony of it. Sitting Bull himself worked for Cody for a time, before he was killed.

She loved most to read about Crazy Horse. Like Carson, he was Lakota, which white people referred to as Sioux. Crazy Horse was Oglala, which was one of the subclasses of the tribe. He was light-skinned and a great tactician. There was only one verified photograph of him, which was disputed by some, accepted by others. It showed a rather handsome man with pigtails, wearing a breastplate. There was also a sketch. He had led a war party against General Crook at the Battle of the Rosebud and won it. He led another party against Custer at the Little Bighorn.

Until his death, by treachery at the hands of a soldier, he was the most famous war leader of the Lakota.

Sitting Bull did not fight; he was not a warrior. He was a holy man who made medicine and had visions of a great battle that was won by the native tribes.

Crazy Horse fascinated Carlie. She bought book after book, looking for all she could find in his history.

She also had books about Alexander the Third, called the Great, who conquered most of the civilized world by the age of thirty. His ability as a strategist was unequaled in the ancient past. Hannibal, who fought the Romans under Scipio Africanus in the Second Punic War at Carthage, was another favorite. Scipio fascinated her, as well.

The ability of some leaders to inspire a small group of men to conquer much larger armies was what drew her to military history. It was the generals who led from the front, who ate and slept and suffered with their men, who won the greatest battles and the greatest honor.