Table of Contents

- Chapter One

- Chapter Two

- Chapter Three

- Chapter Four

- Chapter Five

- Chapter Six

- Chapter Seven

- Chapter Eight

- Chapter Nine

- Chapter Ten

- Chapter Eleven

- Chapter Twelve

- Chapter Thirteen

- Chapter Fourteen

- Chapter Fifteen

- Chapter Sixteen

- Chapter Seventeen

- Chapter Eighteen

- Chapter Nineteen

- Chapter Twenty

- Chapter Twenty-One

- Chapter Twenty-Two

- Chapter Twenty-Three

- Chapter Twenty-Four

- Chapter Twenty-Five

- Chapter Twenty-Six

- Chapter Twenty-Seven

- Chapter Twenty-Eight

The Pastures of Heaven

by D.E. Starns

Copyright © 2011 by Douglas E. Starns

Publish Green

212 3rd Ave North, Suite 290

Minneapolis, MN 55401

612.455.2293

All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted, in any form or by any means, electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording, or otherwise, without the written prior permission of the author.

ISBN: 978-1-935456-64-3

Chapter One

The roan mare stood uneasily, trying to keep her balance while the horse trailer bounced along the rutted dirt road. Her brown eyes blinked against the bars of bright sunlight that streamed through the trailer’s vents, and she snorted at the thick, reddish dust that swirled through the openings.

The Forest Service road known only as 43N21 rolled through land littered with opened cones from scattered pines. The old GMC stepside pickup that was towing the trailer rattled and squeaked incessantly, as if every joint and weld, every nut and bolt, had worked itself loose, or soon would. For decades the truck had jounced over rocky dirt roads just like this, and dirt and dents from a thousand such trips covered it inside and out.

“Hold on, old girl,” muttered the driver, eyes to the small rear-view mirror. With sure patience, his long, bony hands guided the truck and trailer down the dirt track, cranking the big, stiff steering wheel with lean but strong arms, making barely twenty miles per hour.

Clumps of mud, a loose bundle of orange baling string and a pair of hay hooks on the floorboards marked the pickup as the working truck that it still was. The six-cylinder under the rounded hood still ran without much complaint. Duct tape patched the tears in the bench seat, and a missing windshield wiper never had been replaced, but the AM radio still could pull in a signal if it was close enough, and the heater bolted underneath the dash still could chase away the chill. Like its aged owner, it just worked on.

“Gettin’ close,” he announced to no one.

Above worn cowboy boots, a pair of faded jeans were held up by striped suspenders over a threadbare blue cotton shirt. Underneath the clothes was an old man, thin of body and face. Above his high forehead, his silver hair, once blond, was now sparse. His cheeks rose bonelessly to rheumy hazel eyes that squinted against the glare of the sun. On his barbed nose sat a pair of ancient, silver-rimmed eyeglasses. Lips were just a line across his face. Now and then, like his horse, he coughed from the dust that drifted continuously through the open wing windows.

Every few seconds, he glanced to the wing and rear mirrors, at the image of the trailer swinging behind him. The nearly bald tires on the pickup defied the sharp rocks on the road and kicked up a plume of dust that covered the trailer windows, so he could not see the roan mare inside. But he could talk to her.

"Should've known better at your age, Snowy." He reprimanded the horse, but meant it for himself. "Shouldn’t have let you run free like that.” Guilt shook his head.

As old as the pickup was, the two-horse trailer had seen still more years. The paint on its delaminating plywood sides once had been some glossy shade of blue or green, but now was neither, and what was left of it was flaking and peeling. Splotches of rust were eating through the metal roof. Repairs to the hinges on the rear doors had been inexpertly welded, as had a safety bar that someone had added to the outside of the double gate.

The winter gone by had been uncommonly wet, and in places the runoff had cut deep serrations across the road. The ribs and troughs of the washboards were almost invisible in the bright sun, all the more so to Jerome Pitcher's weakened eyes, and the truck and trailer hit a section unexpectedly, jolting with staccato impacts that resounded across the valley. Pitcher's teeth banged together, sending pain from his jaw throughout his head. For a moment the trailer tires lost contact with the ground and it skittered behind the truck, then swung back in line. Pitcher's eyes flicked to the mirrors again. "Sorry, Snowy." His apology was in a voice thin and dry.

Inside the trailer, in the hot, dusty breeze, the mare waited patiently, feeling her own heat. Her large soft ears twitched but mostly lay back against her head. The baby inside of her huge belly had told her that it was ready, but the mare knew that she, not her child, would pick the time and place. She had brought two colts and a filly into the world, and all had lived, thanks to the driver’s kind hands. She remembered the barn and the stall where each had been born and suckled and taken its first steps—horses remember everything—and she would wait until she was there again to deliver this new foal.

"Just hold her a few more minutes." Pitcher spoke to the inside mirror, as if he could read the mare's mind. "We'll be on the hardpack in just a little." He angled his foot on the gas pedal and the truck picked up speed.

A chuckhole dropped a tire and the truck and trailer dipped and lurched. The mare planted her hooves to balance but the side of the trailer met her at her barrel and squeezed her abdomen. She whinnied, upset but not fearful. Horses fear much, but the mare trusted the man who drove the truck. Bending her long neck, she turned one round eye behind her to see how far they had come.

A hundred yards behind the trailer, Jack Owen spit out the dust that clung to his tongue and rolled up the driver's window of his big old Bronco. To his right, Sara Owen cranked her own window to the top, then swept the bangs of her long brown hair behind her ears. Palms together, she rubbed grime off the fair skin of her hands.

"Cheeeeese-burgers!" she sang. She had left her teens behind a decade ago, but some pleasures of youth she never had relinquished. "Dripping with mushrooms and Swiss cheese!"

"Big, hot home fries with lots of salt," her husband added hungrily. "And plenty of ketchup."

"Extra thick, ice-cold chocolate shakes," Sara visualized the menu, her warm brown eyes bright and happy. “So thick you can’t even stir ‘em.” White teeth formed a crescent smile on an oval face that, despite her years, still seemed to hold a childlike innocence. The oval ended in a chin pointed yet rounded. "I can't wait!" She rocked left and right, arms ebulliently pumping up and down from her slim waist.

Jack chuckled lightly. "Hardcore backpackers, aren’t we? A week in the pristine wilderness, and the best part of the trip—"

"—is the junk food when we get back!" Sara giggled the finish.

The dust cloud ahead drew closer and Jack sent the Bronco's wipers sweeping futilely across the wide windshield. "So," he ventured, "find a place as soon as we hit Ash Creek, or wait till Redding?"

"Are you kidding?" Sara’s eagerness was unrestrained. "Give me food!"

Jack glanced over his shoulder at their well-used backpacks, stacked behind them in the cargo area along with their grimy trail clothes and boots. "There's probably still a little—"

"You give me that freeze-dried ice cream one more time, Jack Owen," Sara interrupted sharply, her pretty face stern, "and I'll divorce you. Just one more time, and you are history, mister. Got it?"

Jack squinted down the road, hiding a knowing grin that would have shown his lack of intimidation. "Then I guess I'd better get by this guy." Toeing the accelerator, he began to close the gap.

"Patience!" Sara demanded instantly. No degree of urgency could overcome her fear of speed. Her right foot hunted for the brake pedal, but she was only a few inches over five feet and with the seat back to accommodate Jack's long legs, she could not even touch the firewall.

Jack slowed as they drew near the rear of the old trailer. The billowing dust was too thick there and he quickly let the Ford drop further back. Rocks still loose from the passage of the truck and trailer rattled in the Bronco’s wheel wells.

Blinking at the image ahead of them, Sara leaned forward, as if that way she could see better through the dust. She glanced at her husband.

Jack voiced her thoughts. "Some fat horse."

Sara nodded, a smile creeping onto her face as she savored the dart she was about to launch. "I'll bet nobody makes her eat trail mix for lunch."

"She wouldn't be so fat if they did."

Sara squeezed Jack's muscular forearm. His strong, kind face held only a smile. Their years of friendship, then courtship and, inevitably, marriage had toughened him to her tart tongue.

He returned her glance. Even in worn tan pants and a faded violet shirt, her slim figure obviously had taken some expert lessons from a woman. He breathed with contented anticipation. Small backpacking tents did not lend themselves well to romance, but tonight they would be home and sleeping in their own bed.

The washboard came out of nowhere and the pickup bounced viciously. Jerome Pitcher lost his grip on the steering wheel only for an instant, but it was enough. By the time his fingers had found their hold again the trailer had whipped through a thirty-degree swing, and he had heard the booming thud from inside.

Through the blowing dust ahead of them, Jack saw the trailer shudder and begin its quick slide. "Uh-oh," he thought aloud.

Sara too saw the movement and her voice pitched upward: "Jack?"

Tires plunging in and out of the ruts, tugged by the sudden shift in weight and direction, the rear of the pickup veered to the right. Truck and trailer skidded off the road, trying their best to jackknife, hurling dust and brush and pinecones into the air. Pitcher stomped on the brake and the canted vehicles dragged across the duff to a ragged, rocking stop.

Hitting the washboard a few seconds after the trailer, the Bronco shook violently in every direction, rattling with a savage vibration that Sara felt in every one of her bones.

"Damn!" swore Jack.

Sara seized the armrest with one hand and the seat with the other as the lurching threw her against the door. As the tires lost their grip on the road, the Bronco began to shimmy sideways, heading for a collision with the pickup and the trailer. Jack reacted instantly. Quickly, with skilled twists of the wheel and a surge of momentum, he corrected the shuddering skid and held the truck on the road.

Jerome Pitcher's face was grimly set as he jumped down from the cab of his pickup and hurried toward his tow. Sara watched him as the Bronco passed. The old man disappeared behind the rear of the trailer and did not reappear. Her heart thumped in her chest the way it always did when her intuition wanted to alert her to something. "Jack, stop," she commanded. "He's in trouble."

The image in the outside mirror was not alarming. "He's okay, honey," Jack said. But he slowed anyway.

At the rear of the horse trailer, Jerome Pitcher tossed the safety bar in the dirt, flung open the doors and swore under his breath at what he saw.

The mare was down on her right side. Her hindquarters butting up against the right-side wall, she was spread across the width of the trailer. Partly underneath the metal rail that divided the interior, her right shoulder was tight to the front wall, her head and neck bent upward by a nylon halter and rope that was still tied to the manger hook. As her front hooves scraped the dirty floor and her rear feet thudded against the side wall, she turned a wide, frightened eye at Pitcher. Wheezing snorts and groans escaped her in short bursts, sounds of distress that only a frightened horse can make.

"Dammit, Snowy!" Pitcher swore again, more at himself than the horse. He grabbed the tubular frame of the door and hauled himself into the trailer. A yank on the quick-release ring on the tie separated it, the weight of the horse on the other end instantly pulling it free from the manger hook. The mare’s head hit the floor underneath the divider hard. She whinnied sharply, but years of training held back her instinctive panic.

Sara pressed her cheek hard against the window glass as she stared behind the Bronco. She gave up, twisted about and hung over the back of the seat, peering out the dirt-caked rear window. She could not see the old man. "No, he's not, Jack. And what if he needs help?"

"Well, what am I—"

The flashing eyes that Sara turned on him squelched his resistance. He had never had much success softening her zeal, though he had tried many times—for her own good, he had said. She had inherited all of her father's defiant spirit and there was nothing he could do about that, even if it did sometimes get them into something over their heads.

Pitcher wedged himself into the rear of the trailer. Two pins attached the chest-high divider to the feed bins in front, one to the center post at the rear. Bending his arms at the elbows, the old man set his feet, cupped his hands under the bottom rail of the barrier and heaved upward. Straining, jerking, his face bulged and his fingers turned white at the tips. His feet shuffled spasmodically in a bizarre dance as he tried to avoid the sudden sweep of the horse's hooves. The iron railing refused to move.

Pitcher grunted and gasped for breath, but did not loosen his grip. He pulled and yanked till the pain in his hands forced him to breathe again. As the sweating horse puffed and groaned, he shifted his grip and stance, found better purchase, better leverage, and tried again.

"Jack," Sara urged again as their truck rolled farther down the rocky dirt road.

Sighing with more than just a note of frustration, Jack halted the Bronco, slipped it into reverse, and ran the four-by-four backward up the road. As he stopped, Sara shoved open her door and ran toward the rear of the horse trailer. Shutting down the engine, Jack hopped out and dutifully trotted after his wife, through the choking dust that eddied around the vehicles.

Pitcher's arms fell to his sides in defeat. His face was red, his lungs wheezing, the hard, calloused skin of his hands dented by his effort. As his arthritis seized and cramped his curled fingers, Sara skidded around the end of the trailer. Pitcher turned beaten eyes toward her.

"Oh, my God!" The downed horse and the downcast old man shocked her. "Is she hurt?"

Before Pitcher could answer, Jack ran to Sara's side to see for himself.

Lifting her head, curling her strong neck, the mare named Nightsnow turned a huge round eye toward the strangers behind her. A thin white strip ran down the center of her face, the color of the white that fear was bringing to her eyes, the color of the star-like white speckles in the nightdark coat that gave her name to her. She blew again, nostrils fluttering, ticks of straw caught in her unshaven whiskers. Her front legs pawed roughly, hooves flashing, as her ears lay back and her head went down again. She breathed even more heavily. She could wait only so long.

Pitcher appraised Sara and Jack. He did not know them, so to them his face remained blank. "No, she ain't hurt," he rasped. “Not bad, anyways.” His tall, thin frame gingerly stepped down, out of the trailer.

Jack's eyes ran over the horse. The mare's abdomen was hugely distended, her udder full and beginning to exude. Steam rose from her sweat-covered body as she pawed at the trailer floor. Her eyes were anxious. Jack knew little of horses, but the signs were obvious. "Sara...!"

Sara took a step toward the trailer and looked more closely at the prostrate horse. "Oh!" she exclaimed suddenly and just as quickly retreated to Jack's side.

Still short of breath, Pitcher nodded sourly, hands on hips, disgusted. "Gonna foal right there."

Jack rolled his eyes. He could sense what was coming. "Oh, great."

"Now? Here?" Sara covered her mouth with one hand at the thought of the baby being born on the floor of a dirty horse trailer at the side of a forest road.

Pitcher stared at her. The worry on his face might have been bleak amusement at her alarm had not his heart been with his mare. "Not her time," he agreed surely, long face swinging back and forth. "Not the best place for it, neither. But down like that, all excited, ain't nothing to do 'cept help her along."

"You can't drive her back like that?"

With one hard glance, Pitcher studied Jack. "She'd prob'ly foal soon’s I started up the truck. Only way I know to stop her is to get her up."

Sara's agitation grew. She could not stand feeling helpless. With each second that she stared at the horse, she could feel the mare's urgent need. The mother and child needed a proper place to give birth. "Then let's do that!" She looked up at Pitcher. "We can get her up!"

Pitcher turned his watery eyes toward the woman. ‘We,’ she said, as if his problem was hers, too. His wife had been a quiet woman who never would have spoken out the way this woman had. That was the way she had been raised. But she would have been right there by his side, too.

He turned his head away from Sara, away from the reminder of the past, and the sun fell into his eyes, obscuring both visions. "Can't get her up with that divider stuck over her like that."

The distraught mare whinnied loudly again. Head and neck rising and falling, she looked for help and vainly tried to stand. Sara looked first at Pitcher, then at her husband. "Jack, we have to try," she pleaded.

Pitcher squinted hard at Jack. “Been around horses much?”

Jack saw his opening. “Not a bit.”

“Thought so.”

Jack swung his face toward Sara, hoping to find a hopeless expression to match his own, but instead he saw only determined persistence, and instead he felt his own countenance change. What air was left in his lungs slowly leaked out along with his resistance.

"I guess I could give it a go," Jack heard himself forced to offer, before Sara could prod again, before the old man could refuse.

Pitcher drew back. He never asked for help and did not like receiving it, especially not from strangers, and city folk at that. He looked at his mare, then at Jack, gauging the power of the younger man's broad back. His sloping shoulders shrugged as he stepped aside. "You're welcome to it, but I been at it already. Won't budge. Prob'ly rusted solid. Ain't been out in years."

Stepping forward, Jack ran a hand over the flaking paint and iron of the divider. "If we get it out, can you get her up?"

Pitcher bit his upper lip, then kicked a couple times at the forest floor with the toe of his boot. "Maybe. If she ain't started. Lord can't stop her once she gets going." He looked at Sara. "You know."

Sara's cheeks burned instantly. Children had to wait until her school had given her tenure and Jack’s own electrical engineering business was well established; they had agreed on that years ago. Something most of her married friends didn't understand.

"Okay." Keeping one foot on the ground and setting one on the trailer floor, Jack gingerly stepped inside. The horse’s hooves looked like huge, sharp anvils attached to taut pistons. He could feel the sudden smack of the hoof against his leg, the splintering of the bone, the stunning pain of the shards tearing through his muscle, the river of his warm blood. The horse turned her left eye toward him, wide open, all white sclera and immense pupil. One quick swipe of those hooves and his insides would be punched as if by a pile driver; one frantic, sharp slice of that cocked leg and he would have half-a-dozen broken ribs and probably a punctured lung, too, and be lying, gasping for his last breaths of air in the hot red dust.

"Pretty tight in there." Pitcher must have seen the pictures in Jack’s mind. "Careful you don't get yourself kicked. Saw a horse break both a man's legs, once."

Oh, terrific. "Right, thanks,” said Jack, without much meaning or gratitude. The mare snorted, almost impatiently, and with a deep breath Jack—letting some other part of himself worry about his body—grabbed the divider bar and repeated Pitcher's futile struggle until sweat beaded his forehead and ran down the channels of his face, until his chest rose and fell with the effort of breathing the thin hot air.

"Like I said," Pitcher stated as Jack's efforts ceased.

Sara bit her lip, pinching off her impatience.

Jack was not the kind to quit easily once he had started something. He examined the other end of the divider. "How about those front pins? They supposed to come out, too?"

"S’posed to," nodded Pitcher dubiously.

Jack leaned his head from the bright sunlight into the shade inside the trailer. The horse seemed impossibly massive, filling the entire space. Her heavy, unshod hooves scraped at the wooden floor, gouging splinters, spreading manure, catching on the steel joining rails between the floorboards. She was dark with sweat, and flies buzzed noisily inside the hot oven of the trailer, landing constantly around her eyes, on her nose. Every time she tried to flick her mane at them, her head banged the trailer wall and the floor and her halter twisted a little more on her head.

Pushing aside the now ever more vivid thought of what might happen should the thousand-plus pounds of horse suddenly lash about inside what seemed to be a coffin, Jack cautiously found his way to the front wall next to the feed bins and straddled the mare's front legs. The horse's huge round eye stared up at him as she continued her loud, wheezing groans. The front of the divider ran left and right, forming a tee across its length. At the bottom end of each side was a fitting for each pin. Jack grabbed and strained at the left side.

Sara gasped expectantly as the left pin broke loose and lifted half an inch. Jack heaved again, jerking the railing upward until the edges of the square metal frame were knifing across his hands. The pin did not give any more. Hands spread wide, he gave up and picked his way out of the trailer.

Pitcher shook his head, exhaling slowly. "Didn't think so." There was little time now. He looked around the quiet, forested land and ran his tongue over his teeth, unable to find a way to say Thank you. He glanced at the mare's belly, then raised his eyes to Jack's. "She's gonna let that foal come any minute. You might as well be goin'."

Sara stared at the old man's gaunt, disheartened face. She crossed her arms staunchly. "We'll stay and help."

Pitcher peered far into her brown eyes, saw something in the big, soft irises, saw that she meant what she said, and quickly broke his gaze away. Of all times, of all places. God alone knew how He answered prayers. If that was what He had done.

Entering the trailer, Pitcher bent his aged, weak knees and stroked the mare's hot abdomen. Hesitantly, he looked up at Sara. "Ever help foal before?"

"No, and we're not going to do it for the first time out here, either," Jack quickly answered for her, seeing the despair on his wife's face. "Got a hammer or a tire iron or anything like that?"

Pitcher straightened. "Maybe." Long paces rapidly took him to the cab of the pickup. Rummaging about under the seat for a few seconds, he returned and handed over an iron jack handle. "What d’you think you’re gonna do with that?"

Climbing back into the trailer, Jack planted his feet near the rear of the divider. It was a terrible position to get leverage, but he had no choice. Grasping the tool by its chisel end, he held it under the bottom rail of the divider, pointed almost straight down. Weighing it in his hands, he fixed his eyes on a point on the rail. "I'm going to get this damn thing out," he swore to himself, but loud enough that Pitcher and Sara could hear. Taking a deep breath, he tensed, then whipped the tire iron upward with all his strength.

Metal struck metal with an ear-splitting ring. The mare neighed in near-terror and kicked frantically, trying vainly to roll up onto her feet, slamming back onto the floor and against the plywood wall. Desperately, Jack leapt away from her flying hooves, slamming his shoulder against the frame of the rear door, bouncing and twirling into the air and landing in the dirt on his hands and knees.

"Jack!" Sara dropped to her knees beside him and held his shoulders.

Jack rose quickly, more embarrassed than hurt, and flapped his hands, trying to shake off the vibrating sting that ran from his fingers to elbows. The mare rolled and moaned again.

" 'Nother time like that," Pitcher said quietly at Jack’s side, the caution all the more severe for the softness of its tone, "and she'll drop that foal without even thinking about it." His lips barely moved; he meant for the man only, not his wife, to hear.

Sara saw the determination on her husband's face and took an excited step forward. Now and then, he could be as obstinate and mulish as he accused her of being.

Jack dragged his polo shirt off over his head. Wrapping the shirt tightly around the tire iron, he gripped the padding tightly and looked expectantly at Pitcher.

The old man had lived on a farm his entire life and knew all about improvisation. Dropping his suspenders, he unbuttoned his own shirt and pulled it off his stiff, rheumatic shoulders. Standing in his undershirt, he wrapped the blue cloth blouse in a thick but narrow band around the metal barrier and tied it in place with the sleeves.

"Okay," Jack said again. He climbed back into the trailer once more, his engineer’s mind fixated on solving this problem, nearly oblivious to the horse. Setting himself, tightening, he whipped the tire iron through the hot air of the small space with deadly speed and slammed it into the metal rail. The shirts muffled most of the noise of the blow and insulated Jack's hands, but the mare jerked again at the sound. The divider did not move.

"Nuts," Jack huffed, patient and stubborn at the same time. He sucked in a breath, tensed, and pounded the bottom of the divider again. Flakes dropped from around the pin. "Come on, come on," he urged, wiping sweat from his forehead. Dirt and sweat streaked his back and chest. Again—and then again—he collected himself and beat the rail. Rust began to join the dirt and straw and manure on the floor. At the fifth blow, metal groaned as the pin broke loose and inched upward.

Sara gasped expectantly and held her breath. Pitcher sprang into the trailer as Jack tossed the tool into the dirt. The old man stepped over the mare and seized the front of the barrier. At Pitcher's nod, both men heaved the divider upward. With a protesting screech, all the anchors pulled out and the rail was free in their hands.

"You got it!" blurted Sara. "You got it! You got it!"

Pitcher grunted. Jack took the divider from his grip and manhandled it out of the trailer.

Excitement stole Sara's breath. "Can she get up now?"

Pitcher's hands found his hips. "Up to her. Might be cast, so close to the wall." Squatting, he picked up the short trailer tie rope with one hand and stroked the worried mare with the other, worrying that she might not be able to roll over enough to get her feet under her. Some horses caught themselves up against the walls of their stalls that way. "Come on now, Snowy," he said lowly. "This ain't the time or place. You know better'n this." Long fingers rubbed the horse's poll, stroked her ears. "You oughta be in the barn. Got it all cleaned up for you, broke down for you and the little one." He began scratching and kneading the mare's neck above the withers. "This lady," his eyes touched Sara for just a moment, shyly, gratefully, sadly, "was nice enough to stop for you. Now we gotta get up and get on home."

Slowly, arthritically, he straightened, stepped back and clucked to the mare. "Come on, old girl," he said in a voice so gentle it did not seem like his. "Come on now."

The mare moved, rolling slightly to her left. Pitcher clucked again. Softly: "Just a little more now, Snowy. You can do it. Come on. There's a good old girl." He tugged the tie rope just a little, just a little encouragement, releasing the tension as soon as the mare tried to rise.

Straining, blowing, eyes fixed on her master, trying to comply, the mare extended her front legs as far as she could, jamming her hooves against the front plywood walls. Tucking her rear legs underneath her, she pushed upward with her powerful hindquarters, fighting the cramped space, fighting the added weight of the foal inside of her. The trailer boomed like metallic thunder as her hooves struck out. She lurched forward and upward, her head and neck bobbing. Her shoulders rose, but as she thrust her hips upward she ran out of room. All four legs started to collapse. Snorting fearfully, pawing wildly, pounding the trailer floor, she suddenly stumbled backward, one foot catching the rear lip of the trailer, but then caught herself and surged up again. In a moment, her thrashing legs straightened and gathered under her heaving body. And then she was up.

"Yes!" shouted Jack.

"We're going to make it!" Sara squealed, fists clenched by her shoulders.

Standing unsteadily, the mare calmed, puffing from her effort. Her abdomen swayed as her broad, marked face turned toward Jack and Sara. One ear stayed locked on her master, the other turned with curious wonder at these two strangers.

Sara's hands dug into her pockets, then popped out again to smooth her hair along the sides of her head. "How long now?"

Pitcher rubbed the mare's face, not thinking of his mare, or the foal soon to come. The excitement, the caring. Giving without thought. So alike. "Long as it takes," he finally answered. "Won't foal here in the trailer, not now she's back up." To the horse, he said, "Back, now." He laid the palm of his hand softly across her nose, but paused for the smallest moment. Tell me why, Lord. Tell me why. Now, here. "Come on, Snowy," he coaxed. "Back, back." The mare retreated slowly, and Pitcher guided her with the lightest touches to her place on the right side of the trailer, where he tied her. Hauling the divider back in, Jack lifted it with a grunt, fitted the wavering pins and tapped the barrier down into place. Pitcher waited until the door behind the mare was almost closed, then hopped out the other door, next to Jack. With both doors closed and locked, he looked at, if not through, Sara Owen.

Sara simply handed the men their shirts. Pitcher slapped his against his pants, knocking off the dust. Jack struggled to get his over his sweaty shoulders.

Pitcher’s eyes found first Jack, then Sara. For the first time in three decades, he felt somehow very uneasy. Scared, perhaps, at the unfamiliarity of not being alone.

"Better get her back to the barn, now," he said, the way people who have spent their lives in the country say both thank you and goodbye.

But Jack was from the city and did not understand those ways. Neither did he hesitate. "Get in the Bronc," he told Sara.

Sara darted toward the truck, yelling to Pitcher: "We'll follow you!"

Chapter Two

Dropping off the thick lip of the pavement with a shuddering clank, the old truck and trailer sluiced along the narrow dirt driveway. Close behind, Jack and Sara Owen turned off the river road and soon passed between the decaying wooden gate posts of Jerome Pitcher's farm.

Half a mile from the paved road, across a bridge of railroad ties, huddled Jerome Pitcher's homestead. The small white house was centered in a raggedly-fenced square of forty acres or so, a mere fourth of a quarter of a section. On every side waved the green fields, unbroken by little more than an isolated tree, a far away house or barn, until dammed by the mountains. Above the split cedar shakes on the roof, the sky seemed to fall upward without end.

The pickup and trailer rattled to a stop in front of a barn that had survived generations longer than those who had built it. Walls and peaks sagged toward each other, every wooden board past even the state of disrepair, a dark gray color that only unrelenting seasons could impart. Rusty orange corrosion already patched a newer corrugated metal roof, and atop one peak a weathervane rooster had been caught with its beak forever pointing northwest.

The Bronco skidded to a dusty stop alongside the trailer. Even as Jack and Sara opened their doors, Pitcher's shuffling jog had carried him from the cab of his pickup to the rear of the trailer. Doors shoved wide open, he climbed in and swapped the manger tie for the lead rope on the halter ring. Gently, slowly, he eased the mare backwards and out, and she stepped down from the trailer, one leg at a time. Unsteady at first, abdomen swaying, with solid ground under her feet and the familiar smells of the ranch in her nose, the mare calmed and softened and her head and neck bent toward the ground. By her shoulder, Pitcher led her across a front yard that was all dust and no grass, where two chickens pecked futilely for food.

Under the front windows of the house were the barely visible remnants of flower beds, now plentiful with weeds, but still bordered by half-sunken round river stones. Out beyond the barn, lost beneath the ages of rust, dirt and cobwebs that caked them, crouched the hulks of long disused farm equipment. Nearly invisible against the distant mountains was the collapsing skeleton of what once must have been a huge pole barn.

The mare's hooves clopped across the cracked concrete pad near the entrance to the barn. She was still sweating and steaming and, backlit by the open doorway, seemed to be smoking. From the glaring afternoon sun, the inside of the barn was a darkness of musty smells, of hay and horses, of dirt and urine, of cows and manure. Overhead, pigeons cooed anxiously from shadowed rafters.

"All the others I seen, they been at night," Pitcher said, eyes straight ahead as he walked to the foaling stall, but still expecting to be listened to by Jack and Sara, who had hung back, unsure of themselves. "Snowy, she got her own clock. Ain't waited for sunset but once. And then she prob’ly jus’ forgot the time."

The foaling stall was large and rectangular, two regular stalls joined together. Clean yellow straw thickly covered the dirt floor. Farther down the aisle and on the other side, a single Guernsey cow had another large stall all to herself. The other box stalls were empty. The rest of the horses were all in the turnout for the day.

Jack ran ahead, slid the stiff latch and held open the stall door. Pitcher led the mare in and turned her around. Almost immediately, the horse’s legs crumpled underneath her and she lay over on her side, halter and lead rope still attached.

"Went down pretty hard at that last washboard," Pitcher thought aloud. "Prob'ly not feelin' too good." Leaving the stall, he went to a small tack room near the front of the barn and rummaged through a number of dirty white plastic bottles on shelves, lying in corners. He returned empty-handed. "All out.” He was angry, sad, hard on himself.

