I meandered down the driveway, debating on whether a truckload of gravel would fill the gouges from the fire trucks and fire crews. Not that we pampered a green swath of manicured lawn anywhere on our place. Watering ornamental gra.s.s was a waste when we didn't have enough water for our cattle. Or when our grazing land resembled a dust bowl. Or when one of our wells could go dry at any time.

Along the road, lavender starflowers waved in the wind, the cheery yellow centers nature's smiley face. During my childhood, I decapitated those flowers and used the pretty blossoms as the crowning glory on my mud pies. My mud pies still looked better than my real pies, much to Sophie's dismay.

I rested my forearm on top of the mailbox. A vehicle barreled toward me from the north, reminding me of the night I'd almost become a hood ornament. So many bad things had happened in the interim I'd forgotten about it. I wondered if Dawson had forgotten, too.

Rollie grinned from inside a rattletrap Chevy pickup. The jagged end of his braid swept the seat as he leaned across to open the pa.s.senger door. "Hoka hey."

"Hey." The makeshift vice-grip door handle clanked as I slammed the door shut. "Nice hat."

His fingers swept the black felt brim. "My official PI hat. Makes me look mysterious and smart, eh?"

"Definitely. So, are we on official PI business, boss?"

"Yep."

"Where we going?"

"Just for a drive so I can talk to you about them Warrior Society kids." He shot me a sidelong glance as he shifted to third. "You still interested, right?"

"Yeah. But I didn't think you were."

"Guess mebbe I was curious so I asked around some."

"You could've told me over the phone."

He grunted. "Huh-uh. Face-to-face meetings only in this line of work. Do you know how much private and dangerous stuff people overhear because of phone conversations and the like? I prefer a controlled environment." Rollie slapped the seat between us and a cloud of dust arose. "Like this one."

Lucky me. "So how'd you get the information? Or is that a PI secret?"

Seemed Rollie might hedge. Finally, he sighed. "Verline. She was friends with Sue Anne. And with that Lanae girl who just up and took off. Verline went to talk to Bucky One Feather yesterday about what was going on with the Warrior Society. He told her."

"Just because she asked?"

"No." Rollie shuddered. "I don't think she asked nice. Them pregnancy hormones are nasty."

True. I thought of Hope the night she'd come to my rescue at the rez rec center. Not typical behavior for her. "What'd Bucky say?"

"Just he's scared he'll wind up dead. He wouldn't tell Verline who was in charge. But he did mention you and your sister took a whack at them. That true?"

I nodded.

"Didja learn anything new?"

"Not a d.a.m.n thing. It's frustrating." I directed my gaze out the window to the undulating prairie, rock-strewn hills, and the plateaus rising from nowhere-the unique topography that comprised our land. The austere beauty of the Badlands on my right; on my left, the pine-covered grandeur of the Black Hills and the jagged point of Harney Peak in the distance. I'd been on this road so many times I could've driven it in my sleep. I never tired of the dramatic view. What did that mean?

That this is where you belong.

Gooseflesh broke out on my arms.

I faced Rollie. "Did you say something?"

"No. Why? You look like you seen a ghost."

No ghost. Just phantom ancestral voices talking inside my head. I'd rather it had been a d.a.m.n ghost.

"Mercy? What's wrong?"

"Ah. Nothing. Is that the only reason you called?"

"No." He lit a cigarette and relaxed back, driving with his left hand. "Heard about the fire, hey."

"Everybody heard."

"I was on my way over to help when dispatch came on the scanner and said it was under control. Lucky thing it didn't spread."

Not surprising Rollie listened to the police scanner. "Yeah. It was hard to believe that so many people showed up to help out." An enormous blackbird took flight from a broken fence post; the wings beat an iridescent blue in the blinding sunlight.

"Folks wanting to help out surprises you?"

"No. That used to be my biggest complaint about living here. Everybody knew everybody else's business. Now that doesn't seem like the worst thing."

Rollie coughed and spit a loogie out the open window. "It ain't. It's what kept your dad sane after Sunny died, that sense of community and continuity. Sometimes it's a pain in the a.s.s, but it's better than the alternative."

"Like starting over someplace new?"

"Uh-huh. You lose the history and the connection. Once it's gone, you ain't ever getting it back and you become an outsider. Your family ain't never been outsiders. Even after you've been gone two d.a.m.n decades, the community considers you one of their own, Mercy. Being here is your destiny."

I ignored the destiny comment.

"Case in point: them freaks that bought the Jackson place? They're outsiders. Always will be. And I'll bet a hundred bucks not one of 'em bothered to lend a hand when your place was on fire last night, did they?"

"Not that I know of."

"You been by since they put up the electric fences?"

"Been meaning to . . . I've had other things on my mind."

"I'll take you past it before I run you back home. I ain't gonna slow down, 'cause them white supremacists would probably love to shoot an old savage Injun guy like me, eh?"

"I'd protect you."

"You carrying?"

"Always."

After Rollie's comments, I studied the scenery with a sharper eye. Cracked soil, ranging in color from chalk white to bleached orange, signaled cattle had overgrazed this section. Huge clumps of sage plants overtook the landscape, but it was still b.u.t.t-ugly. Barbed-wire fence stretched as far as the eye could see. I recognized the scraggly copse of poplar trees marking the turnoff to the Jacksons' driveway. Some things never changed.

Whoa. And some things changed more than I could imagine.

Electric fences surrounding the house and yard distorted the landscape into a military image reminiscent of the cold war. Warning signs were plastered everywhere. The skeletal forms of buildings being constructed loomed like metal monsters.

