The New Deputy in Town. B.J. Daniels

first to settle here, just miles from where the Missouri River wound a deep cut through the land.

      This house and the early memories of their daughter were all Gramps and Gramma Pearl had. Titus kept the place up as if he believed that one day Geneva would return.

      Laney and Laci visited each summer for the promised two weeks. Laney felt guilty that it wasn’t more, but both she and Laci had their own lives, Laci in Seattle and Laney in Mesa, Arizona. The house sat empty the rest of the time. Waiting for someone who was never going to return.

      Laney tried to go back to her book, but her mind kept wandering. She found herself looking down the long dirt road. If anyone had been coming, she would have been able to see the dust cloud miles away.

      Nothing moved. Huge cumulus clouds bobbed along in an ocean of blue as the sun rose higher and the day began to get hot. A cloud floated over, casting a dark, cool shadow over her. Laney shivered, sensing a change in the air.

      An instant later she was startled by the unexpected thunder of hooves as her cousin Maddie came riding around the end of the house. Maddie leaped off her horse in a cloud of dust, her face flushed with excitement under her western straw hat.

      “I heard you were here,” Maddie said as she bounded over the railing just as she’d done since she was a child. “Mother’s coming by later, but I couldn’t wait so I rode over,” she said as she gave Laney a hug.

      “Got in last night.” Laney smiled in spite of herself as she looked at her cousin. Now nineteen, Maddie hadn’t changed that much from the gangly freckle-faced girl she’d been. She was tall and slim to the point of being skinny, with a mop of thick reddish-blond hair and light blue eyes. She wore a western shirt, jeans and boots.

      “Where’s Laci?” Maddie asked excitedly. “Cooking, I’ll bet. Oh, what is that heavenly smell?”

      From inside the house came the warm rich scent of chocolate-chip cookies baking even though it was way too hot to bake. As if that had ever stopped Laci.

      “Who wants a warm cookie?” her sister called on cue from inside the house.

      “Guess who!” Maddie called back laughing, then looked at Laney, her expression sobering. “I wish you lived here. I hate these short visits. They are never enough.” She gave Laney another hug, hanging on longer this time.

      Laney sensed a small shudder in her cousin’s thin frame. She pulled back, taking Maddie’s arms to look at her, and felt her flinch. Shoving back Maddie’s shirtsleeve, Laney saw dark bruises, each spread evenly apart as if someone had grasped her too roughly.

      “What is this?” What she wanted to say was “who did this to you?”

      “You know me,” Maddie replied quickly, drawing her sleeve down over the bruises. “I’ve always been such a klutz. It’s nothing.”

      It was something; Laney could feel it as Maddie flashed her a reassuring smile that didn’t quite ring true and hurried into the kitchen.

      THE NEW DEPUTY SHERIFF, Nick Rogers, had been covering the weekend shifts until Sheriff Carter Jackson returned from Florida. So he wasn’t surprised when he got called out on another assault Sunday morning.

      There’d been two assaults since he’d taken the job. The victims were men who’d been attacked outside one of the bars on a Saturday night when the place was packed and there was a live band. Which probably explained why no one heard a disturbance in the parking lot.

      He found Curtis McAlheney at the bar nursing a beer. Nick slid up onto the stool next to him and ordered a cup of coffee since it was only nine-thirty in the morning.

      Curtis had a split lip, a black eye, a broken nose and was stooped over as if his ribs were bothering him.

      “Broken or cracked?” Nick asked.

      “Cracked, but they hurt like hell,” Curtis said.

      “You see your assailant?”

      Curtis looked over at him. Thirty-something, he had thinning brown hair that stuck out the bottom of his John Deere cap. His eyes were small and brown, and his belly hung over his jeans into a T-shirt that proclaimed he was God’s gift to women.

      “Assailant?” Curtis repeated. “Didn’t see no assailant—just some bastard with a baseball bat.”

      “You see his face?”

      Curtis shook his head regretfully. “It was dark. He hit me from behind, knocked me down then beat me up good. He was big, I can tell you that much.”

      Nick nodded. This was pretty much the same description he’d gotten from the other men. Nick suspected the assailant was anything but big. A big man armed with a baseball bat would have done a lot more damage. “He rob you?”

      Curtis looked sheepish. “I imagine he planned to. I think he came to his senses and took off before I got up and took that bat away from him and showed him what for.”

      Right. The motive in all the cases didn’t appear to be robbery since nothing was taken but each man’s pride. The assailant had just attacked, beaten up the men and taken off.

      “Before you left the bar, did you get into a disagreement with anyone?”

      “Naw. I just had a few beers, danced a little.”

      Same story Nick was getting from the others, although he suspected each had had more than a few beers.

      “Well, if you think of anything else,” Nick said finishing his coffee.

      “Has to be some bastard not from around here, ain’t that right, Shirley?” Curtis said to the bartender.

      The bartender, a fifty-something stick of a woman, nodded. “No one around here would do something like that for no good reason.”

      Nick suspected whoever the assailant was, he had a reason, one good enough for him anyway. Tossing money on the bar for his coffee and a tip, Nick left as his cell phone began to vibrate.

      “Trouble down in Old Town Whitehorse,” the dispatcher said. “Alice Miller says someone stole her chickens.”

      AS MADDIE RODE OFF, LACI PUT her feet up on the porch railing and sighed. “We need to have a party for her.”

      Laney looked up from her book although she hadn’t been reading. She’d been thinking about her cousin.

      Laci took a cookie from the plate she’d brought out earlier. They’d had cookies and lemonade on the porch and talked about old times, although Laney hadn’t been able to shake her worry for her cousin.

      “An engagement party,” Laci said between bites.

      “I’m not sure that’s a good idea,” Laney said. “Didn’t Maddie seem…different to you?”

      Her sister shot her a look. “She’s lost a bunch of weight since last summer. Don’t all soon-to-be brides do that though?”

      Maybe. “She’s too skinny, but that’s not what I’m talking about. She doesn’t seem…”

      “Happy?” Laci started laughing. “Maddie could be the poster child for happy.”

      “I felt like she was trying a little too hard,” Laney said. She’d seen her cousin when they’d gotten into town last night. Only Maddie hadn’t seen them. Laney had called to her cousin who was leaving the back way just as they were coming in the front. But their cousin obviously hadn’t heard them over the din of the bar as she left. “Like last night when we saw her leaving the bar. She wasn’t with her fiancé.”

      Her sister groaned. “Maddie’s fine. I’m sure she wasn’t doing anything more than dancing with a few ranch hands just like we were. She left the bar alone, didn’t she?”

      Laney nodded.

      “See. Maddie’s just stretching her wings a little.”

      Maybe,