“Bute," he answered questioning eyes. He didn’t know and couldn’t say "phenylbutasone".

Sara didn't know the word bute, but her agile mind took in the circumstances and the horse's need and made the leap. "Jack's got some aspirin in his first-aid kit," she offered. "Would that help?"

Pitcher inclined his head, eyebrows raised. "Might." Ten aspirin might make up the equivalent of one huge pheynlbutasone tablet. "Take about twenty, I guess. But if she bleeds, aspirin'd jus’ make it worse."

"Bleed? She might—" she looked from horse to owner "—bleed? Shouldn't we call a vet?"

The idea was dismissed with the clicking snap of the lead rope being released from the halter ring. Pitcher coiled the soft, braided nylon with practiced hands. "Brought out lots of foals. Seen more'n that. Ain’t ever needed a vet." Hanging the lead rope on a peg outside the stall door, he ran a hand over his head, smoothing his tousled silver hair.

"Course, couple years ago, Bob Endemann down the road," he retold, "his old gray mare, she had a misshaped foal. Bad. Had to have a vet out and cut it up so they could get it out and not kill the mare as she tried to drop it.”

"Oh, God!" Sara barely mouthed the words, trying to shut her mind to the horrific image her mind had created for her. Her hands flattened over her face. Jack touched her shoulder, but she felt no reassurance.

"Happens." Pitcher shrugged with the matter-of-fact emotion of a man who has lived all his life within the country where the mortality of animals was just a recurring part of life. "No way to tell." Kneeling at the rear of the mare, his old, thin hands began swiftly plaiting her long, coarse tail.

Sara clung to the iron-capped rim of the wall of the stall, fingers curling over the edge, face poised anxiously above her hands. "But shouldn't we have hot water ready? Or antiseptic?"

Wonder blinked at her from behind the lenses of Pitcher's silver glasses. "What for?"

"I don't know." Sara's head wiggled back and forth, knowing that she did not know anything about any of this. "To clean her or something?"

Halfway down the mare's tail, Pitcher stopped his weaving. His work was rough, but it would have to do. From his trouser pocket he pulled an old but clean sock and slipped it over the loose, unbraided end of the horse's tail.

"Newborn foal can't see," he said, words carrying over his shoulder to Sara. "Smells its way to its mother. Can't do that if mom stinks of soap." With a rubber band, he cinched the sock in place, just as the mare puffed and groaned loudly again. Her abdomen twitched.

"Breakin' water soon," Pitcher noted, hands in the small of his back helping him straighten up. “We weren’t none too minutes early.”

"Oh, God, I can't watch this." Fear and embarrassment swirling inside of her, swirling her physically, Sara turned her back to the stall.

For a moment, Pitcher's attention left his mare. His granite eyes studied this strange mixture of woman, then seemed to reach some conclusion. He turned back to the mare and, without expression, said, "Cup a coffee'd go good after she delivers." Sara stayed at the gate, mouth partly open. He added: "Prob'ly find everything you need in the kitchen."

The hint suddenly was clear. "In the kitchen. Right.”

"Door's not locked. Ain't nobody home."

"All right." Walking quickly, Sara headed down the aisle. Behind her, Pitcher's voice said, "Whyn’t you come in here and lend a hand?" Sara broke into a slow, half-frightened jog as she looked back and saw Jack at the open stall door, his face pleading with her not to leave him alone with the acerbic old man and the pregnant horse.

The wooden-framed screen door of the house banged closed behind her and she found herself in a small, crowded living room. Like the barn, the house had a musty, dusty smell, an old smell, a smell of the people and things that had lived within it during the many years gone by, of pipes smoked and meals cooked and special perfume dabbed behind ears on rare evenings.

"Hello?" Sara said to the long silent house. The rooms did not answer her. She stepped farther inside, onto a braided oval rug.

The furniture was well cared for, but old; the patterned cloth was bright in some places, faded where the sun was strong through the windows. Fraying lace doilies from another era still were tacked with crystal corkscrew pins to the arms and headrests of the easy chairs and a small sofa. Lathed maple tables bore scars on the legs and rings on the surfaces. Above a vintage Philco television set, porcelain figurines danced on a delicate shelf.

A woman's touch, thought Sara. A woman's house. But a thin layer of dust coated the tables, and as she looked closer she saw that the furniture was overused and uncleaned. Especially the one easy chair next to the small, blackened brick fireplace at the end of the room.

Inside the stall in the barn, the last of the amniotic fluid had poured into the straw. Now, the mare groaned and wheezed as her body contracted, and soon a pair of small hooves appeared.

Pitcher was standing behind the horse with his hands on his hips, and he exhaled a barely audible sigh of relief, satisfaction. "Front feet," he said. "She's gonna be okay." He puffed a quick, determined breath and with one hand set his glasses higher on his nose. "Okay." A quick glance cued Jack: "Grab a leg."

Jack stared, wide-eyed. "What?"

Crouching, Pitcher himself seized one of the legs of the emerging foal. "Pull easy as she pushes," he directed. "Make sure it don't go back in."

Swallowing a huge breath, Jack kneeled to Pitcher's left and took hold of the foal's other limp, wet leg.

“Gentle, so’s you don’t hurt its cannons.”

Close behind the mare, touching a warm, wet animal giving birth for the first time in his life, overwhelmed by the smell and sound and feeling, Jack had enough with which to contend. Helplessly, his head shook, “The what?"

Air hissed through Pitcher’s clenched teeth. “Between its hoof and elbow, there—the cannon bone. Horse puts all its weight on it. Can’t risk hurtin’ it.”

Jack thought he could trace Pitcher’s vision. “Right. I got it.”

"Then take a good grip and pull toward the hocks," the old man directed him, leaning back to get some leverage.

Jack hesitated, again uncertain. Pitcher, exasperated, leaned his head—all he had free—toward Jack and the mare's hind legs. "Back of her legs, there. Looks like your own elbow." He tightened. "Pull now!"

Sara moved and looked about timidly. In the small, antiquated kitchen of the house were only a man's leavings. A few cleaned but chipped dishes of a pattern popular forty years earlier were standing in a drain rack on the peeling Formica countertop. An obsolete refrigerator with a single exterior door hummed loudly. In the door-less cupboards were colored plastic and aluminum tumblers of the kind she could remember from her long-gone grandmother's house. An empty coffee percolator was on the cold stove. Guessing at how it worked, she filled the pot from the faucet, added coffee from a can in a cupboard, and set it on the stove to boil.

Just as Jack thought he could pull no more, the mare expelled the foal onto the straw. Standing, retreating, catching his breath, he let Pitcher pull off the remaining birth sac, then clean the foal's nose and mouth and examine the baby. Soon Pitcher too stood. He tossed a towel to Jack and used one himself to clean up. Hands on his hip pockets, he stretched his back into an arch.

"Filly. Snowy's second. Good strong pasterns—see?"

"Uh-huh," Jack nodded and immediately Pitcher's grimace reflected the obvious ignorance. Pitcher kneeled again, his fingers running over the foal's hooves and legs below the fetlocks. "Here.” A glance. “And here." Another glance. He touched the well-formed hooves and looked up to make sure that Jack was watching. " 'Fraid she'd be premature, but it don't look like it. See there, now?"

"Yeah, now," Jack admitted.

They stood back together. In a few minutes, the mare also stood, turned, and began licking and cleaning her child.

"You're still a good mom, Snowy," Pitcher said, softly appreciative of the sweet old mare.

Waiting for the coffee, Sara wandered. Only half the bed in the master bedroom had been slept in, and the frayed quilts had not been straightened. Dirty jeans and coveralls were hanging over the bedposts and chairs. On one side of the open closet, neat, pressed and preserved, hung a woman's clothes. The other bedroom in the house apparently had not been used in years. If ever. As she passed back through the kitchen, she turned the percolator down to a simmer.

"Gotta get up, little fellow. Gotta learn how to stand. Let's try it again." For a second time, Pitcher pulled the little filly's forelegs straight out in front of her. As the spindly foal pushed her hindquarters upward, Jack encouraged and supported her, hands on her small haunches. For a moment, the filly reached her full height, her back nearly even with Jack's waist. Then, her trembling shoulders gave way and in a second she was down in the straw again. The mother nuzzled her caringly, encouragingly.

Sara found it on a bookcase in the living room. An ornate silver picture frame. Unlike anything else in the house, it gleamed from continual cleaning. The frame surrounded a professional portrait. Though the old photographic dyes had begun to degrade, the woman in the photo was still young and beautiful. Her face was classic, with high cheekbones, a strong chin and delicate lips, a certain far-away light in her eyes. Her dark hair was coiffed back on her head, her dark, expressive eyes gazing at some distant place. Faded script in the lower right corner read: To my loving husband. Kathryn.

"Sara!"

Jack's voice pealed from the barn and snatched back Sara's attention. An hour had fled without her knowing. "What?" she asked the empty room, unsure of what she had heard.

"Sara, come on!" Fifty yards away, Jack was in the doorway of the barn, hands cupped around his mouth.

Leaving her thoughts, Sara rushed to the kitchen refrigerator for a moment, then pushed through the screen door. Across the brick stoop, she bounded down the stairs, and ran to her husband. "Jack? What is it?"

Jack grinned broadly as his wife joined him. "You won't believe it. Come see."

In the foaling stall, the mare and the foal had been cleaned and checked. Outside the box, Pitcher stood with forearms resting on the top of the wall. "Lookin' good," he said as she approached.

Easing up to the wall, Sara peered inside. Instantly, her face softened, her apprehension vanished. Mother and child were standing together, the foal beginning to suckle. The mare's gentle face regarded the humans at the rail with a kind of appreciation and understanding that they could not hope to comprehend.

"Oh, how sweet," Sara murmured, casting a delighted smile over her shoulder at her husband, and then at Pitcher.

The glance, as short as it was, caught Pitcher unprepared, and he had to swallow before he could speak. "Little sorrel filly," he told them in an unsure voice. "If she had the right sire, she'll be a fine mare."

"Oh, Jack!" Sara exclaimed softly as the skinny little horse, precariously balanced on her thin legs, turned her still unseeing eyes toward them. The little horse was chestnut-colored, with a lighter mane and tail, a broad white blaze on her face and four white stockings. “She’s beautiful.”

After quietly watching mother and child stepping and pawing in the rustling straw, Sara finally held out her hand. “I brought this.”

Pitcher eyed the red apple from the refrigerator. Just like her. Always thinking of someone else. With a thankful grunt, he took the apple, pulled his ever-present jackknife from his pocket and slit it into wedges.

Shyly, Sara took back several of the slices. Pitcher leaned a permissive head toward the mare. “Go on. Like this.” Pitcher extended his arm, palm flat and upward.

With a slice of apple in her hand, Sara’s arm reached out in hesitant jerks. “Here, sweetie.” Instead of clicking with her tongue and cheek, she kissed, as if she were calling a cat.

The mare shuffled over and her seemingly huge head stretched toward Sara. She felt the horse’s scratchy whiskers and soft lips nibbling across her palm, seeking the treat. She closed her eyes and held her breath, hoping the horse wouldn’t bite off her fingers.

Jack smiled inwardly. Sara’s boldness went only so far.

But the mare took the apple neatly from Sara’s upturned palm, swung her head and crunched the piece between her teeth. Her soft eyes blinked, and she sniffed for more. More confident, Sara fed her another slice.

"Best to leave 'em alone now, for a while," Pitcher announced abruptly, turning away from the stall and walking back up the aisle.

Jack motioned for Sara to follow.

"No," she protested in a whisper, letting the mare have another bit of apple. "Can't we stay a minute more?"

Jack leaned his head meaningfully toward Pitcher's retreating back. "We should go." He meant go home, but Pitcher was waiting for them just outside the barn. Hearing them approach, Pitcher started across the yard toward his house, clearly expecting them to follow. He knew what he ought to do, what she would have done, but didn’t like it. A couple of steps at a jog brought Jack alongside the older man's shoulder, and a few moments later Sara, too, caught up.

On the horizon, the sun was soon to be pierced by the highest peaks of the marbled mountains. "Gonna do fine," Pitcher said as he walked. “Good-looking little filly, too. Good con-formation.” It was a two syllable word for him. “Be a good ranch horse, she gets started good." Without breaking stride, he climbed the stairs to the porch. "Coffee ready?"

"I—I—yes," stuttered Sara, hoping she was right, that the pot had not boiled dry.

Pitcher's leathery hand found the handle to the screen door. "You're welcome to a cup, if you'd like." With that sentence, so unnatural for him, he pulled open the door and, pushing it wide behind him, entered the house without looking back.

Hundreds of miles of hot, straight freeway, hours behind the wheel, lay between them and their home in San Jose, but Jack's begging look lost to one parsimonious glance from Sara. "That'd be nice," he reluctantly agreed, catching the edge of the door before it could close.

"We'd love a cup," asserted Sara as she stepped determinedly into the house. Hurrying into the kitchen where the simmering coffee pot was still gushing steam from its spout, she found three blue-and-white-speckled mugs in the cupboard and with a potholder wrapped around the handle of the pot, poured the cups full of scalding, oily black coffee.

In the living room, Pitcher had settled, uneasily, into his well-used easy chair by the fireplace. Jack was in a stiff-backed chair near the entrance, facing the older man. The empty sofa in front of the windows stretched between them.

"There wasn't any milk or cream in the refrigerator," Sara apologized, handing one mug to Pitcher.

"Cow's in the barn," he observed.

"Oh," blushed Sara. "Of course."

After critically examining the steaming mug in his hands for a moment, Pitcher slurped the fiery liquid over the rim of the cup to cool it to the point where it was still painfully hot but not too blistering to drink. As he swallowed, he nodded. "Good," his raspy voice approved, though the brew was nowhere near as strong as he liked.

Relieved that she had mastered the strange percolating coffee pot, Sara eased Jack's cup into his waiting hands, and squeezed by him to the middle of the sofa. But the there-then-gone, nervous-but-pleased smiles that Jack and she exchanged had no similar effect on Pitcher’s face. The only sound in the room was the sipping of the coffee and the muted whistling of the summer wind. Pitcher cleared his throat, but nothing followed.

Into the silence, Sara offered the thing most on her mind. "I can't believe that little baby can be up on her feet so soon. How can she do that? So soon after being born?"

The birth of a foal had never held any awe for Pitcher. His face showed, perhaps, an imperceptible shrug. When he spoke to Sara, it was with none of the harshness that had been in his directions to Jack. "Horses're pretty helpless, mostly. Nature made ‘em prey animals. Don’t got much way to protect themselves, 'cept runnin' away, so a mom’s got to get herself and her foal up and on their way soon's she can."

"Only way they can be safe," Jack agreed, as if he had always known that, too, which he had not.

“Of course,” Sara meekly agreed.

Again, the awkward muteness covered the three of them. Pitcher seemed fixated on some loose strand in the rug; Jack’s eyes wandered the room in a pretense of interest. To Sara, the picture of the glossy roan mare patiently suckling her wobbly baby filled her behind closed eyes.

Jack swallowed a mouthful from his cup and finally took the initiative. "By the way—" he stood, leaned across the room and extended his hand "—I'm Jack Owen."

The grip Pitcher returned as he half-stood mashed Jack's fingers together. "Jerome Pitcher."

Both men sank back into their chairs. Looking about as they did, cuddling her mug on her knees, Sara turned her soft brown eyes toward Pitcher and with a warm smile that seemed to know him said, "I'm Sara."

After a long moment of queasy uncertainty, Pitcher's chin slowly dipped. "Pleasure." The word did not come easily. The radiance of Sara's expression hurt to see. Too much alike, God, he dared to remonstrate. The strangest familiar fear flittered inside him. His attention fell away from her, down to the safe vision of his boots. "Guess I ought to thank you," he said. "Wasn't no cause for you to stop."

"I'm glad we did." Sara's voice was sure. "I wouldn't have missed it for the world."

Above the rim of his cup, Jack's eyes twinkled at her. You weren’t there!

The slight widening of Sara's eyes would have escaped anyone else, but Jack saw her reproach for what it was. Quickly, he looked around for something to keep the talk flowing. From his chair, over the sills of the double-hung windows, he could see the immense fields of crops that covered the valley floor. He tilted his head toward the cultivated land. "Lot of land for one man to farm.”

Pitcher lifted his mug and noisily sipped again, ignoring the hidden doubt, the tacit reference to his age and implicit frailty. Balancing the cup of coffee on his knee, he said, "Don't farm, myself."

Sara's head cocked to one side with an inquisitive look that Pitcher could not refuse.

Working his jaw back and forth, fingertips holding his cup by its burning lip, he set the coffee mug down on the table, on one of the countless water rings left on the wood over a score of careless years. To the young woman he explained, "Gran’dad came out here, more’n a hundred years ago." Sara leaned toward him eagerly at the start of the oral history, instantly rapt by the subject she taught in high school, and Pitcher saw the brightness in her eyes. He started to speak again, realizing how easy it was for him to tell her things. “Lookin’ for gold, like everybody back then. Mostly Irish and Port-a-gee, up here. Found a good strike of metal up in the hills, along the river bar. Everybody else was scrabbling around down here like fools, jus’ like the gold they filled their sacks with. Gran’dad, he seen their stakes weren’t worth nothin’, ‘n’ bought out most of ‘em for a few pennies. Course,” his index finger jabbed upward and described a rough circle in the air, “it was bigger, back then."

“And after that?” Sara encouraged. The way he spoke—it was so different, so much more alive, so much more vivid, than the constantly-revised, politically-corrected dry words-on-paper texts from which she taught, semester after semester, to pupils, bored, indifferent, insolently proud of their ignorance. He spoke of passion with passion, of sadness with sadness. "Your family must—"

Pitcher's lean face twisted; she seemed so much to want to know. For one rare time he interrupted someone else. "Gran’dad, he was a good man, but he weren’t no farmer. Neither was Dad, really. Couple of poor harvests was all it took, and whatever they’d got from the good years was all gone. Coulda been the Marlahan Mustard, gettin’ in the crops. Cows won’t eat the hay, once it’s in it. Don’t know. But some of the others, mostly Port-a-gee, stayed on. Still here, too.” He motioned toward some enclave elsewhere in the valley, and was quiet for a moment. Then, as if he had not been reliving past years in current seconds: “Had to let loose of most of it over the years, jus’ to pay bills. Not much left for me, anymore." Times gone by, good turned to bad, slowly recurved his lips to a gentle scowl. One rough hand waved out the windows at the fields that ranged all around them, and finally he addressed Jack's comment. "That's all other men's crops."

Grandfather and grandmother had passed, never seeing their struggles near to ending. Then his father and mother, in the same year, after trying all they knew, all they could learn, even ashamedly accepting Roosevelt’s government’s help. Then it had fallen to him and his brother, who tried to earn enough on the Shasta Dam project to make it all work, but then the battle at the frozen Chosin Reservoir had taken him, too. And then only Kathryn and he had been left.

Sara's eyes widened as she saw the narrative giving way to what must have been an endless loop of thoughts. She couldn’t let him stop now. "Refill?" she asked, hoping to prolong the moment. She took Jack’s mug, but Pitcher shook his head.

The trip to the kitchen and back took Sara only a few seconds, but the walk presented scenes of the valley through five different windows, five impressions of unremitting, unchanging beauty. She stopped just before entering the living room, and smoothed her hair, nervously.

As she lowered Jack’s mug into his waiting hands, she said, softly, to the man who had lived and worked alone on his ranch probably as long as she had been alive, "I was just thinking…." She let the thought hang there until, edging past Jack’s chair, she reached one of the two front windows. Late afternoon sun glowed on her face through the dirty panes. Thin shadows of the window muntins and mullions glided over her face as she swung her head back and forth, eyes shifting across the spreading landscape.

"I made you stop the truck, the first time we ever came here. Remember?" A turn of her head sent the words over her shoulder at her husband, but she didn't wait for his answer. "It must've been five or six years ago. We were coming from Ash Creek in the middle of July, and everything was so hot and dry and brown in town, and we kept hoping that the Wilderness would still have at least some water. Outside of town, the hills started to get just a little green—and then we went up and crossed over the pass and came down the far side. And it was just a completely different world."

She swept the acres of green and yellow, the forested mountains that ringed them and the boundless blue of the sky, seeing them then, not now. Around her slim waist, her arms tightened. "It was just breathtaking,” she remembered aloud. “Just like it is now. We got out of the car and walked along the road by the river; remember? It was so quiet, so peaceful. So pure and clean. Unbelievably beautiful. And it's always been exactly the same way, every time we come. Year after year after year. Just as I dream of it."

Sometimes, when we least expect it, fortune graces us. After years of presumed contentment, or years of struggle, of beaten acceptance or despairing resignation, when the unhappy past is beyond reach and the future holds no better promise as far as the eye can see and as long as the heart can hold out, the hopeless bleakness is broken. As if the most impoverished, bitterly consigned to his fate, finds a fortune lain without explanation in his hands.

Some chance encounter, some rare moment in perhaps even the most public of places where yet only two people seem to exist to each other, when a sparkle of eyes suddenly is from a pounding heart and not the lights, when a smile becomes so intimately personal that, though involuntary, it is so impelled that it cannot be restrained.

These are the times of the greatest loneliness, and the greatest happiness, when someone, perhaps unknowingly at first, evades all defenses to the most guarded refuges of our heart, giving bright vision to what were only tattered dreams. They finish, with their own, first our sentences, and then our very thoughts. Interests are cautiously shared; passions are delicately opened. Perhaps passion itself may pass between, without so much as a physical touch. The heart is embraced in a way as never before, in a fleeting, feverish moment when cultivated constraints are freely abandoned, when the prospect of a life recovered—or perhaps lived for the first time—means more than all hard-learned and committed circumspection.

These are moments that we mostly—most of us, it is sad to say—hope for only in the secret parts of our hearts, without any realistic faith that they ever may occur. All of us long for the instant when all the trials and troubles, the waiting and wanting, of life, is gratified in one overwhelming burst of sensation; a few casual comments develop into a conversation of words, looks, inferences and implications, all the subtleties of language spoken or not; a simple exchange becomes an intense delight that flares brilliantly, utterly unexpectedly. Surprise that surpasses amazement, a glimpse of joy exceeding hope, a dazzle of emotions.

But, in fact, defeat too often is our only greeting. The impossibilities of reality far too often confront us, implacable, unyielding; pitilessly, even ruthlessly, refusing such pleasure.

Yet, somehow these moments persist, here and there, by their nature when and where least anticipated. They do occur; tantalizing, precious, fleeting things, sometimes gone before we can grasp them. Sometimes the moment passes inanimately from sheer disbelief or anxiety. Sometimes in desperation we grasp them too tightly and squeeze them till they are bent, misshapen, misunderstood and gone; never, no matter how unrelentingly pursued, never, ever to be reclaimed. Only the most tender handling can preserve such times.

And then, sometimes, these moments display their own initiative, waiting patiently, almost understandingly, to be touched, gripped, held close. With rarity that seems to be little more than pure myth, fortune may favor some lucky ones of us with more than one such moment.

In his chair by the cold, black fireplace, Jerome Pitcher stared at Sara, his watery eyes uncertain, unsure; unsure even in the long unquestioned faith that so often, for so long, had been all that had sustained him. Her voice was so smooth and sweet, like music far away, like the whispering of wind over fields of waving grain.

"I'm always afraid that the next time I'm here, it'll be different somehow, that the farms will be gone, or that it won't be as pretty as I think it was," he heard Sara saying. Her lips pressed together briefly. "But it's always the same. A little piece of paradise, preserved somehow. The fields, the pastures and the horses, the herds of dairy cows; the rows of sprinklers in the sun, the hay rolls, the mountains—as if heaven had picked it out for some special eternity.”

Sara's hand rose until her palm felt the warm window glass. Over her shoulder to her husband: “You know, Jack.” Eyes back out the window, over the fields, toward the mountains. “Whatever trailhead we’re headed for, I’m always looking at houses as we go, dreaming of living here. A nice little ranch house, set back from the road, up a little slope, a pasture for horses in front of it, and a view of the valley stretching away for miles.” Her delicate fingers curled, one by one, in the air, then dropped slowly downward to meet her other hand. “As I dream, I always think that life here would be so perfect….” A short breath lifted her chin. She realized she was talking too much.

The lines on Pitcher's face sank deeper into his wrinkled skin. Sara had to stop. No one could bring back those summer reveries, those inexpressible feelings when neither joy nor future knew any bounds. Yet, when through the screen door an errant breeze entered the house, fluttering the faded old window curtains, he ached for her voice to continue, for the void to be filled somehow.

"It’s silly, I know.” She was shy, almost sheepish. “But—but, it’s like, as I dream, I can almost feel myself here.”

Behind her, Jack coughed lowly. In her periphery, she saw his eyes caution hers, then flick toward Pitcher.

Darkness had swept the old man’s face under the unending, unbearable sadness that has no relief. The bitter helplessness he had felt and fought against for so long had risen again, filling his insides with the agony of every day of his Kathryn’s illness, the sickening feebleness of the hopeless fight against her cancer. Next year. Next year. He always had promised her next year. Till there were no more years to promise.

These people were kind-hearted, no doubt, but they should not have stopped to help. He had not needed them, nor their good intentions. After helping Snowy to her feet, they should have gone, but instead they had followed him to his home and intruded on the foaling of his favorite mare. And now here they were, sitting inside his home—her home—their home—longer than hospitality demanded he let them, talking about—with her talking like she knew—

The summer wind stole again inside the house and fluttered the thin curtains. As the fabric stilled, Sara finally heard the profoundness of the silence behind her. Over her shoulder, seeing the indulgence on her husband's face, a small, embarrassed smile showed her teeth only until she looked at Jerome Pitcher. She turned and the fragile smile vanished as her gaze dropped to the floor. “I’m sorry. I go on, sometimes.”

Pitcher's lips were as white as the fingers that gripped his chair. Inside his chest, the pain was back, the pain that had threatened to suffocate him. His lungs betrayed his very need to breathe. He blinked, once, twice. The sun gleaming off the silver picture frame was too bright for his old eyes. He blinked several more times, rapidly, and felt wetness on his eyelashes.

Sara bit her lip. With one hand, she stayed Jack from speaking. She followed Pitcher’s stare, across the room to the polished silver frame. The old man’s stare seemed so solidly fixed upon the photograph that it would shatter if either moved.

The woman in the photograph was only in her late twenties or early thirties. Kathryn, Sara read again. The weathering of Pitcher's face placed him near seventy. They could not have been married long. Thirty years, she thought. Thirty years, and he still grieves.

Pitcher seemed to be sinking down into his chair, crushed by something unseen. Sara reached out her small hand as if to touch him, to pull him back.

Like an uncoiling spring, Pitcher rose swiftly from his chair and fled the outstretched hand that seemed to be handing his wonderful, terrible memories to him. " 'Bout time to check on that foal." His voice was flinty. "Expect you'll want to be goin', too." He pushed by them, through the screen door and onto the brick stoop.

The sun was low in the sky now, glaring intensely in their eyes as they hurried to follow. Pitcher heard their footsteps behind him but did not stop. Bumping down the porch steps, he headed toward the barn, legs and back working in disharmonious rhythm. His lips were set. He had to carve the new filly's name into a piece of hardwood while it was still fresh in his mind.

Jack urged Sara into the Bronco and climbed into the driver's seat. The truck doors slammed shut and isolated them from the hot yard. Jack started the truck and cranked the wheel. As they started to retrace the long, narrow dirt driveway, Sara could just see Jerome Pitcher's tall, thin outline disappearing into the barn. Her fingertips touched the window of the Bronco.

“Take care," her heart wished.

Chapter Three

Like a moving mirror, the glistening surface of the river winds gently through the valley, reflecting the disc of the full moon and the startlingly brilliant and endless stars in the night sky. Wide and shallow, crystal clear down to the rounded granite stones that form its rough bed, the quietly running water is as cold and pure as the snow that it once was. Softly lapping waves split and sparkle the light of the moon and slowly wave the tall, thin reeds that huddle along the riverbank. The moon seems to glide along the shining surface of the water, until the rolling currents round a bend and the entire river suddenly shimmers with the image of a distant snowy volcanic peak so immense that from a hundred miles away it still fills the distant horizon.

Above the tops of the reeds that line the river stretches the valley floor, a flat, unending, breathtaking sheet of rich, emerald green. Broad pastures run into spreading fields of thick, rich alfalfa that roll like the sea in the cool night breeze, rippling with silver moonlight. At the edges of the fields, peaks of feldspar and serpentine rise without the preamble of foothills from the valley floor to enclose and secrete the valley. Dense stands of tall pines and firs cover the hills, flowing downward toward the bountiful grain fields, where in daylight sparse maples and oaks shade the land.

A thin ribbon of road traverses the length of the valley. Where the rich farmland lies broad between the hills, the highway borders the mountains; where the peaks are within a close mile of each other, the twisting gray path balances on the precipice of the river. A pickup truck of a wayward teenager rolls along the road, heading back from the small town at the valley head. Its yellow headlights casting a feeble gleam ahead of its rumbling engine, it is the only manmade source of light or sound for miles, until it, like the river it follows, rounds a bend and is lost from sight.

As the faintest tinge of yellow appears in the eastern sky, the unearthly wail of a pack of coyote bringing its prey to ground echoes in the hills. At the sound, a mule deer that had been picking its way through the undergrowth bounds away, startling a hunting owl.

Yellow blends with rose, sharpening the outlying ridge lines, dimming the stars. The black of infinite space softens to purple, then fades with time to the blue of a Polynesian sky. Colorful bunches of wildflowers awaken, spotting the hills and dripping onto the crop lands. As the dew on the long needles of the pines begins to evaporate, a black bear lumbers over the crest of the hills toward a mountain tarn. It sniffs the pure, fragrant air and pauses a moment to look back, watching, with shallow understanding, the flickering lights on the valley floor that are the windows of the widely-spaced homes of stirring farmers.

In the sun of the new morning, the undulating sheet of green alfalfa pastures and fields stretches as far as the eye can see, filling the valley like blue water fills a reservoir.

