The Wind Comes Sweeping. Marcia Preston

among these cobblestone buildings, or if he saw only the shabby remains of a once-prosperous enterprise.

      His truck pulled in beside her and rolled to a stop. She shouldered her door open and started up the rock sidewalk to the house. “Want some coffee for the drive?” she called. On a ranch, coffee was one of the basic food groups. She’d been addicted since high school.

      “No, thanks. I drank about a gallon on the drive out here,” he said.

      “Then you’d better come in and use the facility before we go.”

      She directed him to the bathroom, then clumped up the split-log staircase to her bedroom and pulled on cleaner boots for the trip to Pacheeta. If Rainwater had waited until nine o’clock to show up for their appointment, she might have fixed her face a bit before then. Or she might not. At any rate, she didn’t see much point in it now.

      When she came back down he had gone outdoors. She refilled her thermal mug and turned off the coffeepot but didn’t bother locking the house. Her dad believed that locks kept out only honest men; a thief would break down the door or smash a window. She found Jace checking the cargo still wrapped securely in the bed of her truck.

      Red Ryder’s springs squawked as he settled onto the seat, his shoulders filling up his side of the cab. Marik coaxed the truck into reverse and they wheezed down the driveway toward the highway, leaving his nice airtight truck parked by her house. She hoped the old red pickup was up to the trip.

      They rattled over the blacktop, watching shadows recede across the landscape as the sun ascended. She saw him try the window handle once, but when it didn’t respond he said nothing and zipped up his vest. He didn’t talk much, which was okay with her. Her social skills had regressed since she’d moved back to the ranch; after Monte left, she often went several days without talking to anyone.

      A coyote trotted along a fence, heading toward a grove of leafless trees. Far to their right, above the line of trees that concealed the Silk Mountain River, a dark swosh etched the blue of the sky. The wingspan was too large for a hawk. It was another eagle, probably scanning a pool where the water was deep enough to hunt for fish. The sight of it sent a new pang of dread through her middle.

      Rainwater saw it, too. “The river is the south boundary of your ranch?”

      “Correct.”

      “Does it border your neighbors’ land, too? The ones opposing the wind farm?”

      She nodded. “The wildlife preserve butts up to me on the south, across the river,” she said. “The Searcy ranch is to the east, and the Gurdmans’ farm on the west. The land to the north is owned by somebody who lives in Oklahoma City and never comes out here. The elk from the refuge have sort of taken over the pastureland there.”

      “Cool.”

      “Yeah, they’re beautiful. In the fall you can hear them bugling.” Her mouth twisted. “Burt Gurdman runs ’em off his land with a shotgun.”

      Rainwater said nothing, just shook his head.

      Marik pulled a folded paper from above the visor and handed it to Rainwater. It had come in yesterday’s mail from the office of Earl Searcy, mayor of Silk. The notice invited local residents to attend a community meeting for the purpose of discussing the rural water system, a proposal to hire a full-time police chief and a possible moratorium on construction of twenty-five additional wind turbines on Killdeer Ridge. GPP&L had already paid half the lease money for phase two of the wind turbines. Marik had used the money to retire some of her debt and to buy a lustful young bull and a new bunch of heifers. If construction was blocked, the company might want that money returned.

      The mere sight of the flyer made her angry all over again. The least Earl Searcy could have done was phone her about it in person. Silk didn’t have a mayor when she was a kid, and she liked it better that way.

      Except for the Gurdmans, the Searcys were her closest neighbors and good people. Earl had been a friend to her dad. His sons, Jackson and Cade, often helped out on the Youngblood ranch. None of them had ever said anything about opposing the wind farm.

      “I don’t know where they get off discussing construction on private property,” she said. “My ranch isn’t inside city limits. There’s no question of zoning or public access or any other damn thing that should concern city government, such as it is. The construction is phase two of a project that was thoroughly discussed, state permits obtained, all the legalese dotted and crossed months ago.”

      He handed the flyer back to her and she stuffed it behind the visor again. “But if this eagle was killed by the windmills and some federal agency gets involved,” she said, “that’s a whole new ball game.”

      “You need a necropsy on the bird before that meeting.”

      She glanced at him. “What’s that? An autopsy for animals?”

      “Exactly. That’s why you want to turn it over to the wildlife department instead of a county sheriff.”

      Maybe it was a good thing Jace Rainwater showed up early after all.

      “During the first phase of construction, somebody put sugar in the gas tanks of the big dirt-moving machines,” she told him. “Shut them down for several weeks. The site boss said they had trouble like that sometimes, but not usually in such an isolated spot. He thought it was probably teenagers, but I had my doubts even then.”

      Rainwater nodded but made no comment. She dropped the subject, regretting that she’d aired her grievances to a stranger.

      After a minute he pointed through the windshield toward a rocky mound in the distance. “Is that Silk Mountain?”

      “Yup. That’s it. The town was named for the mountain, but people dropped the mountain part years ago and just call the town Silk.” A neat irony, she thought, for a village of maybe two thousand that was anything but silky.

      The mountain wasn’t much of a mountain, either, just a geographical anomaly that had thrust a tall, red mesa far above the surrounding level terrain. Flat shale boulders stacked up like a deli sandwich that narrowed to a square, treeless summit. Between the mountain and the road they were driving lay a wide, flat plain veined by creeks that drained into the river. In the heat of summer, the creek beds dried up and stranded the resident crawdads.

      “I read how Silk Mountain got its name,” Rainwater said.

      She nodded. “Did the guidebook tell you about the ghost that lives up there?”

      He glanced sideways, his face skeptical. “No. I guess it left out the good parts.”

      “They say a young pioneer wife who lived out here before there was a town or a road, or anything, went crazy from loneliness and the unrelenting wind. One day while her husband was gone, she scrubbed the floor of her cabin, fed the milk cow and hung her only two dresses wrong side out on the clothesline. She was wearing a camisole and petticoats and farmer’s boots when she climbed to the top of Silk Mountain and jumped to her death.” Marik didn’t mention her near relation to the young wife. “Sometimes on a moonlit night, people see her ghost standing on the edge of Silk Rock.”

      “Great story.” He looked toward the shale outcropping and smiled. “So have you ever seen her?”

      Marik paused. “I don’t know you well enough to answer that.” It might have been just a trick of the light.

      The blacktop road led them directly down the unnamed main street of Silk. It was still early, and only a few dusty pickups and the postmistress’s PT Cruiser were parked in the slanted spaces beside the street. Half of the storefronts sat vacant, sad reminders of somebody’s retail dreams gone up in dust. Around windows dimmed by gray grime, the painted facades peeled like a bad sunburn.

      “There’s the P.O.,” Marik said as they rolled past, “and the grocery store–slash–drugstore, and the DHS office.”

      “Every little town needs a welfare office,” he said drily.

      “It