The Prodigal Cowboy. Kathleen Eagle

of nothing not to expect too much. Bella had always been a quick study.

      Still, he owed her.

      “I think it’s wonderful, the way the Drexlers have worked out a deal with the Tribe to set aside some of that remote reservation land for more sanctuary.”

      The Tribe being her people and Ethan’s adoptive father’s people. Logan Wolf Track was a Lakota Sioux Tribal councilman. Ethan looked Indian, too, but she’d never asked him about his background. Everyone knew that his mother had left Logan to raise her two boys, whom he’d legally adopted—just up and left and never came back—but nobody asked too many questions. It wasn’t their way. Ethan and his older brother, Trace, were Wolf Tracks.

      “Are you working on a news story?” he asked.

      “I’ve been digging around.” She folded her hands around her glass and studied the two shrinking chunks of ice. “There’s definitely a story there—one that goes back a ways—but I’m looking for the details on my own. It’s not the kind of assignment I’m likely to get from KOZY-TV.”

      “Why not? They don’t like mustangs?”

      “They’re fine with mustangs. They don’t like digging around.”

      “Isn’t that how you come up with news? Dirt sells.”

      “But sleeping dogs don’t bite, and the suits at the station—such as they are here in good ol’ Rapid City, South Dakota, you know, not exactly coat and tie—they don’t want to get their business-casual clothes torn.” She ignored his quizzical look. “Let’s just say they don’t pay me to dig.” She smiled. “But it’s fun, isn’t it? You dig?”

      He chuckled. “Postholes, yeah.”

      “When you were hiring out as a kid, did you ever work for Dan Tutan?” The change in his eyes—quizzical to cold—was barely discernible, but it was there. “You know, the Drexlers’ neighbor.”

      Oh, yeah. He knew.

      But he shook his head. Interesting.

      “There’s a story there,” she said with a smile. “Big-time rivalry. Maybe some political back-scratching going on that could affect Indian Country. And that’s where I come in. Like I said, strictly on my own.” Was he ready for the kicker? Timing the kicker was Bella’s journalistic specialty. “Tutan wants the leases that went to the Double D for the sanctuary, and he’s got a friend in D.C.—Senator Perry Garth.”

      He stared at her. Or through her.

      Perfect timing.

      “South Dakota’s beloved Senator Garth. Tutan and Garth go way back. And Garth is on the Indian Affairs Committee, as well as the Subcommittee on Public Lands and Forests.”

      “Politics.” He shook his head. “You just cruised past my point of interest. My story’s in the training competition. My interest is in the horses.” He drank half of what was left in his glass in one deep pull.

      “I just thought … because Logan is on the Tribal Council …”

      “That’s his story.” He set the glass down and smiled as he slid to the end of the booth. “You wanna talk politics, you’re followin’ the wrong Wolf Track.” He glanced toward the bar and its deserted stools. Remote control in hand, the bearded bartender was surfing channels on the screen above the Bud Light sign. “Looks like your fans have moved on.”

      “I doubt that pair watches much news. They know you, though.”

      “Yeah. You need a name to drop in low places, you’re welcome to use mine.” He gave her his signature wink again. Damn if it didn’t give her the same deep-down shiver. “You decide to do a story on wild horses, look me up.”

      And damn if he didn’t walk out first, taking the book she hadn’t been able to identify.

      Ethan sat behind the steering wheel of his pickup, parked in the shadows across the street from what had once been the Hitching Post. The neon had given up the ghost on the letter H, so it was now the itching Post. The sign had called out to him the first time he’d seen it. He’d finally had his freedom back—most of it, anyway—and it had some weight to it. He was itching to do something different with his life, but damned if he knew what. So he’d answered the blinking call of the itching Post. He’d claimed a bar stool, wet his whistle after a long dry spell and gotten himself wasted. Stupid drunk.

      The next morning he’d looked at himself in the mirror and scratched his face. He’d scratched his neck, his shoulder, dug all his fingers into his hair, looked in the mirror again and nearly busted a gut laughing.

      The sign said itching post, you idiot. Not scratching post.

      If he’d learned one thing from spending two years behind bars, it was that the word freedom pretty much summed up everything a man had to lose. Freedom was living. Two years without it and you had a foot in the grave. Deadwood. Reviving that foot meant getting a leg up somehow. He hadn’t been quite ready for South Dakota. He still had some growing up to do.

      He’d gone to Colorado—as good a place as any that wasn’t South Dakota—and taken up his parole officer’s suggestion that he continue on the path he’d taken with the Wild Horse Inmate Program. Ethan had answered correctly—yeah, I like that idea—but mentally he’d added that the prison program couldn’t claim credit for anything except maybe backing him into the right corner, the one that gave him a clear view of where he’d come from and where he might go. He’d spent most of his life within earshot of a horse barn, which might have been why he’d taken horses for granted, along with every other promising path he could have taken instead of the one that had cut off his slack.

      Before the horses—before Logan Wolf Track—his life was hazy. He’d been Trace’s little brother. They’d had a mother, but she was part of the haze. Even after she’d married Logan, her part of the family equation was hazy. Muddy, more like. He remembered the sound of her voice and the way she’d drawn out certain words so that South Dakotans looked at each other and shrugged. An accent, they’d called it, but to him it was the sound that settled an unsettled mind. Mom’s here. He couldn’t picture her face, but he still felt an odd sense of relief when he heard her voice, even though it was only in his head. He was up to his neck in hot water, hot muddy water, shrouded in early-morning haze, but he wasn’t alone. He could hear her. She hadn’t gone away.

      And neither had that stupid kid. God, how he hated that quivering, shivering little boy who still clung to the soft tissue of his innards. He was pitiful, that kid. He had to get tough or get dead, that kid, and he’d damn sure better not show his face. Keeping that kid quiet had been a full-time job. Ethan needed all the help he could get, and he’d assigned roles. Whether they knew it or not, every person, place or thing within spitting distance had a part to play, and he’d taken it all for granted.

      Including the friendship he might have had with the woman who’d just stepped into the spotlight under the itching Post sign. Of course he remembered her. Straight-A student with a straight body and a straightforward approach. She would go places and do things, and she wasn’t letting anyone get in her way. Not that his charm was lost on her, or that he wouldn’t pass up the chance to use that to his advantage, but there was an air of dignity about her that gave her some protection from guys like him.

      But not from guys who had no use for dignity.

      Tom “Loopy” Lupien and his forgettable sidekick were back in play, following Bella out the door. Two colorless figures casting long shadows across the dimly lit sidewalk. He’d thought they were gone. Must have been hiding out in the can.

      “Hey, did the Wolf make tracks?” one of them called after her.

      “You need a ride?” the other asked. In this light it was hard to tell one from the other, but it didn’t matter. Any friend of Loopy’s had been scraped from the mold underneath the empty barrel.

      A