The abundant fields, of alfalfa of such deep green as to defy a more verdant hue, are fenced and crossed-fenced by split rails of wooden posts and sagging barbed wire. Golden sunlight glints off uneven silver lines of irrigation pipes that reach across the fields on spindly, spoked metal wheels as tall as a man, rainbowing the morning sun as they spit streaming arcs of water on the crops.

All around the valley, where the alfalfa does not grow, dairy cattle open their eyes and lower their heads to begin grazing on lush grass. In scattered pastures, saddle horses begin to limber their muscles, feeling the early summer sunlight on their withers; they snort and blow, anticipating their early morning feeding. Clouds float like stretched cotton bolls in a frigid blue sky swept clean by racing winds from the Pacific.

As the dawn grows, as the valley awakens, in a weathered red barn a cold tractor engine coughs, catches and settles into a chugging idle. The iron hitch of a harvester to be towed coldly clangs into place. In front of a rambling, weedy house, a beaten pickup comes, like its owner, to tired life. In corners of the fields, already harvested, green alfalfa rolls cluster together like unbaked loaves of bread.

The sounds of the farmers cross the fields and wash up into the rising granite hills, sending a chattering gray squirrel dashing for a tree and a quail hen scuttering after her children, while on a safe perch high in the pines an old scrub jay greets still another new day with raucous impertinence.

It was all ever-changing and unchanging, month following month, just as one year swiftly began to give way to the next.

Chapter Four

"Uh-oh." From her manager's desk in the finance section of the Kroeber Cadillac dealership in Redding, fifty-seven-year-old Rose Sickles glared across the showroom. Luxury sedans and coupes reflected their gleaming shells in the polished floor and the plate glass windows, but it was the flash of the burgundy Mercedes wheeling into the lot outside that had caught her eye. Without appearing to alter her work, she warned lowly, "Watch out, girls. He's here." A quick turn of her wrist showed her the time. "And only an hour before lunch, too."

The young women at the desks around Rose groaned softly in unison and tried to look even more industrious than they usually did. Rose smoothed the gray hair she had wound into a tight bun on the back of her head and kept a wary eye on the site of the Mercedes. She could just see where it had parked, partially obscured behind a line of freshly-washed Cadillacs.

A moment later, the head and shoulders of thirty-eight-year-old Barry Kroeber rose above the tops of the cars. He turned, deeply-set dark eyes swiftly inspecting his dealership, dry lips set almost grimly beneath his black moustache. He had his father's long face and high forehead, but the lines of his own features had been more sharply drawn. His nose curved upward slightly to a small bulb, while his chin reached a sharp and arrogant point. Above his face, his thick black hair was boyishly cut.

Even from a distance, the dress and demeanor of her boss were apparent to Rose. "He's in a mood," she warned again.

In a whisper that was meant to be heard, Cindy Marklee, fresh from Kansas and one of the youngest of the staff, said, rather imprudently yet forgivably, "Run for the storm cellar, Auntie Em!"

Squinting into the unfiltered winter sun, Rose added, "I think he's got his Yves St. Laurent on today. Must be working on another 'business deal'."

"I can't wait to see this one," Leslie Bryer said without looking up from her keyboard.

Behind Leslie, Carol Martinez tried to make her computer’s spell-check understand that she really had meant to use the word she had typed, but the machine insisted otherwise. She grimaced as she worked. "He asked me to have an expense check waiting for him when he came in, you know."

Leslie buried her head—and her resentment—in her work. "Now I know where our Christmas bonuses always go."

Rose's mouth opened, but closed soundlessly into a thin line. "RHIP," she finally said. "Rank has its privileges."

"And abuses," added Carol.

"Now—" cautioned Rose half-heartedly. For as long as she had worked for him, Barry Kroeber had never possessed the slightest idea of how to run a business or how to treat his employees. He had muddled through solely by instinct and luck—and a few personal attributes that he still valued more highly than anyone who knew him.

Carol gave up trying to correct her errors and opened a new contract document. "At least he'll be gone most of the afternoon."

"Thank God for small favors," murmured Rose.

In the clear mid-November air, Barry Kroeber breathed deeply, trying to shake off the effects of too much red wine the night before. Shutting the door of his Mercedes, he smoothed the lines of his suit over his well-built body and walked briskly over ground that was still fresh from a recent winter rain. Two salesmen standing and talking near the rear of a blue sedan gave ground when he confronted them, even though at two inches shy of six feet he was shorter than both of them.

"Keeping busy?" As always, his deep voice was too loud and artificially enthusiastic.

Both salesmen broke away, like a sea parting, trying to avoid his scrutiny. "Little slow this morning," answered Frank Worley, raising his voice slightly to carry over the rush of automobiles on the busy street next to the dealership.

"Then you'd better get with it," Kroeber said, passing between them. "Before this place goes broke."

Worley glanced incredulously at his partner, Rob Webster, then mouthed a flat, "Yes, sir," to his boss' departing back.

"Get cranking," ordered Kroeber again without looking around.

Worley sighed, a short, unhappy sound. For the last three months, he had led the sales staff in closed deals. He could not crank any harder.

Webster turned a complete circle, searching for customers and spies. So that only Worley could hear, he said, "If he'd keep his crank in his pants, maybe we wouldn't be broke."

A smile seemed to appear on Worley's face, but the look was not pleasant. A pretty young woman named Jo Ann somethingorother had picked up a new Cadillac yesterday, and no one had been able to find the paperwork on the deal. Carol Martinez had told him that such things had happened once or twice before. A short, malicious laugh burst past his lips. "Yeah. He cranks, and we get the shaft."

Nodding bitterly, Webster swiveled at the waist, hunting for anyone who looked like they could be talked into buying a luxury sedan they did not need. As a prospect crossed the line from the sidewalk to the lot and began to peer curiously inside the window of a silver sedan, he tensed. "Turkey on a string," he muttered to Worley as he began to stalk his prey.

Rose Sickles and the rest of her staff kept their heads down as Kroeber whirled in, but he quickly found his office manager anyway.

"How's Sheila doing on that contract?" Taking the expense check that Carol Martinez handed to him, Kroeber hovered over Rose's desk, crowding her, worrying her every action like a starving dog. "There's another guy right behind me trying to buy that building. If I don't get the papers done before noon, they'll sell it right out from under me, and I can't afford to lose it. It's a money-maker."

"Sheila's out today," Rose responded, stone-faced, braced for the inevitable storm.

"Out?" Kroeber's shoulders hunched upward toward his skull and his voice pitched far up the scale until he almost seemed to whine. "What do you mean, out? I'm trying to make a million dollars here!" He impaled each staffer with shifting glances. Out?!"

"Sheila's sick today, Mr. Kroeber," Rose answered quietly, knowing that he would not hear. "I'm having Leslie type it. She's almost as fast."

In one corner, Leslie looked up and pretended to smile.

Instantly mollified, Kroeber's shoulders dropped back downward with his voice. "You're thinking," he commended the obvious. "But have her hurry," he told Rose, scanning the sales forms and reports piled in the in-baskets. "Things are starting to back up."

As her boss hurried deeper into the building and out of earshot, Carol Martinez sniffed, "Things wouldn't back up if you'd let us do our jobs instead of your stupid real estate."

"'You're thinking,'" Cindy mocked.

"Shhh," admonished Rose.

Frank Worley's salesman's eyes searched the perimeter of the outside lot like radar. Abruptly, he found a new target. "Oh, Lord," he said suddenly. His left arm waved frantically behind his back, calling Rob Webster to his side. The younger man ran over quickly, followed Worley's gaze to its end, and sucked in a breath.

"Stacked," hissed Webster.

The slim, young redhead walked onto the lot, violet satin pants suit swishing all over her. The pants were startlingly tight, the wrap-around top held loosely in place by a lightly-tied belt of the same material. Her hairstyle was painfully fresh, her makeup markedly overdone. Despite all that, her face was rather pretty. Unused to her black, spike heels, she walked unsteadily, breasts bouncing freely against the loose folds of her blouse.

"Oh, drop your keys or something," Rob Webster pleaded.

The young women who worked for Rose Sickles saw the girl coming. Their work slowed, then stopped. All recognized Kroeber's 'business appointment'.

"Can you believe that?" Cindy asked, brushing a strand of coarse red hair from her eyes.

"Some pants suit," Carol noted, envious and appreciative at the same time, her extra ten pounds suddenly very heavy on her hips. Out of the corner of her eyes, she saw Cindy glance down at her thin figure, just barely outlined by a soft knit sweater.

Rose sniffed. "Looks more like pajamas to me."

Carol laughed lowly. "That's appropriate."

As if operating on a sixth sense, Barry Kroeber suddenly swept into view from the direction of the service bays, descending on the young woman predatorily, greeting her possessively, examining her appreciatively.

"Pretty ill at ease," noted Carol of the young woman.

"Twenty years younger than he is," Rose adjudged.

Leading the woman toward his Mercedes, Kroeber passed the two salesmen and one wide-eyed customer.

"Business appointment, my eye," Carol snorted. "Who does he think he's fooling?"

For a dozen dealerships over her many years, Rose Sickles had worked long hours and seen many things of which she never would tell. While at her age she no longer coveted any illusions about her own looks, she still remembered what the passions of adultery were like. Drily, without youth's emotions, she told her staff: "His wife, dears."

* * *

The Salmon and Cascade Mountains that form the northern end of the Sacramento River basin and at their widest circumference encircle the City of Redding had become a line of vanilla ice cream cones, their ceaseless peaks iced by snow, smothered by a layer of whipped-cream clouds. While the snow did not reach down into the city, both the rain and the wind that swept the streets carried the merciless cold of the Arctic.

Even sipping a cup of strong, acidic coffee in the customer lounge of her brother's dealership, Diana Robeck felt the chill. Born and raised in the city, like her brother, she thought nothing of the fact that a winter of freezing wind and snow could follow a valley summer in which the rolling brown hills baked in temperatures well over a hundred degrees. But the familiarity of the cycle didn't make her warm.

"I'm sure he'll be back soon," Cindy Marklee said with false sympathy as she made a cup of weak tea. Then, despite herself, she lied for her boss: "He was only having lunch with a company representative to talk about some kind of fleet deal."

Diana helped herself to another stale pastry from a flimsy cardboard box. Judging how she could get the most of the sweet icing into her mouth in one bite, she wiggled the roll far back past her lips, almost touching her tonsils with it before she bit off the remainder. She chewed awkwardly several times, then sipped some more black coffee from her Styrofoam cup. Her cheeks bulged, distorting an oval face that could have had a rough attractiveness about it. She had broad cheekbones, wide, curved lips that too infrequently showed a smile, and a small, dimpled chin. Large, rectangular glasses sat on an ordinary nose. Through the glasses, her small blue eyes resentfully appraised Cindy's lithe figure.

"He's always late," Diana puffed through her mouthful.

Cindy smiled, for lack of anything better to do, and left the room to return to her work.

Diana pulled the coat of her light brown pants suit tighter around her, as if hoping to disguise the slight roundness of her figure. She was not terribly overweight, but the suit, which she had bought at a discount store, hoping it would look more expensive than it did, stretched tightly in spots. Inside her boots, her feet were beginning to hurt. With the loss of some of the excess pounds she had accumulated over her thirty-five years, plus a new wardrobe, some judicious makeup for her pale face and a new style for her long, straight brown hair, she might have been almost as attractive as she had been when posing for her high school yearbook photo. Though deep within her she knew that was true, she never had been able to bring those thoughts or feelings close enough to the surface to seize them and act on them. Sitting heavily on the lumpy couch, she licked her fingers clean of the butter icing from the pastry.

Her brother's raindrop-dotted Mercedes rolled onto the lot as Diana was finishing a magazine article on the private lives of the British royalty. She sensed and saw the arrival, just as the employees, always concerned with the welfare of their employer's sister, moved to notify her.

Barry Kroeber waited in the warm leather driver's seat of his car, oblivious to the fact that he was forcing Diana to jog across the open lot from the showroom with only her purse as meager cover from the rain. As she ran, the Mercedes' wipers cleared the windshield with intermittent, imperial sweeps.

Barely glancing at his sister as she tumbled into the passenger seat and tugged the door closed, Kroeber pulled the shift lever on the center console backward and into gear. He released the parking brake before Diana had her seat belt buckled.

"You could've been on time," she complained, short of breath. "It's past two o'clock."

"You could've brought an umbrella." He had no humor for his sister.

Diana wiped the rain from her face with a twisted piece of pink facial tissue she had found in her purse. "We're not going to be there for hours."

"Looks like it."

"And even if we do get there before dark, what makes you think he'll be any more agreeable this time than the last?"

Kroeber shifted crookedly in his seat. "It's too good a deal this time. It's a guaranteed moneymaker. And he'll be over seventy this year. He's getting too old to stay there by himself. Why would he pass it up?"

Settling in for the ride, Diana thought out loud: "Same reason he always has. He doesn't want us to have it." Her cheeks burned as repressed anger clenched her teeth. Barry had known his father, if only for a couple of years, but between Diana's conception and her birth, Mitchell Pitcher had died in combat in Korea. Her mother had remarried only eight months after Diana's birth, to hapless Harold Kroeber. Poor Harold had poorer luck; his equipment rental business had gone bankrupt and the marriage had ended in divorce a few short years later, about the same time that Diana's grandparents had passed away. Sorrow had given the family little respite over those years.

Franklin and Irene Pitcher had never really known or cared for their grandchildren, and their wills had left their entire estate to their one living child. Decades later, that which Diana had thought would someday be rightfully hers, Jerome Pitcher still held all to himself.

Kroeber seemed optimistic, unconcerned, one hand draped over the rim of the steering wheel as they climbed and descended the mountains and bridged the many fingers of Lake Shasta. "Well, we'll see. If it looks like he hasn't changed his mind, we won't waste our time. I've gotta get back to the store anyway."

Diana bit her lip and fixed her gaze out the window, watching the mountainous country pass by. She felt the acid in her stomach, but did not fool herself into thinking that it was only the strong coffee she had ingested. The recurrence of the symptoms of what she was sure was an ulcer, plus a bitter, weak, helpless feeling, were the signs that she was beginning to sink into the sullen depression that had plagued her for so many years. The feelings intensified with a quick glance to her left.

Barry could afford to be cavalier. His dealership and real estate holdings were worth many hundreds of times the value of the small house that Diana occupied with her husband, Phil Robeck, and her two teenaged children.

A deep sigh lifted and lowered her chest. Despite the thoughtless failure of their father to provide before he died for her and her brother, and despite their mother's terribly poor choice of Harold Kroeber as her new husband, Barry had prospered. While Diana had struggled to find a way out of the hole her mother and father had left her in, Barry had become increasingly more affluent. While she viewed each morning and each day of clerking in Robert's Stationery Store with dread, Barry seemed to be driven by endless energy. While she turned her face from the world, he seemed to meet it and even conquer it. She threw an even more resentful glance at him. He did not have to look to their stolen inheritance for his future.

Kroeber sped up the concrete Interstate without regard to safety. As the daylight dimmed with the late afternoon and the darkening of the storm clouds, the land, wet with rain and patched by new-fallen snow, turned to scrubby country suitable for little more than grazing livestock. Within several hours, as thunderstorms flashed with soundless lightening over the distant Oregon border, they dropped from the high desert they had been traversing, and green began to return to the hills and fields.

Diana had been quiet for most of the drive. Kroeber did not appear to have noticed, dividing his concentration between his driving, playing with the climate control and flicking among country-western stations on the FM stereo. When he finally found the freeway turnoff he wanted, Diana sat up and brushed her hair. "Almost there," she said needlessly.

Twenty miles of familiar two-lane road flashed by under the wheels of the Mercedes. As they crested the last hill, the green valley, rimmed by the snowy, forested mountains, spread out before them. The winding river glistened among the emerald fields, reflecting the setting sun. The daylight on the land was all the more beautiful for the ominous black clouds of the winter thunderstorm hanging to the north. "Mmm-hmmm," Kroeber breathed.

"God, what a sight," Diana had to admit. "Think of what the investors would say if they could see this."

Kroeber laughed once; short, sharp. "Think of what they'd pay, you mean."

Isolated in the heart of the county, tourism had yet to taint Smith's Fork, the little town at the head of the valley. The Postal Service had graced it with its own Post Office and ZIP code, the Forest Service maintained a small Ranger Station and several real estate firms did a small business, but other than that the settlement had changed little over its hundred-year history. Feed stores, hardware stores and farm equipment stores were the backbone of the economy. Several sporting goods shops and more than a few bars were squeezed in along the one main street. Just on the other side of the shops were the first residential neighborhoods, with beautifully built and maintained homes that in places like San Francisco would have sold for small fortunes. Three churches held prominent places in the small concentration of buildings that passed for a downtown area, for though the official population of the town was less than five hundred, the farmers and ranchers and recluses in the distant canyons could swell that number several times over.

Kroeber's Mercedes was starkly out of place among the many pickup trucks, utility vehicles and older sedans that spotted the narrow streets and the parking lot of the one modern grocery store. The expensive burgundy sedan drew stares, a few curious, a few hostile, as it slowly passed through. With no major cross street, their progress was unbroken by a single traffic light or stop sign.

A few minutes after leaving the town, the entrance to Jerome Pitcher's place came into view.

"Hasn't changed a thing," Kroeber noted with disdain as he turned onto the driveway. "Same old posts. Gonna rot out pretty soon—if they haven't already. Then what'd he do?"

"Leave them there," Diana answered, and they smiled knowingly at each other.

The white house with the gray roof at the end of the dirt road seemed deserted. The windows were dark, and no vehicles were visible. The barn, too, was dark and empty.

"He'd better be here." Kroeber was not a forgiving man.

"You told him we were coming?"

"Of course."

Diana waited in the sedan while Kroeber trotted up the porch steps and banged on the screen door. Cold wind tugged at his clothes as he waited. He paused only a few seconds before trying to peer through the old, lacy curtains on the windows of the dark front room. Turning a disgusted face toward the car, he banged on the door one more time, waited a few more seconds, then returned to the Mercedes.

"God damn old man," he swore as he buckled his seat belt into place.

"I'm not surprised." Diana shook her head.

"He's a god damn old man," Kroeber insisted, throwing the car into reverse and wheeling it about. "I told him we were coming. Now, he's probably out in some field somewhere with his frigging horses. And we came all the way up here, just so he wouldn't have to drive. Two god damn hours on the road, just to be nice, and he's not even here. Jesus!" The sedan flew along the dirt road back to the asphalt highway.

As Kroeber turned the car back toward town, Diana curled up in her seat, leaning against the passenger door. A long, low sigh hissed from her. "Just can't win," she breathed, face to the cold glass of the window. Her uncle had beaten her again. "Just can't win."

Kroeber played his anger out in his driving, racing around the sweeping turns at nearly twice the speed limit. Diana hung onto the door handle, saying nothing as she rocked back and forth with the car.

Just outside town, a dirty, red four-wheel-drive pickup with a roll bar studded with lights more than halved their speed. "Oh, great," Kroeber fumed, one hand on the wheel, the other on the gearshift lever. As they entered the little town, the pickup truck slowed even more. Advancing gray clouds cloaked the sky as the sun began to set. Kroeber leaned to his left, trying to see what might be delaying them. "Come on, you yahoos." He shifted in his seat. "Like, I really want to drive two hours home at night in the rain, you know?"

The pickup slowed even more as it swung off the road toward a small bar. The driver of the truck parked next to a gray GMC pickup as Kroeber pressed the accelerator of the Mercedes and the sedan smoothly surged ahead. Diana's mind had slowed, but as they picked up speed, she said, "Barry, wasn't that Jerome's truck?"

The Mercedes's nose dipped and wobbled as Kroeber braked and twisted in his seat to look behind them. "Where?"

Pushing herself back up into the seat, Diana scanned the outside mirror. "Back there, at the bar. That old gray pickup. Isn't that the one he drives?"

"We'll find out." Reversing direction, Kroeber retraced their course, stopped on the street in front of the bar, and squinted at the truck for only a moment. "That's the one." He slipped his big sedan between the red pickup and an equally dirty Blazer and climbed out.

The dark bar was small, but almost empty. As sunset neared, the farmers and ranchers who would fill the chairs and line the bar rail still had hours of work ahead of them. The short wooden bar counter ran along the left wall. Near tap handles for Budweiser and Coors stood a middle-aged man in a dark green shirt with brightly colored suspenders, wiping the wooden surface clean. The rest of the place was wide open, with just round wooden tables and chairs, but no booths. The driver of the red pickup had joined two other men at a table in the far corner. They were all dressed much alike, in blue jeans, plaid shirts of various colors, well-worn cowboy boots, and down vests or short jackets. Their low conversation did not stop as Kroeber walked in, but they all looked at him, noticing his suit and the silk tie knotted over a gold collar stay, his shiny black loafers, his soft hands. A faint, knowing smile touched the face of the driver of the pickup before he turned his attention back to his friends.

Kroeber noticed nothing but Jerome Pitcher. The old man was at the far end of the bar, his back to the door. The counter supported his left arm as he leaned against it, while a glass of beer was held lightly in his right hand. A long, tan sheepskin coat hung loosely over a red and white tattersall shirt and faded blue jeans. He was staring up at a small color television on a shelf on the back wall. The evening news was playing.

Kroeber strode to Pitcher, laid one hand on the bar and stretched his neck to try to view Pitcher's long face. His loud voice seemed bold. "Jerome! What are you doing here?"

Pitcher turned his head slightly, displaying little recognition of Kroeber. He lifted his glass slightly. "Tryin’ to have a beer."

Kroeber's jaw flexed as his eyes narrowed. Reading his uncle always had been almost impossible for him. "Diana's out in the car. We were just at your house."

Turning to face the bar, Pitcher sipped from his glass, then set it down on a damp napkin with a grimace. The pleasure of a rare evening away from his home already had been ruined. "Is she? Why for?" Row upon row of liquor bottles beneath the mirror on the wall across from him seemed to hold his attention.

Kroeber stared, mind working, dark eyes glinting. "I called you last week about coming up today to your house to talk to you."

Shrugging, Pitcher lifted his glass again. He remembered the unwanted call. The conversation had been one-sided. "Never said anybody'd be there." He sipped.

Fingers leaving furrows in his thick black hair, Kroeber breathed heavily. Pitcher was not an easy man to talk to. He leaned forward. "I thought I told you—"

At last, Pitcher turned his eyes on the younger, shorter man. "Don't really like bein' told things, you know."

Behind the bar, the man in the green shirt wiped a glass and smiled appreciatively.

Teeth grating with a painful smile, Kroeber leaned still farther toward his uncle and swore as quietly as he could. "Well, god damn, what in the fucking hell did you think we were driving all the way up here for?"

Setting down his glass and slipping his hands into the pockets of his coat, Pitcher displayed little concern. He had no time for pushy, pompous, vulgar men, even if they were his brother's son. "Didn't much care."

Kroeber checked the three men in the corner. They were occasionally glancing over with more than casual interest. His cheeks flapped as he puffed out a breath.

"Buying anything today, mister?"

Pausing, quelling his temper before turning to answer the bartender’s question, Kroeber said casually, "Just a draft." He tossed some money on the bar. Then, he lowered his voice and to Pitcher said, "We just want to talk to you."

"You're doin' that."

A swallow from the drink that the bartender gave him went down Kroeber's throat like a rock. Deliberately, he set down the frosted glass. He was approaching this like a family squabble, and he shouldn't. It was a business deal. That was all. A difficult business deal. His uncle could be stubborn, but so could he. No one could outlast him in hardball negotiations.

His voice deepened into a deceptively conspiratorial tone he liked to use with opponents. "I'm putting together a package with some other people, Jerome," he said lowly. "It's a big deal. Big." His eyebrows rose and fell as his head nodded once. "If the numbers work—and believe me they will—we all stand to turn one hell of a profit. The investors'll make a hundred percent on what they put up. You'll make a thousand—and you won't have to put up anything. How does that sound?"

As Kroeber spoke, a faint tinge of color came to Pitcher's long, plain face. His nephew's words buzzed in his ears like the summer mosquitoes that plagued him so, swarming, then fleeing, then swarming again. His voice gained a sharp edge. "You at that again?"

Hands spreading innocently, Kroeber backed off slightly, knowing he could push Pitcher only so far. "We've talked about this before, I know," he admitted, "but this is totally different. We've got something else in mind. Something much bigger. I've already got the blueprints drawn up. You won't believe how it'll change the valley. We're already getting the backing. People are buying in left and right. It's that special. A guaranteed moneymaker. All we need is you. You're the key." His head dipped as his eyebrows shot up, a hook that almost never failed.

Pain and anger twirled together as Pitcher's chin sank toward his chest. The valley couldn't change. If his nephew didn't understand that, he was a far sight less intelligent than he seemed. If he did, he was a ruthless man. Either way, it made no difference. Flatly, Pitcher said, "Wastin' your time."

Internally, angrily, Kroeber marveled. The old man just didn't understand the value of money. "Jerome, you could come out of this very well off."

Pitcher's chin rose proudly. "Doin' fine now."

Kroeber stared into the golden liquid bubbling in his glass. "You could be doing a lot better. It's a good deal, believe me. A sweet deal. A moneymaker."

"Don't need more money."

"Think, though." Kroeber's exasperation almost burst through his practiced veneer. "You could buy a new house, build a new barn."

Pitcher's gray eyes widened, and he straightened slightly. "Your grandad and grandma built that place."

"You can keep the house, then."

"Gonna do that anyway."

Kroeber gave in to his exasperation. Buyers at the dealership could be stubborn, but getting them to name their bottom dollar always left them open for negotiation, then the kill. "Look, Je-rome," he said, mocking his uncle by his pronunciation. "You tell me. What will it take to get you to go along with this? You tell me."

"Told you before," Pitcher almost snapped. "More'n once, too."

Frustration squeezed the younger man's face, crinkling lines in his skin. He just could not keep his salesman’s demeanor. "You've got no reason to hang on to it, anymore, damn it! You're getting old. You don't use it anyway."

A frown deepened the curve of Pitcher's mouth. Kroeber didn't understand. He was trying to take everything away, and he didn't even begin to understand.

Kroeber lowered his voice again, shifting as quickly as he taught his salesmen to do, and again leaned toward his uncle. "It'd mean an awful lot to Diana, you know," he confided. "She hasn't got much. Dad would have left half of it to her, if he could've."

Pitcher's jaw worked soundlessly for a moment. His brother would have done many great things, had it not been for the war. Many great things. But his were not the only dreams lost. His lips pressed firm. "Didn't work out that way."

For a moment, Kroeber knew the churning resentment that Diana lived with every day. "Jerome, you know that Dad would've left us his share. Part of it's ours."

Pitcher's face seemed to grow more flushed. "Ain't so."

Kroeber stretched his jaw and with one hand wrung the curled edge of the wooden bar. "Well, it should be. And, you know, Dad would've wanted you to sell it to us—at least our share."

Growing anger drained Pitcher's face and narrowed his eyes. His features lengthened as his heart beat harder. "You don't know nothin' ‘bout what your Dad wanted."

"Mom always said—”

Pitcher struck swiftly. "Your mom married Harry Kroeber 'fore Mitch was cold in the ground. She can't speak for him. No more'n you can."

Kroeber's next words died in his throat. He stared at his uncle until, finally, he found that his ego could not let the humiliation go unanswered. In a voice of gravel, he said, "It was eighteen months, Jerome."

Pitcher's mouth twisted. The dislike he had always felt for his nephew was ripening into disgust. "You don't even go by his name."

Kroeber felt like a small child again, being scolded by the uncle he had known little but feared much. "I was ten years old before I even knew Harry wasn't my father. Even then I didn't know what my name really was."

"You know now."

They stared at each other for long seconds, an eternity. Pairs of eyes watched their backs, straining for the next words. Finally, Kroeber broke loose. He had been wrong. This was not business. From deep within him, he found the weak point, and the knife he could use to cut it. Softly, he asked, "Is that all you want to do? Sit there with your horses until you die? Is that all? Don't you think that's crazy? It sounds crazy to me. It’ll sound crazy to a lot of people, maybe a court. They might think you should be in a conservatorship. Should I get a conservatorship over you, Jerome?"

Pitcher's eyes glinted. He had not truly hated his nephew until this very moment. "Don't see it that way."

"No, of course you don't." Kroeber heard his voice and knew he was at his best. "You don't have any children. You don't have any family, besides Diana and me. So we'll get it all, eventually, and then we'll go ahead with the plans anyway. Don't you understand that?"

Pitcher's breath sounded roughly, pouring in and out of his lungs. His shoulders drew back. His seventy-first birthday was only a few months away. He had seen his own grandfather at seventy-nine slowly yield to a brain disease that no one had understood. The doctors had always told his father and even himself that it could happen again. His face grew red as the fingers gripping his beer glass turned almost white. As he thought of himself in an antiseptic white hospital bed, and his home—Kathryn's home—in the hands of the man standing before him, his pulse began throbbing violently on his temple. A strange numbness invaded the fingers and toes of his left side. Staring at his nephew, the deadened sensation began to spread, touching the muscles of his face. He shook his head, but the feeling would not leave him. "Won't give it up," he declared.

The three men in the corner had stopped talking. The driver of the red pickup truck stood, his chair noisily scraping the floor. The bartender pushed himself off the cash register, watching critically. On the television set, the news gave way to a series of commercials.

Kroeber did not falter despite the looks on the faces of the men around him. He had never granted any quarter in his business deals, and he would not do so now. "Think about it," he commanded his uncle. "You're letting it go to waste. You're missing your big chance. If you keep waiting, your chance'll be gone, and you won't be able to get it back." He lowered his voice as he moved in for the kill. "You'll have done just what you did to Kathryn."

Pitcher's face distorted. The barroom was beginning to spin and heave, as if it were a cabin on a ship in a storm, and the movement was making his head ache terribly. But he could still see Kroeber's face in front of him, still see the young man's arrogant smirk, a smirk Kroeber always seemed to have no matter what he was doing. Pitcher’s eyes narrowed as his lips peeled back from his teeth. A broken breath passed his teeth as nausea seized his insides. Suddenly, he slammed his glass on top of the bar, splashing beer over his hand, the polished oak, his faded sleeve. Digging his hands into his coat pockets, he stepped toward the dimly-seen, shifting door, driving his shoulder into Kroeber's chest, knocking him back hard against the bar.

