A Bride for Dry Creek. Janet Tronstad

calmly reasoned, she and Flint would only find someone else to marry them again. Flint had made a mistake in locating the proper official, but they would take care of it. They’d marry again. That’s what people in love did. She started to fold the aprons her mother had given her.

      When she finished packing, Francis went down to the kitchen to prepare supper for her father. It was the last meal she’d make for him for awhile, and she was happy to do it. She decided to make beef stew because it could simmer for hours with little tending after she left.

      Four hours later her father invited her to sit down and eat the stew with him. She knew Flint could have driven into Miles City and back several times in the hours that had passed. Francis refused the stew and went to her room. He must have had car trouble, she thought. That was it. He’d call any minute. She stayed awake all night waiting for the phone to ring. It was a week before she even made any attempt to sleep at nights.

      “It was my father,” Francis said calmly as she looked Flint’s boss in the eyes. “He must have arranged it all.”

      “I’m sorry.” The man said his words quickly.

      The inside of the cold house was silent. Francis sat with the open Bible on her lap, staring at the page where her marriage vows had been recorded and a scripture reference from Solomon had been added. As she looked at it closely, she could see that the faded handwriting was Flint’s. She wished she could have stood with him when he recorded the date in this Bible. It must have had meaning for him or he wouldn’t have stopped on his way into Miles City to write it down.

      “Surely Flint—” she looked at the man.

      He was twisting the handle that gave energy to the emergency lantern on the table. He didn’t look up from the lantern. “He didn’t want to tell me about you. Didn’t even mention your name. But he had to tell me the basics. I was only checking out his story. Part of the job. We needed to find out about the arrest. It was on his record.”

      “So he thinks it was me who got him arrested.”

      The temperature of the night seemed to go even lower.

      The man nodded.

      Francis felt numb. She had never imagined anything like this. She had assumed Flint had been the one to have second thoughts. Or that he had never intended to really marry her anyway. He wasn’t from around here. She never should have trusted him as much as she did. She repeated all the words she had said to herself over the years. None of them gave her any comfort.

      “He should have come back to talk to me.”

      “Maybe he tried,” the man said. He’d stopped cranking the lantern and sat at the table.

      The silence stretched between them.

      “Mind if I smoke?” the man finally asked.

      “Go ahead,” Francis said automatically. She felt like her whole life was shifting gears and the gears were rusty. She’d spent too much of the past twenty years resenting Flint. Letting her anger burn toward him in the hopes that someday her memories would be light, airy ashes that could be blown away. But instead of producing ashes that were light, her anger had produced a heavy, molten chunk of resentment that wouldn’t budge in a whirlwind.

      There had been no blowing away of old, forgotten memories. These past weeks in Dry Creek had already proven that to her. She was beginning to believe she would be forever shackled by her memories. But now it turned out that the whole basis for her anger was untrue. Flint had not left her. She had, apparently, somehow left him.

      A rumbling growl came from the man’s coat pocket.

      “Excuse me,” he said as he reached into his pocket and pulled out a cell phone. “That’ll be Mrs. B.”

      The conversation was short, and all Francis heard were several satisfied grunts.

      “Flint’s got them in custody,” the man said when he put his phone back in his pocket. “He’s holding them in something he called the dance barn in Dry Creek. Said you’d know where it was. Told me to bring you with me and come over.”

      “So I’m free to go?” Francis asked blankly as she looked up. She’d been so distressed about everything the man had told her she hadn’t realized her first impressions of him must not be true.

      “Of course,” the man said as he stood and put his backpack on his shoulders.

      “But who are you?”

      “Inspector Kahn—FBI,” the man said as he fumbled through another pocket in his coat and pulled out an identification badge.

      “But—”

      “The cattle business,” the man explained as he showed the badge to Francis. “It’s interstate. Makes it a federal crime.”

      “So the FBI sent someone in.” Francis took a moment to look at the badge so she could scramble to get on track. She had heard the FBI was working on the case. They had asked Garth to help. “So you really didn’t need Garth, after all.”

      Inspector Kahn grunted. “Not when I have a hot-head like Flint working for me.”

      “Flint works for you?”

      Inspector Kahn grunted again and started walking toward the door. “Sometimes I think it’s me working for him. I’d place money that the reason he’s so keen for me to get there is because he wants me to do the paperwork. Flint always hated the paper side of things.” He looked over his shoulder at her. “You coming?”

      “Yes.” Francis certainly didn’t want to stay in this cold house any longer than she needed to. She pulled the jacket Flint had given her earlier over her shoulders and picked up the Bible.

      The inspector looked at the Bible. “I expect you’ll need to talk to Flint about this marriage business.”

      “I intend to try.”

      The inspector smiled at that. “Flint isn’t always an easy man to reason with. Stubborn as he is brave. But you know that—you’re married to him.”

      “I guess I am, at that.” The ashes inside of Francis might not be blowing away, but she could feel them shifting all over the place. It appeared she, Francis K. Elkton, had actually been married to Flint L. Harris some twenty years ago.

      For the umpteenth time that night, Flint wondered at the value of being a hero. He had saved Garth Elkton’s hide—not to mention the even more tender hide of the attractive woman with him, Sylvia Bannister—and they were both giving him a shoulder colder than the storm front that was fast moving into town.

      In his jeans and wool jacket, Flint was out of place inside the barn. Not that any of the men there hadn’t quickly helped him hog-tie the three men who had kidnapped Garth and Sylvia and attempted to take them away in the back of an old cattle truck.

      But the music was still playing a slow tune and the pink crepe paper still hung from the rafters of that old barn. And Flint felt about as welcome as a stray wet dog at a fancy church picnic.

      “There, that should do it.” Flint checked the knots in the rope for the third time. He’d asked someone to call the local sheriff and was told the man was picking up something in Billings but would be back at the dance soon. He hoped the sheriff would get there before the inspector. Maybe then some of the paperwork would be local.

      “Who’d you say you were again?” Garth Elkton asked the question, quiet-like, as he squatted to check the ropes with Flint.

      “Flint Harris.”

      “The guy who called me the other night about the kidnapping?” Garth sounded suspicious.

      “Yes.”

      “Still don’t know how you knew about it.”

      “Because I’ve been freezing my toes off the past few nights following these guys around.” Flint jerked his head at the men on the floor. Flint could see the direction