Married In Montana

At his touch, she winced and gave a hiss of pain.

“What? What’s wrong?” He opened his fingers and looked at her arm where it lay across his palm. A bracelet of dark red bruises circled her delicate wrist. “Damn. Did he do this to you?”

Megan had turned toward the window.

“Did your dad do this, honey?” Hand on her chin, he made her face him. Tears filled her big brown eyes and dripped onto his thumb as she nodded.

Bobby fell back against the seat, swearing under his breath. “Somebody ought to put that bastard in jail. Or maybe just take him out and shoot him like the rabid dog he is.”

Megan’s soft fingers touched the back of his hand. “It’s okay, Bobby. Really. He woke up when I came in last night, is all. He didn’t like that it was so late, and he…he took me to my room.”

“Dragged, you mean.” She didn’t have to draw him a picture. “Did he know you were with me?”

“He thought I was with Racey.”

“I guess that’s a good thing.” Megan’s dad would’ve killed her if he knew she was seeing a Maxwell. He would’ve killed her if he knew about the little motel in Bozeman where they’d spent the better part of the night. “How’d you get out this morning?”

“Mama told him I had to go to church. Then she said I was going to Aunt Sara’s to baby-sit.”

“Are you really?” What good was a long Sunday afternoon off without Megan?

She smiled when he looked at her. “Sara and Rick are taking the kids to see his mother down in Red Lodge. I don’t have to be home until six.”

“So what are we gonna do?” Dan reached out and pulled Racey closer. “And where are we gonna do it?”

They stopped at the Quik-Save in Mitchell for some sandwiches and chips, colas and beer. The girls stayed in the truck; when Bobby and Dan stepped outside again, they found a cowboy, elbows propped on the driver’s-side window frame, with his head and shoulders inside the cab. The black pickup with a double gun rack across the parking lot identified Hank Reeves—Megan’s ex-boyfriend, sometime wrangler for local spreads and full-time pain in the butt.

Bobby stepped up to the rear door of the truck and opened it into Reeves’s shoulder as if he hadn’t noticed anyone standing there.

“Hey!” Reeves staggered back a stride, called Bobby a foul name.

Putting the bag of food down beside Megan, Bobby turned to face the cowboy. “You talking to me?”

“Not if I can help it.” Reeves tried to lean in the window again, but Dan had him blocked. “You’re in my way, kid. Beat it.”

Dan had a very short fuse. “Get away from my truck before I kick you away.”

Reeves grabbed Dan’s Sunday-shirt collar. Fists tight, Bobby tensed up for some action, and then he heard Megan say his name.

“Don’t fight him, Bobby. Not here, not on Sunday.”

“Was he bothering you?” Megan had dated Reeves until Bobby asked her out last spring. The guy still hadn’t gotten over being replaced by a Maxwell.

She shook her head, and her shiny hair bounced. “No, he was just saying hello. Please…let him leave. Don’t cause any more trouble.”

Dan and Reeves were still scuffling for purchase, trying out holds to test each other’s strength. With a sigh, Bobby circled around and pulled his friend back from Hank Reeves’s grip. “Break it up. Come on, settle down.” His hard shove sent Dan stumbling up against the front fender of the truck. Bobby turned to Reeves. “Just hit the road. It’s Sunday, and the girls don’t want to watch a fight.”

Reeves started forward, hesitated, and glanced at Megan. Finally, he swore and picked his hat up out of the dirt. “I’ll see you about this later,” he promised Dan. Glancing into the truck, he actually smiled for a second at Megan. “I’ll see you later, too, sweet thing.”

Bobby gritted his teeth and kept his hands at his sides. Barely.

Once Reeves’s truck left the parking lot, Dan gave Bobby a shove as good as the one he’d received. “I shoulda just beat him up once and for all. Why’d you get in the way, man?”

Bobby climbed into the back of the truck cab, set the grocery bag on the floor and pulled Megan into his arms. “Because the lady said so.” He lifted her face to his for a kiss. “And as far as I’m concerned, what Megan says goes!”

RAFE FOUND the first carcass about a mile into the forest.

He’d taken Jed out for a hike Sunday afternoon, hoping to work off the extra helping of roast beef Mona had piled on his plate at lunch, trying to outwalk his irrational disappointment at being blown off—again—by Thea Maxwell. At least this time she’d had a good reason. But that didn’t make him feel any more optimistic about the future.

Walking at a good pace, Rafe left the last isolated houses behind and entered national forest land. Jed wandered ahead, in his usual dopey way, snuffling at the carpet of needles shadowed by tall pines and cedars, the bases of trees, the crevices of rocks. Though he frequently disappeared from sight, the noise he made carried. He sounded like a miniature steam engine chugging up the hill.