"Miserable little son-of-a-bitch," he said to himself.

Chapter Five

At the beginning of the long winter, out of some poorly-learned and half-forgotten duty, Diana Robeck and Barry Kroeber visited their uncle in his hospital bed at least once every week. While winter storms shrouded the mountaintops with clouds and sheeted the steep volcanic slopes with snow, while the great basin of Lake Shasta swelled with runoff and the Sacramento River crept insidiously toward the tops of its leveed banks, Kroeber drove his sister to the small county hospital every Wednesday. A special visit at Christmas seemed to justify skipping the next several regular trips, and when the new year began they found that they were driving up only once every three weeks or so.

Kroeber's fault was never to be mentioned, if it ever was thought. His sister and he would dress nicely and enter the private room as if they always expected to see Pitcher sitting up and reading, as if they had nothing in their hearts but love for the old and stricken man. Once alone, Diana would replace a small, wilting basket of flowers on the side table with a freshly-bought but still stale bouquet from the hospital gift shop. Kroeber would mutter a greeting to his uncle, then stand and stare out the window of the County General Hospital in Ash Creek.

Every visit, his thoughts returned to that cold, bleak day in Smith's Fork. Before he had even called for help, volunteer emergency personnel had come running from up and down the street. A surveyor, still in her safety vest; a mechanic in his coveralls; a pretty young real estate agent in high heels and a short dress. All had been quick, concerned and professional, but Kroeber had found his interest drawn more to the pretty young woman than to his fallen uncle.

Long minutes after the call for help had gone out, the sole, small fire truck in the service of Smith's Fork had arrived, pulling up in front of the bar, siren screaming, red lights flashing. Firefighters trained as emergency medical technicians had begun pulling boxes from panels on the side of the truck. Many minutes later, the ambulance from Ash Creek had rolled up and attendants in institutional green scrubs and purple nitrile gloves had thrown open the rear doors. On a collapsible gurney, Pitcher had been shoved into that gaping maw and the vehicle that had consumed him had sped away.

Kroeber had wished ever since that the life-savers had never arrived, but he had said nothing to anyone. When he had called the 911 emergency number, he had not been thinking; yet, had he been aware of what he was doing, he still would have had no other choice. With his aged uncle sprawled face down on the cold concrete of the weathered sidewalk in front of the small bar, with wary-eyed, expectant people grouped all about him, he had to call. The crowd had gathered so quickly, with the immediate, honest concern of those who live together in a small country town. He could not possibly have just stood there, in his city suit and manners, and watched his uncle die. He had to have called.

But day after day he wished he had not. He wished it then, and he wished it now. It would have been so easy. And Diana had never let him forget that.

After several weeks, they had stopped seeking updates from Peter Whistler, the portly doctor in overall charge of the intensive care unit and Pitcher's case in particular. Now, if their short stay happened to coincide with the visit of one of the female nurses or technicians who came in periodically to check on the catheters, IV's, respirators and other mute, blinking machines that cared robotically for Pitcher, Kroeber would exchange a few words with the woman. Perhaps, if the woman was particularly attractive, the conversation would last a few minutes longer than normal, and sometimes some tidbit of information would be passed—to be quickly forgotten. Always, though, the give and take was the same: Any change?

No, no response.

How long can he hang on?

No telling when someone will come out of a coma.

Diana would sit in a chair at the end of the bed, sometimes pretending to read a magazine, sometimes pretending to listen to Kroeber talk, but mostly wishing that she did not have to be where she was, that this dreadful situation would end somehow, that her life would finally change for the better. And so the days crept past.

* * *

The county general hospital was a single-story, rambling structure built four decades earlier, and its aging exterior seemed to crumble and sag a little more every year. That day, the day that had started it all, by accident, the hospital had been wet. Rain had soaked into the stucco walls in spots, buildings gathered protectively together under the ominous black clouds of a looming thunderstorm, and the whole collection had seemed dreary and run-down, unlike a hospital at all. In the hallway of the ICU, where Pitcher had been taken after his emergency surgery, sitting in a plastic and steel chair near the nurse's station, had been Peter Whistler. A short, rotund man in his late fifties with thinning black hair and an even thinner black beard, the doctor had smothered the chair. Striped suspenders had held gray tick slacks up around his protruding belly.

He had walked without bouncing, Kroeber remembered, as if he had been floating, as if his feet had been just moving in air. His forearms had swung in front of his thighs, swiveling at the elbows, rather than pivoting at the shoulder and swinging at his sides. His round, fleshy face had appeared as a picture of abiding depression, an expression Kroeber and his sister had learned to expect. In his manner, Diana had even seemed to find some kind of peculiar solace.

Whistler had caught them with his eyes and pulled them from the hallway with a crooked finger. When they had neared, he had spoken to them in a deep, brisk voice. "His temperature, pulse and blood pressure have all been climbing ever since he was released from ICU. That can mean several things, none of them good. For a long-term prognosis, it's not good at all." He paused to see their reaction. There was none. "In fact," he continued, "there might not be much of a long-term prognosis. It can mean that we're on a final course, if you understand."

"Go on," Kroeber had said, with just the right touch of trepidation.

Whistler had gauged them, seen nothing, and continued. "There's one other thing. He's on anticoagulants and penicillin, and his white count isn't bad, but with a progression this quick and the labor his respirations are going through, I'm worried about complications." Waiting, to the blank faces before him he finally had said, leaning forward slightly as he did, "Pneumonia? MRSA? Embolisms?"

"Oh," Diana had said, as if she had understood.

Whistler had been emphatic. "I've got to be absolutely sure. I've got the history you gave to the admitting nurse, but I want to ask you again myself. Is there any history of hypertension, cardiovascular disease, arteriosclerosis, Alzheimer’s, or anything like that?" From his fat, depressed face, his dark eyes had probed them.

Kroeber had been forced by his own thoughts to clear his throat. He had tried to appear so concerned, so worried. With Diana's pitiful expression, they easily were the sick at heart but still loving niece and nephew. They had acted beautifully, all the while wishing they could simply turn their backs and walk away. Just turn from it all. Just let it happen.

"Not that we know of, doctor," he had said instead, closing his mouth and keeping his wishes within him, keeping to himself the knowledge that he and his sister had talked to their uncle perhaps once every other year. Hiding the fact that they knew almost nothing of his medical history, if indeed there was any.

"Any venereal diseases?" Whistler had asked, eyes hunting as much as his questions for any morsel of information.

Kroeber had blinked at a question that Jo Ann somethingorother had recently had the effrontery to ask him. "I really doubt it."

"Arthritis? Bursitis? Rheumatism? Anything systemic?"

Kroeber's shoulders had plunged up and down as a half-remembered picture of Pitcher's clawing, calloused hands had come to mind. "He had arthritis, I think." Lies were better with a grain of truth in them.

"How about pulmonary problems? Does he have any history of any kind of pulmonary problems? Edema, pleurisy, COPD? Emphysema or interstitial fibrosis—scarring of the lungs? Pneumoconiosis—coal miner's disease? Anything like that? Anything that might be there but not necessarily show up on X-ray? Anything I've got to worry about? If you think there's something, we can send him down to Redding for a CAT scan." Whistler had burned intensely, flaring in a few seconds from a smoldering pile to a bonfire. "No? How about hay fever? Allergies? Asthma? Allergic reactions? Anything? Even once?"

As Kroeber had tried to answer all the questions all at once, Diana, staring at the floor, had finally admitted, "We weren't that close, doctor."

Whistler had glared at her, and Kroeber had feared that the doctor could see right through her. Whistler's first position out of the UC Davis medical school had been a direct appointment as a Captain in the United States Army, and he had learned a lot about dealing with recalcitrant people from the regular Army officers with whom he had served.

"You're his closest relatives, people," the chief of surgery had said sharply. "You're all I've got. You know him best. He can't tell me anything. He's lying there in an apoplectic coma. He's fighting harder than anybody I've ever seen, but he's in exanimation, and I don't like the course he's starting to run. I can't do much of anything except try to keep him alive and wait for him to come out of it. And if I'm going to do that, you've got to help me. I have to know everything I can about him. Every last thing."

Unschooled in sales, Diana had been unable to keep resentment from her face. Her brother, though, knew the art of guile, and had assumed his most innocent, apologetic air.

"Doctor, Jerome wasn't the kind of man who complained a lot." Kroeber had smiled inwardly at the thought that twice in two minutes he had actually told the truth. "We lived a long way from each other for years, and you simply couldn't get him to talk on the telephone." Pay for it, Jerome, he had thought. "As far as I know, he was pretty healthy." Then, he had asked plaintively, "We want to help, but what else can we do?"

Whistler's exhale had been all too unhappy.

Kroeber had continued anyway, carefully crafting his tone to hide the total absence of any intent to fulfill the offer he was about to make. "If you think it'd be helpful," he had said in a way that so often had pushed a reluctant buyer over the edge and into years of high-interest debt, "Diana and I can go over to the valley and see if his friends or neighbors know anything."

Nodding slowly, apparently relieved, Whistler had said, "That might help, if you could do that."

Finally seeing her brother's plan, Diana had joined in: "We'll try, doctor," she had promised. "We'll start tomorrow."

Taking a half step away from them, Whistler had paused. Kroeber remembered that small, half-twisting step as exactly the same as the movement that his grade school principal had taken toward him just before administering the one caning of his life.

Swiveling at the waist, Peter Whistler, M. D., had pointed a stubby finger their way. His voice had conveyed his words without the slightest slack. "You'd better hurry," he had said.

* * *

"Fourteen weeks."

Kroeber tightened the collar of his raincoat around his neck and tried to walk faster down the sidewalk toward the small, low hospital. Rain wet his face as wind ruffled his thick, black hair. Cars rushed by on the state highway behind him. Slow to follow, Diana hurried from the Mercedes in an irregular, jerky walk. "It's been fourteen weeks since he got out of surgery, do you know that?" he called back to her.

Diana did not answer. The hours sitting outside the emergency room while the doctors had dealt with Pitcher's cerebral hemorrhage would never leave her. She would never forget the sad, discouraging joy that she had felt each time the doctors had told her that Pitcher was improving or was pulling through. She knew exactly how many days and hours her torture had lasted, how many times she had made this walk, how many times she had passed through the hospital lobby. All she had been able to think of for more than three months was why bad things always, always happened to her.

"It's going to be spring in a couple of months, for God's sake," Kroeber complained as they passed by the elderly volunteers at the front desk. "Snow'll melt, ground'll thaw...." He thought of huge yellow machines on segmented tracks belching diesel fumes as they moved tons of dark brown earth in bright sunlight.

"Hell." He could not sell any more memberships in the golf club, or presell any more home sites until the construction permits and contracts were signed. And he could not have that done until the land was his. The visage of waiting, Methuselah-like, for payment squelched his next words. Instead, he said once again, to no one in particular: "Fourteen god damn weeks." He grunted. "And he'll probably be here another three god damn months from now."

As they entered the hospital, Diana nodded and finally spoke. "And another six months after that" she prophesied.

* * *

The long drive home in the Mercedes was quiet. Diana's shoulder leaned against the passenger door, her winter coat draped over her, eyeglasses in her pocket, eyelids fluttering with sleep. Occasionally, Kroeber's fingers strayed over the stereo buttons, but he let the radio remain silent.

"This is killing us, you know," he said after fifty miles of freeway had passed beneath them.

"What?" Diana asked thickly, opening her eyes long enough to look about at the sodden green land and the gray sky.

Kroeber's head dipped with his thoughts. "Him, and us, too. All because the doctor—" he never had been able to remember the surgeon's name "—said, just after the surgery, that we were Jerome's closest relatives. Remember? And he was right. We're the ones who knew him best. So we go around playing like all we care about is what's best for him, what he would want, and we end up fucking ourselves."

Sighing, repulsed by the profanity she heard all too much in her own house, Diana scrunched around on her seat and tucked her coat farther up under her chin. "Uh-huh."

Kroeber exhaled heavily through his nose. "We wring our hands and tell them to do everything they can, 'cause we know Jerome'd want to fight this, so they do—and every day they keep the old bastard alive, we lose a small fortune."

Diana's mouth opened, as if she was about to comment, but her lips closed without uttering a word. With a grunt, she nestled deeper into the leather seat.

Kroeber swore again, under his breath. He was unused to being thwarted, unused to being deprived of what he wanted or having to wait for it. Diana wouldn't talk about it because she didn't understand. She had never had a deep thought in her life, in his opinion, and she never would.

Bitter, he steered the car in silence as the road unwound its miles. "Just killing us both," he said to the slick gray pavement. As Diana's body began to go limp, as she drifted off into a shallow, dreamless, numbing sleep, she mumbled, as if bowing to her two errant teenagers, "Whatever you say."

* * *

The unrolled sheets of the spool of stark white paper were held in place on Kroeber's desk in his office at his dealership by a motley collection: a porcelain coffee mug with a naked woman draped over the edge, her legs forming the handle; a set of plastic laughing teeth from a novelty shop; a cheap plastic trophy "won" for surviving a guided rafting trip on a calm river; and another coffee mug with a confrontational and profane statement imprinted on it. On the paper itself, the purplish-blue ink of an architect's pen traced the plot plans that obsessed Kroeber's thoughts.

Kroeber himself stood behind his desk, bouncing his slim golden pen in his fingers up and down in the air, occasionally tapping the end of the instrument against the edge of the paper.

Cathy Welch watched the pen rising and falling and listened with little interest. Sitting to Kroeber's right, legs and arms crossed, bent forward, all she could think about was going home. She hardly knew her second cousin, but what little she did know of Barry Kroeber, she did not like.

Kroeber's eyes roamed appreciatively over the shapely legs that extended from Cathy's short skirt, and the large, pendulous breasts beneath the clinging material of her blouse. She was the kind of woman who could not conceal her attractive figure beneath any kind of clothes. Despite the extra makeup on her face and the overly-elaborate styling of her curly, reddish-blonde hair, he began to wonder, as he did every time he saw her, whether there was some sort of taboo against second cousins.

To the left of Kroeber's desk stood Bruce Adamek. Every aspect of him, from the thin arms he crossed over his thin chest, to the thin legs that supported his tall body, seemed on the edge of emaciation and belied the marathoner that he was. As old as his other two cousins, Adamek's long, uneven face seemed fascinated. "How long have you been working on this?"

Kroeber smiled slightly, recognizing from the question the first signs of mental conquest. Ignoring the inquiry in order to prove his superior position, he replied, "We're almost into spring. Before summer's over, they can get the grading done and the foundations poured and the model homes built. By fall, if we start now, we can have at least half the memberships and sites locked in, in my estimate. And, as you can appreciate, I've done this before."

"Huh," Adamek mused.

"You can't beat the return," Kroeber said, casting a glance at Cathy, but concentrating on Adamek. His pen circled, indicating the entire development. "If we get all the land we're after, we'll still have more than half left over after all the plans are built out. Obviously, that'll leave a lot of room for expansion. Room for profit."

Adamek inched closer to the desk, peering down the overhead view of the site design in the architect's drawings. "A hundred luxury homes, each on half an acre." His forefinger drew a line across his lips. "What kind of profit would you expect per unit?"

Kroeber drew a deep, satisfied breath. He had one cousin almost convinced. "The land is ours, or almost ours. The only cost, then, is the construction. I'd expect a minimum, a minimum, of one hundred seventy-five thousand average net profit. Per unit." He turned and smiled at Cathy.

The narrow eyebrows on Adamek's face arched up his high forehead. "That's—" He, too, looked at Cathy, unable to do the math in his head.

"Split four ways," Kroeber added meaningfully, though the actual split would be many times that. "Not to mention the golf club memberships, green fees, the tennis club memberships, the swim club memberships, the ski club memberships, guided trip fees—and of course, the yearly association dues."

Cathy's back straightened as she sat up, a movement that Kroeber appreciated. She said with true disbelief, "You're talking about tens of millions of dollars."

Kroeber smiled, almost boyishly. "You're thinking."

The sudden fever that had come to Cathy's eyes before Kroeber had spoken suddenly drained away. Her face grew set. "Come on. What makes you think people would pay that much to live or visit some place like this? Isn't it awfully far from anywhere? I mean, what in the world would entice anybody to come here? I had trouble just getting up enough energy to drive up here from Sacramento."

Gathering himself as he took in and let out one long breath, Kroeber smiled with an unmistakable air of long-practiced superiority. "They'll do it," his head nodded. "If we have to, we'll have a special shuttle from the county airport. Hell, we'll build a new airport."

He dropped into his salesman's voice and manner. "And besides, have you looked at the site? Have you ever seen anything like it? Nobody has. There isn't any place like it. It's as unique as it is beautiful. People would pay anything to get their hands on a piece of it. I mean, even if they never did anything, even if they never set foot on the championship golf course or jogged a single step on the jogging path or skied one run down their own private mountain—" he tapped the uneven concentric topographic rings of a peak, where gashes of proposed clear-cutting depicted several ski slopes and lifts "—they could sit in their living rooms all day long and look out their picture windows, and still feel that they got their money's worth."

Dollar signs glowed in the pupils of Adamek's eyes.

To add the icing to the cake, Kroeber said suggestively, "And imagine what you could get for your interest—should you for some reason want to sell at some point in the future."

Cathy felt her head begin to nod in agreement, as if she had reached a decision without knowing it. "Millions," she said, her voice, too, in awe of the words that might apply simultaneously to both dollars in the abstract and her own wealth in particular.

"That's right," Kroeber tried to push her further. "A four-way partnership, even five ways, if we count your husband—"

"It's his money. We'd have to."

"—could net each partner millions."

Cathy drew in a reluctant breath as Adamek leaned over the table. He said, "The entrance—?"

Kroeber counted one cousin in his pocket. He answered with the same well-rehearsed speech that he had given to the banks that had agreed to fund ninety percent of the loan, providing he could locate private investors who would contribute the remainder. "They're going to take the entrance road right down the driveway to Jerome's homestead." He suppressed a desire to gloat. "Of course, we expect some trouble from the various farmers on the surrounding land, but nothing we can't overcome."

"You'll never recognize it." He could picture the words of the slick advertising copy he had ordered professionally written, and he recited them as if reading right off the paper. "Members will drive through a huge, elaborate and expensive guarded gate, designed to convey their importance to themselves and anyone who visits them, down a tree-shaded road, then pass through a portion of the golf course, finally splitting at a "Y" in the road to reach master-planned communities of luxury retirement homes, each built around a mini-business center with small shops and offices and services. Perfect for retired or resort-minded people. Each home will sit on a lot of no less than half an acre—which is a lot to people used to living in the city. The list of amenities in each will be endless." His eyes swept the faces of Cathy and Adamek, and found them both enthralled.

Kroeber continued. "Visitors, on the other hand, will take the other "Y" in the road, and reach a planned grouping of private bungalows, each fully furnished, equipped and serviced. Both members and guests will have full access to miles of jogging and hiking trails, twelve lighted tennis courts, a mini-ski slope on the private mountain behind the development, three pools, four spas including mud baths, herbal wraps, steam and sauna, and in-room massage, and a fully-staffed, twenty-four-hour four-star restaurant on site. There'll also be a main coffee shop, meeting rooms, and a number of lounges, including a billiard room."

"That's—" Adamek was in awe.

Kroeber sliced and served the dessert. "The plans even call for diverting the river, scooping out a lake, damming one end, and making a skating pond out of it in the winter, for young and old alike."

Cathy stood, stretching her body above her high heels, and Kroeber breathed longingly. "It sounds too good to be true," she said.

Kroeber nodded. "That's exactly the idea. It’d be their own personal piece of paradise.

The muscles in Adamek's shoulders relaxed. "It also sounds like you could lose your shirt."

"Yeah," Cathy seconded.

"No!" Kroeber was suddenly impatient. He ran his fingers through his hair without purpose or effect. "We pre-sell the homesites, the club memberships and timeshares on the bungalows. Before the first Caterpillar hits the dirt, we've already recouped our investment. Then, the way I've worked the numbers, it'll look so good that people'll be lining up to buy it from us. The Japanese might snap it up, like they did Pebble Beach Company. We'll be able to sell it before it's even complete. And after that, who cares what happens to it?"

The three exchanged glances. Cathy sighed reluctantly, but said, "Tom's going to have to see a lot more patients when he hears what I'm doing."

Adamek emitted a short, cynical laugh. "Yeah, another filling or two a week." He turned his long face to Kroeber. "I'm salaried. Doesn't make any difference how much feed I ship, the bucks are the same. I don't know how I can come up with what you're asking for, unless I mortgage my house."

"Do it!" Kroeber instantly commanded. "It's worth it. I'm going to take a loan against the receivables in this place. That should tell you something. It's really worth it. Where else can you get a return like this? Hell, by the end of the year, you'll not only be able to pay off the mortgage, you won't even have to work anymore. Not for the rest of your life."

Nodding as reluctantly as Cathy had, his bright eyes still on the thin lines of the plans, Adamek said, "Sharon'll probably kill me. But," he looked up at Kroeber, "what the hell."

Kroeber shook his cousin's strong hand. Looking at Cathy, he considered trying to kiss her, but thought better of it. He extended his hand toward her.

She turned her face toward the door and her back toward her cousin. Still deep in doubt, she said, "Now all you have to do is get the land."

A small grimace showed on Kroeber's face. He never let a deal sit. The waiting he was undergoing now was anathema to him. He shrugged. "Jerome's on almost total life support...." He did not say what he thought. Pitcher was an old man. He had survived far longer than anyone could have expected. His time had to be limited. "We'll have it by the time you mail in your taxes."

"That's appropriate somehow," Cathy said absently. "Death and taxes together."

Adamek face twitched. "What's the last date you can get it and still—"

"First of May, I'd say." Kroeber left his desk and urged his new partners to the door of his office. "But don't worry. We'll get it."

* * *

The wall of the front room of Kroeber's new home east of Redding was an almost unbroken expanse of glass. Beyond the glass rolled thousands of acres of open cattle land, the gently sloping hills rising gradually toward the east, leaving green, grassy, oak-spotted fields for stands of conifers on the steep slopes of the Cascades, and beyond them the headwaters of the McCloud River.

Diana sat in a room half as large as her own home and stared out at a view she knew she could never hope to have for her own. The attire she thought of as one of her most expensive outfits seemed to serve only to announce her relative poverty. The casual dress that Kroeber's slim wife Nancy had worn when greeting her probably had cost more than the best clothes Diana owned.

Setting down the drink she should not have been having so early in the day, Diana walked to the wall of windows. Her jaw was tight as she looked at and felt her surroundings. So private was the view that the design of the house did not even call for window coverings. The glass rose from polished oak floor to high-beamed ceiling, and wrapped around one corner of the room to a massive stone fireplace. The huge Persian rug on the floor in the middle of the room probably had cost as much as she earned in six months. The atmosphere was palatial.

So much did Diana want to abandon her life and live in a place like this that her thoughts had started to become erratic, often unrealistic, at times desperate. Between working hours, she sat before the flickering television set, hunting for shows of fantasy, or the far ends of fiction.

While she continued to cook for her family, her children were usually left to fend for themselves. The pressure to escape the pit she was in struggled against the restraints the world had set in her way, fighting and twisting inside of her until she could not stand the strain.

She turned. Kroeber was sitting on one of the two twin sofas in the room, one leg crossed over the other, arms spread wide on the backrest, watching her. He wore white European tennis shoes, designer blue jeans, and a yellow polo shirt that hung loosely over his flat stomach. Diana felt her fat once more, and with it the many injustices that had been done to her.

"Whistler would never do it," she thought aloud.

Kroeber's face did not change. "Do what?"

Diana stared at her brother for a few seconds, then walked to the back of the sofa that faced the couch on which Kroeber sat. Resting her fingertips on the backrest, tapping them nervously, she wondered if only she saw it, or if he was testing her.

"It's Easter," she said.

"So?" Kroeber's face did not change. She didn't have to say that. For minutes, from somewhere in the distance had been coming the squeal of their children hunting colored eggs on an acre of manicured lawn.

Diana swallowed. Her brother could intimidate people other than his business adversaries. "So, if they don't start soon, it'll be too late."

Kroeber's dark eyes flared as his chest filled. "You think I don't know that?" he snapped. "I've got people calling me every day, almost every hour, wanting to know if they've got the go-ahead. I'm calling people every day. In fact, I call the hospital every day." He coughed, a short, vicious laugh. "The nurses can't believe how concerned I am." His upper lip pulled back in a mirthless grin.

Diana's fingers curled inward until her nails cut into the flesh of her palms. Kroeber always had been so much more articulate than she. "It's just that—you know, so much time is going by, while...."

In one smooth movement, Kroeber exhaled heavily, brought his arms to his sides and lifted himself off the sofa. "God damn old man," he said under his breath. Crossing the room, he too stood and looked out the windows, hands shoved into his front pockets up to the knuckles.

"Every day he lies there...Jesus, do you know what it's costing us? I mean, the interest alone on the money we haven't got from the sales we haven't made could feed all our kids for years." He clenched and relaxed his jaw as his eyes narrowed. "If something doesn't happen soon, we're going to have to put it off till next year."

"No!" Diana blurted the word fearfully.

Kroeber turned a surprised gaze toward her. "Well? I keep expecting some teary nurse to call me to tell me he's gone, but it doesn't happen. It just doesn't happen."

Slowly, Diana shook her head. "But—isn't that the whole point? That they're not going to let him die? That they're going to keep him pumped and drained and fed forever?"

Kroeber's face tensed. He turned suddenly and charged to within inches of Diana. For several silent seconds, his gaze roamed over her face. Then he nodded, a single, quick jerk of his head. "Sister, you might have just said something," he said lowly. Leaving her, he raced to close the tall double doors at the entrance to the room, sealing them off, ensuring their privacy. Silently returning to Diana, his eyes searched hers.

In her blue corneas he saw, or thought he saw, what she was thinking. "You're absolutely right," he said. "They're going to keep those tubes in him and keep him attached to those machines as long as they possibly can. It could be years."

Diana backed one step from Kroeber's presence. "So?"

Kroeber's unrelenting stare pursued her, holding onto her even as she moved. "So that's what you meant? When you said that Whistler would never do it?"

Diana nodded silently, almost afraid to admit to her own thoughts.

"How long have you had something like this in mind?"

At last, Diana broke away and walked to the cold, black mouth of the stone fireplace. "It's obvious, isn't it? Didn't you say that we were the ones who knew best what Jerome would want? In the car?"

Slowly, Kroeber shook his head as he considered his sister and wondered if he had underestimated her all these years. She was proposing something that he knew he never would have imagined. And yet, as much as he was amazed at her, he liked the idea more. "No, the doctor said that. And it's true, as far as he's concerned. As far as he thinks he's concerned. But he didn't mean it that way. Not the way...we mean it." The ramifications were growing as he spoke. "So, you're right. Totally right. He'd never do it voluntarily." He breathed deeply, feeling dizzying oxygen rush to his brain. "But I'll bet there's a way."

Diana nodded. Soon there would be an end to her pain. Soon all the obstacles to what was rightfully hers would be gone. Somewhere in the house, a door closed and indistinct voices could be heard. "There has to be a way."

Chapter Six

Jim Alarcon was a very large man, so large that when he passed through a doorway he almost had to stoop. In his middle fifties, his short hair was already completely silver, as were the rims of his oversized glasses. He spoke slowly, only after thought, and with a trace of what once had been a pronounced Texas drawl. He seemed to have only two suits, a gray pinstripe and a deep navy blue, which were complimented by one of two ties, each of which sported the same silver tie pin, a duck taking wing. His mien was as varied as his clothes; an easygoing manner that prevailed in almost all circumstances, until a flashing temper took over, yet in its fury lasted but a few seconds. A seldom seen but wide smile worked well with a twinkle in his blue-gray eyes.

Alarcon practiced law in a large, richly-appointed office high in a building in downtown Redding. From genuine wood paneling hung original oils. On solid, hand-carved tables sat trinkets and curios from his frequent overseas vacations. He did not believe in unnecessary displays of his wealth, but he did like to enjoy the rewards of his labors. And he knew that most clients thought that rich furnishings boded if not assured success.

Friday morning, Barry Kroeber and Diana Robeck parked on the street half an hour before their nine o'clock appointment. Sitting in the Mercedes, Diana's breath was short and her chest hurt with each effort. Kroeber seemed only slightly ill at ease, now and then smoothing his silk tie under his wool suit coat, and Diana thought that no one but her would have noticed even that little disturbance.

For the tenth time in ten minutes, Kroeber checked his gargantuan wristwatch. He exhaled. "Maybe he's early?" he suggested.

"Maybe." Nervousness was jumping in Diana's stomach. The idea that to her had seemed so obvious, so workable; the same idea that she had put forth in Kroeber's home, now seemed all too transparent, destined to ruin what little bit of life she had, to cost her every small thing she had fought to obtain.

Before she knew it, Kroeber had opened the car door. "Come on. We'll see if he's in. If not, we'll just sit down and wait."

Waiting until Kroeber had shut his door and she could see him walking around the nose of the sedan, Diana squeezed her eyes shut, told herself that everything would—had—to be okay, and stepped from the car.

They rode alone in the elevator, in silence. A brass plaque on a heavy wooden door marked the office. The middle-aged woman behind the secretary's desk to the left of the entrance door appraised them tightly. Without interrupting her task of sorting papers, she watched them enter, look about in apparent awe, then approach her.

"You're Mister Alarcon's nine o'clock?" A hint of reproof was in her voice, as if she had read them thoroughly in the few seconds she had seen them and already disapproved of them both.

Diana hid behind her brother. "Right," Kroeber stated. "Is he in?"

The secretary tapped the sorted papers on the desk a few times. "Mister Alarcon has a nine-thirty in the Probate Court."

Kroeber stood still, smiling, trying to mask his lack of understanding. Diana's eyes roamed again about the expensively decorated waiting room. This was how people lived if they were rich. And it was only a business.

