Duke: Deputy Cowboy

Duke laughed. Dinah talked tough, but she had the perfect disposition for her job. She knew Montana law, had grown up in Roundup, but her best trait in Duke’s opinion—she accepted people for who they were and looked for good in everyone.

“Laugh, but I want to nail the thieves working over our friends, family and neighbors so bad I can taste it.”

“Me, too. I think by upping their timetable they’re bound to get sloppy and make a misstep.”

“I hope so. Enjoy your club steak on toast and all the trimmings. I’ll see you bright and early tomorrow.”

Duke clicked off as he pulled up in front of the redbrick diner. They all ate there so often they knew the nightly specials by heart. Tonight his timing couldn’t be better. A pickup about the size of his pulled out and left an opening where Duke could keep an eye on his vehicle from inside. “Zorro, be good while I’m in eating and I’ll bring you some steak.” The dog perked his ears, but he lay back down when Duke opened his door and cracked open a window far enough for Zorro to get his snout out for fresh air.

Sierra Byrne, who owned the diner, hadn’t grown up in Roundup, but she’d spent summers in her parents’ cabin on the nearby Musselshell River. And she served comfort food, which made her restaurant a hit with ranchers and rodeo cowboys who went for stick-to-the-ribs meals. Men and women alike enjoyed the mining theme. Duke wasn’t crazy about the tables with sparkly red Formica tops, but in general the place had a homey feel.

Several people greeted him as he entered and that, too, added to the diner’s attraction. Two members of the Roundup rodeo committee hailed him to sit with them. The town’s fair and rodeo loomed large in everyone’s mind as it was only a few weeks away. Preparation didn’t change much from year to year, but every year the committees jockeyed their events enough to claim the current rodeo/fair would be the best one yet. And it did seem to Duke that the fair added more booths, the parade got bigger and motels got booked quicker each year, which was good for the town coffers.

Farley Clark owned a gas station at each end of town. He also stored the movable bleachers at his ranch. Duke supposed Farley wanted to ask him to line up burly cowboys to assemble the bleachers. This evening, Farley and his tablemate, Jeff Woods, wanted to discuss the most recent robbery.

“Heck of a note,” Farley said, “Sarah and Ace losing that pricy stud. Thunder Ranch being hit twice puts me in mind that whoever’s doing this is thumbing their nose at Dinah. What’s she got in mind to do? Are there any leads at all?”

Duke shook his head. He hadn’t expected to get grilled about the burglary, or he probably would have skipped coming here. Not everyone in town had favored the idea of Roundup electing a woman sheriff. Farley had been one of the most vocal, and had supported Dinah’s opponent.

“I’ll take the special, with iced tea,” Duke called to Susie Reynolds, the waitress heading toward him. She gave him a thumbs-up, and turned back to deliver his order.

“You figure it’s a local?” Jeff asked, peeling the label off his bottle of sarsaparilla.

“Bound to be,” Duke answered. “Or else someone has spent a lot of time working out escape routes. They strike at night. Nobody hears or sees them make a getaway. Pete Duval’s ranch isn’t easy to find in broad daylight. Practically all of the ranches hit own dogs who haven’t barked in alarm. Dinah and I assume it’s guys who know the back roads and local ranch layouts.”

Farley Clark stirred two packets of sugar in his coffee. “Did you check at the bank if anyone is making deposits over and above what’s normal?”

“Dinah did.” Duke watched the man drink the syrupy black stuff. “Farley, these guys haven’t left any tracks. You know, I sort of sense you aren’t happy with the job Dinah and I are doing. If you want to call a town-hall meeting to let everyone vent, I won’t object and I’m sure Dinah won’t. We keep hoping someone saw or heard something, but haven’t connected it to the break-ins, or didn’t think to report it. Remember, Thunder Ranch has suffered the biggest losses. Surely you don’t believe Dinah and I wouldn’t round up this gang if we could?”

Farley didn’t back off. “I’m just saying it’s gone on longer than any problem the city’s ever had. If Dinah doesn’t catch the culprits before our upcoming fair and rodeo, no one will be comfortable leaving their ranches while they attend scheduled events.”

Duke’s meal came and saved him from losing his temper and snapping at Farley. Susie slipped Duke a small plastic bag. “For Zorro,” she said. “I know you always take him some of your steak.”

“Hey, thanks. I didn’t realize I was so predictable.”

