The New Cowboy. Rebecca Winters

slipped out of the ranch house without eating breakfast. Normally she ate with her grandfather, but this morning she was in a hurry and didn’t want to hear the news about last night’s welcome-home party for Zane. It would hurt too much to know what she’d missed. Pretty soon Ralph would inquire about her date. That was something she would just as soon forget.

      She started up her truck and took off for the shooting range outside White Lodge where she put in a half hour’s target practice, but last night’s events still haunted her. Avery hadn’t liked hurting Mike, but she’d had no choice and told him the truth: the man she’d thought she could forget had come back into her life unexpectedly. Though she didn’t know what would come of it—maybe nothing—she knew it wasn’t fair to use Mike. That was a terrible thing to do to anyone.

      Naturally she’d mentioned no name, so Mike couldn’t possibly know about her feelings for Zane, who’d been away for close to a year and had only come home periodically. But it was painful how stone-cold quiet Mike had gone on the drive home. Who could blame him? When they reached the ranch house, she’d jumped out of the truck before he could come around. “I’m truly sorry, Mike. Thank you for dinner. Please forgive me.”

      By the time she made it to the porch, he’d peeled out of the driveway. She could hear the screech of tires even after she’d let herself in the house. The unpleasant moment, compounded by guilt of another kind she’d been carrying around for eight years, had made her sleep fitful.

      After picking up a snack, she headed for Little Big Horn College in the town of Crow Agency, Montana. The two-year community college chartered by the Crow Nation offered eight associate of arts degrees. Though the majority of the students enrolled were members of the Crow Nation, it was a public college and she’d been enrolled in Crow language classes on Fridays for a long time.

      The hour and a half drive from the ranch put limits on her time so that she could only attend classes once a week. It would take years to achieve any kind of mastery, but she’d always had extra help from Jarod and his Crow family. While she’d been away at college in Bozeman she’d hired a tutor to keep teaching her the language. Because of that ability, she’d won a fellowship to Berkeley.

      If she hoped to publish important works in the future, it was vital she be able to communicate with the elderly Crow people on the reservation who could help her with her folklore research. This was her focus, the only thing that was going to help her keep her distance from Zane.

      After three hours of classwork, she grabbed a sandwich, left campus and headed for Absarokee. Near the town was an archaeological site that was the former site of Crow Agency along Highway 78. She was part of a crew uncovering part of the foundation of the original agency compound. They’d been compiling a growing collection of artifacts.

      She’d found a blue bottle, the ceramic arm of a doll, a pottery shard and the cylinder of a cap-and-ball revolver. The fantastically rich artifact record and archaeologically intact nature of the site made it unique on the high plains of Montana. Actual objects used by the Crow formed a bridge between the past and present. Every piece of evidence excited her because the site was a window into a very transformative time in Crow Nation history.

      By midafternoon she pulled up next to some other trucks parked in a field near the ongoing excavation of the foundation of a Crow cabin building that was over a hundred years old. Some kind of meeting was in progress. Paul Osgood, the auburn haired fiftyish professor who headed the dig, waved her over to him and four other archaeologists.

      “Hi. What’s going on?”

      “We’re glad you’re here. As you can see, vandals were busy again during the night. I called the police yesterday. They’ll do what they can, but it isn’t possible for them to patrol this area all the time. They don’t have the manpower. Last night someone desecrated part of this foundation we’d marked and tagged into units. The loss of animal and fish bone fragments comes as a real blow.”

      When Avery looked down, she could see what he meant. The fragments told so much about the changing Crow diet: how they went from living on bison, antelope, deer, elk and cutthroat trout to subsisting on government-provided beef.

      “Do you think this is a case of pure and simple looting out of greed? Or malicious vandalism by a bunch of out-of-control teenagers?”

      “I have no idea.”

      “We need a guard dog,” she muttered.

      “I agree. Unfortunately the benefactors who’ve funded this project aren’t about to give us more money for protection like that.”

      Ed Meese spoke up. “I could camp out here tonight.”

      “Not alone,” Paul exclaimed.

      Ray Collins volunteered to keep watch with him.

      Paul shook his head. “I can’t allow you to do that. For one thing, it could be dangerous. You don’t know what you could be dealing with. I promised the authorities we’d let them handle this, but I’ve been asked to get some pictures proving the damage. Why don’t we walk around the site and take photos of anything we find disturbed? We’ll send them to the police and call it a night.”

      They worked together till six before disbanding. Avery drove back to the ranch totally frustrated by the damage done. For the culprits, it was like taking candy from a baby. Her crew was helpless in the face of the wanton destruction happening after dark.

      She pulled in at seven, heartsick over the situation. Avery was just about to pull the key from the ignition when someone walked up to her truck.

      Suddenly her heart had another problem. Zane.

      Avery had been so upset, she hadn’t noticed his Volvo sitting next to some of the other vehicles. He was dressed in a dark gray pullover and jeans. His hard-muscled physique standing in cowboy boots made him a good six-three. Between dark fringed lashes, his intelligent eyes glowed like twin blue suns.

      With shaky fingers she lowered the window. Now if she could just catch her breath. “I understand congratulations are in order for a lot of reasons. Welcome home. You didn’t have to wait until the Fourth of July after all.”

      A ghost of a smile hovered around his mouth. “Even better, I’m here to stay. You missed a great party last night.”

      “I’m sorry about that.”

      He raked a suntanned hand through hair that looked like rich brown loam. “Do you have another date tonight with the same man as last night?”

      She blinked. “How did you know about that?”

      “I saw the two of you together while I was driving in from Glasgow.”

      Avery couldn’t believe it. She’d been so upset with herself for having made a second date with Mike, she hadn’t been aware of anything else. Biting her lip she said, “I have no plans for tonight. It’s been a long day.”

      “Too long to go out on a case with me tonight? The police alerted the BLM law enforcement to a new problem in the area.”

      Her head flew back, causing the hair to resettle around her shoulders. “What do you mean?”

      “Now that I’m permanently stationed here, my first undercover assignment is to catch the vandals desecrating the dig site at Absarokee.”

      A small cry escaped her throat. “That’s where I work!”

      “Sadie told me.” He cocked his dark head. “After all these months of working at opposite ends of the state, imagine my surprise. When I saw my orders, it reminded me of a poem that says, ‘God long ago drew a circle in the sand exactly around the spot where you are standing right now. I was never not coming here. This was never not going to happen.’”

      The words, and the way he’d said them, sounded like bits of prophecy, making their way to her soul where she’d tried to hide from him. She averted her eyes.

      “I need someone to give me inside information. Who better than you? Tonight