"He's in his office right now, preparing for his appearance," the secretary said. "I'm sure that he'll have a few minutes for you soon."

"Great!" boomed Kroeber, turning to find a seat far away from the truculent woman behind the desk, hiding a look of disgust from her. Placing himself on a thickly-cushioned sofa, he knitted his fingers and rested his elbows on his wide-spread thighs. Diana sat beside him, sometimes watching how efficiently the woman worked, sometimes picking her way through the news magazines on the end table.

In only a few minutes, Jim Alarcon yanked open the door to his private office and strode into the waiting room. He noted the presence of Kroeber and Diana in one quick glance, but without acknowledging them turned to his secretary. "Maddie," he said, pushing a handful of colored legal-sized forms and a dictation cassette at her, "fill these out as best you can. The Comptroller still hasn't gotten back to us on this one. If there's nothing in the afternoon mail, give them a call and see if you can yank their chain a little."

"Yes, Mister Alarcon," said the woman at the desk with civility that Kroeber or Diana had yet to receive.

Alarcon turned and, from his great height, appraised his visitors. He stepped forward. "Jim Alarcon." His huge hand aimed for Kroeber.

Standing, Kroeber was a good ten inches shorter than the attorney. He met Alarcon in the middle of the reception room and shook hands, keeping off his face a grimace from the pain that Alarcon's grip inflicted. Breaking loose as quickly as possible, Kroeber waved his uninjured hand at his sister. "Diana Robeck."

Diana stood meekly.

"We called—" Kroeber began.

"Come on in." Alarcon turned and walked into his office.

Letting Diana enter first, Kroeber shut the door on a large, darkly furnished room that despite its size gained its only natural illumination from two tall, narrow windows to the left of the huge, expensive desk. Through the panes could be seen the skyline of Redding. Pale manila folders dripped off the edges of the desk. Except for two guest chairs in front of the desk, the rest of the room seemed a collection of tall, well-stocked bookshelves with glass doors. Lawyer's bookcases.

Alarcon seemed to fill his desk chair to overflowing. He motioned to Kroeber and Diana to sit. They did, Kroeber taking the chair to the left, Diana to his right.

Kroeber's instinct was to take charge. He spoke first. "We have a little problem with our uncle."

"Really?" Alarcon leaned back in his chair and tossed a cheap plastic ballpoint pen onto the desk. His instinct was to let someone else make the first bid. That way he knew their position before they knew his. "That's more than I can say about most of my clients' relatives."

Diana chanced a look at her brother, but Kroeber continued to stare intensely at Alarcon. "Oh?" He tried to show that he understood, but failed, and knew he had to ask. "Why is that?"

The attorney smiled his broad but deadpan smile. "Well, they're usually dead."

Again, Kroeber's grin was frozen on his face. Suddenly, he laughed loudly, artificially, while his eyes betrayed his total noncomprehension of the joke.

The attorney sighed and sat forward. "Sorry," he said, as if he had voiced the sentiment a thousand times and had ceased to attach any meaning to it. "Guess you've got to be a probate lawyer."

"Huh," Kroeber said. He did not wait for another such episode. Later, he would try to figure out the humor. Eyeing Alarcon's common pen, he drew his own slim, gold-plated instrument from his pocket, mentally thanking his own decision, years ago, never to be without it. He took a deep breath but let out only a portion of it, as if the matter he was about to discuss weighed heavily on his emotions.

"We have an uncle who had a stroke a number of months ago. Well, before Thanksgiving, so I guess it was last year."

"Okay," Alarcon nodded.

"At the moment," Kroeber said judiciously, "he's on virtually total life support."

"Here in town? At Mercy?"

"No," said Kroeber quickly. "Sacramento."

"Aha." Alarcon nodded again, as if telling himself something.

"He's been that way for a long time."

"Uh-huh. And?"

Kroeber was momentarily taken aback. He glanced at his sister, as if gaining strength from her, then turned his gaze toward the attorney.

"You want to know if there's anything you can do to—ease the situation," Alarcon stated.

Kroeber nodded, then leaned forward. His gaze dropped to the floor, then rose slowly. "William," he used the first name to convey a sense of intimacy, "was always a very outdoors type of guy. If he wasn't hunting, he was fishing, and if he wasn't doing that, he was working around his ranch, as he called it. He was—is, I guess I should say—seventy years old, and still you'd always find him out there with the horses or cattle. The only time he went inside was to sleep, and even then he'd go to bed late and get up at dawn." He turned toward Diana. "You remember," he urged.

Diana's eyes remained fixed on her shoes. "That's right," she whispered.

Kroeber sighed again. "You just couldn't make him slow down. And now...."

"Uh-huh," Alarcon said again.

Kroeber's voice cracked as he said, "We just—well, we just can't help thinking that if he knew what was happening, if he knew he was stuck in that little hospital bed, all intubated and respirated...." He trailed off deliberately.

Alarcon leaned forward, picked up his pen and began screwing and unscrewing its two parts. "He wouldn't want to go on," he finished the thought.

Diana nodded silently.

"You're his closest family?"

"Yes," Diana answered.

"Nobody else?"

"Not as close as us," Kroeber said.

"Who's his doctor?"

Kroeber caught his breath, afraid for some reason that the attorney knew or might find out more than he himself knew. "The doctor in charge down there is Frank Perlucci," he answered as innocently as he could.

To Kroeber's relief, Alarcon shrugged. "Never heard of him. What does he think you should do?"

Kroeber took in and released what he thought was a troubled breath, then shrugged his shoulders helplessly. "He's a doctor."

Alarcon's eyebrows bounced up and down. "Yeah, he is. What does he want to do?"

Diana turned a pleading face toward the attorney. "It's just not right," she moaned.

A long and heavy sigh softened Alarcon's voice. "Okay. What you want me to do is to help you find a way to help your uncle William out of his misery."

Kroeber hesitated, searching for traps, then nodded once, quickly.

Drawing himself up to his desk, Alarcon pulled a yellow legal tablet in front of him, jotting the date and time in the corner. He seemed to form a question, then retract it. He peered up at Kroeber and pushed back from the desk a few inches. "Does your uncle William have a will anywhere?"

Kroeber stole a look at his sister. They had not been inside Pitcher's house for decades, nor had they thought of searching it, though they apparently should have. It was too late now. He couldn't look uninformed. "No," he decided aloud. "He didn't leave one. We've looked."

"Does he have any assets?"

Though he had expected the question, Kroeber could not meet the attorney's scrutiny. His view dropped. "He lives on a small—a very small—piece of land in the valley." One hand gestured beyond the walls to the south, taking in the hundreds of miles that were the Sacramento Valley. "He's got a little old house, a barn that's falling down, and maybe half a dozen horses. Maybe some other animals. An old truck." He shrugged once more.

Alarcon kept any expression from his face. The case had no potential for any kind of attorney fees. Still, he had to ask. "What are the horses worth?"

Kroeber squinted, wondering how he had overlooked a potential asset. Then he saw the answer and provided it. "They aren't thoroughbreds, if that's what you're wondering. And they're all pretty old, except for a filly that was born last summer. The whole herd's probably not worth more than a couple thousand, altogether."

"Huh," Alarcon said, settling something for himself. He closed on his desk again. "Withdrawing life support from a patient isn't an easy thing to do," he told them. "I'm sure you know that."

Kroeber's swallow was noticeable. "We know."

"Legally, I mean," Alarcon frowned. "If—I'm sorry, but I have to ask. What's William's status, exactly? Do you know? Or should I call Doctor Perlucci?"

For some reason, Diana seemed to fear the question. "What do you mean?"

Doodling on the pad, Alarcon said, "There are several ways to do what you're asking. One way is if the patient is what they call—" He halted as he glanced from Kroeber to Diana. Brain dead was not a term that grieving families tolerated very well. "Well, basically, if there's a confirmed finding that all the patient's mental functioning has irreversibly stopped."

"I don't think that's the case," Kroeber said carefully. Yesterday, he had called the hospital in time to learn that, despite all the artificial cardiovascular and pulmonary assistance being provided, despite the liquid nutrition going into his veins through tubes and the catheters taking away his wastes, an electroencephalogram of Pitcher's brain had still produced a significant activity trace, even outside the brain stem. Jerome Pitcher was not brain dead.

"You want me to call the doctor and find out? It'd be a whole lot easier if that's the way it is."

Shaking his head, Kroeber answered, "Let's assume it's not."

Alarcon's eyes darted back and forth between brother and sister. They were not communicating. She was just sitting there, like a bump on a Rio Grande log, letting him do all the talking. "Then things may start to get sticky," he said, amused by his own choice of words. "Did William ever make out what they call a 'Directive to Physicians' under the Natural Death Act?"

Again, Kroeber's face was blank.

Patiently, Alarcon explained, "It's a document, basically, that a person executes, saying that if they ever have an incurable, terminal injury or disease, that life-sustaining procedures are not to be used. You're not aware of anything like that?"

"No. I don't think he ever saw a lawyer for anything. Ever."

"Well, he'd probably have to have, for this. It's something he probably would have consulted you about, too, since you're his closest family." Alarcon was both reassured and disappointed when Kroeber didn't flinch. He had not wanted him to, but experience had said he would.

"And it would have had to have been signed and witnessed."

"There's nothing like that," Diana said to the floor.

"How about a power of attorney over health care? That might work."

"Like I said," Kroeber responded. "He probably never saw a lawyer."

"Wouldn't have to," Alarcon said. "It's just a preprinted form. You can buy one in a stationery store."

"There's nothing like that, either," Diana said.

Taking the ends of his pen in the fingers of each hand, Alarcon sighed. "We're running out of options here, folks." He kicked back from the desk. "Unless there's something in writing somewhere giving you the authority to make that decision for him, you're going to be in court for years."

"Oh, God," Kroeber said as Diana made a noise like a whimper.

Alarcon cast a glance at the ceiling. There were other, less probable, possibilities. "He wasn't adjudged incompetent, or anything like that, before this happened, was he?"

Kroeber ran a hand through his hair. This was far more complicated than he had thought it would be, and it was leading nowhere. "No."

"There's no conservatorship that you know of?"

With a sigh like a groan, Kroeber answered again, "No. He was pretty sharp up until the stroke. Sharp and stubborn."

Diana raised her face. The light from the lamp on the desk reflected off her glasses. "Can we do that now?"

"Find him incompetent while he's in a hospital bed in a coma?" the attorney asked, keeping his eyes from widening to the point of incredulity. "No."

"What if we could show that he wasn't, you know, capable of managing his affairs before this happened?"

Alarcon seemed to wince. "It's too late for any of this, folks. If you can't communicate with him, and I assume you can't, you can't get him to sign any of these documents, and you certainly won't get a judge to adjudicate him incompetent. I'm sorry, but the only way you're going to be able to help William is by going to court."

"But that could take years, right?" Diana barely murmured her question.

"I'm afraid so. Remember Karen Ann Quinlan? Nancy Kruzan? Elizabeth Bouvia? No state likes this sort of thing. And without some expression of intent in writing, an advance health care directive or whatnot, to go on...it's just your word that you know what he'd want. Of course, the fact there are no assets to go to you by intestate succession lends credence to your position. But the state will fight it. They always do."

Kroeber clenched his teeth to avoid swearing. He stood and extended his hand to his sister. "Come on, Diana." He pulled her to her feet. To Alarcon, he said, "I don't know if we're ready to be in court for years."

Alarcon climbed to his feet. "That's understandable. Take a while to think about it." He opened the office door for them. "It might not come to that. There are other powers at work, you know."

Kroeber had not believed in God since he was eleven years old. He turned as he entered the reception room. "Should we just pay the secretary?"

"What for?" Alarcon paused at the doorway to his office. "I didn't do anything for you."

Kroeber thought for only a second. Not once in his life had he declined payment for anything. "Okay, thanks. But maybe you still will."

In the car, Diana seemed despondent. Gathering her elbows to her stomach, she rocked forward, squeezing herself together until she could not stand it anymore. Breaking apart, she flung herself back into the deep seat and breathed desperately. She wanted to feel tears on her face, but they would not come. Her voice was a whine. "Even he can't help."

Kroeber barely suppressed a grin. Diana was overreacting, as usual. He twisted the ignition key. "He already has."

* * *

That night, they burned the crumpled papers of the evidence in the fireplace of Kroeber's home. While Diana drank brandy after brandy from a crystalline snifter, her brother laid an oak fire over the wispy black ashes and fed logs to the flames until a red-hot bed of coals covered the firebricks.

On Monday morning, Kroeber presented a thick sheaf of papers, ranging from letters of intent to partnership agreements, to Cathy Welch and Bruce Adamek. Keeping all the documents clipped together in a single stack, talking rapidly and incessantly, he lifted only the bottom of each paper to reach the next, pointed to each signature line on each legal document, and watched his cousins carefully to ensure that no mistakes were made. At the point that they committed perjury and became unconvicted felons, he was no more troubled than on any of the countless times in the past when he himself had done exactly that.

Thursday afternoon found them again in front of Jim Alarcon's office. This time they did not hesitate. Following her excited brother into the office, Diana held her chin up, and on the corners of her mouth was the slightest smile. Seeing her happy gave him an extra boost of confidence.

"Hello again," Alarcon said as he led them into his office. "Make a decision? Something happen to push you one way or another?" He sat in the too-small chair, wearing the same suit they had seen him in a week earlier.

Sitting, Kroeber held a long rectangle of folded papers in front of him. Eyes glinting, teeth bared in a broad smile, he lied. "We went through William's house again, over the weekend." Neither he nor Diana had been to Pitcher's home since his stroke, nor did they intend to go.

"We kept thinking of what you had said. We found this in a cubbyhole in a—what do you call it?—an old davenport. His desk, I guess." He held the papers out toward the attorney, like a child handing a present to a parent.

Alarcon accepted the document as if at the same time he was repelled and fascinated by it. As he unfolded the sheets, which Kroeber and Diana had creased over and over again, folded and unfolded, rubbed inside drawers to soil, and even stained with a ring from a coffee cup, Alarcon stared at Kroeber with dubious eyes.

Kroeber did not notice the look. "It's a 'Durable Power of Attorney for Health Care'." The words spewed from him. "It designates me as my uncle’s health care agent. He must have done it and not told me. Maybe he was going to, I don't know. Or maybe he did and I don't remember. I don't know."

Turning the pages slowly, Alarcon was silent until he had examined the entire document. Then, deliberately, he refolded the sheets. Holding it tightly in one hand, he tapped a folded edge against his lips. "There's no statement of desires," he noted.

"We saw that," Diana answered.

"Nothing about what he wants done with his personal or real property."

"Yes."

Alarcon looked at Diana. "You understand, this power of attorney would give your brother virtually complete control over your uncle's health care—including, at the moment, the power to refuse any more life-support care?"

Kroeber nodded in what he hoped was a very thoughtful manner. "I guess he must have thought that I would know what he would want."

Alarcon shifted uncomfortably. "You talked a lot about this, you and your uncle?" The attorney turned his stare back to Kroeber.

"We must have talked enough that he thought he knew me enough to trust me, don't you think?"

The attorney's chest rose and fell. The answer was defensive, almost defiant. He tapped a corner of the document on the desk. "This is your uncle's signature?"

"Well, of course!" Kroeber spread his open hands wide, knowing that no one would be able to discover or piece together their many attempts at forgery from the ashes in his fireplace. "I suppose we can attest to that, if you need us to."

Alarcon gave away the point. They could say anything. "And the witnesses?"

Kroeber shrugged.

"I'm sure they could be located," Diana suggested.

"Yes," Alarcon said drily, "I'm sure they could."

"Is that necessary?" she asked, and Kroeber had to admire how his sister had learned to simulate naiveté.

After a moment, Alarcon said, "No, that's not a necessity. The declarations they signed are enough. Unless there's some serious question. And I doubt anything like that is going to come up."

Leaning forward, face almost glowing, Kroeber said, "Then this will work? You'll help us?"

The expression on Alarcon's face did not change. Slowly rising from his desk, he took two steps, opened the door to his office and called around the corner, "Maddie, come in here for a minute, will you?"

They heard the rustle of papers and the squeak of a chair, then footsteps, and the secretary appeared in the doorway. Alarcon shut the door behind her. Both the attorney and his secretary remained standing. Alarcon crossed his thick arms over his broad chest.

"Maddie knows what we've talked about," Alarcon said.

"Okay," Kroeber agreed. He had no other choice.

"Last Friday, you'll remember," Alarcon said to Maddie, "these people came in to find out how to withdraw life support from their uncle, who's in a coma, or worse, in some hospital down in Sacramento. I told them they'd need an advance directive, or a conservatorship, or a power of attorney. They didn't have one. And their uncle didn't leave a will. They'd looked. Now, fortuitously, they've found a power of attorney, signed by their uncle, who had never visited a lawyer in his life." He looked down at Kroeber, who continued trying to smile despite the cavity that was forming in his stomach. "Is that about it?" Alarcon asked. "Did I get it accurately enough?"

Diana shifted in her seat. "That's what happened," she insisted. She peered at Maddie. "Why do you need—"

Kroeber cut her off, suddenly seeing where they were all heading. His smile vanished as he stood, and a scowl took its place. Sharply, he said, "Are you going to help us?"

Alarcon's face crinkled slightly with disgusted amusement. "I not only will not help you, I don't even want you in my office." Leaning in front of his secretary, he yanked open the door and, still bent at the waist, with his other hand pointed out of the room, his face lit by a contrived and unpleasant smile.

* * *

Peter Whistler's only reaction had been a frown that had lengthened his already lowering face. He had looked over the power of attorney that Kroeber gave him, never showing his surprise, listened to Kroeber's explanation of how it had come to be, then said simply, "All right."

Diana had smiled behind the doctor's back, but he had walked to his office, not to Pitcher's bedside, and he had called the hospital administrator, not the staff nurse. He could not and would not make this kind of decision alone.

"You should have known it wouldn't be so simple," Diana hissed while she straightened her brother's tie. The week that had passed had cost her seven nights of sleep. She was eating antacids like candy. Her brother seemed nervous, but more confident than she had ever been in her entire life.

Just beyond the doors of the conference room in the small County hospital were the doctors and nurses of the hospital review committee and all the senior members of the hospital administration.

"It's still simple," Kroeber said, barely moving his lips so that passing staff members could not hear. "They don't know anything. They can't argue with us. All you have to do is just sit there and look sad. See if you can cry."

At the last, she jerked the knot of his tie against his throat and grasped the handle of the door.

The room was filled with people, far more than Kroeber had expected. Of the men and women sitting around the oval conference table, only Whistler and several of the nurses were recognizable to him. The room was decorated in warm oranges and yellows, and the windows along one wall looked out on the one main street in town.

The only unoccupied chair at the table was at one end, across from the hospital administrator. Kroeber sat in it. Diana took a seat behind him, along the wall.

The administrator was a man in his late sixties, with a bulbous nose mottled by purple veins. Gray hair that receded sharply from a peak over his forehead was brushed and slicked even further back, behind ears that stood out from his head. A tiny knot in his school tie was loose against a white shirt collar that splayed flatly on his chest. In a thick, unclear voice, he introduced Barry and Diana, then named and pointed at the others around the table. Most of the physicians and nurses did not even look up from their notes.

"That's all the review committee," the man said. "Now, over here," one arm limply extended toward the administrator's left, "is the hospital's legal counsel, Ken Everett."

Kroeber's attention shifted to a large, middle-aged man in a dark suit and eyeglasses. His black hair was smooth and shiny, his face strong and square. French cuffs with expensive links extended from his jacket sleeves as he tapped the ends of a pen on a blank pad of paper in front of him. Everett nodded once, sharply. His lips offered a smile that his eyes did not share. Kroeber returned the nod.

"You can understand," the administrator continued, "the... possibilities...for the hospital, in this kind of situation. None of us in this room," his weak arms rose and gathered everyone within their spread, "has ever been in a situation like this before. We all have to be...concerned."

Again, Kroeber nodded. Just trying to cover your ass, he thought.

"So I'm sure you won't mind," the man looked first at Kroeber, then over his shoulder at a slightly plump blonde woman in her thirties who was sitting unobtrusively before a small black machine on a chrome tripod, her fingers poised over several short rows of unmarked keys, "if we have a record of this meeting?"

"Of course not." There was no other answer. The woman smiled at him and pulled on a strip of thin, tan paper that ran from the bottom of a plastic tray on the front of the machine, inside the device, and out into the top of the tray. She checked her watch and tapped lightly and silently on the keys for a moment.

"Good," the administrator nodded and cleared his throat. "Now, your uncle has been in our hospital's care for several months now, is that right?"

"Yes."

"He had a CVA, a cerebral vascular accident?"

"I believe so, yes."

"And he's been in a coma ever since admission?"

"Virtually," said Kroeber.

"Persistent vegetative state by now," Peter Whistler added under his breath.

"And," the administrator's voice dropped into a hushed, breathy tone usually used only by pastors or morticians, "it's your wish that life support systems be removed at this time?"

Opening his mouth, Kroeber paused for a moment, as if he did not know what to say, as if he had not written and rehearsed this speech a dozen times more often than the one about the project.

"My uncle," he began, but purposefully faltered. He tried again, gaze slowly rising from the polished table to the eyes of the people around him. "My uncle—if you had known my uncle—" He broke, and tried again. "If you had known my uncle, you'd know that living like this is the last thing he would want. He was a very proud man, a farmer. He never slowed down, never asked for help from anybody, never took charity from anybody. He always figured he could do everything himself, and if he couldn't, then that was that." All that was true. Kroeber had known that much about Pitcher. Letting these people, too, know the old man was the perfect way to set the stage.

"He just—I mean, here he was, seventy or so, and he'd still get up at dawn and do chores, like he was a teenager. He would have done that till—" Kroeber broke off, letting the others at the table finish the sentence. Till he died. When he saw the embarrassed sadness on the face of one of the women on the executive committee, he licked his lips and continued, "You have no idea how hard it was for him to ask me to do this for him, to make these kinds of decisions for him."

"Why did he?" Whistler asked.

Thoughts of the past seemed to discompose Kroeber's expression. "I was only about six or seven when my uncle's wife died, but I understand it was after a long illness, and that he took it very hard." Kroeber knew almost nothing about how Kathryn had died or how Pitcher had felt, but did remember the funeral and the sad faces of tall adults in black clothes. He could guess, and what he couldn't guess he could make up. "He didn't say so, but I'd have to assume—"

"He didn't want it to happen to him," one of the review committee finished, a bored and sour look on his face.

Kroeber simply nodded. They were seeing it for themselves now. "I'm sure," he almost whispered, "that he would have done the same for her. He would have helped her this way—if he could have." One of the nurses closed her eyes and shook her head, fingers at her lips.

Kroeber's voice found strength. "How long can you keep him alive? Indefinitely? Life support is borderline, I understand. It's not total, but he'll die without it, eventually. With it, he could be kept "alive", if you want to use that term, indefinitely."

"But that's not what he would want. You don't know him. You can't say, like we can, 'We're his family'. We speak for him." He purposefully struggled for a breath. "I guess what it comes down to is that he wouldn't want to live this way. And he asked me to make sure that no one would ever force him to." He held his breath.

"And now I'm asking you."

Heads turned toward each other to note agreement, and Kroeber squeezed one fist in victory. The man with the sour face said, "Basically, what you're saying is, your uncle wanted to die with dignity. Is that right?"

Kroeber's head rose and fell with slow emphasis. "This isn't what he wanted. It isn't how he lived. And it isn't—" he pretended to have to force himself to say it. "It isn't how he wanted to die."

"Shouldn't somebody from the State of California be here?" one of the administrators asked. Bright blue eyes in a face of translucent pink skin searched the others for agreement.

Kroeber could not have that. Even Everett being here was nearly too much. "This has been a very personal and very difficult thing for my sister and I," he said, almost too quickly, swinging a hand toward Diana but not looking at her. "I think getting the state involved would only make things that much worse. You have no idea—" He scanned the people around him. They worked in a hospital, where death was a common thing. But they wouldn't expect him to think of it that way. "Well, maybe you do know how hard this can be." He saw several nods of silent agreement, and then the committee as a whole seemed to stare with sympathy behind him for a moment, where Diana was carrying out her part of the charade.

"Is that necessary?" the administrator asked of the hospital's counsel. "To have the state involved?"

Everett scooted forward in his chair. His voice was very deep and crisp. "No, not necessarily. That's what the durable power of attorney is all about, avoiding legal fights like that. The state feels that it needs a representative for the patient only when the patient hasn't expressed his wishes or has no one else to speak for him. That's not the case here." He stopped addressing the administrator and swiveled his head toward Kroeber. "But let me ask you this, Mister Kroeber. You said that Jerome Pitcher asked you to become his agent under this document?"

A manicured forefinger tapped the power of attorney that Everett slid from underneath his pad of paper. "Did he say, 'I want to execute a durable power of attorney for health care'?"

"No. Of course not."

"He was a farmer, not a lawyer?"

Kroeber nodded, unable to read Everett's face.

"Then you knew what to do? How?"

Don't be too pat, Kroeber told himself. "No, I didn't know either. I just knew what he wanted."

"Then how did you come to this?" Again, Everett's forefinger tapped the paper, a little more forcefully.

Again, the bit of truth that would make it all so believable. "We talked to a lawyer."

Everett's eyebrows arched just slightly. "You did. Who?"

"Jim Alarcon, in Redding."

"Why isn't he here representing you today?"

Kroeber sighed dolefully. "We just talked to him. We didn't hire him. Diana and I wanted this to be something just within our family. You just have no idea how personal or difficult this is for us. We don't want to involve a bunch of lawyers, we don't want the state involved, we don't want the press involved. Frankly," he let the faintest shade of hostility into his tone, "even this meeting is extremely hard for us." He tried to make his voice crack. "This is a very private, personal matter. If we could, we'd really prefer not to have anybody else involved."

Everett opened his mouth, but Kroeber quickly said, "But all I know is what my uncle wanted, and that he's trusting me to act for him, now that he can't."

Everett sighed resignedly and shrugged indifferently when the administrator eyed him. He had asked all the questions that the hospital expected him to ask. And besides, the only people who might bring a wrongful death claim were sitting here asking them to bring about that death. "I don't see a liability problem."

"All right," the administrator said to Kroeber. "If you and your sister wouldn't mind waiting outside...?"

With the relatives of their patient out of the room, the team of doctors and nurses who cared for Jerome Pitcher talked of the prognosis and told anecdotal stories of patients who had survived comas for years. Even Peter Whistler, though, had to admit to the review committee that he knew of no cases of a comatose patient on life-support ever recovering, and that a course of barbiturates had failed to produce any observable change in his patient's condition. The coma seemed truly irreversible.

Each of the administrators leaned back in their chairs, listening to the quiet debate, thinking not of the medicine or morals involved but of the exorbitant cost to an already poor county and an even poorer hospital of keeping one old man alive indefinitely. They let their doctors and nurses vent their feelings and emotions, until there was nothing left to be said, until the medical issues were exhausted, and then they reached the only conclusion they felt they could.

Standing with his sister at the end of the table, Barry Kroeber held his glee within him when he heard the decision, while Diana seized his arm in a vicious grip, both to hide her elation and to keep from falling to the floor. Kroeber thanked the committee for their understanding, and left the room with Peter Whistler.

A short time later, on a warm, sunny day in May, for reasons he would never know, Jerome Pitcher died.

Chapter Seven

Kroeber became a whirlwind that Diana could only watch. Within one week of the poorly-attended funeral at the hillside cemetery outside of Ash Creek, he had begun to sign the contracts for percolation tests, septic tank systems and the drilling of a score of wells. Bids for excavation, grading and road construction and the construction of the homes and buildings were taken from contractors as far south as Watsonville. Ten days after his uncle had been laid to rest next to the old, weathered gravestone of his wife, Kroeber flew to Sacramento to have lunch with a golf course designer whose name alone would draw players from around the country. The next day he signed up a golf course construction company and a general contractor for the landscaping, and the day after that he set the wheels in motion for preparation of the environmental impact statement required by California law.

The permits and plans that had to be drawn and submitted to the County planning department were set forth in precise detail. The documents could have said anything, though, for they were going to the desks of men and women who already looked with approving eyes on a project that would bring in enough tourism and tax dollars to triple the County budget. And before the first ceremonial shovelful of dirt was turned, Kroeber's banks were preparing the papers for the permanent financing loans.

At the end of the second week, Kroeber and Diana traveled to Willis Casey's law office in Ash Creek to sign the petition for letters of administration that would allow them to dispose of Pitcher's entire estate.

Casey was a very old, very thin, somber and wrinkled man who always spoke in a slow, slurred manner, saying more than he thought. He always wore three-piece suits no matter what the weather or occasion. His chin was pointed, as was his nose, and his jowls were forever puffy. He was winding down his practice, doing only probate work, and he was relying on his staff to complete the plethora of necessary forms. To him, the sworn statement that Diana and Kroeber had made a due search for any will left by their uncle, and had been unable to find one, was only a formality. To Kroeber, it was just another meaningless perjury.

At the conclusion of their meeting, Casey pulled his warped body upward and extended a hand. Kroeber took the leathery skin reluctantly, his distaste hidden behind another phony smile.

"Notices will go out, there'll be a hearing, you'll be appointed, and it'll all be done in no time," Casey promised. He had not litigated a probate case in twenty years.

Diana huffed and fidgeted with impatience, twisting the ends of a new silk scarf around her neck. "I still don't see why it takes so long. It sounds like it's going to take to Christmas!"

Casey smiled a weak smile, ran a hand over his almost bald head, and said condescendingly to the very young people before him, "Can't have a summary administration for heirs at law, not where there's real property involved." For a moment, his mind turned toward his expected fees, a nice and unexpected windfall for his upcoming retirement. "And the property's yours, really, right now. Without any other heirs, the administration's just a protocol we have to go through."

"We understand," Kroeber interjected, keeping Diana from a second outburst. "But it's been a long six months. You know."

Casey smiled his weak smile, his faded eyes unfocused. He had ceased long ago to feel how relatives grieved. "It's a tough time for all of us," he said as he had a thousand times before. "But we'll get you through it."

