McFadden shook his head. “Look, Joanna, theoretically, York and I are on the same side of the fence, but the Feds are under no obligation to share their information with us, and they usually don’t. If York’s asking questions, he must have some good reason for doing so, but if you personally have done nothing wrong-and I can’t imagine you have-then I’m sure it’ll all get straightened out eventually.”

“Me personally,” she repeated, plucking the two most significant words out of McFadden’s sentence and focusing in on those. “You said if I personally have done nothing wrong. What about Andy?”

McFadden raised the can of Coors and finished it. He dropped the empty can into a paper bag beside his chair while his somber gaze met and held hers. “I don’t want to break your heart, Joanna,” he answered quietly. “That’s the last thing I want to do, but I’m not so sure about Andy.”

Joanna’s chest constricted. “And you won’t tell me anything more than that?”

“Can’t, Joanna. Sorry.”

“There’s a big difference between can’t and won’t, Sheriff McFadden,” she said, standing up abruptly. “Come on, Jenny. We’ve got to go.

Jennifer dashed up onto the porch and handed the Frisbee over to Walter McFadden. “Tigger’s one neat dog,” she said. “Hey, Mom. Can we get a Frisbee so I can teach Sadie to catch like that?”

“We can try,” Joanna said. With a curt nod over her shoulder to Walter McFadden, she led Jennifer back to the car. The sheriff watched them go, shaking his head as he did so.

“Come on, Tigger,” McFadden said to the dog. “Let’s go see about rustling us up some dinner.” The two of them, man and dog, walked into the house together.

Joanna headed home. Jennifer, who had been laughing and running with the dog, was suddenly quiet and subdued. “Are you mad at me?” she asked.

“Mad? Why would I be mad at you?”

“I was having so much fun, I almost forgot,” Jenny said.

Joanna shook her head. “No. If I’m mad at anybody, I’m angry with myself.”

“Why?”

“For not taking my own advice. I told you not to let what people say bother you, but I’m letting it bother me.”

“Sheriff McFadden said something?”

“Everybody’s entitled to his opinion,” Joanna said tightly.

When they pulled into the yard at the ranch, with Sadie running laps around the Eagle, Eleanor Lathrop’s Chrysler was parked by the gate, and Clayton Rhodes’ Ford pickup was down near the barn.

“You go on inside and let Grandma Lathrop know we’re home,” Joanna said. “I’ll go see if Mr. Rhodes needs any help.”

As she opened the car door, she heard the troublesome pump in the corral stock tank cough, wheeze, and finally catch. When she reached the corral, she found the ten head of cattle were already munching hay, while a steady stream of water flowed into the metal stock tank. Clayton Rhodes was standing then watching the tank fill when she came up behind him. He jumped when she spoke.

“You and Jim Bob don’t have to do this, you know,” Joanna said.

Clayton Rhodes turned around to face her, cupping one hand to his ear. “What’s that?” he asked. Without teeth he spoke with a decided lisp.

“You don’t have to do this,” Joanna repeated loudly enough to compensate for both the old man’s deafness and the noisy rattle of the pump’s motor. “You and Jim Bob are doing way too much. Jenny and I can handle the chores ourselves, really.”

Clayton shrugged his bony, stooped shoulders. “It’s no trouble,” he said. “I figure I could just as well be doing something useful of an evening.”

He turned back to the pump and studied the flow of water into the metal tank. “Didn’t put in much gas,” he added. “Should fill up the tank without running over. You won’t have to come back out and turn it off. I started the pump out in the back pasture on my way over.”

“Thank you,” Joanna said. “I had forgotten about that one completely.”

“Other people haven’t,” Clayton Rhodes observed with a frown. “From the footprints and tire tracks around it, I’d say somebody’s been having a regular convention.”

“Hunters?” Joanna asked.

He shrugged. “Maybe, but why hunters would be out tramping around in street shoes is more than I can figure.”

Street shoes? Joanna wondered.

Finished with the chores, Clayton Rhodes wiped his hands on his worn overalls and started toward his truck with Joanna and Sadie both trailing along behind.

“I don’t understand,” Joanna said. “Why would someone in street shoes be out in the middle of my back pasture?”

“Kinda makes you wonder, don’t it,” Clayton nodded.

Suddenly Joanna remembered to mind her manners. “Won’t you come on up to the house for coffee. If there isn’t any ready, it’ll only take a few minutes.”

“Nope, but thank you just the same,” he said, as they reached Clayton’s ancient Ford with its much-replaced wooden bed. “Think I’ll head on home.” For a moment he stood with one hand on the door handle as if trying to reach some decision. “You know,” he said finally, “I worry about you and Jenny being out here all by yourselves.”

“We’re all right,” Joanna said. “For right now, there are plenty of people in and out. Besides, we’ve got the dog.”

Clayton looked down at the hound and shook his head. “This worthless old thing?” he said disparagingly, ruffling the dog’s floppy ears. “Why, she’d as soon lick somebody to death as bite ‘em. She didn’t even bother to bark at me when I showed up here a while ago.

“I’m serious as hell about this, Joanna. With that there new prison down at Douglas and with wetbacks coming across the line the way they do nowadays, a person needs to be ready to defend himself. Maybe some folks are buying off on that suicide story, but it seems to me as if somebody was mad enough at Andy to take a shot at him. And now we’ve got a pack of strangers hanging out in your back pasture. Nosiree, I don’t like this a-tall. You got yourself a gun there in the house?”

Joanna shook her head. “Andy had guns, two of them, but we don’t have either one of them anymore.”

The old man nodded sagely. “That’s about what I figured. You do know how to use one, don’t you?”

She nodded. “My dad taught me when I was a girl. It’s like riding a bicycle, you never really forget the basics, but maintaining any kind of accuracy takes constant practice, and I haven’t fired a gun in years.”

“Then I’d get myself some practice if I were you.^”

With that, Clayton Rhodes wrenched open the creaking door and reached across the truck’s threadbare seat. He opened the glove box and pulled out a small bundle which he handed over to Joanna. From the feel and the shape of the surprisingly heavy package, Joanna knew she was holding a gun wrapped In an old pillowcase.

“Here,” he said. “This here used to be Molly’s before she up and died on me. I never I liked leaving her out here all by herself, either, so she kept this in her apron pocket just in case. Never had to use it, thank God, but we had some good laughs about her bein’ a pistol packin’ mama.”

He reached in his pocket and pulled out a box of ammunition. “You’ll need this along with it.”

Joanna started to object, to say that she couldn’t possibly accept it, but the old man silenced her with a wave of his hand. “Humor a butt-sprung old man, will you?” he said, climbing up into the truck. “You hang onto it as a personal favor to me.”

He turned the key in the ignition and the old engine coughed to life, then he looked back at Joanna. “Deal?” he said through the permanently opened window.

She nodded. “Deal,” she said, “but only as a personal favor.”

As he drove out of the yard, Joanna realized that in all the years she had known Clayton Rhodes, this was the most she had ever heard him say. Only heartfelt concern for her and for Jenny had propelled him beyond his usual reticence. She headed for the house both humbled and grateful.