“Oh, joy.” She shifted feet. “I still don’t know where Cold Springs is.”

I can take you there. There will be no digging, like here.

“We should get on with that. You loosened the soil, you can do that? Affect the environment?”

This was my home, land I chose and named, even though I did not own it.

“Oh.”

It was a job that took will and determination and concentration. A fleeting smile, and, yes, the apparition was denser here, more defined. I was good at my job that took those qualities.

“Extraordinary,” Clare said.

Yes. I was also good with risk, when sober.

Enzo, who’d been sniffing around the old pump, galloped up faster than a live dog. Clare is not a risk-taker.

“No joke,” Clare muttered. “Let’s get this thing started. I want to be out of here. I’ll go get the spade”—she wished she’d purchased some sort of sturdier shovel—“and some liquid.” When the phantom began sinking into the ground, maybe loosening the soil, she turned hurriedly away so she couldn’t see the strangeness, caught herself, and sauntered back up to the car, though her body had tightened with nerves. Quick movement caught the eye.

And she’d have to pray that no one else wanted to visit the station while she was about her business.

This was her life now. Doing things she didn’t want at the beck and call of wretched ghosts.

Or going mad.

She got the camp shovel out of the back of the car along with all the liquid she had. She could always stop somewhere on the way home and buy more.

It is as soft as I can make it, Jack Slade said in her mind. He inclined his torso. And I thank you for your help.

“Yeah, yeah,” she muttered.

She emptied her water and her iced tea, then poured the beer on the ground, ignoring Slade’s wince.

With one last scan of the area and seeing no one in sight, she crouched down and levered up the dry grass and some soil, working at it slowly, carefully trying to spread fresh and damp earth along the ground near her instead of piling it. She fell into a rhythm and stopped when her body began to protest the activity. Standing, she walked toward the cool shade cast by the building and surveyed the land. Still no activity at the ranch; perhaps it was one of those deals that did most of its business at certain times during the year. The stream appeared cool and flowing and lovely.

She rolled her shoulders, wiped her face and neck and palms with her bandana, and headed back to her hole. Just a little longer, she hoped.

Grunting as she stooped again, she continued with her task, keeping an eye out for people on the ranch. It was down the hill, and some buildings might block her, but she felt far too vulnerable.

“The least you two can do is tell me if anyone is watching or coming.”

Jack Slade shook his head. Not fond of risk.

“No.” And here she was, talking aloud again, had been all morning, to no one anyone else could see.

You must take some risks, now and at Cold Springs. Jack Slade drifted a little, hesitant. Cold Springs is on privately owned land.

Cold Springs sounded wonderful right now, a nighttime trip, driving under a huge sky of rarely seen stars and maybe the Milky Way, which couldn’t be seen in Denver . . . the pretty images ground to a halt. “Privately owned land. I’ll have to trespass.”

Yes, Slade said.

You can do it! I will be with you! I can keep watch! Enzo barked.

“You both do know that ranchers in Wyoming have guns?” Clare said.

Slade’s nostrils widened as if he snorted.

“Yeah, yeah, I know you’re the original badass gunman, Slade, but I’ve never even held one.”

It is too bad that Zach won’t be with you, Enzo said.

The springs are gone, along with the old station house. It is now very close to a farmed field.

“Yes, I’ll miss Zach,” Clare snapped, more hurt than she cared to admit even to herself. She dug deep with her spade. “Farmland, great. Even Wyoming farmers have guns.”

Clink.

You’ve got it! Enzo bounced around her.

“I think so,” Clare said, digging more carefully now, widening the hole around the angled bottle made of dark glass. Five minutes later she’d retrieved the thing. The bottle was dark green bordering on black and nine inches long. She brushed clinging dirt off it.

“I can’t see through it!” she said, frustrated.

The ear is in there, Jack Slade said.

Enzo poked his face into the bottle. Yes, it is there, a human ear, a little shriveled and almost whole.

“Eww.” She laid the bottle in the grass, took her blue bandana from her pocket, and wiped her face, then the object of her quest. Gently, she shook it, thought she felt a little shifting dirt. As far as she was concerned, the ear was good enough for now.

We did it! We did it! We did it!

“Yes,” Clare said, tiredly.

She spent long minutes putting the dirt back in the hole, arranging the grass again, making the evidence of disturbance minimal.

When she returned to the car, all she wanted was a bath. She toyed with driving into Fort Collins and renting a room, but she ached to be in her new home with her belongings. That was the payoff for her gift to see ghosts, and it was almost sufficient.

Wrapping the bottle in paper towels, she maneuvered her car seat back and forth to wedge the bottle safely under the wonky seat, not wanting the filthy ear-holding object in her cooler. Desultorily she ate a couple of small chicken strips and an egg and wished she had a drink to go with her food.

“Leaving now,” she muttered, knowing that both Jack Slade, who’d disappeared into the station where he’d lived, and Enzo, amusing himself by passing through the large jumble of rocks, could hear her.

Slade didn’t appear, but when she passed the rocks on the way out of the gate, Enzo slipped inside the vehicle and sat upright in the passenger seat, and it didn’t even faze her. He looked at her, his head wrinkling. There are graves behind the rocks. Not many, but one of them was a baby.

“What a wonderful thing to hear. Any ghosts?”

No, they are long gone.

“Fabulous.”

 • • •

Oddly enough, the Flinton case looked like it would break wide open, with the newer bunch of leads on the furniture and antique silver. Clare’s examination of the books, particularly the receipts, showed whom many of the items had been sold to. And though they’d been lost for decades, Zach felt an urgency to find them, give Mrs. Flinton closure, at least.

But throughout the day he felt a persistent itch between his shoulder blades and thought about the argument he’d had with Clare.

When he was downtown working, he got hungry and avoided both restaurants he’d met Clare in . . . but he bought an e-copy of the main and massive biography of Jack Slade that Clare had a half dozen bookmarks in.

Interesting reading. The story drew him in, though he skimmed it since he knew the general details of Slade’s life. He paid particular attention to Virginia Dale. There were no pictures of the place in the book, but he found some online.

As he closed his tablet and finished his drink, he tilted his chair back and considered what he’d read. Joseph Albert Slade’s story was tough in so many ways. Yeah, he might have suffered from PTSD, but the guy sure hadn’t handled himself.

A trickle of pride welled in Zach. He’d done better, all around. Might never be the success the original Jack Slade had been in his heyday as a division manager of the stagecoach and Pony Express, but Zach wouldn’t be shooting up saloons, begging for forgiveness, and strung up by a vigilante committee either.

By early afternoon he wanted to call Clare. Not really to apologize. More like just to make sure the trip had gone okay.