"Great!" Laying his hand on his sister's shoulder, Kroeber guided Diana toward the office door. The smirk that replaced his smile as they stepped out onto the street was genuine. Willis Casey was nothing like Jim Alarcon. This old man might have decades of experience to employ on their behalf, but he was tired and malleable and would use his knowledge as they directed. He would ask no questions, harbor no suspicions. He was the perfect choice.

They walked rapidly to the car. Behind her glasses, Diana's blue eyes were bright, and her face was full of color. Her newly-styled light brown hair bounced on her shoulders and blew slightly in the light wind. Casey's last words were still in her ears. The probate ceremony might take months, it might be winter before title officially passed, but right now half of Pitcher's land was hers.

A deep breath filled her as she thought of that fact. The development would begin soon, and a wide paved road would be cut from the river road right to the front door of Pitcher's old home. The house and barn would be torn down, the animals sold to factories. Then, on the surrounding land, the miniature homes and buildings and cars and trees and ponds laid out so quaintly on a board in the architect's office would become a real resort. Her wide lips split into a smile, and she said the word to herself. Rich. What a delightful gift providence had handed her—with a little prodding. She laughed once, surprising Kroeber. Christmas would be appropriate after all.

Tossing the coat of his muted plaid suit on the rear seat of the Mercedes, Kroeber slipped behind the wheel as Diana took the passenger seat. He started the car, listened to the engine for a moment, then looked at his sister. For a moment, they simply stared at each other. Suddenly, his face broke into a boyish grin. "Hot damn!"

Diana's head slowly nodded up and down with confidence. Her lips formed a thin but happily determined smile. "We're on the way," she said.

The day that the surveyors began planting wooden stakes adorned with orange pennants amid the green alfalfa was the day that the selling campaign began. Stealing half of the staff of his dealership, Kroeber moved the women to a new office in town whence brochures could be mailed, telephone calls made, inquiries answered and, most importantly, checks received. He already had formed a dummy corporation to hide his dealings and opened a bank account for it. At the new, little office, he had organized a system for receiving, opening, stacking and distributing the thousands of fliers and brochures that the printers were sending. He had installed two high-speed copiers and a postage meter.

Mailings began to go out to golf shops, golf courses and golf clubs throughout the region and the state. A dozen high school seniors were recruited and sent out at minimum wage to spread a hundred fliers on every window and pole they could find. Every major real estate agent and firm in the area was notified by a special, detailed package that extolled the virtues of the coming development and advised them how to contact Kroeber.

Articles were prepared for the real estate section in the local newspapers as well as the major papers from Seattle to Los Angeles. The architect's elevations were skillfully adapted and enhanced to show clusters of happy people of all ages, then printed on posters that were taped or tacked wherever there was space. Television commercials were to come in a few months, but in the meantime full color brochures were left at every elitist health club and spa that would accept them. Mailing lits of retired persons was obtained, and they began to send thousands of brochures in alphabetic groupings. One of the girls suggested buying the mailing lists for magazines specializing in travel and health, and she was immediately burdened with that additional task. Almost every other day, the postage meter had to be replenished. Three of Kroeber's salesmen gave up talking about cars and began talking to their targets about vacations and luxury and retirement and putting greens and living where the air was clean. When he was not taking his most important prospects to expensive dinners, Kroeber was racing back and forth between his dealership and his sales office. Hounding his understaffed crews, he divided his staff, doubled their workload, forced them into overtime, and cursed those who fell behind.

* * *

As he rolled his irrigation pipes over the flat farmland or scythed the alfalfa from the seat of his combine, Sam Kinney watched the pickup trucks circling Jerome Pitcher's empty home. They bounced over the dirt access roads that crisscrossed the green fields, ranging from the river to the mountains, sometimes stopping for hours at a time, then moving on. From afar, the half dozen trucks were all the same, small pickups painted bright yellow with utility boxes bolted behind their cabs. As they worked their way closer to him, he could see but not read the green logos stenciled on the doors.

Day after day, from the top of his open tractor, he studied the industrious men who drove the trucks as they set up and leveled their tripods and waved back and forth to each other and wrote on clipboards. During breaks he would perch on a fence rail and smoke a cigarette while he watched them pound their small pine shafts into the ground. After several weeks, from high in the air conditioned cab of his harvester, he thought he could see patterns forming out of the lines of wooden stakes. Day after day, they closed in on the land that he and his father had worked for over three long decades. And then on one sunny day in June, the men in the yellow pickup trucks drove onto the land that was properly his. Onto his farm.

Kinney was forty-eight years old, a big, strong man with brownish hair that was streaked with gray and a face that was perpetually sunburned where it was not bearded. He had disked and plowed and sowed and reaped the same land for all of his life. It was a plain, simple life, but not as hard as it had been for his father, who had worked much of the land before him. Kinney knew the cycle of the crops and the cycle of the seasons, and knew that when something had to be done, it had to be done.

When the truck drove by his combine, Kinney could finally read the name on the door, and he did not like what he read. He knew what surveyors did. The two men in the truck looked at him as they passed, and the driver, a stocky black man in his thirties, smiled and lifted his hand. Turning the big harvester into the dusty wake of the pickup, Kinney trailed them to their next site. Hopping down out of his huge, idling machine, he rolled the sleeves of his blue checked shirt up to his elbows and approached the driver. "Workin' hard?" he asked.

"Hardly workin'," the man answered, a big grin on his square, handsome face. His assistant, a younger, slightly built, fair-skinned man, hung his arms over the wall of the pickup box and listened.

"Big job?"

"Biggest I've been on for a while. We've been all over this damn place." The man pointed up and down the valley.

"Been at it a long time, too," Kinney noted. "I seen you fellas out here for seems like weeks."

"Seems longer to me," the second man said. "I've pounded more stakes than you can shake a stick at."

"Or a stake," laughed the first.

Unaffected by the feeble humor, Kinney looked about him, at the thin gray road shining in the distance, at the places that the yellow trucks had been. When he looked back at the surveyors, the two men seemed uneasy, uncomfortable with him somehow. "What all you workin' at?"

"Like we said, a big development," answered the assistant.

"Damn big," agreed the other. "Right about here," he pointed to the rich, dark earth, "is supposed to be the end of the main access road for the guest bungalows." Turning, he pointed toward the river road, his arm describing a sweeping arc. "The ninth hole of the golf course'll be over here someplace, I guess, so the homeowners at the other end," he pointed the other way, "can tee off and putt out at their own front doors. Nice, huh?"

Kinney searched up and down the wind-swept valley. His eyes squinted in the bright sun that burned in the pure blue sky as he tried to envision what the man was saying. He did. Land he could not farm. Buildings where the croplands should be. The life his father had given to him, gone. Drawing himself up to his full height, his voice burst loudly. "On this land?"

"Hey," the first man protested with a disarming smile, "it's not up to me, okay? I just draw the lines. Okay?" When Kinney didn't answer, he turned to his truck, opened the utility box and began extracting his surveying equipment. His assistant did likewise. Neither wanted to confront the bigger man.

"Who'd you say was doing' it?"

Both men halted the work of unloading. Kinney's firm voice now demanded an answer. They looked carefully at him. "We just work for the general contractor," the assistant finally said.

"Who's he work for?"

The surveyor turned slowly back to his task. "The development company, I guess."

"Who do they work for?"

Again, the man faced him. No one else had asked him any questions the entire time he had been out here. He tried to be patient and pleasant. "Well, if I had to guess, I'd say, whoever the owner of this place is."

Kinney's eyes narrowed to slits as he glanced at Pitcher's home, then back at the two men. "I don't think so."

The surveyor shrugged as with one hand he hefted a box containing his transit and with the other a second box holding a new laser EDM, an electronic distance measuring device. "Well, I don't know, then," he said to Kinney as he walked to his preselected site. The big man worried him somehow, and he wanted the conversation to end. "Come on,

Bob," he called to his assistant. With a silent nod at the farmer, the younger man lugged the tripod under one arm, a third box in his free hand, and followed his boss.

Kinney drove his combine back to his barn as fast as it would go, much faster than he should have, but still an agonizingly slow pace. Cranking up his big crew cab pickup, without stopping to say hello to his wife or tell her where he was going, he turned the nose of the old truck toward his neighbor's distant home.

From the fall through the winter, over Christmas and New Year's Day, into the spring and now the summer, every morning and evening of every day, Sam Kinney or one of his three teenaged boys had driven to Jerome Pitcher's home. Once a day they had cleaned stalls and checked the house. The one cow they had moved into their own barn, which they felt was only right since otherwise the milk would go to waste. Twice a day they would feed the horses, and the boys sometimes rode them bareback to give them some exercise.

They could have turned them out into the pasture, but their father had decided that they should keep them close to the barn, just in case one day Pitcher returned.

Kinney trotted down the barn aisle to feed a sweet apple to the two-year-old sorrel filly As You Dream, then jogged back to Pitcher's home. The old house had been locked up tight since a day or two after Pitcher's stroke, but a spare key to the front door hung in plain sight inside the barn for anyone who knew where to look. Most of Pitcher's neighbor's did. Kinney let himself in without a second thought.

He stood on the faded carpet in the small front room and looked around him. Sunlight struggled through the dirty windows, slid off the aged furniture and lay weakly on the floor. Kinney saw the years, the memories, and despite himself had to swallow hard. Someday he or his wife would know this time, too. He began his search.

He had been in this house three times. Once, with his own father, when Franklin Pitcher had passed away. Forty-two years ago. He had been six years old. He had not known Jerome Pitcher's father, and had been bewildered by the grieving sadness of all the adults in dark clothes. The second time Kinney had been in this house had been thirty-three years ago. He had been fifteen, and that time he did understand the empty, helpless grief. God had finally taken Jerome's beautiful wife, and there was nothing that anyone could say or do.

The last time he had been inside, he had been nineteen, and his father had brought him along to discuss the terms of their still-new arrangement with Pitcher. The last several winters had been hard, the summers too hot and dry, and the crops had not been good. His father John had said all this in his terse way, shamed somehow, but Pitcher had simply nodded. Don't worry about it, he had said. Then he had looked at John Kinney's oldest son and told the boy that he shouldn't ever worry. Kinney had not been through the front door since.

Perhaps fifty times since then they had seen each other, fifty times over the many seasons. And they were neighbors. Once a year, he had visited Pitcher, like most of the farmers in this part of the valley did, and now and then he would run into him in Smith's Fork, at the head of the valley. Once he saw him in Ash Creek, at the one theatre. They would talk, briefly, about the weather and crops and family and how the country was being run, and always it was too short. In all that time, over all those meetings, they had exchanged not more than a few hundred words. Pitcher had grown older, but, oddly, he had not seemed to age.

Two years ago, Kinney had been out in the rains too long and somehow had caught pneumonia. For weeks, he had struggled in his bed, while his wife had cared for him and his children had done the work that needed to be done. When in the springtime he had finally taken his pallid face into the bright sunshine again, the first trip he had made had been to Pitcher's home. The old man had been picking the hooves on a dun gelding tethered in the aisle of the barn, and his long face had shown a trace of satisfaction at seeing Kinney up and about again.

Pitcher had stopped his work. "Doin' all right?" he had asked.

Kinney had nodded. "Been better, though." Then he had said what had brought him to his neighbor's home. "Been thinking, though."

"Oh?" Pitcher had said, flicking mud and manure and rocks from the frog on the horse's hoof.

The words had been difficult for Kinney, more so than the thoughts, for he, like Pitcher, rarely asked anything of anyone. He had not known how to put his months of thoughts into simple words. He had found interest in the gelding and had scratched the horse's neck above the withers. Remnants of the animal's winter coat had flown into the air. Watching the movement of his hands, he had said, "A thing like this...."

Pitcher hadn't looked up. Kinney had blown the floating horsehair away from his face and switched his hands to the horse's ears. "Well, it's like this. I know, when I go, I can leave what I got to my kids. And I know that after me, they'll do right, for theirs." He had swallowed and taken a deep breath. There was no easy or right way to talk about this. "But I don't know about the things I don't own." He had turned his eyes toward Pitcher, but the old man had only stared back and lifted another of the horse's hooves.

Leaving the horse, Kinney had walked to the open front of the barn and stared out at the valley for a long minute. Over his shoulder, he had said, "There's probably a lot of folks who might be wondering the same thing, don't you think?"

"Most likely." Pitcher's voice had dropped two levels. Slowly letting the animal's leg down, twirling the hoof pick with the fingers of his right hand, he looked at his home, as if seeing it the way it was so long ago. "Nobody got cause to worry," he had said softly. "Ain't nothin' gonna change." At Kinney's look, he had added, "That's my word, too."

Inside the house, Kinney moved quickly. The place was much smaller than his, older too, smelling of dust and disuse, and he could search it easily. Despite his size and strength, he gingerly opened the maple drawers and cabinets in the front room, as if afraid that breaking the wood would destroy more than just the furniture. He looked behind paintings, having seen in a movie many years ago how wall safes might be secreted there. Not thinking to look in the kitchen, he walked to the bedroom.

In the carved wooden hope chest at the end of the bed he found a beaten cardboard box full of papers and photographs. Taking the box from the chest, he carried it into the kitchen and set it on the small kitchen table. He picked through the contents until he found it, tucked in an envelope, sealed tight. Ripping the top of the envelope with his finger and drawing the folded papers from their place, he murmured, pleased with himself. "Thought so."

The document was only two short pages of thin, slanted scrawling, dated several summers ago, but it was what he had been expecting to find. He had known that it existed.

Skimming the poor attempt at formal tradition and the coarse sentences that followed, Kinney smiled grimly. "I thought so, Jerome."

* * *

From the distant horizon to the sky overhead, the lines of puffy clouds spread like a giant fan, tinged pink by the light of the dawn that was still hidden behind the eastern hills. A slight, turbulent breeze ruffled the combed but still unruly dark brown hair on the head of thirty-six-year-old Andrew Wesley Morrison. Standing on the sidewalk outside his office, one hand dug deeply in the pocket of the tan field jacket that wrapped loosely around his tall, slim body, while the other hand raised a white china mug of hot coffee to his lips to sip. The light morning breeze gently lifted, then dropped, the collar of his jacket onto his strong shoulders. Shifting his feet, he scraped his battered white sneakers on the concrete, then scratched his right thigh through his brown corduroy pants.

With pale green eyes that sometimes looked brown and in the right light could even appear blue, Morrison examined the streets of downtown Ash Creek. The city was small by almost any standard, but even at this time of day the roads were not silent. Unlike the commute traffic of more urban areas, here the sounds of vehicles were singular, short and businesslike. Through the clean, cold air came the sound of a truck setting off on a long, rural delivery route, then a car taking its occupant to open a bakery. The people awake at this time of day needed to be, not because of the length of their commute, but because they had much work to do before the sun set once more.

Since coming to the small county seat, Morrison had learned well the relativity of time as well as work. Three years had taught him that a rancher's request to meet him before work meant before dawn, when a farmer's day really begins. He had seen many a dark and cold early morning blend into a bright and hot day, then sink into a rosy, humid twilight and finally, as he finally left his office, dissolve into a starry black night.

As the sun climbed closer to the ridge lines of the eastern peaks, the breeze began to warm. "Well, come on, Sam," Morrison said to the empty street before him. Again sipping his strong, aromatic coffee, he licked condensation from his upper lip. Patience was another thing he had learned, or tried to learn, since his arrival.

A few minutes before the sun burned its way through the plane of the smoky sky, a battered tan crew cab pickup truck squeaked around a corner, rolled its way up Main Street and swung over to the curb across the street. Inside the cab of the pickup, Morrison could see the graying hair and beard of his onetime client, Samuel Kinney, as well as one of Sam's black Labrador dogs.

Kinney wasted no time. Shutting off the lights and dropping out of the cab behind his dog, he slammed the truck door with a hollow clang and jogged his heavy body across the street. Stopping on the sidewalk just in front of Morrison, he dug his hands into the pockets of his heavy wool jacket and looked down on the younger man. In the deepening blue of the morning sky, the uneven amalgam of features on Morrison's angular, clean-shaven face seemed even more irregular. At the end of a triangular face, Morrison's chin was rounded but still strong, his cheekbones high and pronounced. A firmly set mouth spread below a slightly rounded nose, and that sat below bright and expectant eyes and a high forehead. While no one ever would have called him handsome in the classical sense, neither would he had been dismissed as unattractive. In its distinctiveness, his face marked the depth of his character.

"Morning, Sam," Morrison said politely.

"Wes," Kinney returned as they shook hands. "Got something for you." The Labrador trotted about aimlessly, looking and sniffing.

Morrison motioned with his cup at the one-story building behind him. "Come in for a cup of coffee? Nice and hot."

"No time, but thanks," Kinney answered, digging inside his coat. Extracting the folded papers of Jerome Pitcher's will, he handed the wrinkled document, along with the key to Pitcher's house, to Morrison and replaced his hands in his coat pockets.

As Morrison held the papers toward the sun and scanned the writing, Kinney tried to attract the attention of his dog.

In half a minute, Morrison folded the papers and looked up. He had read the document twice. "Where'd you get this?" His clean, honest face held genuine surprise.

"Found it in his house."

"What were you doing there?"

"Looking for it."

Morrison bit off another question. "Well, Sam, you know I don't do this sort of thing."

Kinney whistled airily to his dog, then looked back. "I figure you can this time, though," he said simply.

The black Lab ran up, sniffed its master and trotted away again. "Why?" Morrison fell back on questions.

To Kinney, there was no doubt about the answer. "There's been surveyors out on his property, last couple weeks or so. Some kind of big development. They even been on my land."

"Really?" Morrison's chin lifted slightly. "When'd you find this?" He flapped the papers.

"Yesterday. I called you right after."

"And there's been people out on Pitcher's land for weeks?"

Kinney's head rose and fell. "That's right."

"Huh," Morrison mused. "Well, that seems pretty inconsistent." His eyes met Kinney's. "So you think that whoever's on the property," he turned toward the hills and the valley on the other side, "is ignoring this." He waved the folded papers before his face.

"Damn straight," Kinney said gruffly. "Makes no matter to me," he added. "Land's there for the using. Best use you can put it to is the best use it's meant for."

"Uh-huh," Morrison encouraged.

"But," the farmer held up his index finger, "this ain't right."

"Probably true," Morrison said drily. "You know who these people are?" he asked. "The beneficiaries? The people he wanted to have his estate?"

"Nope."

"He didn't have any wife or kids?"

"No."

"No family at all?"

"Nobody close, I know of."

"Huh." Hesitation crossed Morrison's face.

"Somebody ought to do something, if that's what he wanted," Kinney stared at the smaller man. "So I brought it to you."

"But I don't—" Morrison protested again, offering the papers back to Kinney.

Hands remaining resolutely in his pockets, Kinney insisted, "Somebody's got to do it, Wes." He whistled to the dog again, without effect.

Morrison sighed as a slight smile twisted his lips upward. He could not resist a call to defend the undefended. He never had. "All right." He tucked the document into his inside pocket. "I guess I can see what I can do."

At his words, Kinney felt the weight being lifted from his shoulders. The will was in safe hands. Morrison had said that he would take care of it, and his word was all that anyone needed to know.

Calling to his dog, Kinney again stuck out his hand to the younger man. "Thanks."

"Sure," Morrison answered, clasping the rough palm.

Kinney jogged back across the street to his truck. The dog leapt in over him. Without looking around, he drove back toward his home.

Morrison stood on the sidewalk and sipped his coffee until the pickup disappeared from sight around a corner. Then he turned toward his law office, downed the last of his cup, and asked himself, "All right, Wesley, just what can you do?"

* * *

Stacey Fletcher stepped inside the waiting room of the law office and turned to close the glass-paneled entrance door. "Doughnuts!" she called out. As she balanced the box of pastries and her purse in her arms, something warm and wet wiped itself against the back of her stockinged calf. Jerking suddenly, she calmed almost instantly and looked down at her aggressor.

A small, tricolored Australian Shepherd sat at her feet, its brown eyes seeming to bulge from its head, its floppy ears alternately popping up and lying flat. A thin white blaze ran down its black forehead and expanded into a white muzzle. The dog's neck and chest were white, its mouth open in a silly grin. Its docked tail vibrated happily. It pawed a black, white and tan foreleg at Stacey and grinned again, then yawned with a crescendoing squeak.

Turning the cardboard sign in the window so that OPEN showed to the public street, Stacey stepped carefully past the dog. "Wes!" she called, setting the doughnuts and her purse on her desk to the left of the entrance door. "Doughnuts!"

From behind the closed door ahead of her and directly across from the entry, Morrison's voice answered knowingly. "Give her a bear claw—maybe she'll take it and go away."

"Come out here, you coward," Stacey commanded, brushing curls of wavy blonde hair from her face. Crossing the dark green, patterned carpet of the waiting room and putting one knee on the small cream-colored sofa, she reached up and twisted the wand of the mini blinds, letting light through the window in the wall across from her desk.

Morrison opened his office door, saw Stacey and appreciatively ran his eyes over the curves of her body as it stretched under her bright blue dress. She was twenty-eight, happily married for five years, and the best secretary he had ever known. Unlike the nameless, faceless women in the typing pool of the huge firm for which he once had worked, unlike the unmotivated civil servants he had known, and quite unlike the short, obese and incompetent woman he had endured when he had first started practicing, Stacey was as smart as she was pretty, as efficient as she was tyrannical.

Descending from the sofa, Stacey folded her arms across her chest and looked at the Australian Shepherd, which was now sitting in front of her desk, still grinning happily and looking from her to Morrison and back again. "What's she doing here?" she demanded to know.

Standing in the doorway to his office, still in his jeans and field jacket, Morrison shrugged. "I got up at four, to meet Sam Kinney at five. She got up with me. Didn't seem fair to leave her all alone till I got home. I don't usually kick her off the bed till seven."

"She sleeps on your bed now?" Stacey blinked with disbelief.

Morrison squirmed under her glare. "She's lonely," was the only excuse he could offer. "If you'd been abandoned out on the highway in a rainstorm, wouldn't you want to sleep in a nice warm bed with somebody?"

Huffing, Stacey pulled off her sweater as she headed for her desk. "If you'd found me all wet alongside the highway, would you have taken me home?"

"Oh, yes," Morrison smiled gleefully to himself, but drew a glare of tolerant disapproval.

"It's unnatural," Stacey complained, sitting down and turning on her computer. "A man should live with a woman, not a dog."

At the last word, the dog trotted to Morrison's feet, sat and looked up at him.

"She's female," Morrison protested. "Besides," he smiled helplessly at the little shepherd, "she won't go away."

Stacey began flipping through her work. "Give her a doughnut and get to work. What were you doing here at five o'clock, anyway?"

Stooping, Morrison scratched the dog's ears for a few seconds. "Sam had a will he'd found in one of his neighbor's houses. It hasn't been offered for probate, but somebody's starting to develop the neighbor's land."

Stacey stopped her work, raising her eyebrows. "That doesn't sound right."

As Morrison stood, the Shepherd dived nose first into the carpet, rolled on her back, stuck her forelegs straight up, and obsequiously rolled her eyes up at him. Sighing, he rubbed her belly with the toe of his sneaker. "That's what I thought. Anyway, he wanted me to handle it for him—or the deceased—or somebody. Actually, come to think of it, I don't know who the client would be."

Stacey began peering at the screen of her monitor. "Well, I hope you didn't take it. We don't do probate," she both reminded and instructed him.

Her tongue thwupping in and out, the Shepherd followed at Morrison's heels as he plucked a glazed doughnut from the box. "Have you got Willis Casey's number?" he asked. "I'll probably give it to him."

"Casey?" Stacey began picking with painted fingernails through her card file. "Do I know him?"

"Probably not."

"Should I?"

"Probably not. He's kind of the dean of the probate lawyers north of Shasta."

Dropping her hands into her lap, Stacey sat back in her chair. "But we don't do probate," she repeated. "Why should I have his number?"

Morrison bit a semicircle from the doughnut. "You probably shouldn't. I just asked if you did." They traded glances. Morrison smiled fearfully. "If you kill me, who'll sign your paycheck?"

Consulting a directory she had at her fingertips, Stacey scribbled Casey's number on a pad and handed the slip to her boss. "After you get rid of this probate thing, try and get some real work done, okay?"

Morrison ducked into his office, leaving the Shepherd standing in the middle of the waiting room, gazing patiently at Stacey.

"On the other hand," Stacey said to the dog, "maybe you're the best he can do."

Due to the nature of his practice, Willis Casey was usually in his office rather than in court. Morrison reached him on the first try, and they exchanged polite, professional amenities.

"I've got a little problem that's right up your alley," Morrison finally said.

"What's that?" Casey's slurred, nasal voice spoke slowly in Morrison's ear.

"One of my clients gave me a will that hasn't been probated yet, but it seems that someone's already taken possession of the property."

"Oh, that's not all that unusual," Casey told him. "Lot's of people take possession before a final distribution."

Morrison doodled on a legal pad, drawing a starburst. "Well, this is a little more than that. If you saw the document and knew what was going on, you might think it was pretty inconsistent. Anyway, as you probably know, I don't do probate, so I thought you might be able to help out."

"Well, maybe I can do that." Through the telephone earpiece came the sound of Casey shifting positions and tugging at paper. "How about giving me the decedent's name?"

Morrison leaned forward and scanned the handwritten will again. "Last name Pitcher, first name Jerome. Jerome Pitcher. Lived out on the river road, over in the valley."

Casey made a strange, strangling noise, then said, "Well, Wes, I know this is going to sound funny, but I'm already probating the estate of Jerome Pitcher. I'm doing it intestate, too, on the basis of representations by his niece and nephew that he died without a will." Casey paused. "You sure you've got an authentic will there?"

Morrison was already close up against his desk, every muscle taut. "I haven't looked into that," he said carefully, withdrawing from the professional congeniality that had marked the rest of the conversation.

"Well, you might want to do that," Casey said, in his slow, subtle way of influencing a case. "I already have a sworn statement there was no will, and I'm about to file for letters of administration for the niece and nephew."

Morrison scrambled. "Who are the niece and nephew? What are their names?"

Casey told him, then said, "You know, maybe we really don't have a problem, if the beneficiaries are the same under the will. Do you have their names there?"

"Yes," Morrison said shortly.

"And?"

A long, hard, unpleasant and unprofitable fight appeared before Morrison's eyes. "Just about everything goes to someone named Sara Owen and her husband Jack," he said, knowing as he said it that, on this occasion, he would break his own rules; he would do probate, once again. "Know who they are?"

Casey's old voice sighed tiredly in Morrison's ear. "No, Wes, I don't." Casey did not want a fight any more than Morrison did. "I guess we've got a problem."

Morrison leaned back in his chair, nodding slowly and unhappily to himself. "Yeah, I guess we do."

Chapter Eight

For a very brief moment, Kroeber did not understand. When he did, his insides turned into water. Face stiffening as he tried to hide the fear that instantly threatened to consume him, his heart began pounding so hard that he thought that it would break his breastbone. They had been caught. Like the moment, long ago and now forgotten, that he and sensuous but under-aged Deena Stewart had been caught naked in the back seat of her father's Impala, panic and shame shortened his breath and twitched in his feet.

"Just a minute," he said to his caller. Rising from his desk, keeping the telephone to his ear, he eased to the doorway and closed off his office. Alone in the room, holding onto the edge of his desk with his free hand, he shut his eyes.

"Barry?" Willis Casey's voice sounded through the long-distance telephone lines.

"Yes." Kroeber answered without knowing that he had done so.

"You didn't know anything about this?" The old lawyer asked in the tone attorneys use when they know that their client has lied, but do not want to be told so directly—or do not care.

"Of course not," Kroeber asserted the answer that Casey so obviously wanted.

"Well, then," the slow voice inquired, "what do you think is going on?"

As he filled lungs that for half a minute had not moved, Kroeber's head cleared. He was no longer seventeen, no longer inexperienced in life, no longer conscience-ridden like so many of his colleagues. Shoving his feelings beneath the veneer of a successful businessman, he slipped into the manner of thought and action that had become second nature. "That's easy," he said. "It's a fraud. Just someone trying to get the land. Whoever turned it in is probably the beneficiary, too. I'll bet he even wrote it."

"No," Casey said, stretching the word out for long seconds. In the office he had occupied for decades, he leaned back in a creaking judge's chair and stared at cobwebs in the corners of the ceiling. He thought of Wesley Morrison. Not a chance, he thought. "I know the lawyer who's offering the will for probate," he told Kroeber. "I don't think he'd have anything to do with a fraud."

Kroeber's lips fluttered as he stopped himself from telling Casey that in his experience lawyers, like banks, are easily duped. It was so pitifully easy. Neither paid any attention to the things they did not want to know, and what they did not know never hurt them.

"Besides," Casey continued, "the man who actually turned it in, Samuel Kinney, doesn't take under the will. He doesn't get anything. So it's not a question of him trying to get something out of this."

Exhaling heavily through his nose, Kroeber finally sat down again, staring at the lighted line buttons on the telephone. "It doesn't matter," he stated rapidly. "My uncle didn't leave a will, so this has to be a fraud. Who's the property left to, if not us? Maybe this Kinney's being clever and trying to get it to go to someone he knows."

Papers rustled like static over the lines. "The main devise is to one Jack Owen and, I presume, his wife, Sara."

"Who the hell are they?"

"The wife is to be the executrix, though they share equally in the estate. The residue goes to you and your sister."

"Like hell."

"That's what it says. I'm reading a copy of it now."

"Have you talked to these people?"

A long, resigned sigh came over the line. "Well, Barry, nobody knows where they are. My staff has already checked all the local telephone books and the directories for Redding and Red Bluff, too. There's a half dozen Jack Owens and a few Sara Owens, but no Jack and Sara Owen."

Kroeber's face remained compressed. "So how can that be a will? How can you give your property to somebody who doesn't exist?"

Casey took his time answering. "We don't know that they don't exist, Barry. We just can't find them right now."

