Even the Nights are Better. Margot Dalton

fact, except for the clean white cast on his hind leg and the clipped area where Manny had inserted a neat row of stitches into the long jagged cut, he looked almost normal. But, studying the little animal closely, Carolyn could see that he was still far from any kind of health and strength. His big dark eyes were glazed with pain, and though he made a gallant attempt he was no longer able to lift his damaged head from the sacking to lick her fingers.

      Carolyn swallowed hard and tried to smile at his furry, anxious face.

      “Poor little guy,” she murmured. “I guess your breakfast is more important than mine, isn’t it? I won’t try to move you just now. I’ll go back up to the house and fix something for you to eat, and bring it right on down here, okay? That’ll make you feel better, boy. That’ll just be so nice…”

      Still murmuring in low soothing tones, she backed away and turned toward the big front doors.

      But she’d only gone a few steps when she paused in shock, her hand to her mouth. A shadow flitted past her legs just inches away with a glint of white teeth and eyes in the darkness, a scrabbling of straw and a ragged flash of color swallowed up at once in the dusky stillness of the barn.

      “Oh, my God!” she exclaimed aloud, badly startled. “What was that? Who’s there?” She peered into the dark cavernous shadows of the hay piled next to the door.

      “Teresa?” she called. “Is that you? What do you think you’re doing, child, spying on me and scaring me half to death?”

      There was no response from the shadows. “Teresa?” she called again. “Are you in there? Is that you?”

      The silence was so profound that Carolyn, leaning forward tensely, was almost certain she could hear the child’s shallow frightened breathing. She considered crawling into the cavern between the bales and hauling the little girl out bodily, giving her a good talking-to about her behavior. After a moment, though, she changed her mind and started out the door again.

      Teresa Martinez had been living at the ranch for almost four months now, since just before Christmas, and Carolyn had never actually talked to the child. As far as she knew, nobody else had, either. Carolyn had hired the little girl’s mother, Rosa, to help exercise the horses and also cook the meals for the four men that the Circle T employed on a permanent basis.

      Rosa Martinez had just moved up from Fort Stockton, she told Carolyn at her employment interview. She was a dark, slim, quiet woman in her late twenties who would probably be quite attractive if she didn’t hold herself under such constant rigid control.

      But her personality wasn’t any of Carolyn’s business. As manager of the ranch, Carolyn was only concerned with the woman’s job performance, and that was entirely satisfactory. Rosa Martinez seemed to be as skilled a hand with food as she was with horses. The hired men had never looked so cheerful and well-fed, even though they spent many frustrating hours trying to draw the taciturn Rosa into conversation.

      Rosa’s daughter was about nine years old, a wild dark wraith of a child with clouds of tangled black hair and glittering black eyes. She didn’t seem to attend school at all. In response to Carolyn’s worried inquiries, Rosa had said simply, “Teresa, she doesn’t do good at school, and they don’t want her there. Too wild, they say, so I just teach her at home.”

      Carolyn frequently wondered if Teresa ever sat still long enough to learn anything. The child seemed to be more wood sprite than little girl, a dark silent flitting presence like a small furtive animal around the ranch. As was the case with Carolyn this morning, people never knew when Teresa might be watching them, or how long she’d been there and what she’d seen. Nobody had ever heard her speak, either, but her unexpected appearances had more than once startled residents of the Circle T.

      There were rumors about Rosa and her child, of course. There were rumors about everything and everybody in and around Crystal Creek. They usually originated in the Longhorn Coffee Shop and drifted out across the countryside like an invisible but all-pervasive mist. People talked of some terrible event in Rosa’s past, of a drunken abusive stepfather who had threatened little Teresa’s life and had finally been knifed or shot by Rosa in a panicked attempt to save her child.

      “The kid saw it all,” Bubba Gibson reported, wide-eyed and hushed with ghoulish appreciation of the story. “Blood an’ everythin’. Never been the same since, they say. Touched in the head, they say.”

      Carolyn tended to ignore the rumors. She considered it none of her business what had happened in the woman’s past. Still, Carolyn Townsend could never quite bring herself to overlook the suffering of small helpless beings, children and animals both, and she often brooded about the strange shadow-child who inhabited the Circle T.

      Maybe she’d have another talk with Rosa. After all, Teresa certainly couldn’t go on like this forever, living most of the time out in the open like some wild animal, popping up under people’s noses at all hours of the day and scaring them to death. She needed a daily routine, some decent clothes, a few regular toys. She needed to ride the school bus, have the chance to be with other children….

      Carolyn slipped in through the side door of the big ranch house, paused in a nearby bathroom to wash her hands, then moved into the gleaming kitchen with a sigh of pleasure.

      Carolyn Townsend loved her kitchen.

      Of all the rooms and spaces of this house, this one was the most uniquely hers, reflecting her own personality in its shining whiteness and long polished oak table, its pale blue countertops and blue gingham place mats. Muslim curtains, vivid splashes of green hanging plants and rare delft china added to its charm.

      About five years earlier, when Beverly was just getting into the beauty pageant scene and her physical setting had been so important to her, she had begun nagging her father and mother about renovating their big comfortable home.

      Important people would be coming to visit, she insisted passionately, people who could have a real bearing on her career. What would they think of the scarred leather sofas, the fading wallpaper, the rugged, “lived-in” look of the old stone ranch house?

      Carolyn, who had always loved her home, was offended. But Frank Townsend could never deny anything to this only child of his, this beautiful daughter whom he adored, and the two of them had finally prevailed.

      All in all, Carolyn thought, looking around with rueful pleasure, Frank and Beverly had probably been right. Though Carolyn had opposed many of the changes at the time, she had to admit that she liked her home the way it looked now.

      She crossed the gleaming floor of dark peggedoak planks, leaning on the counter to gaze out the window at the fields bathed in springtime freshness, and smiled as the curtain fluttered in the breeze and brushed her cheek like a caress.

      Then, abruptly, she remembered the animal down in the barn. She pulled out the blender and moved back over to the refrigerator. Resting idly against the open door, she contemplated what she could mix up for little dog.

      “Some of that stew from supper last night,” she murmured, thinking out loud. “That’d be good, and maybe a little warm milk to go with it…”

      As frequently happened these days, Carolyn suddenly had the uncomfortable sensation that she wasn’t alone in the kitchen, that somebody was nearby and watching her.

      “Teresa?” she called gently, keeping her voice deliberately casual. “Are you peeking in through the window again? Why don’t you come inside and have some breakfast with me?”

      She waited, listening to the silence. But there was no response, just the soft rustle of the curtains and the morning breeze whispering in the trees beyond the window.

      Carolyn felt a brief shiver of alarm, remembering the disturbed young woman who had recently stalked her nephew Tyler McKinney, peering in windows and causing so much trouble at the neighboring ranch. That was different, of course, and much more upsetting. The woman had been unstable. Teresa was just a lonely troubled little girl.

      All at once the telephone rang, a harsh sound in the sun-washed morning stillness