Secret of Deadman's Ravine

Her face flamed at the pity she’d seen in their faces. No one believed Chester would be back. And she was sure they’d all speculated on why Chester had left her.

Well, let their tongues wag. She had turned down their help. She’d pay hell before she’d take their pity. She’d show them all. Lila Cross Bailey didn’t need anyone. Never had.

Tears sprang to her eyes. She furtively wiped them away. The last thing she’d do was let one person in this community see her cry.

Not that there was much left. There were only a half-dozen houses still standing, most of them empty, in what had once been a thriving homestead town a hundred years ago.

Amid the weeds, abandoned houses and what was left of the foundations of homes long gone was Titus and Pearl Cavanaugh’s big white three-story house at the far end of the street. Next to it was the smaller house where Titus’s mother, Bertie, had lived before she’d become so sick she had to go into Whitehorse to the nursing home.

A couple of blocks behind the community center and near the creek stood the old abandoned Cherry house, which kids still said was haunted. Lila was eleven when she heard what sounded like a baby crying in the empty old Victorian house. She still got goose bumps when she thought about it.

At the opposite end of town was Geraldine Shaw’s clapboard house, a large red barn behind it.

Overlooking the town was the Whitehorse Cemetery, where residents had been buried from the time the original homesteaders settled here. The most recent grave belonged to Abigail Ames, Pearl Cavanaugh’s mother. Next to the cemetery was the fairgrounds where community summer events took place.

As Lila looked up, a tumbleweed cartwheeled across Main Street. Like many small towns across eastern Montana, both Old Town and Whitehorse were dying, the young people leaving, the old people heading for the cemetery on the hill.

The young people left for better jobs or to go to school and never return, glad to have escaped the hard life of farming or ranching such austere county.

Lila knew that Faith and McKenna had only come home for the summer because they’d heard that their father had moved out. She’d insisted they take jobs in Whitehorse to keep them out of her hair and make it clear that she didn’t need their help.

Not that there was much in Whitehorse to the north. It had a grocery, a newspaper, several banks, a handful of churches and a hardware store and lumberyard. The bowling alley had burned down but the old-timey theater was still open, showing one new movie three days a week.

Like other ranchers from around the county, Lila went into Whitehorse for supplies and to stop by the nursing home to see her mother.

Why Eve had come back was a mystery to most everyone but Lila. Eve moved into her grandmother’s house up the road and, from all appearances, seemed to be staying, which frightened Lila more than she wanted to admit.

As she gazed out the window, Lila knew it was just a matter of time before she’d be all alone in that big old rambling house with nothing but memories. And regrets.

“They’ll find her,” a deep male voice said behind her, making her jump.

She felt the skin on her neck prickle as she recognized the voice and realized he had her trapped in the corner between the long potluck table and the window.

Her back stiffened and she had to fix her expression before she turned around to face Errol Wilson.

“I know you must be worried, but we all know how strong Eve is,” Errol said. He was a short, broad man with small dark eyes and a receding hairline of salt-and-pepper hair that stuck out from under his Western hat.

As his eyes locked with hers, Lila felt her skin crawl. She nodded, unable to speak, barely able to breathe. Normally, she made sure she kept her distance from Errol at these community gatherings, never letting him get her alone, even with other people around. But nothing about the past few days had been normal.

“Eve’s a survivor,” Errol continued, standing next to Lila but not looking at her. So close she knew that no one else in the room could hear him. If anyone looked this way, they would think he was inspecting the dishes that had been set out for the potluck.

“Like her mother,” Errol added.

“Ready?” Frank Ross called to Errol. “You’re going with Floyd Evans and the sheriff,” Frank told Errol, and gave Lila a comforting nod before heading for the door.

Lila turned her back to Errol, but she could still feel him behind her, the scent of his aftershave making her stomach roil.

“Don’t worry, Lila,” Errol said. “We’ll find your daughter and bring her back to you. Wouldn’t let anything ever happen to her. Just like I’d hate to see anything happen to you.”

She gripped the edge of the table, shaking violently with anger and fear and enough regret that she thought she might drown in it.

Please, God, let Eve be all right. Don’t punish herfor my mistakes. Give me a chance to make thingsright with her.