Suddenly, Kroeber sat up straight. "No, and I'll bet you don't. I'll bet this is a fraud, but it's being done by one of the farmers out there who's trying to stop what I'm doing. That's how it smells to me. Am I right?"

Casey felt himself being led. It was all right. "That's a possibility, I suppose."

Drawing his gold pen from his pocket, Kroeber began to jot some notes. "That's it. That's it. Some farmer or, more likely, some environmental group, out to try to kill the deal. Well, get rid of it. Throw the thing out."

Noontime was approaching, and Casey began to feel tired. "It's not up to me, Barry. It's for the court to decide now."

Kroeber’s dark eyes flashed. "Courts? What do you mean, courts? Just do it! Just prove it's a fraud."

"I—"

"Just go down and do it, okay? I've got construction crews lined up, I've got plans ready for approval, I've got ads running daily. Jesus, Casey, I've already spent the money I sold the memberships for—what do you expect me to do, give it back? I haven't got it."

"All right, all right," Casey murmured. "Don't worry." He offered the comfort for his own benefit as much as Kroeber's. Running one hand over his bare head, he said, "You have to keep in mind who the players are. The other lawyer's young, and he doesn't do any probate work. He doesn't know Judge Reyes the way I do. I've been pushing cases through his court for, oh, twenty years now. Who do you think he'll listen to?"

Kroeber sat back, nodding. "All right. That's good. You're thinking."

"I'll just take Simon out to lunch before the hearing and let him know where we're going," Casey creaked. "He's getting a little senile, but he's like me. We think alike. He'll see it and go along."

Kroeber's face began to relax. "You're thinking." He repeated, nodding to himself, approving of Casey's method. "All right. We'll do it that way."

"Well, that's fine, then," the old lawyer mumbled. "I'll let you know how it goes."

"You'll tell me when you've won," Kroeber corrected.

Casey chuckled lowly. "That's right. I'll tell you when we've won." Placing the receiver on the cradle of his ancient black rotary telephone, he tried to remember Simon Reyes' favorite restaurant.

Rising, Kroeber looked down at his cluttered desk. He seemed to be standing on the edge of a tall building, far above the ground, swaying in the wind. The deposits and memberships he had received or sold already totaled in the hundreds of thousands.

And all of it already had been spent on advertising and development costs, including his own salary as president of the corporation. The thought of having to return it left him hollow. The house of cards he had built would fall apart, and not long after that there would be a knock on his door by a man with a warrant. He would be lucky to save anything. Someone tapped on the office door and his heart jumped. The surface of the desk solidified.

The door opened, exposing the face of Rose Sickles, the office manager. "Customer to see you, Mr. Kroeber. Says he's a friend of yours."

Kroeber barely heard her, so intent was he on how to contain this uncontainable problem. He would have to manage everything—including Casey—more closely than ever. He would have to bring it to an end as soon as possible. As he left the office, scraping against Rose and putting on a false smile for his unknown customer, the thought of breaking the news to Diana made him shudder.

* * *

Joe Mines looked down at the head of the Australian Shepherd that was resting forlornly on his left thigh. The dog's unblinking, bulging brown eyes peered up at him, occasionally swinging for a moment with apparent meaning toward the other three men sitting around the card table. Mines was the forty-one-year-old manager of a local hardware shop who knew Wesley Morrison from his constant visits and purchases. Morrison had a penchant for working around his house, and his garage shop was almost as well stocked and equipped as the hardware store itself. He was the kind of customer Mines loved to have.

Lee Salinger, a heavy equipment operator, sat across from Pat Beesley, a quiet County Deputy Sheriff. Salinger shuffled the deck of cards and said, "I still can't believe you paid cash for this place, Wes."

The low-stakes game was being played in the dining room of Morrison's home on the outskirts of town, a low brown house with big windows that showed Mount Shasta rising above the Cascade Range. It was a new and well-built home, far from the road, surrounded but not enclosed by shady trees, and rimmed completely by a high, sturdy rail fence. To Beesley, a former Special Forces sergeant, something about the spacing of the fence, the shrubby landscaping and the expanse of lawn between the two reminded him of the way killing zones were constructed. It was, he thought, an odd kind of landscaping.

Forgetting his feelings, the Deputy Sheriff eyed the huge stack of red, white and blue poker chips in front of Morrison, then gauged the much smaller columns before the others. "I believe it," he quipped back to Salinger.

"Ante up," ordered the operating engineer. He dealt rapidly and the men picked up their cards.

"Two," said Morrison. Two cards flew from Salinger's hands.

Beesley sipped his Budweiser and grinned. "Couple more cards, and I'll have gin."

Salinger and Mines exchanged glances. The game was five card draw. "Cards?" Salinger asked severely.

"Three." Beesley grinned again.

Looking from his cards to the dog, Mines finally asked in his plaintive drawl, "Wes, how do you make this dog go away?"

Morrison smiled knowingly. "Well, she comes without being called, so maybe you should try calling her."

Beesley and Salinger lowered their cards to watch.

Mines looked the Shepherd directly in the eyes. "Come, dog!" he commanded.

In an instant the little tricolor bounded into the air and landed in Mines' lap. Her black nose an inch from his, her brown eyes pleaded with him.

Beesley grinned from ear to ear. "That sure worked."

"Yeah, real good, Wes," Mines growled. The Shepherd grinned and panted hot air onto his face.

"Akk," grimaced Mines.

Morrison tried to swallow a chuckle but it found its way out through his eyes. "Try telling her to go away."

Mines looked at Beesley, who stifled a laugh of his own, then again stared the dog in the face. He took a breath, and said, "Go away, do—"

The Shepherd's head lunged toward him at lightning speed and her tongue wiped his face with a thwwp! before he could even think of moving.

Beesley and Salinger shared a glance. "That's some fast dog," the young deputy observed. As the dog continued her intent, happy stare at Mines' face, Salinger turned toward Morrison. "You need to get yourself a woman, Wes."

* * *

"You look good in a suit," Stacey told Morrison, appraising him from her desk. "You should get into a line of work where you have to wear one now and then."

Smiling briefly, Morrison straightened his conservative red and blue tie, then snugged the knot against the crisp buttoned-down collar of his white shirt. He was due in court in a few minutes. A hand run through his hair succeeded in setting the unmindful strands in place for only a few seconds. As he reached for the coat of his gray pinstripes, the shepherd ran up to him and with her tongue tasted the crease of his pants. "Don't do that!" he said futilely.

The shepherd dove nose-first into the carpet and flipped on her back again as Stacey said, "How about banking? That way you could work only four hours and still feel like you were putting in a full day's work." She put a finger to her lips. "Or do you do that already?"

Morrison just smiled again. Yesterday, with no files on his desk, a stack of untranscribed dictation beside Stacey and no calls needing to be returned, he had left the office at noon to go fishing for steelhead from the banks of the Klamath River. Sometimes he liked being the boss.

"Mr. Wiley called again while you were gone," Stacey continued relentlessly.

"Oh, God," moaned Morrison, packing his file in his briefcase. "Mr. Wiley. Now what?"

"Didn't you see my note? He wants to know how you're coming along with his partnership agreement."

Closing the briefcase latches and spinning the combination locks, Morrison sighed. "That crazy thing? You're working on that right now, aren't you?"

Her curly blonde hair bouncing as she nodded, Stacey said, "I'm correcting your dictation mistakes, if that's what you mean."

Morrison squatted and petted the dog. The shepherd licked his hand at every stroke. "Haven't I always told you to do what's right, not what I say?"

"Since when have I listened to you?"

Hand on the doorknob to the street, Morrison paused. "You know, I don't recall you ever doing that."

Stacey stopped typing on the computer keyboard and turned a serious face toward her boss. She liked working for Wesley Morrison. He was kind and generous, with a sharp, self-deprecating sense of humor that made her want to help him and made her care about the outcome of his cases. "Is this an important hearing?"

Morrison's shoulders rose and fell in a shrug that appeared more relaxed than he felt. "Judge Reyes apparently has never seen an intestate Petition for Letters of Administration and a Petition for Letters Testamentary in the same case. Neither have I, come to think of it, but that's neither here nor there. I guess he wants to get some idea of what's going on. See what the fight's all about. I don't think this is really the hearing on who the representative of the estate will be."

Nodding, Stacey's expression became solemn. The worry she saw on Morrison's face and heard in his soft voice was concern not only about winning, but about doing the best job he could for a client he did not even know. Stacey sometimes had to push, prod and cajole him into his work, but once he was started, he would work without a break until he was finished. A brief he put off writing would turn out as a masterful mix of legal research and persuasive prose; a simple contract he delayed putting together would be thought through and clearly drafted to cover every eventuality; an arbitration decision he had stalled in delivering would reveal the insight and wisdom that had made him a fund of knowledge and a source of judgment for other members of the county bar. The quality of his work more than explained why he had been courted by one of the biggest law firms in San Francisco. And still, for all his intelligence and skill, for all the pride he took in each individual piece of writing, he seemed to take little joy in his work. As she looked at his bright, thoughtful eyes, she wondered for the hundredth time why such a man had forsaken such a promising career to come to such a small town, so far from anywhere. "Good luck," she wished sincerely. "You'll do fine."

"Sure," Morrison said as he left the building.

* * *

At the rear of the single courtroom of the Ash Creek Superior Court, Diana Robeck sat on the edge of the bleached oak bench. Her breath was unnaturally shallow, and every few minutes she would inhale and exhale one huge breath to clear the carbon dioxide from her system and calm herself down. From a tensely rigid face, her small blue eyes darted around the courtroom, periodically focusing on the bailiff, each time studying his khaki shirt, his olive pants and tie, the yellow and green patch on his shoulder. Above his left breast pocket was his gold, seven-pointed star; above the right pocket, a gold-bordered American flag. Her attention began to wander, snapping from person to place, from the square fluorescent light panels in the ceiling to the court reporter's table near the judge's bench and the court clerk's cubbyhole below it.

She was nine years old sitting in the corner of her room on the floor, waiting for her father to come home and punish her. She had been deprived of candy all week because of a poor report card, but the low grade had been the fault of a wizened old teacher who had not understood her. So she was pouting resentfully, angry at being made to pay for someone else's mistake. The brightly colored pieces of hard candy in the cheap crystal jar on the high shelf had been too tempting, and the kitchen stool next to the empty counter had planted the idea in her mind. The closing of the front door had startled her, the candy jar had fallen and shattered, and she had been caught. She had been left not only without her treat but with the gnawing fear of anticipated punishment. The threat had been real, and for three days just sitting down had been agony.

Now, as the minutes slid by, the bright life she so recently had envisioned gradually dimmed and receded, the treasure that had been so close to being in her grasp slipped farther away. Pushed into the beginning of another gray depression by the anger at her impending loss, she fought her way out and emerged with her wrath intensified.

Back in the courtroom and the present time, she suppressed her ire, and took off and cleaned her oversized glasses. Her hands shook nervously while she worked, as if she were a defendant in a criminal court, which in some ways she felt she was.

Barry sat to his sister's left, impatiently leaning forward and resting his elbows on his knees, occasionally glancing at the mural on the wall that depicted the Indians and pioneers of the area. An end to the proceedings was all that he wanted. He had tried to make conversation with Diana on the way up, and again here in the courtroom, but she was frozen. Her thoughts were somewhere else, her answers were sentences of only one or two words. Despite the new suit she was wearing, she seemed to have reverted to her old self, and yet to have changed somehow.

After his fifteenth attempt he had given up trying to talk to her. Now, he simply sat in anxious silence, while in the back of his mind he worked the numbers of the development plan, estimating possible mortgages and loans, trying to figure a worst-case scenario.

On Diana's right sat Willis Casey. Relaxed, leaning back on the hardwood bench, rocking slightly, he looked as comfortable as he felt. He ignored the emotions of his clients. He had been in this courtroom and older ones from Redding to Eureka so often that he could not number the times. In his youth, he had fought other attorneys and stubborn judges in monstrous disputes between heirs, and had thought of himself as his clients' champion when he had won. Since then he had learned other ways to win a case, ways that were as subtle and effective as they were unethical and fragile. Having coffee or lunch with the judge assigned to one of his cases and discussing "hypothetical" fact patterns, as he had today with Simon Reyes, was just one of those ways.

The courtroom was rectangular, with less than a dozen benches for spectators and a tiny table just inside the doors for what press there was in the county. That bench was empty today. Across the back wall ran black-and-white photographs of former Superior Court judges. A low rail of the same bleached oak that formed the judge's bench and the witness box separated the audience from the counsel area. Just inside the rail were half a dozen throne-like chairs of leather and wood, again mirroring the structure of the chairs in the jury box. The judge's bench itself was squeezed into the right front corner of the room.

Simon Reyes sat on the high bench in his black robe, slipping in and out of lucidity. Casey felt sorry for Reyes. At sixty-one, the judge was younger than the old attorney, but as the days passed his reason became less and less sound. Even over their pleasant lunch, filled with thoughts of past cases and passed-away friends, Reyes' difficulties had been apparent. Casey had seen that and had decided that he could play on it.

The courtroom door opened and closed with an airy swish and a thud. Wesley Morrison stood just inside the door, intently examining the scene before him.

With the young lawyer slightly in front of the last row of benches, Casey thought that he and his clients had not been seen. A tired smile on his face, he rose silently, edged close to Morrison's shoulder, and in his slow, slurry voice said, "Wes."

Without turning or even moving, Morrison said, "Morning, Willis. What are you doing, hiding here in the back?"

Casey hid the mild disappointment he felt at not surprising his opponent and responded, "We're way down on the calendar. You want to go out in the hallway and talk a little before the case is called?"

"Sure."

Matching Casey's aged shuffle, Morrison lead the way from the courtroom and down the corridor to the top of the stairs. "So," he stopped and turned. "You want to just give in, or what?"

That brought a genuine smile to Casey's face. "Well, not just yet."

Morrison returned the sentiment. "So, what did you have in mind?"

Casey's hand smoothed the few strands of hair left on his head. "Well, I thought we might be able to sharpen the issues for the judge. Maybe give him some idea where we're willing to go with this. What do you think?"

It was an attempt to discover the strength of his position, and Morrison saw it. He replied, "I think we're here to fight about who's going to get Jerome Pitcher's estate. I haven't missed something, have I?"

"No, Wes," Casey said in a gently condescending voice that over the decades he had learned to employ against younger lawyers with great effectiveness. "But, you've got to admit, given a choice between two live and present heirs, and some fictional woman...well, you know how Judge Reyes thinks." Casey added the slightest emphasis to the last words, knowing that Morrison was not aware of how Simon Reyes thought.

Morrison stood tall and straight and did not blink. "I know that he'll have to give full effect to Pitcher's intent as expressed in the will. Your clients will just have to be satisfied with taking what's left."

Casey smiled again, but this expression was not one of pleasure. He had never had a case with Morrison before, but the young man was proving to be as capable as his reputation. He tried another path. "Well, all right, Wes, if you want to just let the judge decide...." Turning his back, he stepped toward the courtroom.

With a nonchalant toss of his head, Morrison followed.

"You know," Casey stopped a few feet from the door and tried again. "This thing could go on for years, with appeals and everything."

"I wouldn't be surprised."

Casey's own voice was suddenly very tired. "Wes, you don't want that. Believe me. Drawing these probate things out...it's just not good for anyone."

"Then let's not." His bright eyes searched Casey's face for signs of the maneuvering he knew was still going on.

"What if we tell the judge," Casey suggested, "that if you can't turn up these people within, say, two weeks, you'll withdraw the will from probate."

Morrison sucked his teeth for a second. "If you'll agree, in return, that if I do find them and they are granted letters, you won't appeal."

Keeping his face entirely impassive, Casey nodded slowly, knowing that he had won. "I guess I can agree to that."

Morrison held the door open for Casey. Together, they re-entered the courtroom and took their seats until their case was called.

At the court clerk's command, side by side, Morrison and Casey stood silently at the counsel table in the nearly empty courtroom until Judge Reyes had finished reviewing his file and said, "All right, gentlemen." He examined them both for a moment. "You both want letters, is that right?"

"Yes, your honor."

"Yes, your honor."

"Mr. Casey, you want intestate letter of administration for the decedent's niece and nephew, and—" he paused to flip through the court file, "—Mr. Morrison, you're offering a holographic will with a named executrix."

"That's correct, your honor."

"Mr. Morrison, correct me if I'm wrong, but you don't really have a client, do you?" The judge's black hair glinted in the fluorescent light from the overhead lamps. Lowering his bifocals, he peered down at the two attorneys.

"I suppose that technically that's true," Morrison admitted. "But given the circumstances, I don't think—"

"Well, I guess I can let that go for the moment," Reyes agreed.

Casey did not miss the import of the statement. "Well, your honor, that issue is one of our main points. It's our contention that, not only is the will a fraud, but that the devise is to nonexistent persons, and that's why Mr. Morrison—and I intend to cast no aspersions on him—"

"Of course not," the judge seconded.

"—doesn't have a client. But as I said," Casey reminded Reyes of one part of their luncheon conversation, "the first point is that the will is a fraud. My clients have signed a declaration under penalty of perjury of the laws of this state that," he lowered his voice, "to the best of their knowledge," he raised his voice again, "Jerome Pitcher left no will. The document that's been offered for probate must be a forgery of some kind."

Catching the tendrils of Casey's comments as his attention momentarily wandered, Reyes focused on Morrison. "Is that right, counsel? Is the will you're offering a fraud?"

Knowing that the bluntness of the question was designed solely to shock him off balance, Morrison coolly opened his briefcase and removed a sheaf of papers.

"Your honor," his clear voice said, the papers in his hand, "I have here affidavits from fourteen men who did business with Jerome Pitcher over the course of twenty or more years." Sam Kinney's assistance in producing those affidavits had been invaluable. "Every one of them had innumerable occasions to witness Mr. Pitcher's signature and handwriting, and every one of them swears that the will is in his handwriting."

"Well, now, I don't know—" Casey began.

"And," Morrison continued smoothly, "I also have an affidavit from Corey Lands, a fingerprint expert in the criminalistics lab of the county Sheriff's Office who doubles as a handwriting analyst. He also believes that the will is authentic." Pat Beesley had pulled strings there. "I would think that would be sufficient for at least a preliminary showing of authenticity." Sliding copies of the affidavits across the polished wooden table to within Casey's reach, Morrison asked, "Permission to approach the bench?"

With a glance at Casey, Reyes said, "Granted."

Morrison walked toward the judge's bench, handed the papers to the court clerk, then retreated to his place at the counsel table.

Reyes finished fingering through the affidavits before Casey did. "What about all this, Mr. Casey? How do you respond to this?"

Still examining Morrison's evidence, Casey temporized: "Well, obviously, we'd need to retain our own expert."

"Obviously," the judge quickly agreed, his voice as arid as the surrounding high desert. "And I'll give you time to do that."

"Equally obvious," Morrison interjected, finally beginning to see the interplay between counsel and the court, "the Court cannot rule the will invalid at this point."

Judge Reyes sighed. In his younger days, he had been a fine scholar, and despite the demands of social politics, he could still be swayed by good lawyering. "I would have to say that's right. I can't say at this point whether it's invalid." He saw Casey's eyes narrow and added: "But, counsel, I also can't say that it is valid."

"I understand, your honor," Morrison said, content to simply have forestalled a ruling and to have put the burden onto Casey.

"I'm going to defer that issue for right now, Mr. Casey," the judge said, then indulgently gave his old friend another chance. "Did you have another issue you wanted to raise?"

Unruffled, Casey nodded. He reminded Reyes of the other point they had talked about and hypothetically agreed upon at lunch: "Well, it's this matter of whether these people even exist, and this might really be the main point here in this case. As your honor has already perceptively recognized, Mr. Morrison really doesn't even have a client, and that raises the question of whether these people are even a party to these proceedings. And that leads up the question of whether the will can even be offered for probate. And—"

"So—"

"And," Casey continued at a nod from Reyes, "if these people are nonexistent, as it certainly appears, then the devise in the will would appear to be invalid. If that's so, my clients, Mr. Kroeber and Mrs. Robeck, will take all the property through the residuary clause. Either way, it seems to me, the ultimate result is the same. I think the court could rule in my clients' favor right now, if the court should deem that appropriate." He spread his hands as if to receive the judge's decision.

Despite his failings, Reyes had not forgotten a judge's duties. "Mr. Morrison, do you want to respond to that? Do you know who these persons are? Or if they even exist?"

Morrison took a breath and gathered his thoughts. This was the difficult stage. "I have no reason to believe, and I don't think anyone in this courtroom has any reason to believe, that they do not exist. I think it's simply a matter of finding them. If I may analogize, your honor, it's somewhat like locating a missing heir."

"But," Reyes smiled patronizingly, the folds of his cheeks curving toward his eyes, "don't we, in cases like that, know that the heir, as a known relative, actually exists, and it's just a matter of finding out where they are?" For a few seconds, his mind was sharp once more. "Whereas here, there's no indication that these persons are an heir or otherwise related or entitled to inherit, and no indication, really, that they even exist. Isn't that right?"

"Your honor," Morrison prefaced, "Jerome Pitcher met a lot of people. He knew a lot of people. He didn't keep a diary or an address book, so we don't know who those people are. But, it is indisputable that he has the right under the law to bequeath his property to whomever he wants. And it is equally clear that whatever his intent was, it is entitled to precedence and must be given effect if at all possible." He paused for breath as he saw Reyes' eyes darken and drift. Leaning slightly over the table, he sharpened his tone and aimed his words at the judge. "Your honor, if these people do exist, if they could be found, if they could come here and prove they were the ones Mr. Pitcher wanted to inherit his property, wouldn't it be a manifest injustice, both to them and to him, to prevent that from happening?"

Quickly, Casey said, "It's not a question—"

Morrison kicked his voice up one level. "Wouldn't it be simply unfair, Your Honor, to repudiate the decedent's intent, and deprive these people of their legacy, without at least giving notice and giving them a chance to appear and claim what is rightfully and legally theirs?"

Beside Morrison, Casey emitted a long sigh. He had underestimated Wesley Morrison, and thought to himself that if he had retired three years ago he could be sitting in a retirement community by a lake in Mexico right now.

Judge Reyes pushed his glasses back up onto his nose. "But, counsel, if, as Mr. Casey says, these persons don't exist, then they would not respond to notice, would they?"

Morrison knew when to give ground and when to fight. "Not if they actually don't exist. Then, of course not."

"Then why should I issue notice?"

Morrison pressed the point again. "Because they might exist, your honor. Because they might be out there, they might see the notice, they might really be the ones Mr. Pitcher wanted to give his property to. And if they don't exist, and they don't respond, what harm has been done? Mr. Casey's clients will still take, and they won't be prejudiced in any way."

Casey spoke. "I object to that. There's a large development they're trying to pursue. Any delay could be quite costly."

In the back of the courtroom, Kroeber whispered, "No shit!" Diana emitted a strangled sigh.

"I have filed a request for an injunction to stop any development on Mr. Pitcher's property," Morrison reminded the judge. "I can't speak for any of the surrounding property owners, of course."

"I've read your request," Reyes said. "It's denied." Tossing his glasses on the bench, he laced his fingers, leaned forward and said, "Mr. Casey's clients have demonstrated a prima facie case of a right to their uncle's land. Stopping the work seems to me to be far more prejudicial to them, than letting it go on is to the potential beneficiaries."

Reyes' mind was shifting more and more rapidly, touching one extreme and then the other. Rubbing his aching eyes, he decided that he had done enough work for today. He leaned back in his chair, for how long he didn't know, until he abruptly realized that he was still sitting on the bench of his courtroom. His chair squeaked as he leaned forward.

"All right," he decided, keen once more. "I'll order that notice be published for two weeks from today. We'll have the official hearing on your petitions at that time. Mr. Morrison, will you bear the costs of the notice?"

Feeling the tingle of success, Morrison nodded. "Of course, your honor."

"All right. That's an interlocutory ruling then. But if no one steps forward at the end of two weeks...?"

Now, Casey said strongly, "We'll be able to dispose of the case then, your honor, based on an agreement I have with counsel." His hand indicated Morrison.

"Fine." Reyes looked at his clerk. "Any more?"

"Last one," the woman replied.

"Thank you, counsel," the judge ended the session.

"Thank you, your honor," both men said.

* * *

Stacey jotted on the back of a telephone message sheet. "All the local papers, plus Redding, Red Bluff, Alturas, Eureka, and Crescent City. How about Oregon?"

Pacing in the waiting room while the little shepherd sat on the sofa and watched, Morrison's head nodded jerkily. "We'd better. Klamath Falls, Medford and Grants Pass. Then just the main papers in Eugene and Portland. And as far south as Sacramento."

"Nevada?"

"Just Reno would do, I think."

Stacey nodded, finished writing, and looked at her boss. "This is going to cost us an arm and a leg, you know."

"No doubt."

"And just who am I supposed to send the bill to?"

Morrison shrugged. "It'll probably be pro bono."

Stacey laughed one short, high-pitched time. "After this, you won't have to provide any free services to the County bar for a hundred years."

Sighing, Morrison stared at the shepherd's silly grin. He nodded to himself. "That ought to just about do it."

Chapter Nine

The meager winter snow pack had raced away from all but the highest granite slopes of the wilderness by late spring. For the third year, the black winter clouds that normally filled the sparkling lakes with rainwater and pushed the river to or beyond its banks had visited the north only sporadically, coming and going in the night, leaving little evidence of their passing.

For the last three days, Donald Hupper had put his forty-two year old body on the back of a sorrel gelding and ridden the most heavily used trails of his domain; each evening he had listened to the reports from his other Rangers, and then he had made the tough decision to post a permanent high-fire danger warning on the sign outside the low, brown U. S. Forest Service Ranger Station in Smith's Fork. The warning would remain there from June throughout the summer, a kind of stiff compromise between the safety of the forest and the public's right to enjoy it. But, at the same time, he instructed his staff to highlight the rules and to check, whenever they could, to visually confirm that the backpackers heading into the mountains really did have the shovel or other tool necessary to extinguish their campfires.

Entering the lobby of the Ranger Station, Hupper stopped to examine all the posted notices, maps and rules, making sure that everything on the boards was current, and that everything that was required to be there was actually present. He did this every morning, just as each and every morning he read all the sections of the newspaper from front to back, just as he had committed to memory each twist and turn of almost every trail and the location of each campsite, just as he could name and describe each of the fauna and most of the flora that inhabited and flourished in the surrounding country. He knew that his wife Lorna and their three children at times found his attention to such minutiae endearing, and at other times excruciating; he knew also that some psychologist would have some exotic name for his trait and perhaps blame it on something in his childhood, but he did not care. Attention to detail and a good memory were, he thought, part of what made him a good civil servant and a good Forest Ranger.

His staff was very good and he saw no errors or omissions in the bulletins. During the day, as he had instructed, they solemnly passed over the little yellow campfire permits to the public as if they were turning over family heirlooms or documents from a sacred trust. They pointed out the breathtaking pictures of the spectacular fires years earlier that, save for the intervention of fearless smoke jumpers and units from the U. S. Army, would have burned down the logging town of Happy Camp, and they extracted personal promises from the eldest members of each party not to harm the forests. Hupper prayed that would be enough. Another dry year, and he would have to prohibit any kind of fires or camp stoves below the six thousand foot elevation line. Above that level, the moisture content might be high enough and the vegetation sparse enough to forestall any disaster. He hoped.

Throughout the morning, at odd moments and during lulls in the work of managing the minor bureaucracy of his isolated station and dealing with the paperwork that kept him inside far more than he liked, something pricked at Hupper's thoughts. The irritation, like loose ends that needed uniting, had niggled at him at home and at work for almost two weeks now. He would pause, pick up a pen and a notepad as if to jot a memo, but find nothing on his mind. Leaving his desk, he would troll through the station, seeking some hook, some key, but he found nothing. Whatever had touched his thoughts would pass unrecorded. The feeling exasperated him, but like the tip-of-the-tongue phenomena, the more he concentrated, the further away he drove the matter.

Just before noon, when the June sun was high and bright, a short, slim woman with a ponytail of frizzy red hair walked through the front doors. Behind the counter, plump Janet Barker looked up and burst into a smile.

"Sue!" Janet exclaimed. "How good to see you! How long's it been?"

"Hello, again!" Sue Rendon flashed a warm smile at being welcomed.

Pushing through the low swinging gate that separated the lobby from the administrative area, Janet hugged the younger, smaller woman. "You're looking good! Where've you been? What've you been doing? Are you all done with school? Did you get a job yet?"

Reversing the course of yet another expedition through the building, Hupper swung around a corner and found the source of the voices.

"Sue!" he repeated Janet's greeting. During her first two years of study in the forestry program at UC Davis, Sue Rendon had joined the many part-timers and volunteers who swell the Forest Service's summertime ranks, serving happily and usefully at Hupper's station.

"Mister Hupper!" Sue gave him a warm handshake. "How are you?"

"Just great. Just great. Are you all graduated now?"

Smiling happily, Sue nodded. "All done. With my bachelor's, at least."

"Now into the real world," observed Janet.

Shyness made Sue grin. With a quick glance at Hupper, she admitted, "Well, that is one reason why I'm here, besides just wanting to see you all again and say hello."

Hupper grinned back. Sue was bright and cheery, and had been a competent and well-liked addition to his staff. He had always thought well of her. "Need a letter of reference? No problem."

"On one condition:" Janet interposed. "Don't stay away so long next time!"

The nagging, nebulous notion that had pestered Hupper for days solidified and stood in front of him, as plain as the summer day. A satisfied smile glowed on his face as the details fell together. "Sue, would you excuse me for just a moment?"

"Of course." Sue turned back to Janet as Hupper almost ran to his office and grabbed the telephone off the corner of his desk.

* * *

"Well?" Stacey's interrogation stopped Morrison in his tracks.

Morrison tried to keep his pleasant smile off his sharply-angled face and appear the serious employer, but he could not do so. The grimness he had cultivated during his unhappy adolescence no longer had the severity he had so long sought. His grin flashed and disappeared. Setting down his briefcase, he pushed back into place the shock of hair that had fallen onto his forehead.

Stacey continued to stare at him while the computer keyboard continued to click beneath her flittering fingers. Morrison watched for a moment. "How do you do that?"

