Man Behind The Badge. Pamela Toth

crate. When he saw Robin, his tail wagged, but he stopped barking and began whining instead. He wiggled so hard the cage shook. After she’d made sure he had water, she let him lick her fingers and she scratched his chin while he squeezed his dark eyes shut in obvious pleasure.

      Typical male, she thought with a grin. Noisy and easy to satisfy.

      As if she knew anything about satisfying a male, or wanted to. Her grin faded as fast as it had appeared.

      Despite her fatigue, she was eager to get settled and start working. Doc Harmon had promised to find her a rental she could afford, but she didn’t have an ad dress, and of course she couldn’t leave until he got back. There wasn’t anything she could really do here until he showed her around, and she was hesitant to poke through his files, so she went back to the reception area and sat down at the big desk. There was a phone with two lines, thankfully silent, but no computer, which didn’t surprise her. With a sigh she started flipping idly through the open appointment book. Nothing scheduled until late afternoon and no telling how long Erline would be out sick, so she might as well get familiar with the setup.

      Charlie didn’t need to follow the faint track through the grass to find the pasture where the two owners of the Running W had said they’d meet him. The land was as familiar as the face he saw in the mirror, and the men nearly so. He’d spent his youth on the Running W, chasing after his older brothers, Adam and Travis, and working beside them.

      Topping a rise, Charlie spotted them standing with the vet near their rigs and several mounds that appeared to be sleeping cattle.

      A chill went through Charlie. His hands tightened on the wheel of his Jeep as he struggled to replace a rancher’s sick dismay with the objectivity of a lawman.

      No one had been more surprised than Charlie when he’d beaten out a bully and a green kid to win the election ten months before, and not everyone was happy about it, considering his reputation as a skirt-chasing lightweight who’d been riding along on his brothers’ coattails. He’d discovered a knack for the job, equal parts politician, paper pusher and crime solver, but he knew convincing his detractors would take time.

      Whether chasing a woman or a criminal, Charlie was a patient man.

      “Hey, bro, thanks for coming out,” Adam said after he’d parked next to the ranch pickup and joined the other three men.

      “No problem.” Briefly, Charlie clasped the hand Adam extended. Charlie had sold out his share of the ranch to his brothers, but they’d all remained close. Today’s summons was no surprise; Charlie would have been upset if they hadn’t called.

      “How you doing?” he asked Travis, whose grim expression matched Adam’s.

      “I’ve been better,” Travis replied around the stalk of grass stuck in the corner of his mouth. “Dead cattle’s a bad business.”

      “That’s for sure. What happened?” Charlie looked from him to the vet, who’d been bent over a dun-colored steer with his black leather bag open beside him. Five other carcasses were scattered nearby.

      The old vet packed up the specimens he’d been collecting. “I’ll know for sure when we hear back from the lab,” he said by way of greeting as he got to his feet, “but it looks pretty obvious to me what happened.”

      The sick feeling Charlie had been trying to blot out came flooding back. “What do you mean?” he asked.

      Doc Harmon glanced at Adam. “Show him what you found.”

      Adam held up a bag Charlie hadn’t noticed before. “This was mixed in with some feed we found scattered nearby.”

      Charlie glanced at the printing on the bag. It was a common brand. “Have any idea how it got out here?” he asked.

      A muscle flexed along Adam’s jaw as he shook his head. “It’s the same kind we keep in the shed,” he replied. “I’ll have to check and see if it came from there, but everyone who works here knows better than to leave rat poison anywhere near the stock.”

      The vet cleared his throat. When Charlie glanced at him, he said, “Looks deliberate to me. Maybe you’d better ask your brothers if they’ve made any enemies lately.”

      When she heard a vehicle pull up outside, Robin set aside the three-month-old magazine she’d been reading and went to the window. Once in a while a car went by and she’d had several calls; no one had come into the clinic. Even the dog in the back was asleep.

      She recognized the SUV, relieved Doc Harmon had returned. She had a lot of questions, a couple of them being whether she had anywhere to sleep tonight—or a job tomorrow. As she continued to watch through the window, he got out of his car, grabbed his bag and walked over to the olive-green Cherokee that had pulled in behind him. It had a gold star painted on the door and an official-looking row of lights on top. Through the back window she could see a rifle rack, and it wasn’t empty.

      Robin couldn’t hear what they were saying and the vet’s back was to her as he leaned forward, but the smile Sheriff Winchester had worn earlier was noticeably absent. After a couple more moments, Doc Harmon straightened up.

      The sheriff glanced at the clinic window and Robin moved away so he wouldn’t see her spying on them and get the wrong idea. By the time her boss came through the front door, she was standing behind the counter trying to look indispensable.

      “Everything okay?” she asked innocently as the dog in the back room began barking again.

      “Some days I really dislike this job.” He set his bag on the counter, looking tired. “How did you get on? Any emergencies?”

      Robin told him about a couple of the calls she’d taken. “Nothing urgent,” she concluded. “I told them Erline would get back to them. Do you know when she’ll be in?”

      “Tomorrow, I hope. Thanks for covering.”

      “It doesn’t sound like things went well at the Winchesters’ spread,” she asked, prompted by both professional interest and personal curiosity. She’d mentally reviewed her brief encounter with the sheriff several times, wondering if her abrupt dash into the clinic had made her seem unfriendly, and then telling herself it didn’t matter what he thought as long as it didn’t affect her professionally.

      The vet picked up his messages, but she had the impression that he wasn’t really looking at them. “Half a dozen dead cattle at the biggest ranch in these parts,” he said finally. “One of the hands found them this morning.”

      Robin could understand his reaction. This was cattle country. A contagious disease could endanger an entire herd if it wasn’t treated in time. No wonder he looked worried. “Were you able to make a diagnosis?” she asked.

      He ran his hand through his hair, making it stand on end. “It looks like someone tainted their feed with rodent poison. The sheriff is looking into it.”

      “The sheriff?” Robin echoed.

      Doc Harmon nodded. “Cattle will eat damn near anything. Ranchers don’t leave poison around for them to get into.”

      “So it was deliberate?” Robin asked. “Why would anyone do that?”

      He shrugged. “Everyone has enemies.”

      “Is there some kind of range war going on around here?” she probed.

      His smile was fleeting. “This isn’t the Old West, my girl, but bad things still happen. Could be an unhappy ex-employee or an envious neighbor. Those boys have worked hard, and they’ve done well. I even heard a rumor that they’d had an offer for their land.”

      He glanced around the office. “Did you get a chance to explore?”

      Robin would have liked to ask more about the Winchesters, but she didn’t want to push. “A little.” She clasped her hands together and took a deep breath. “I know you expected me to get here yesterday, but I had car trouble. I should have let you know.” Before she could add anything