“It’s okay. I really wanted to come ask if any of your family has heard from Tuf? My older brother is finally back in the States. He’s at Kāne‘ohe Bay in Hawaii, but he served with Tuf in Afghanistan and asked about him when we spoke. I said I haven’t seen him around town.”

Duke stopped cutting his steak. “Aunt Sarah has been in contact with him. That’s about all I know. But when I’m not at the sheriff’s office or out doing that job, I’m off at rodeos.” Duke gave a casual shrug. Really he knew everyone in the family worried about his youngest cousin. But they were tight-knit, and not prone to blabber personal stuff that could lead to gossip.

Jeff ordered another soft drink. Luckily Farley took out his money clip, peeled off a tip and dropped it beside his plate. Susie went to help a new customer as Farley said, “I don’t think we’ve reached the stage of calling for a town-hall meeting, Duke, but I wonder if Dinah shouldn’t deputize a couple of guys at least through our fair and rodeo. It so happens my son, Rory, is home from college for the summer, along with his good friend, Tracy Babcock. They could be of help. My wife wants Rory to be a lawyer even though he thinks he’d rather be a rancher. A summer internship as a deputy would look good on his résumé if he chooses law.”

Now Farley’s entire complaint came into focus for Duke and made more sense. “I’ll pass that information along to Dinah when I see her in the morning,” Duke said. He could almost predict her reaction. Farley’s wife had spoiled their only son, Rory, with ready cash, hot cars and expensive clothes only dudes would be caught wearing, and his good buddy, Tracy Babcock, was cut from the same cloth. To keep from further comment, Duke cut a slice of steak and put it in his mouth. He gestured goodbye with his fork as Farley ambled off.

Jeff, who ran a dry-cleaning establishment in town that catered to single cowboys, saw through Duke’s badly concealed attitude. “Farley and Janine have high expectations for Rory. The problem as I see it is they’ve waited too long to clamp down on the kid. I doubt Dinah needs to worry about hiring the boys. Those two and their pals are more interested in partying the summer away with their girlfriends over in Musselshell.” Jeff finished his second sarsaparilla, got up, said his farewells to Duke and stopped to talk to a couple of ranchers on his way out.

Duke tucked into his food. His mind lingered less on Farley’s desire to have his son play deputy, and more on the nearness of the event under discussion. He thought of his offer to find a team of wild pony racers for Angie Barrington’s son. He discovered he liked thinking about Angie. Her efficiency in the kitchen left him wondering how much time she spent making her horse treats. The way he’d seen horses gobble up the oat cookies, they probably ate them faster than one woman alone could bake. If Angie wanted to expand and hire people to help mix and bake the cookies as she’d indicated, she could build a profitable company. He could help her advertise by building her a website—if she’d let him.

Having eaten his fill, Duke sliced and bagged his leftover steak for Zorro. Putting his tip on the money Farley and Jeff had left, Duke got up to go.

Weaving through tables still occupied by people he knew well got him sidetracked by several men who wanted news of the latest robbery. Everyone expressed concern and asked him to pass on good wishes to his aunt and Ace. Thankfully no one else hinted that he and Dinah weren’t doing their job.

Outside at last, Duke opened his pickup and let Zorro out. Exhausted as Duke was, Zorro deserved to stretch his legs, and deserved to eat his steak treat in comfort.

The big dog nosed the bag. Whimpering eagerly, he pawed Duke’s leg.

“Good dog. But let’s walk down to the park before I feed you. I can stand to walk off some of that big meal before I go home and crash for the night.”

In spite of the fact it had gotten quite dark in the time Duke spent in the diner, five or so teenagers still played pick-up basketball in the park. Their only light came from streetlamps set in every block along the town’s main street. Pausing at a park bench, Duke braced a foot on the bench seat and he watched the boys shoot hoops as he fed Zorro bits of steak.

Lighting the play areas in the park had been on the town council agenda for at least the four years Duke had served as deputy. The money never seemed to stretch far enough. The mayor insisted, rightfully so, that funding for police, firefighters, trash collection and other essentials came before lighting the park. But watching the kids who finally gave up trying to see the baskets and took off for who knew where, Duke thought it would be money well spent to get park lighting on the next general-election ballot. Not that he was political.

He chuckled over the notion as he fed Zorro the last bite of steak. He imagined Ace asking him when he had turned into such an adult as to be considering funding, politics and other grown-up things.

