The rancher took off his cap, wiped his pale forehead with his shirtsleeve and put it back on again. He flicked her a glance and a nod, then looked at Roan and gestured toward the sheriff’s department SUV. “What’s the law doin’ out here this time a’ day?” His growly voice reminded her of Roan’s, only rustier.

Roan looked over at Mary, flashed her a reassuring smile. “Got somebody here I want you to meet. Boyd…Mary Owen-or, I guess it’s Yancy, right? Anyway, Mary, this is my father-in-law, Boyd Stuart.”

Mary nodded and smiled, uncertain whether to offer her hand or not. But the rancher nudged the bill of his cap back with his thumb, swiped his gnarled hand across the front of his shirt and then held it out to her with a gruff, “I know who you are. How-do, miss.”

And that was when she saw that the hand he offered her bore the silvery discoloration of burn scars, and that above the grizzled jaws and weathered, leathery skin that covered the lower two-thirds of his face, his blue eyes were filled with a bottomless sadness. Kind eyes, she thought, that would never really smile again.

She took the scarred hand and murmured, “I’m so happy to meet you.”

“So,” Roan said, raking a hand through his hair in an uncharacteristically awkward gesture, “where’s your sidekick?”

“Little bit?” Boyd scowled and made a cranky gesture with his hand that failed to override the affection in his voice. “Ah, she’s off somewheres-barn, probably. One of the cats had a litter, and she’s bound and determined to find her nest. She’ll come a’runnin’, once she knows you’re here.”

“I can’t stay.” Roan shot Mary another look, one she couldn’t read. “I need to get back to town. A lot going on I need to tend to.”

The rancher took off his cap again…put it back on. “Yeah? How’d that go-the big parade?”

“Parade went fine,” Roan said, and his eyes were hard and flinty. “Somebody took a shot at Mary, though.”

Boyd’s head rocked back as if someone had thrown a punch at him. “You don’t say.”

“’Fraid so. That’s why I brought her out here. She’s gonna need a safe place to stay until we can get whoever’s responsible. You mind getting her settled in? Show her around? Like I said, I need to get on back.”

“Sure,” said Boyd. “No problem. Where you wanna put her?”

Mary opened her mouth, but her panic-stricken cries-Don’t go! Don’t leave me!-were all inside her head.

Roan had the back of the SUV open and was hauling out her suitcase and the cat carrier and the large shopping bag with the cat supplies in it. He set them beside the opening in the split rail fence, then looked up and said, “Put her in my room.” This time Mary managed to produce sound, but no discernible words. He opened the car door and paused, half in and half out, to give her a long, burning look. “I’ll sleep on the couch.”

He slid behind the wheel and slammed the door, and the SUV roared to life. Mary and Boyd stood side by side without speaking and watched it execute a wrenching three-point turn, then accelerate down the lane, crunching gravel and spitting dust.

For a few more seconds the dust and the silence hovered in the air. Then Boyd made an abrupt beckoning gesture with one hand, picked up her suitcase with the other and said gruffly, “No sense standin’ out here in the yard. Come on in the house-I’ll show you to Roan’s room.” He started across the enclosed yard, moving surprisingly quickly in his odd crabbed gait-rather like the oldtime Western movie star, John Wayne, in a hurry.

Mary picked up the cat carrier and the shopping bag and followed. “Oh, please don’t put him out of his room,” she said, puffing a little as she hurried to catch up. “The couch-anything will be fine for me.”

Boyd glanced over at the cat carrier, apparently ignoring that remark. “What you got there?” When the carrier’s occupant responded with a furious growl, he chuckled and said, “Oh-big old fella.” Then he looked up at Mary, and there was a gleam in his sad old eyes.

“Shoot, Roan don’t hardly ever use it anyhow, the hours he keeps. Waste of a perfectly good mattress, you ask me.” He opened the front door and held it with his backside while Mary slipped past him into the house, then pulled the door shut and clumped ahead of her across an entryway of polished pine. She barely had time to notice the large open rooms with vaulted ceilings, a sense of warmth and light and natural colors, a feeling of the outdoors brought inside, before following her host down a wide carpeted hallway that ended abruptly at a plywood barricade. Halfway down the hall, Boyd turned into an open doorway. Mary followed him into a room that was much smaller and plainer than she’d expected.

Boyd set the suitcase down with a thump on a Navajo patterned rug. “There you go,” he said, then straightened, hooked a thumb in the pocket of his Levi’s and surveyed the room with narrowed eyes, scratching his stubbled chin. “You’ll most likely be wantin’ clean sheets and such. You’ll find some in that chest a’ drawers over yonder. Bathroom’s around the corner, next to the kitchen. You think of anything else you need, give me a holler.”

