Lone Calder Star. Janet Dailey

absolute necessity for one with absentee ownership.

      Quint waited until the cowboys had gone and the young waitress had cleaned their table, then made his own way to the cash register. His gaze traveled over her face when she joined him, noting its clean, smooth lines.

      “Was everything all right?” Her glance briefly made contact with his, but not long enough to renew his fascination with the tan shade of her eyes.

      “Fine,” Quint replied, conscious of a male interest stirring despite her youth and his better judgment. “The hamburger was a good choice.”

      “Better than the meat loaf.” A smile edged the corners of her mouth.

      “I’ll take your word for that.” He laid a twenty-dollar bill on the counter. “Your cowboy friend advised against taking that job at the Cee Bar. He said I wouldn’t like working there. Do you know why?”

      Quint sensed her sudden withdrawal; it was almost a physical thing.

      Yet the shrugging lift of her shoulders seemed to be a natural gesture of ignorance. “John Earl usually knows what he’s talking about. It would be smart to listen to him.” She placed his change on the counter and turned away, adding a perfunctory “Y’all have a good night.”

      Quint studied the straight, almost stiff, line of her back and considered pursuing the subject. He knew, better than most, that the young were rarely skilled at withholding information for long. The cook emerged from the kitchen, using the hem of his stained apron to mop up the sweat rolling down his multiple chins.

      The corpulent man threw an indifferent look at Quint and waved a fat hand at the waitress. “Might as well lock up after he leaves and call it a night.” He grabbed a glass of ice from the rack and pushed it under the Coke dispenser.

      The announcement effectively made it difficult, if not impossible, for Quint to linger and question the young waitress further. He decided it might be for the best. If Rutledge was behind this, then it was better not to involve the girl—even indirectly.

      There were fewer vehicles parked along the street and no traffic moving when Quint left the café. But he scanned the street in both directions, mainly out of habit, as he made his way to the rental car.

      Dallas watched him through the café’s plate-glass window while she gathered up the dirty dishes from his table. She was surprised and a little puzzled when she saw him slide behind the wheel of a late-model sedan. Every self-respecting cowboy she knew drove a pickup—except for the occasional married ones.

      Dallas tried to remember whether he’d been wearing a wedding band, but she had no recollection of one. Not that it mattered. It wasn’t likely she would see him again anyway.

      With her side work finished, Dallas filled out her time card, stuffed her textbooks and papers into a canvas tote bag, called a good night to Tubby Harris, and left by the back door. She wrenched open the driver’s side door of an old white pickup, shoved her tote bag onto the passenger seat, and climbed in after it.

      It was a five-minute drive from the café to the old Farrell place on the outskirts of town. Dallas parked the pickup next to the single-wide trailer that had been home for the last eight months. The outside light was on, the yellow fixture throwing an amber glow over the wooden steps to the trailer’s front door.

      A bluish light flickered across the living room window, a distinctive pattern that said the television was on. Dallas smiled knowing that she would likely find her grandfather snoozing in his recliner.

      The smile didn’t last, though. Losing the ranch had been hard on her grandfather, but not as hard as finding himself with all this time on his hands and nothing to do with it. Jobs were scarce in Loury, and there were fewer still for a seventy-eight-year-old man.

      Suppressing a sigh, Dallas slung the tote bag strap over her shoulder and climbed the steps to the front door. The hinge screeched in protest when she pushed the door open.

      Instantly the recliner snapped upright and the footrest thudded into place. “Who’s there?” her grandfather barked.

      “It’s just me.” Dallas walked on in and halted at the sight of the shotgun gripped in his gnarled hands. “I thought you promised me you’d lock that in the gun cabinet, Empty.”

      Born Mordecai Thomas Garner, the rancher had been known by his initials M.T. since his cradle days. No one recalled who had first mistakenly spelled his name as Empty, but it had stuck. Everyone in the area knew the big-chested, bandy-legged old man as Empty Garner.

      Empty had the grace to shift uncomfortably under her disapproving look. “I had to clean it first,” he grumbled in his own defense and motioned to the gun-cleaning kit on the table next to his chair.

      She skimmed the tabletop and noted the absence of any shells. “That’s loaded, isn’t it?”

      “What good is it to have a gun around if it isn’t loaded?” he argued, then attempted to change the subject. “What in tarnation are you doing home so early anyway?”

      “It’s Wednesday. Tubby seldom has many customers on a weeknight.” Dallas let her tote bag slide to the floor and crossed to his chair, extending her hand in a demanding fashion. “Give me the shotgun, and I’ll lock it up.”

      His eyes narrowed in sharp temper. “Don’t you be giving me orders, little girl. I’m not the youngster around here.”

      But it wasn’t in Dallas to back down when she knew she was right. She pointed a rigid finger at the tall gun cabinet on the wall next to the television. “Then you go lock it up before you accidentally shoot somebody.”

      He glared at her. “How can I when you’re standing in my way?”

      “I could throttle you sometimes,” she declared and stalked over to scoop up her tote bag.

      Empty Garner levered himself out of the recliner and crossed to the gun cabinet, moving with the side-to-side rocking gait of a man who had spent most of his life in a saddle. “Someday you’re going to be sorry you insisted on this,” he said to her back as Dallas carried her bag of books to the table in the adjoining kitchen. “Especially if Rutledge sends one of his boys prowling around here.”

      “You don’t have to worry about Rutledge.” Dallas plunked herself on one of the kitchen chairs, feeling as cranky and out of sorts as her grandfather. Deep down she knew it had nothing to do with the shotgun. “He’s after the Cee Bar now.”

      “How do you know that?” Keys rattled on the metal ring as Empty flipped through them, searching for the one for the gun cabinet.

      “John Earl was in the café tonight.”

      Her news caught Empty off guard. His brow furrowed in thought as he stowed the shotgun in the cabinet and locked the door. He shoved the key ring in his pocket and ambled into the kitchen, still mulling over her statement.

      “I know John Earl’s belt doesn’t go through all the loops, but I didn’t think he was dumb enough to volunteer something like that.”

      “He didn’t exactly volunteer it,” Dallas admitted and pulled her English Lit book out of the tote bag.

      “How did it come up then?”

      Dallas sighed in exasperation, regretting that she had mentioned anything about it. But once said, she couldn’t take it back. And knowing her grandfather, he wouldn’t give her a moment’s peace until he knew the whole story. She should have remembered that any mention of Rutledge was like a red cape to a Spanish bull.

      As concisely as possible, Dallas told him about the stranger looking for work and asking about the job opening at the Cee Bar, followed by John Earl’s questioning her conversation with the stranger and his cocky response about the unlikelihood of the stranger getting hired.

      “He didn’t say it in so many words,” Dallas said in conclusion, “but it was obvious that Evans had been run off.”

      Her grandfather