Three ATVs were positioned as guards inside the fence. And Sheriff Dawson was hunkered against the front b.u.mper of his patrol car, red and blue lights swirling around him as he talked to another guy inside the fence.

I muttered, "c.r.a.p," and plastered my back against the seat, out of Dawson's line of vision. I blamed the bullfrogs jumping in my stomach on cruising downhill, not on my seeing Dawson. Or thinking he might've seen me.

"Changes them folks made are spooky, ain't it? Couple of other people were seriously interested in buying it. They would've been a better match."

Who would've been a better match? The Florida Swamp Rats? Kit McIntyre? I wanted to know; yet I didn't.

"Gotta be doing something hinky there," Rollie continued, "with all that security, doncha think?"

"That's what Iris Newsome thinks. She's been bugging me about signing some kind of pet.i.tion banning additional building or some d.a.m.n thing."

"Might not be a bad idea. Rumor around Viewfield is they're from some religious sect where they have multiple wives."

Lost in my own thoughts, I shrugged. I wondered what Dawson was doing out there. Routine traffic arrest? On a secondary gravel road? Didn't he have a more productive way to spend his time? Like looking for my nephew's murderer?

Rollie sighed. It wasn't a happy sigh. It was a weary sigh I used to hear from my dad.

"What?"

"How long you had a thing for Sheriff Dawson, hey?"

My fingers rubbed my mouth. Was it obvious my lips were still a little puffy from last night's encounter with Dawson? No. Rollie was perceptive, which made him good at his job. But I was good at mine, too, so I didn't answer.

"Mercy. You know I ain't gonna let this go."

"Who says he doesn't have a thing for me?"

Rollie squinted at me through the smoke curling by his eye. "Same difference."

Big difference, but I doubted he'd see one.

He said, "I should've known."

"Known what?"

"That you'd go for a fella like him."

"What makes you think you know anything about the type of guy I go for now?"

He followed up with a mean laugh laced with coughing spurts. "Because Dawson is just like your dad."

That observation jarred me to the core. My mouth opened to argue, but he beat me to the punch.

"Don't deny it. Dawson is big guy. Stubborn. Good-looking. Kinda mean. A little on the shady side. Another cowboy in a uniform."

"My dad wasn't shady."

He grunted. "I won't argue that point, outta respect for the dead."

I bit my tongue.

"Besides, I thought you had some trust issues with the sheriff."

"I do." Denial or explanation of the change would sound like an excuse, or worse, a confession. I didn't need to give Rollie Rondeaux any personal ammo on me because he'd use it.

"I understand the attraction to someone who ain't good for you. Been with a woman like that a time or two myself. Worth a tumble but I'd never turn my back on her."

My teeth left another chomp mark on my tongue. His situation with Verline wasn't my business. However, I had a perverse need to keep my personal business with Dawson out of the public domain. "Do I have to ask you not to blab this, Rollie?"

"Nope. I don't diss on my employees."

"Got more than just me working for you?"

"Officially? Nope." He grinned. "Unofficially? More than you can shake a stick at, Mercy girl."

I smiled. Couldn't help it. I'd always liked Rollie.

He dumped me off at the top of the driveway. "Keep in touch. You hear anything, you need anything, call me."

"For another face-to-face meeting to keep Big Brother from overhearing us?"

"Yep. Or mebbe, keep me in the loop because I'm worried about you."

Back at the ranch, Theo convinced Hope he could take care of her, so she'd left with him. Sophie shushed me during her soaps. Yay. At loose ends again. d.a.m.n. I needed a job.

You could run for sheriff.

Right. That didn't help my immediate boredom.

Then I remembered I'd told Jake I'd check out the large flat-bottomed grazing section he'd tentatively earmarked for buffalo. Tooling around in my dad's truck would clear my head. Nothing more relaxing than spending a summer afternoon on the high prairie. The dips and valleys of the terrain showcased subtle changes, changes the uninitiated wouldn't notice.

Much as I tried to pretend otherwise, I wasn't the uninitiated. For the first twelve years of my life I'd soaked up Dad's words and wisdom like a sponge. So I recognized the yucca seedpods changing colors from creamy white to brittle tan. The spines were faded from green to gray due to dust and drought. The clumps of yellow tumblemustard popped up sporadically, sweet and lovely as the th.o.r.n.y bushes of wild pink roses.

I spied an entrance to the west pasture. I unhooked the barbed-wire loop between the posts; yeah, we employed some high-level security measures on the Gunderson Ranch. Why Kit felt the need to sneak around boggled my mind. With seventy-five thousand acres, some of it bordering public land, there was no way we could police it all.

I dragged the rustic gate open. The tires tharumped across the corroded cattleguard. I hopped back out to close it. Far as I knew we weren't keeping cattle in this section, but I'd been schooled early on in the importance of keeping all gates shut. Old habits die hard.

I inched my way in. Fire was a constant worry. Dad's concern during drought years reached the point he wouldn't allow any vehicle that wasn't diesel in any of the pastures after the middle of July because of increased fire danger from the catalytic converters. And when the ranch hands or Jake traveled from one section to the next, they followed a distinct path. No reason to cut up every square inch of earth just because we could.

Contrary to what the tree huggers thought, most ranchers were heavily invested in conservation efforts. Hard not to be when one depended on the land to live.

I putted along, listening to the meadowlarks and hoping to hear the distinctive trill of an oriole. Looking for any sign of the much-reviled prairie dogs. Despite PETA's claim, prairie dogs were not fuzzy, cute little animals being persecuted by trigger-happy landowners in the Wild West.

Prairie dog towns-a series of interconnected tunnels culminating in hundreds of holes-would pop up and ruin miles of grazing land. The oversized rats were good for nothing except lunch for larger predators. Or for target practice.