“I wish you’d just let me have the couch,” Mary murmured absently, trying not to look with too much curiosity…trying not to think about the fact that she was standing in Roan’s bedroom. His private space. Intimacy…

“Couch is comfortable enough,” Boyd admitted, hitching one shoulder. “Use it myself now and then, when Roan’s in town late and I need to stay here with the little bit. Most a’ the time I have my own place up the road-foreman’s cottage. Suits me fine.” He paused, then shook his head in a way that brooked no further argument. “Woman needs her privacy. You let Roan take the couch-he’s young, won’t hurt him none. And you’ve got the cat. Cats don’t like strange places. You’ll be needing to shut him up, I reckon.” There was a definite twinkle in his eye as he nodded toward the case Mary was still holding. “Tell you a trick my wife used to use, to get a cat to settle in a new place. What you do is, you put butter on his paws.”

“Really?” Mary said over Cat’s outraged yowl. “That works?”

Boyd bobbed his head. “M’wife swore it did. Said the cat’d be so busy cleanin’ the butter off his paws, he’d forget all about bein’ in a strange place.” He turned to the door with one of his abrupt hand gestures. “Well-I’ll let you get settled-” he turned back in his bent-over, arthritic way “-unless you’d like to see around the place first…”

“I’d like that,” Mary said, with silent apologies to Cat. She’d wait to let him out of the carrier until she could stay to keep an eye on him. No telling what kind of damage he might do, the mood he was in.

Out in the hallway, she paused to look questioningly at the plywood barricade. Boyd’s hand gesture as he turned away from it was even more blunt and dismissive than usual.

“Used to be the master bedroom back there-Roan’s den…baby’s room…” His crusty voice had thickened. “Burned down a few years back. Roan never has got around to rebuilding it.”

Mary sucked in air, but he left her no time for apologies, or to dwell on the dreadful images that came swarming into her mind. Chilled, she followed Boyd through a cursory tour of the house, and was glad when they came again into the warm spring sunshine, where the scent of lilacs and boisterous greetings from the dogs helped to banish the ghost of past tragedy.

The dogs’ names, she learned, were Rocky and Bear. They were Australian shepherds, and she could tell them apart easily enough because Rocky had one blue eye. Completely accepting of her now, they trotted at her heels as often as they did Boyd’s, as they walked down the cottonwood-shaded lane between storage sheds of all shapes and sizes, corral fences and horse stables, most of them painted a dark red with white trim.

“You ride?” he asked, as they were walking through one of the stables, empty and remarkably cool and quiet for late afternoon. It smelled-not unpleasantly-of leather and straw, manure and something faintly salty Mary could only assume was horse.

“No,” she said quickly, repressing a shudder-not wanting to be impolite, “not really.”

Boyd chuckled. “Well…little bit’ll have you mounted up in no time, I expect.”

Not if I can help it, Mary thought.

Last stop on the tour was a huge old barn at the end of the lane. Again, the interior of the barn was cool and dim, shot through with fingers of sunlight from cracks in the siding and tiny dust-clouded windows high in the walls. Stacks of hay bales filled most of the space, along with a lot of tools and other mysterious objects that appeared to be very, very old. Antiques, Boyd explained proudly. Relics from the Old West he’d collected over the years.

He halted and called up toward the rafters, “Hey, little bit, come on down here, now. We got company.”

There was a pause, and then a small face framed with tousled red hair appeared at the very top of the tallest haystack. The face split into a wide, off-center grin. “Hi,” Susie Grace called down in a hoarse whisper. “I can’t come down right now. I’m holding kittens. You want to see them? They’re really cute. You can climb up here, if you want to.”

Mary opened her mouth. Looked at Boyd, who grinned and shrugged his shoulders. She drew a quivering breath, the feelings inside her as hard to pin down as the dust motes dancing in those shafts of sunlight. Then she shrugged, stepped up onto the lowest layer of bales, and began to climb, Susie Grace calling encouragement and helpful instructions in her raspy whisper. She reached the top of the stack, weak-kneed but triumphant, and turned to wave at Boyd, who touched his cap with a finger, then turned and stumped off on some chore of his own.

Susie Grace scooted back to make room for Mary on the bales, crossing her legs under her Indian-style. She was cradling two tiny black-and-white kittens against her chest. She waited until Mary had settled herself, then peeled one of the kittens off of her T-shirt and commanded, “Hold out your hands.”