Rocky Mountain Lawman. Rachel Lee

But the feeling wouldn’t leave him alone. It was such an unusual notion that half of him resisted, sure he must be losing touch with reality. The other half, however, couldn’t let go of it.

      Yet nothing seemed to have changed. Not one thing that he could see. The atmosphere had changed somehow, markedly. How was that possible?

      At last he reached the first signs posting Buddy’s property. There was no gate to bar the way, although rusty barbed wire stretched away in each direction. He passed the signs by only a few feet, though, and waited. He knew Buddy would show up shortly. He always did, and Craig treated those no-trespassing signs with respect.

      Up the hill in front of him, he could make out signs of Buddy’s house, a log cabin, really, and the outbuildings, mostly hidden by trees. He stiffened ever so slightly, though, when he glimpsed what appeared to be a new cabin under construction. Buddy didn’t have that large a family.

      Changes. They might signal something, might explain Buddy’s sudden increase in paranoia. He wondered if he could find out what was going on.

      Soon he heard the roar of Buddy’s ATV coming down the winding path. When it rounded the last corner he saw his first cause for worry: Buddy wasn’t alone. A stranger rode behind him, a camouflaged stranger carrying a rifle. God, what was Buddy into now?

      Buddy pulled to a stop and turned off his engine. “Craig,” he said with a nod.

      “Buddy.” Craig looked pointedly at the guy behind him. “You need someone to ride shotgun now?”

      “Just my friend, Cap. I’m allowed to have friends, right?”

      “Never said otherwise. You’ve just never greeted me with a rifle before.”

      “Been having a problem with trespassers. Seeing a gun makes them pay attention to the signs.”

      “Guess it would.” Nor was there a damn thing illegal about it. “Nice to meet you, Cap. Craig Stone, Forest Service.”

      Cap gave the shortest of nods. Craig intuitively disliked the man. Something about his eyes, hard eyes. If he learned nothing else, Craig was learning that Buddy was changing something.

      “You here for a reason?” Buddy asked.

      “Actually, yes. You know the public has a right on public lands, Buddy. You can keep people off your property, but not out of the public forest. So if that painter lady wants to come back today, or tomorrow, or any time, she’s allowed to be up on that hill without you bothering her.”

      “She was taking pictures of my place.”

      So there it was. Craig paused a thoughtful second. “I asked her what she took pictures of. She’s trying to capture the light for painting later because it changes so fast. She hardly even knew you were here until you bothered her. So tell me, Buddy, there’s nothing about your place that you’d have to worry about being photographed from damn near a mile away. Is there?”

      “Of course not!”

      Cap seemed to second Buddy by spitting tobacco on the ground.

      That answer was too emphatic by a mile, Craig thought, though he let absolutely nothing show on his face. “Didn’t think so,” he said amiably. “Anyway, just leave the tourists alone. You didn’t need me to remind you. As for the lady painter, I’ll tell her to point her camera in a different direction if it’s got you so worried.”

      Buddy shifted on the seat of the ATV. “Naw,” he said finally. “If she’s just a painter...”

      “Well, I saw her canvas. So did you, I imagine. She’ll be here a few days then move on like everyone else. It’s not like she’s settling in across the valley.”

      “I guess not.

      Craig started to turn Dusty, then paused. “Say, have you noticed any deadfalls or new beaver dams? Water seems low in the valley creek.”

      Buddy hesitated. “No, can’t think of one. I’ll keep my eye out, though.”

      “Thanks. You know how much damage too little water in the valley would do. We’ll probably lose enough elk and moose as it is.”

      “Ticks are gonna be bad,” Buddy agreed. “Too many already.”

      “Yup. Anyway, if you see me poking around, that’s why. I’ve got to find out why the creek is drying up.” He touched the brim of his hat, nodding to both men, and completed Dusty’s turn.

      Sunlight glinted off something in the undergrowth, and his eye followed it swiftly. A trip wire? Just a foot outside Buddy’s fence?

      He reined Dusty, feeling the men’s eyes on his back as if they were hot laser beams. He didn’t turn. “Buddy?”

      “Yeah?”

      “Trip wires are only legal if all they do is set off an alarm.”

      “I know that!”

      “Then have a good day. And make sure they don’t run too far past your fence. Public land again.”

      Without looking back, he rode slowly away.

      Now he was absolutely convinced that problems were brewing, and he was going to have to get to the bottom of it. Soon.

      He hadn’t liked the look of that Cap guy, either. Hell’s bells. Trouble was coming to his forest. He knew it as sure as the sun was pushing toward midday.

      * * *

      Sky liked being in Conard City almost as much as she liked being out in the forest. The place had a worn charm, sort of like fading elegance, especially downtown. The downtown was old enough to bring to mind images of women in long skirts, maybe some of them sporting Edwardian stylishness, swishing along the streets. There were even hitching posts left around the courthouse square, and the courthouse looked as if it had been lifted right out of New England.

      She liked to sit on the benches in that square, amidst the gardens that the city carefully tended, and now, the second morning after her encounter with Buddy, she even received nods and greetings. Some old men played checkers at a stone table with benches beneath a huge cottonwood, and she wondered if that table had always been there or if it had been put there for them.

      Her artist’s eye was taking snapshots, and mentally framing them as if for a canvas. Maybe someday, if she was here long enough, she’d ask those old guys if they’d mind if she took a photo of them.

      She was dressed for painting again, and she liked the fact that nobody looked askance at her splattered jeans, shirt and jacket. It was a fact of her life that sooner or later most everything she owned showed signs of oil paint. Sometimes she joked that it just jumped out of the tubes at her.

      She had carried her painting supplies with her and set up her portable easel with a blank canvas on it. On the bench beside her, she spread out her tarp and then opened her box of brushes and tubes of oils. At home she preferred a sturdy acrylic palette, but when traveling she used one covered with tear-off papers, like a stiff pad. The farther she got from a studio, the more problematic cleanup became.

      Looking around, she thought about the colors she wanted for undercoating the canvas. Though the viewer would never see them, at some level they satisfied the brain, as if while they might appear invisible, they weren’t.

      But even as she sat there staring at the stark white canvas and trying to pick tones and hues from the world around her, she knew she was chickening out. She ought to go back to the woods and paint what she had wanted to paint, not hide out here in the center of town.

      She shouldn’t let that crank drive her off. When had she ever been one to give ground anyway? Four years in the army, some of it in a combat zone, had stripped her of ordinary fears. One man with an attitude wasn’t enough to run her off, not anymore.

      But then she realized what she really wanted to avoid: Craig Stone. Her attraction to him had been immediate and strong, and she didn’t want that. Not now, maybe not ever again. And certainly