Suddenly, the huffing stopped. The forest went still, too quiet. And then it came—the long, baying call of a hound on the scent, and the snap of branches as Jed crashed through the underbrush on the slope high above. Breathing hard, Rafe followed.

He used his hands to climb a couple of the steepest ridges. As he levered his body over the rim of a nearly vertical ledge, he saw his dog about a hundred feet ahead, frozen in place, ears stiff. On his feet again, Rafe approached carefully, soundlessly. If the damn dog had cornered a grizzly, their day was about to turn crazy. The hunting knife Rafe carried wouldn’t be any good against a hungry bear.

But when he reached Jed’s quivering black-and-tan flank, he realized that the whitetail buck lying only six or so yards away wouldn’t be any kind of threat at all. He was already dead.

Not only dead, but decapitated.

Sickened, angry, Rafe crouched a few feet from the carcass, surveying the gory scene. This was a shameful waste, however he looked at it—good venison left to buzzards, wolves and coyotes, or a magnificent animal destroyed. Hunting for sustenance was one thing. Hunting solely to capture a set of antlers to decorate the family-room wall was something else altogether, at least in his book.

But this particular kill was also a crime. Deer season didn’t start for another week, and taking an animal before that date constituted poaching, as did taking an animal without a license and without tagging it to indicate the hunter had stayed within his quota. The Fish and Wildlife guys would want to know what had gone down, so Rafe mentally cataloged the details to include in his report. Whoever made the kill knew what they were doing—one round, straight through the buck’s chest to his heart, had dropped him like a stone.

As Rafe walked a circle around the dead deer, Jed stepped close enough to sniff at the body. If he’d been part of a pack, he might have taken his share of meat.

“But you’ve got good manners, right?” The dog came back to his side and Rafe rubbed his ears. Then he snapped on the leash. “Got any ideas what direction this guy took off in, Jed? We might as well see where he went.”

They circled again, with Jed’s nose close to the ground. At a point almost directly opposite the way they’d come up, the dog veered away, following a scent. Rafe let him lead, hoping this wasn’t a wild-goose chase. Jed didn’t always choose the right trail to follow.

The slope in this direction was easier, the tree cover thinner. Jed followed a trail back down into the foothills, onto the bank of a creek running through an aspen grove. He put one paw in the water then backed up, with a low whine in his throat. Rafe saw the marred ground on the other side of the stream, where the hunter had landed his jump. “Good job, buddy. We’ll get over there, too, see if we can track the bastard down.”

They crossed farther upstream to avoid confusing the hunter’s prints. Not that they’d be any help—the guy had slid backward when he landed, smearing whatever pattern was on the bottom of his shoes. Jed picked up the scent again and bounded forward, leaving Rafe nothing to do but follow.

The aspen grove bordered a wide meadow filled with pungent sagebrush and the windblown arcs of tall, gray-green grass. Now the hunter’s path was visible as a dark line of crushed plants. Rafe released Jed’s lead and pursued the trail on his own.

The line gradually curved to the west, where a thick stand of pines edged the open field. When the tall brush ended, the trail seemed to end as well. Jed zigzagged between the trees, doing his best to pick up a scent, looking more and more worried as the minutes passed.

But Rafe, listening to the wind, had picked up voices. He called the dog to heel. “Which way, buddy? Where are they?”

In response to his whisper, the bloodhound headed roughly south. Signs of human intrusion appeared—a soda can against the foot of a lodgepole pine, a paper napkin blown into a spiny shrub’s branches, a circle of burned grass where some idiot had built a fire. Rafe cursed the stupidity, and moved on.

By the time he and Jed reached the voices—and the pair of trucks parked in a clearing just off the road—Rafe had collected beer bottles and empty condom packets in a discarded plastic bag, along with food wrappers and paper products. He didn’t need to evaluate the assembled company to realize that this was a popular teen hangout. And somehow he wasn’t surprised to find Bobby Maxwell in the center of the group.

They’d heard him coming, because he made no attempt to be quiet. About half a dozen faces were turned his way when Rafe stepped into the clearing.

Bobby raised a soft-drink can in greeting. “Fancy meeting you here, Deputy! Come join our picnic.” A pretty girl sat by his side on the tailgate, trying and failing to hide how nervous she was.

In the next truck bed, a towheaded boy leaned back against a silver metal toolbox. He glanced at Jed, who was still casting around the clearing, investigating scents. “Nice-looking dog, Deputy. What are you hunting?”