But even as she prayed it, Lila Bailey knew there was no way she could make any of this right with Eve.

CARTER SADDLED up with the search party. After the storm, there would be no passable roads to the south. There were few roads to begin with. A couple of Jeep trails when the weather was good. One road that petered out a couple of miles out near his family’s old place.

His father had sold out a while back. Carter’s brother Cade hadn’t had any interest in ranching and Deena had flat out refused to live on a ranch. She thought Whitehorse was the end of the earth as it was.

So his father had sold the homestead. Not that Loren Jackson had ever had any interest in ranching. He’d always leased the land. No, Loren had wanted to be a commercial pilot, but for some reason hadn’t left Phillips County so he’d ended up crop dusting with his father, Ace Jackson.

That was until he’d up and decided to move to Florida.

Carter had never understood his father. Loren Jackson had always seemed…unfulfilled.

So it felt odd to be here and realize that the old place stood empty just up the road. The Cavanaughs had bought the land, but no one had a use for the house, so it had been boarded up.

Carter rode east to avoid seeing the place, going past Bailey property and the house where he’d heard Eve was staying. One of the search party checked to make sure Eve hadn’t returned.

She hadn’t. And McKenna had come along to get a change of clothing for Eve to wear when they found her. Then they all rode south, leaving behind farm and ranch land for cactus and sagebrush.

Titus had divided the men into groups, each armed with a two-way radio. Ward Shaw had brought along a saddled extra horse for Eve to ride when they found her. Everyone was optimistic they would find her alive.

Or at least they pretended to be.

The thunderstorm the night before had wiped out any trace of her tracks, but her horse had returned this morning, leaving deep gouges in the wet gumbolike mud that were easy to follow.

The sheriff rode with Errol Wilson and Floyd Evans. The others fanned out, hoping to catch sight of Eve’s footprints since she would be on foot.

Although Carter had grown up here and known Errol and Floyd all his life, the three rode in silence with little to say to one another. Both men were older by at least twenty-five years and while Errol and Floyd lived within miles of each other, Carter had never known them to be friends.

In fact, few people in and around Old Town particularly liked Errol Wilson. There was something about the man that put Carter off, as well. Something behind the man’s dark eyes that seemed almost predatory. Errol radiated a bitterness for which Carter had never known the source.

As a boy, Carter remembered overhearing some of the men talking about Errol. There was some concern that Errol might be a Peeping Tom. Carter hadn’t known what that was at the time. And he’d never heard any more about it. He just figured that men like Errol Wilson generated those kind of stories because they didn’t fit in.

Carter gave no more thought to either man as he rode. His mind was on Eve and the argument she’d had with her mother. What had sent Eve riding deep into the Breaks without food or water or proper clothing? Her horse coming back without her was a very bad sign. He was worried what they would find. If they managed to find her at all.

The sun moved across Montana’s big sky, drying the mud, heating the air to dragon’s breath. No breeze moved the air. Nothing stirred, but an occasional cricket in a clump of brush.

An hour later, Carter reined in as he lost Eve’s horse’s tracks in a rocky area. “Let’s spread out. Holler when you pick up the tracks again,” he told the two men.

Errol rode off to the west while Floyd went east, kicking up a bunch of antelope. Carter watched the antelope run across the horizon, disappearing as the land began to drop, funneling forward to the riverbed.

To the west Carter saw one of the other groups from the search party had stopped to clean the mud from their horses’hooves. A hawk soared overheard, picking up a thermal, and nearby a mule deer spooked, rising up from a rocky coulee, all big ears as it took off, kicking up clumps of dried earth. No sign of Eve Bailey.

Carter rode straight south to where the flat, high prairie broke into eroded fingers of land that dropped precariously to the river bottom. He kept to the higher ridges in hopes of seeing Eve’s blue T-shirt. The problem was that too much of this land looked exactly the same. That made it extremely easy to get lost. During the storm, Eve could have gotten turned around. If she’d tried to walk out on foot last night she might be anywhere.

At one point, he stopped and realized he could no longer see either Errol or Floyd. He hoped to hell the search party didn’t have to find them before the day was over.