Cowboy Ever After: Big Sky Mountain

Boone laughed, this time for real. “Machetes and dynamite?” he echoed, taking mock offense. “No flame gun?”

“Fresh out of flame guns,” Hutch answered, walking away, getting into his truck and starting up the engine.

He honked the horn once and headed for home.

* * *

KENDRA, HAVING JUST dropped Madison off at preschool and Daisy at Tara’s for a doggy playdate with Lucy, stopped by the Butter Biscuit Café to buy a chocolate croissant and a double-tall nonfat latte before heading to the office the next morning. She was in a buoyant mood, since Walker Parrish had shown definite interest in the mansion the day before when she’d taken him through it. He hadn’t come right out and said the place was exactly what his mystery friend was looking for, but Kendra’s well-honed sales instincts had struck up an immediate ka-ching chorus.

No offer had been made, she reminded herself dutifully, as she waited at the counter to place her take-out order. And a deal was only a deal, at least in the real estate business, when the escrow check cleared the bank.

Thus focused on her internal dialogue, Kendra didn’t notice Deputy McQuillan right away. When she did, she saw that he sat nearby at the long counter with open spaces on both sides of him, crowded as the Butter Biscuit always was during the breakfast rush, his nose not only bandaged, but splinted and both his eyes blackened.

“I’m pressing charges,” he said to everyone in general, his tone as stiff as a wire brush. He had the air of a man just winding up a long and volatile oration.

The café patrons politely ignored him.

“Don’t mind Treat,” the aging waitress whispered to Kendra when she reached the counter, order pad in hand. “He’s just running off at the mouth because he made a move on Brylee Parrish last night, over at the Boot Scoot Tavern, and Walker let him have it, right in the teeth.”

Kendra winced at the violent image. “Ouch,” she said, keeping her voice down.

“Broke his nose for him,” the waitress added unnecessarily and with a note of satisfaction.

McQuillan must have overheard because his gaze swung in their direction, and Kendra felt scalded by it, as though he’d splashed her with acid.

“Go ahead, Millie,” he growled at the still recalcitrant waitress. “Tell the whole world Walker’s side of the story.”

“It’s everybody’s side of the story,” Millie said, undaunted. “You made a damn fool of yourself at the Boot Scoot and that’s a fact. Ask me, you’re just lucky Walker got to you before Hutch Carmody did.”

Hutch’s name, at least in connection with an apparent bar brawl over one Brylee Parrish, caught in Kendra’s throat like rusty barbed wire snagging in flesh.

McQuillan’s face flamed, and his full attention shifted, for whatever reason, to Kendra. “You’d do well to think twice before you take up with Carmody again,” he informed her. “He’s no good.”

Kendra couldn’t speak, she was so galled by McQuillan’s presumption. Who the hell did the man think he was, talking to her like that?

“Shut up, Treat,” Millie said dismissively. “All these good people are trying to enjoy their morning coffee or catch a quick breakfast. Why don’t you let them?”

A terrible tension stretched taut across the whole café, like massive rubber bands. The snap-back, if it happened, would be terrible.

Chair legs scraped against the floor as men in various parts of the room pushed back from tables, ready to intercede if the situation went any further south.

“All I wanted to do,” McQuillan went on, as an ominous, anticipatory silence settled over the place, “was help Brylee forget about her broken heart. Dance with her a little, maybe buy her a drink.” He pointed to his battered face with one index finger. “And this is what I got for my trouble.”

Just then, Essie, the long-time owner of the Butter Biscuit and a no-nonsense type to the crepe soles of her sensible shoes, trundled out of the kitchen, wiping her hands on her apron and advancing until she stood opposite Treat McQuillan with only the counter between them. Her eyes, with their Cleopatra-style liner and shadow, were hot with temper.

“I’ve had just about enough out of you, Treat,” she said, her voice ringing off every window and wall. “You behave yourself, or I’ll call Boone and have you hauled out of here!”

McQuillan flushed a dangerous crimson. “You’ll have to call Slade instead,” he retorted bitterly, apropos of who-knew-what, “because he’s filling in for Boone. Guess he didn’t quite get being sheriff out of his system, old Slade.”

“I’ll call the damn President, if I have to,” Essie answered back, “and don’t you sass me again, Treat McQuillan. I knew your mama.”

I knew your mama.

Kendra almost smiled at the familiar phrase, in spite of the tinderbox climate in the Butter Biscuit Café that sunny and otherwise beautiful late June morning. In Parable, the bonds of friendship and enmity both ran deep, intertwining like tree roots under an old-growth forest until they were hopelessly tangled.

“I knew your mama” was enough to shut most anybody up.

Sure enough, McQuillan subsided, spun around on his stool, stepped down and strode out of the cafe, looking neither to the right nor the left.

The chuckles and comments commenced as soon as the door closed behind him.

“I’m not sure that man is entirely sane,” Essie observed, watching him go.

Nobody disagreed.

Kendra ordered her latte and croissant, waited, paid for her purchase and left the restaurant, still feeling strangely shaken by the episode.

Walking back to the office, she got out her cell phone and speed-dialed Joslyn’s number, hoping she wouldn’t wake her friend up from a post-partum nap or something equally vital.

Joslyn answered on the first ring, though, sounding too chipper to have delivered a baby so recently or to be contemplating a nap. “Hi, Kendra,” she said. “What’s up?”

“I’m not sure,” Kendra answered honestly. Why was she calling Joslyn?

Joslyn simply waited.

“I hear Slade is standing in for Boone,” Kendra finally said, reaching her storefront and fumbling with her keys. “As sheriff, I mean.” She was used to juggling purses and briefcases, cell phones and coffee, but her fingers seemed slippery this morning.

Joslyn replied cheerfully. “Boone’s sons are coming for a visit, so he needed some time off to get his place ready. Slade offered to take over the job for a few days.”

“Oh,” Kendra said, opening the office door and practically fleeing inside. What was she going to say if Joslyn wanted to know why she’d bother to ask about something so clearly not her concern in the first place?

“Why do you ask?” Joslyn said, right on cue.

Kendra sighed, dropping her purse onto her desk, then setting down the coffee and the bag with the croissant inside, too. Even with those few extra seconds to think, she didn’t come up with a plausible excuse for the inquiry.

The truth was going to have to do. “Deputy McQuillan was making a big fuss when I stopped in at the Butter Biscuit a little while ago. Going on about how Walker Parrish assaulted him last night and he’s going to see that he’s charged.”

Joslyn sighed. “There was a little scuffle at the Boot Scoot last night, as I understand it,” she said with just a touch of hesitation.

“And Hutch was involved,” Kendra said.

“Indirectly,” Joslyn confirmed.

“Not that it’s any business of mine, what Hutch Carmody does.” Kendra was speaking to herself then, more than Joslyn.

Joslyn gave a delighted little chuckle. “Except that you do seem a little worried,” she observed. “Why don’t you just admit, if only to me, your main BFF, that you still have a thing for the guy?”

“Because I don’t ‘have a thing for the guy.’”