In Duke’s eyes, Ace always seemed more mature than his other cousins. Of course, he’d become the man of the ranch after his dad died. Even before that Duke had gone to Ace with problems Duke’s own dad ignored.

He threw the empty plastic bag in a trash bin, then rounded up Zorro and returned to the pickup. In a reflective mood, Duke wondered if he’d given his dad enough credit for keeping him and Beau in food, clothing and a roof over their heads. Perhaps his dad didn’t have time to be demonstrative.

At the Ford, Duke loaded Zorro. He saw the sheriff’s office across the street was dark except for one interior light they always left burning. Dinah must have finished her report and gone home. The weight of this investigation was on Dinah’s shoulders even though she was younger than him by three years. She and Angie were the same age. That thought just popped into Duke’s head.

Driving home he compared the two women. Dinah had spent some rocky years before she dug in and turned her life around. Angie hadn’t grown up in Roundup. Duke had no idea about her background other than gossip and rumors floating around about her and the Texas cowboy—a relationship that culminated in her having a baby at twenty-one, which left her a single mom with a lot of obligations.

As Duke pulled down the alley and parked outside his apartment he admitted he wanted to know more about Angie. Funny, he never thought he’d spend so much time wishing he knew every little detail about how a woman had grown up. He had spent his early years as a loner. Mostly due to his stuttering he had holed up reading, or watching TV. Old John Wayne movies were his refuge. He watched them so many times it was how the family came to call him Duke, after the star.

Actually, he hadn’t minded. The Duke set a good example for a gangly kid who longed to be easier in his skin than he was.

In the kitchen, he filled Zorro’s bowl with kibble and gave him fresh water, which about maxed out his energy in this really long day.

Taking a hot shower, he toweled off and crawled between cool sheets, and was oh-so-tempted to switch off his phone lest some new debacle in the normally placid town forced Dinah to roust him. Not that he’d ever shirk his duty on a job he took seriously—a job he loved. In fact if the town ever had money to hire a full-time deputy he’d lobby for the job.

He fell asleep speculating about what opinion Angie Barrington had for law officers. He’d pretty much left her today with the notion rodeo competitors were at the bottom of her list of desirable men.

Chapter Three

Duke woke up with sun streaming in his bedroom window, and he felt happily refreshed. Fading from his sleep-logged mind—an appealing picture of Angie Barrington smiling at him as she leaned over a corral feeding her horse treats to the magnificent, now-missing black stallion, Midnight.

He planted his feet on the floor and almost landed on Zorro, who lay not on his bed but on Duke’s bedside rug, something the dog had done as a pup before Duke bought him his own big, soft bed.

“Sorry, Zorro,” he muttered, hopping over the yawning animal to rummage in his closet. He gave up and retrieved a wrinkled shirt out of the dryer. Doing laundry was at the top of his hate list. If it wasn’t so expensive he’d drop everything at Jeff Woods’s Dry Cleaners. He knew plenty of single cowboys who did. Their jeans and shirts were always pressed and neat. But his part-time job covered rent, food and gas. Since the ranch fell on harder times, those in the family who finished in the money at rodeos, which was almost all of them, contributed what they could toward the ranch. His aunt juggled expenses. She had leased out some prime grazing land. In this part of the country, land was gold. Unfortunately empty acres didn’t put money in the bank.

When he wasn’t on duty he always wore jeans and black T-shirts. The family teased him for that quirk, too. But he liked black and it was a matter of convenience. Now he stopped to wonder if Angie would find him dull because he didn’t gravitate to flamboyant Western shirts like most other cowboys wore.

Still mulling that over in the kitchen, Duke opened the fridge and discovered his milk had gone sour. He spat in the sink a few times, dumped the carton and washed the smelly stuff down the drain. He settled for a breakfast of scrambled eggs and toast, and drank water.

Suddenly, for no real reason, he remembered telling Angie he’d find a couple of kids for her to vet as possible pony-race partners for Luke. He got out the church directory and ran down the list of members as he ate. None of the families listed who had kids the right age jumped out at him.

Rethinking yesterday’s conversation with Angie, Duke wasn’t 100 percent certain he wouldn’t be wasting his time. She sure didn’t seem thrilled about the idea of Luke entering. Duke felt slightly guilty at the thought that he’d volunteered so it’d give him a reason to contact Angie again.

Was that pathetic? He needed an excuse to phone or approach a woman that interested him? If it was Colt—well, Colt before he got married—or Beau, those guys were never shy when it came to chatting up attractive women.