"What?" Her blue eyes stayed on him.

"What you're doing."

Stacey stopped, pulled the tiny foam-covered dictation earphones from their place, and said, "What did you say?"

Typing, looking at him, listening to his dictation, and talking to him. All at the same time. Morrison sighed, glad that on the last Secretary's Day he had sent flowers to Stacey at the office, had taken her to lunch, and had given her the afternoon off. He shook his head. "You know, the thought of having you mad at me is a scary thing."

"It'd better be."

"Any calls on the notice?" He held his breath.

"Not today. I'd tell you if there were, wouldn't I?"

"Maybe."

Stacey showed her pretty smile. "I wouldn't keep you in suspense forever. Now, how'd it go?"

Morrison's face suddenly twisted with amused irritation. He adopted a theatrical pose. "Okay. There I am, out in Jackass Canyon—which, as it turns out, is a very appropriate name." He held his hands out in front of him as he pictured himself standing in the shaded woods in his suit, one foot on the bumper of the two-tone four-wheel-drive Ford Ranger pickup that was as much a tool of his present practice as was his law library.

"Harry Peters is standing on one side of this dry gulch, as mad as can be," he pointed to his left, "and our favorite client—"

"Mister Wiley," Stacey inserted.

"—is standing on the other side, the side I'm on." He pointed at his feet. "It's a boundary dispute, right?"

"Right."

"Wiley and Peters have lived next to each other for God knows how long."

"True."

"And their property line has always run, in part, along Jackass Creek."

"Okay."

"Okay." Morrison's grin flashed again with unspoken humor. "Now, this presents a serious problem in the doctrine of reliction, all right?"

Stacey half-smiled. "Whatever you say."

"Reliction is a sub-part of riparian rights," Morrison said with undeniable yet affected significance. "It's the doctrine that says that one riparian landowner gets the land that appears when a body of water retreats. It's right up there with erosion, accretion and avulsion."

Stacey shook her head in genuine awe. "How do you remember all that stuff?"

"Reliction, accretion, erosion and avulsion?" Morrison repeated. "Everybody knows that.”

Again, Stacey shook her head, her disbelief plain. "Nobody but you knows that."

A shy smile crossed Morrison's face in an instant and then was gone. "Oh, sure they do."

"I believe you," Stacey with complete disbelief. "And so long as you spell each word when you dictate, you'll be okay."

The telephone rang. Morrison waited while Stacey answered.

"Don Hupper?" she questioned, covering the mouthpiece. "At the ranger station?"

"I'll call him back."

"He's with a client, Mister Hupper," said Stacey into the telephone. She listened. "All right. As soon as he's free. Bye bye." She returned the receiver to its cradle.

Morrison continued. "So, what with three dry years, Jackass Creek doesn't have any water in it anymore."

"And Mister Wiley—?"

"—wanted to know if that meant that the boundary line was gone and he now owned all of Peters' land up to the next boundary marker."

Knowingly, Stacey smiled and shook her head. "So?"

Morrison's eyes twinkled. "I told Wiley that I'd argue that case for him, if he'd agree that every time the wash behind his own back porch flooded, he'd give his home to Peters." Hefting his briefcase, he added, as an aside, "He didn't go for that."

Turning back to her work, Stacey said understandingly, "As long as he pays the bill."

Morrison headed for his office.

"Don't forget Mister Hupper," Stacey called.

"I won't forget Mister Hupper," Morrison promised.

"Call him, I mean."

Pausing in the doorway, Morrison looked over his shoulder. "Do I have to? I'm going out to the wilderness in a couple of weeks. I'll see him then."

Stacey's eyes narrowed as she glared at him. "Wes!"

Morrison had never imagined that his own name could sound so menacing. He sighed reluctantly, hating the thought of talking on the telephone. "Ohh-kay." Stepping inside his office, and telling Stacey, "No calls for a while, please." He shut the heavy door behind him.

As the closing of the door sealed him in and secured his privacy, he dropped his briefcase against the wall immediately to his right and leaned back. A long, heavy sigh poured from his lungs. He had been hoping for a quick response to the legal notice he had placed in so many papers, but not even a single call had come into the office. Now, only two days remained before the hearing ordered by Judge Reyes.

Disappointment tempered the gaze he swung around the room. The office spread before him and to his left. A doorway in the wall to his right led to his combined law library and conference room. Two windows in the wall opposite the library provided a distant view of the small county courthouse. The rich green carpet on the floor, the dark walnut bookshelves, the dark walnut pedestal desk in front of and between the windows, the leather swivel chair behind the desk and the beige guest chairs before it, were all of his own choosing.

He had furnished this office anew, intentionally bringing with him from his prior practice only a potted fern in a wrought iron stand and hundreds of invaluable law books. Yet, for all the new things he had purchased, he had not been able to buy any new memories. For a brief moment, as he looked at his new office and remembered his old, as he thought of his case being lost before it had even begun, his features sagged bleakly.

The telephone on the desk chimed and Stacey said through the intercom, "Wes, it's—"

"I thought I said—"

"It's Donald Hupper again. He said he's got to talk to you."

Squaring his shoulders and drawing a solid breath, Morrison was a confident lawyer again. As he sat in the low-backed leather swivel chair, he snatched the telephone receiver from its cradle and held it to his ear. "Hi, Don, how are you?"

Hupper's voice vibrated with excitement. "Fine, Wes. You? Haven't seen you in a while."

A thin, thoughtful smile on his face, Morrison answered, "Oh, I'm fine. In fact, I was going to take a trip up through your neck of the woods in a couple of weeks."

"Well, good. We'll look forward to seeing you. But, in the meantime, maybe I can do something for you."

Morrison swung his chair around and stared out the window, a sure sign of the onset of boredom. "Oh? What's that?"

Hupper sounded pleased with himself. "You know that notice you're running? The probate notice?"

Morrison sat up straight. "Yeah?" He started to swing back toward his desk.

Hupper's smile was almost visible through the telephone lines. "I think I might know who those people are," the Ranger said. "There was a guy and gal who came up here couple of times a year for three or four years. Got to kind of expect 'em. But they haven't been here for a while." The Ranger cleared his throat and his thoughts. "The guy's name was James or Jack or Jake or something like that, I'm not sure, but the gal's name was Sara Owen. That, I'm sure of. Now, I don't know that they're the ones you're looking for, but...."

"You remembered them? After two years?"

A slight pause and a wistful sigh answered in his ear. "Well, Wes," Hupper said the way men do when confiding in each other, "don't tell Lorna, but the gal was awfully cute. Short and slim, but with long brown hair and a smile like you wouldn't believe. I had a nice long talk with them one time out by Granite Lake. She was real friendly and bubbly.... She's somebody you just don't forget."

Half a page of Morrison's yellow legal pad already was covered with hastily scrawled notes. "Address?"

"Mmmmm," Hupper thought. "Don't know. I remember they'd come a long way, though."

"From in California?"

"Oh, yeah. Down Sacramento way, or farther. San Jose, maybe? That sounds right. Is that down that way?"

Morrison nodded, scribbling. "Yeah, it is. And the husband's name started with a 'J'?"

"I think so."

"How old were they?"

"Oh, late-twenties, early thirties, though she looked a lot younger."

"Really? Huh. Okay, remember anything else? Where either one worked?"

"Well...no, I don't. Sorry."

"That's okay. This is a good lead. Thanks a lot, Don. You may have really helped."

Hupper sounded pleased. "Don't mention it."

No sooner had the Ranger hung up than Morrison was on the line to long-distance information and the same time he turned to his computer to see if the internet could cull a few names for him. Spelling the names carefully, he tapped his pen on the desk while he waited. In a few seconds, luck struck, and the pleasant voice of the operator said, "Here you are," and after a click a synthesized voice spoke the digits of the Owens’ telephone number.

* * *

The azaleas and gardenias in the shaded part of the flower garden were blooming in a fragrant profusion of pink and white, Around that color spot, the bright green of fragile baby's tears climbed gentle slopes toward a deep red camellia centerpiece.

Kneeling on the dark soil in faded blue jeans and a short-sleeved white blouse, a straw hat with a wide, drooping brim covering a pony tail, Sara Owen brushed humus from her gardening gloves. The July sun was hot on her back and on the earth of the gently curved bed that received the most daylight. She finally had prepared the ground for the flat of impatiens that lay to her right. Last year's ordinary geraniums had not suited her or the plan of her little garden, so she had removed all those and now was ready to replant with something more appropriate. Over the course of the spring, she had removed and replanted a substantial portion of the flower garden, unable to find any combination that truly satisfied her.

Sitting back on her heels for a moment of rest, her lips pressed together into a thin line. In only two years, by her effort alone, she had taken a corner of the back yard of her Almaden Valley home and turned it into a beautiful, ever-changing array of color and shape, but as she examined it now, her soft brown eyes were dull. The flourishing plants and mixed blooms did not please her as much as they should have, as much as they usually did. No combination ever seemed right. She had planted and uprooted the beds four times, but it was never right. Nothing was ever right.

She felt herself slipping, and with a mental rush leaned forward on one hand and shoved her trowel into the dirt, literally thrusting herself into her work. "Anniversaries are for babies and grandparents," she told herself as she gouged a hole for a robust yellow impatiens.

With six seedlings packed in their holes, well-fertilized and watered, the cell phone by her side warbled at her. Sara sighed, brushed the edges of her bangs from her face and wiped a thin film of perspiration from her forehead. As the handset chirped again, she carefully pulled her gloves from her fingers, and at the third ring picked up the receiver, extended the antenna, switched on the device, and in her melodious voice said, "Hello?"

Four hundred miles away, at the sound of the connection being made, Wesley Morrison exhaled sharply, took another breath, and asked, "May I speak to Jack or Sara Owen, please?"

"This is Sara Owen."

Morrison felt the dizzying flush of success. "Mrs. Owen, my name is Wesley Morrison. I'm a lawyer up in Ash Creek, north of Redding."

"Oh?" Sara had yet to turn her attention from her work to the call, but the sound of the word lawyer made her uneasy.

Morrison paused. He had not thought about what he should say. Alone in his office, a wry smile of self-amusement skirted across his face. "Uh, Mrs. Owen, you and your husband have been named as devisees in a will being offered for probate up here.

In fact, you personally have been named as executrix. I've been delegated by the court to provide notice to you of your pending appointment as representative of the estate. May I ask, would you and your husband be available to come up for a few days and accept the honor? It's almost entirely nominal."

Sara's eyes focused suddenly on the white velvet petals of a gardenia. "A will?"

In Morrison's ears, Sara's voice seemed farther and more distant than could be accounted for by the telephone line. "Yes," he said. "Does that surprise you? Did you know anybody up here? Did you have any relatives or friends or anybody who might—"

Flatly, Sara said , "No. I don't know anybody up there. I think you probably have the wrong person."

"The will was written by Jerome W. Pitcher. Does that help?"

"No." The word was short and unhappy.

Morrison could hear Stacey moving around outside his office. He sunk further into his chair. He did not want to be wrong. "Mrs. Owen, I'm very sorry to bother you, and I don't want you to think I'm looking for clients—"

"I don't," Sara interposed sincerely.

Morrison nodded gratefully to himself and continued, "—but you in fact have been named quite specifically in this will, I believe. It's taken us quite a long time to find you, actually. May I just ask you some clarifying questions, please?"

Sinking onto herself, Sara's head sagged to one side. She never had been able to refuse anyone. "Go ahead," she answered, sitting quietly in the bright sunshine, suppressing the thoughts that made her want to hang up instantly and run inside.

Morrison spoke quickly. "Your name is Sara Owen, not Owens, with an “S”?"

"Yes." Sara reached out and plucked a small brown leaf from one of the pink azaleas.

"And your husband's name?"

The line was silent so long that Morrison thought the connection had been lost. Just as he opened his mouth to speak again, Sara answered simply, "Jack."

Bright summer afternoon sunlight streamed through the two windows behind Morrison and flared off his legal pad into his eyes. He wrote the name "Jack" and circled it several times. The search was almost over. "All right. Good."

Suddenly apprehensive for some reason, Sara asked, "I'm sorry, but is this going to take long? I really was in the middle of something.” There was a need to explain. “A little gardening.”

"I'm sorry," Morrison apologized. "I hope not. I didn't know you were busy. Are you a gardener?"

The question was asked innocently, Sara knew, and she quelled an angry reply. "I just took it up a couple of years ago."

"Ah," Morrison said. "Well, Mrs. Owen, I know this seems strange, maybe sort of like winning the lottery when you didn't know you'd bought a ticket, but I think you and your husband really are the named devisees to this estate."

Abruptly, the sun was intolerably hot on Sara's back. Her voice became hard. "I don't really want to have anything to do with anyone's estate."

Morrison's eyes raced around his room. He did not want to have worked so hard to win, only to lose because of disinterest on the part of the beneficiaries. "Well, I understand it's a difficult thing," he said, and waited long seconds for an understanding response that never came, "but maybe you or your husband could come up here for just a day or two to help us straighten things out?"

"I don't think so." She had become as cold as ice.

"Why not?" An odd sensation, a premonition perhaps, ran up and down his backbone and he held the telephone slightly away from his ear.

"Because."

"But why?" his nature pursued before he could be diplomatic. "I don't think there's much to the estate, and all you have to do is claim it. I—if you want to retain me, I mean, I could dispose of it for you. Why—"

Sara spoke as quickly as she possibly could, as if speed would protect her from the thought and the feelings that always chased it. "Because my husband was killed two years ago this November."

"Oh, God," Morrison heard himself say before he could think.

Now, Sara could not stop. Her attention on the green grass beneath her feet, she told Morrison, "He'd gone out to the quick-stop to buy me some ice cream. There was a robbery and—" her voice broke, "—he got shot."

Running a hand over his face, Morrison said softly, "I'm so very sorry, Mrs. Owen."

A trembling breath calmed Sara. She turned over clumps of earth with the tip of her trowel. "It's all right," she said the same way she had countless times to countless people over the last eighteen months.

The telephone receiver hung loosely in Morrison's hand. Static rasped in his ear.

"So you see...." Sara's voice pleaded. Let this end.

A heavy sigh left Morrison's chest. He had to push just a little further, but he gave her the way out, too. "So, you're not really in a position to come up even for a day or two?"

The bright blossoms of the flower garden she had started as therapy saddened her. Climbing to her feet and turning away from it, she said, "No, I really don't think so. I don't think you have the right people anyway. I don't know anybody up there who would have any reason to leave me anything. And I don't think Jack did, either."

"Well...," Tossing the legal pad and pen onto his desk, Morrison flipped open his case file. A photocopy of the will was bradded on the left side. "May I just read you something? It's very short. It might help you to—"

"If you have to." Sara took two steps toward her house.

Edging up to the desk and guiding his eyes over the words with his fingertips, Morrison read:

Know all men by these documents that I, Jerome Wilson Pitcher, being of sound mind and body, do make this my last will and testament, and no other.

God in His infinite wisdom having taken my loving wife Kathryn from me before her time, and before she could bear us any children, I wish to give all my property as follows: To Sara Owen, who in her heart and in her dreams is so much like my beloved Kathryn, and to her husband Jack Owen, who this day kindly helped me foal a mare when he didn’t have to, I leave all my real and personal property located in this valley, including my animals, along with all the rights and obligations that may go along with it, to forever keep and hold for them and their children as they know is right. If, before I die, God takes one from the other, as He did to me, then I leave everything to the one who remains.

To my niece and nephew Diana Robeck and Barry Kroeber, out of respect for family, I leave the remainder of my estate, wherever and whatever it may be.

I have no other property to give.

It is my last wish that Sara Owen carry out this will as she and the law may direct.

Morrison leaned back in his chair and finished, "And at the bottom, 'Signed on this day of our Lord,' etcetera. A couple of years ago. Does any of that mean anything to you, Mrs. Owen?"

There was only silence until, in a very small voice, Sara whispered, "Oh, my God." Her vision of her home began to blur as her eyes began to water. Her mind filled with images of gaunt Jerome Pitcher, her dear Jack, and the little foal of the old mare. "I know who it is," she said. "I know who it is." One hand covered her mouth and squeezed her cheeks. She shook her head at her thoughts. Almost inaudibly, her heart suddenly full, she promised, "Yes, I'll come."

Chapter Ten

Standing on her hind legs, the little Australian shepherd could just put her front paws on the window sill. Edging the sheer curtains apart with her nose, ears pricked up, her intent, round brown eyes peered through the window glass at the street. In a few seconds, she grinned, tongue hanging out to one side, and looked up at Stacey, who was standing by her side, also staring out. Stacey looked down at the little dog and said lowly, "If she's thirty-one, I'm the Queen of Sheba."

The woman exiting the dirty, scratched Bronco at the sidewalk just up the street from the office was short and slender. Blue jeans hugged her slim hips below a short-sleeved white blouse that hung loosely on her. Luxurious brown hair was swept back from her young face by barrettes on each side. On small white tennis shoes, her petite figure walked down the sidewalk, then trotted lightly up the steps to the law office.

From a side window, Morrison saw the lithe figure, the white shoes and the quick, determined step, and for a desperate moment thought that his insane imaginings of the last few years had come true.

As the afternoon sun was blocked and a shadow darkened the window in the front door, Stacey slipped behind her desk and said musically into her intercom, "She's heee-re!" At the same time, with a grunt, the shepherd lay down under a chair.

The difficulty of dealing with the feelings of persons who have lost someone close to them was the principal reason that Wesley Morrison gave for not practicing probate law or even writing wills or trusts, though he told Stacey, and anyone else who asked, that the real reason was the morass of probate forms and the risks of a crippling malpractice suit. Stacey had difficulty knowing which of the two reasons—if either—was the truth. There sounded like more truth in the first, but not the truth as Morrison stated it. Her boss had some special empathy, some particular understanding, for people who had lost loved ones, yes, but it was not, she thought, related to physical death.

Probating Jerome Pitcher's will should have been an easy matter, Morrison had thought. It was a simple will, with few beneficiaries, none of whom were close to the testator, and apparently a small estate. Now he had the dean of probate lawyers on the other side, two heirs who seemed quite unwilling to concede defeat, and a recently-widowed woman for a client. A pretty young woman, if Donald Hupper was right. The combination did not sit well with him at all, and his instinct to help and please Sara Owen was being smothered by the emotional burdens. Yet, this morning he had shined his shoes and dressed in his second-best suit, a muted blue pinstripe, with a pale yellow shirt and a light blue tie that he held in place with a golden tie tack of a quarter horse. Rising expectantly from the chair behind his desk, he slipped a pen into his shirt pocket, smoothed his tie into place and to himself said, "Showtime."

Stepping from the summer heat into the air-conditioned office, Sara blew out an appreciative breath that fluttered the loose wisps of her bangs. She quickly took in and approved of the quietly elegant furnishings. Her lawyer was successful, but not ostentatious. She liked his taste.

The attractive blonde woman behind the secretary's desk to Sara's left smiled warmly as Sara stepped farther into the room. The door swung shut behind her.

"I'm Sara Owen," Sara said hesitantly.

Stacey continued smiling. "Hi, I'm Stacey. We've been expecting you. Please have a seat. Mr. Morrison will be right with you."

Clutching her purse, Sara slumped onto one end of the sofa as she fanned her face with one hand.

"Long drive?"

"The air conditioner in my Bronco broke down at Red Bluff,"

Sara explained.

"Oh, no," sympathized Stacey. "In this heat? Isn't that just the way it always is?"

"Never fails," Sara agreed.

"Would you like something to drink?"

"Oh, in a minute, maybe." She cocked her head. "Hello, pup," she said to the dog she spied under the chair.

"Isn't she something?" Stacey asked.

"Very cute."

"Mrs. Owen?"

Sara turned to find Morrison standing just outside the doorway to his office. He was younger and had a slighter frame than she had thought he would. His face seemed kinder than a lawyer's should be, and as she rose and approached him she could see only shallowly into his eyes, as if something she could not name lay hidden just beneath the surface. "How do you do? I'm Sara. You're Andrew?"

"Wes."

"Oh."

Taking her delicate hand lightly, Morrison could see both the weakness in her smile and the radiance it would have in better times. Another one of those special smiles that only God can make, he thought bitterly. Despite bearing the fatigue of a long drive her face was very pretty, and she neither had to nor did wear much makeup. Donald Hupper had been right about her. "Very pleased to meet you," he said. Stepping back, one arm swept an arc toward his office. "Why don't you come in?"

"Do I have to?" Sara implored sweetly yet tartly. "I'm so hungry. I haven't eaten since breakfast. Is there someplace nearby we could grab a quick bite?"

Morrison dropped his arm. "Well, no, I—"

The transcription machine whirred and clicked at Stacey's foot on the pedal. "What?" She glared at her employer as she listened again. "You're mumbling again."

"I don't mumble."

"Then you're talking gibberish."

"Which case?"

"Stoltz."

"Epexegesis." He had known when he had dictated his analysis of a colleague's partnership agreement that exactly this conversation would take place.

"Jesus is right," muttered Stacey. "Spell it," she commanded.

He did.

"Thank you," Stacey said. "And if you're going to leave, take that with you." A painted pink fingernail pointed at the shepherd.

Sitting happily between them on the bench seat of Morrison's pickup truck, when they arrived at the outdoor cafe—a little combination of old house and patio tables with umbrellas—the dog lay on her side in the shade under an empty table, but kept watch on Sara and Wes with one unblinking eye. Sara did not hesitate to order a huge cheeseburger and fries, while Morrison found himself tempted by a thickly stacked roast beef sandwich.

Even hidden from the sun under an umbrella canopy, the heat was oppressive. From the glasses of iced tea they both sipped, Morrison tossed an ice cube to the panting dog, which she crunched eagerly.

"What's her name?" Sara asked between dainty mouthfuls, head inclined toward the shepherd.

Morrison, too, timed his answer. "Don't know. Found her beside the road in the rain one night, a few years back. She didn't have tags, and since then she's refused to tell me anything. Been kind of a help now and then," softened reminiscence added.

Sara's face showed a hint of cautious amusement. "You haven’t named her in years? Don’t you call her anything?"

"Sno-cone." Morrison saw and answered the question in Sara's eyes: "The white nose."

"Her nose is black," Sara objected.

"The white muzzle, then. But Stacey calls her Jellybean, precisely because of the nose. And we also call her Bugeye, for obvious reasons."

The corners of Sara's eyes crinkled slightly with enjoyment. She had not expected to find a whimsical sense of humor in her lawyer. "Three names? How in the world do you get her to come when you want her?"

Morrison shrugged. He stole a French fry from Sara's basket. "Try looking at her."

Eyebrows raised in disbelief, Sara turned her gaze on the dog, as did Morrison. Almost immediately, the shepherd climbed to her feet, trotted to Sara's side, sat, and put her muzzle on Sara's thigh. "Now what?"

"Try bribing her."

Gingerly accepting a French fry, the dog trotted back to her place and lay down again to carefully sniff and then eat her treat. A genuine smile began to spread over Sara's countenance, but faltered and collapsed before reaching fruition.

As a warm breeze blew over them, swaying the fringed umbrella, Morrison studied Sara’s face and the emotions he saw there. Don’t start making comparisons, he warned himself. Finally, undecided about what he saw, he said, "Well, down to business, I guess."

"I guess."

Sipping the last of his iced tea, he began, "I'm hoping that we can get all this resolved at the hearing tomorrow, and you can be on your way back home by noon."

Sara nodded. "That'd be nice. And you'll take care of everything for me after that?"

"Everything I can. I presume you'll want to sell everything?"

Sara exhaled a tired sigh. "Probably. I can't imagine what I could really do with it." At the words, the events of a summer day two years ago came to her mind. Softly but firmly, she added. "But I want to see it again, first."

"Okay." Morrison saw but did not understand the distant look in her eyes. "I haven't been out there myself, actually, but I understand from one of my clients that most of the land that surrounds it is farmed by one family or another. One of them would probably be happy to add a few acres to their holdings."

"That sounds good."

"Or," Morrison said carefully, watching for her reaction, "the niece and nephew, who incidentally are opposing your appointment, are trying to develop some adjacent land." Sara's face wrinkled with distaste, but Morrison finished his suggestion anyway: "They'd probably be willing to pay more than anyone else to get it."

Staring at the remnants of her meal as she imagined a stack of condominiums in the midst of the beautiful green valley, Sara seemed to drift even further away. "I'm not sure I'd want to do that."

"All right," Morrison said, not wanting to push her just now. "We'll see how things go." For the next several minutes, he spoke of what had happened and what she could expect, until her shoulders sagged and her attention wandered.

Crumpling his napkin and tossing it into his empty food basket, he said, "Well, I suppose you'd like to see where we've put you up for the night."

Sara leaped thankfully at the diversion. "Would that be all right?"

They rose together. "Come on, pup," Sara called to the dog. She opened the door and the shepherd jumped onto the seat. Sara climbed in the truck after her, seeing for the first time that her lawyer, like seemingly everyone else in this northern part of the state, had a rifle in a window rack behind the seat.

Morrison drove her back to his office to pick up her Bronco, then led her to the motel, a big Best Western, where Stacey had arranged for accommodations for the night. With her eyes drooping, Sara dropped her bags inside the door, thanked Morrison for his help, and promised to be at his office early the next morning. He left as she shut the guest room door.

Walking back across the black asphalt parking lot to his truck, the bright summer sunshine hot on his shoulders, he looked from the curtained window of Sara's room toward the valley on the other side of the forested hills, and for an instant was touched by the oddest feeling of sadness.

* * *

"You've heard of a pride of lions?" Morrison asked as he sat next to Sara in the courtroom crowded by the weekly law and motion calendar that began every Thursday morning.

"Of course." Sara fiddled with the thin, bright yellow ribbon that held her dark brown hair in a smooth pony tail. Morrison dearly wished she would not do that—wear the ribbon, let alone play with it, but he certainly could not tell her that, or why. The ribbon did, though, nicely set off her navy blue suit, low black pumps and her white blouse. With her other hand she held a plastic valise on her lap.

"And an exultation of larks?" Today, buoyant for some reason, Morrison had worn his best gray wool suit, his best white cotton shirt and his best striped burgundy tie. As he spoke, he eyed a group of attorneys gathered around the counsel and clerk's table, arguing about something.

"I think so." The slightly hesitant look of amusement seen yesterday returned to Sara's face. She could tell now from the suppressed grin on Morrison's face and the sparkle in his pale green eyes that he was making another attempt at humor.

Pointing at the dissentious group of men, he leaned toward Sara and whispered, "That's what I'd call a loathe of lawyers."

To Morrison's satisfaction, for a few seconds Sara's lips formed a smile, and when it faded it disappeared, not into sorrow, but into a distracted interest in the proceedings in the courtroom.

Detecting by the sound of his voice the entrance of Willis Casey, Morrison rose quickly and seized his briefcase. He bent down toward Sara. "We're first on the calendar. Stay here till I motion for you to come forward," he commanded, abruptly becoming a far more serious person than Sara had yet seen.

Again, Casey placed his clients in the rear of the courtroom and looked about with weak eyes for his opposing counsel. Morrison found him first.

"Well, today's the day," Casey drawled.

"Sure is," Morrison agreed.

The door to the Judge's chambers opened. "Ready for the appointment of the representative?" Casey asked confidently.

"I guess so," replied Morrison as the bailiff stood and called the court to order. After the complete calendar was called once, the cases were taken in order.

An anxious yet assured breath filled Morrison's lungs as he stepped next to Willis Casey at the counsel table and tried to assess Judge Reyes' competency.

"Well, counsel," the Judge said briskly. "The time has come. Mr. Morrison?"

"Yes, your honor?"

"Have you found your clients?"

"Yes, your honor."

As Willis Casey's jaw fell toward the counsel table, in the rear of the courtroom, Diana Robeck pressed herself backwards into her chair as if she were bracing for some horrendous impact. Barry Kroeber simply swore to himself, turned his head to one side and began to contemplate his financial ruin.

"Your Honor," Casey tried to take the initiative, "no one has told me anything about anyone being located, and I don't see anyone here today—"

"Where are your clients, Mr. Morrison?" Judge Reyes interrupted. "Are they here?"

Morrison turned and beckoned Sara. She rose immediately and came forward and stood to his right. "Right here, Your Honor. This is Sara Lynn Owen, the named beneficiary and executrix."

Casey recovered quickly. "Well, we don't know that she—"

Morrison was silently thankful that Judge Reyes was exceptionally lucid this morning. "Do you have any identification, Mrs. Owen?" the jurist asked.

Sara set her valise on the table, pulled her purse off her shoulder and extracted her wallet. She looked up at the older man in the black robe. "I have my driver's license, Social Security card, credit cards, and," she extracted a paper from her valise, "my passport, and my California state teacher's credential."

"Hand them to the bailiff, please," Reyes ordered, with a deprecating look at Casey.

Taking the original papers from Sara, Morrison placed them, with copies he had made that morning, in the hands of the deputy sheriff, who gave them to the Judge. A second set of copies went to Casey.

Reyes examined the documents for a moment. "These seem to establish Mrs. Owen's identity, wouldn't you say, Mr. Casey?"

Willis Casey drew a long, old, tired breath. "Well, it certainly appears that her name is Sara Owen."

"Well, then—"

"But what about the other beneficiary, Jack Owen?" Casey probed. "Has counsel produced him, too?"

Gaze downcast for a moment, Morrison said distinctly, "Mrs. Owen's husband passed away eighteen months ago."

Casey's expression brightened considerably. "Well, that's fine then," he said without consideration of who was present.

As Sara sat motionless, staring at the papers on the table in front of her, and as Morrison opened his mouth to thank the judge, Reyes held up a forefinger. "But, counsel," he spoke directly to Casey, "aren't we forgetting something fundamental here?"

Casey agreed promptly. "That's right, your honor. There's no proof here whatsoever," he showed the experience of a situation played out a hundred times, and displayed a self-satisfied smile, "that Mr. Morrison's client is the Sara Owen named in the will. There's no proof here at all that this woman," his aged hand swung toward Sara, "is the same Sara Owen that the testator knew."

"What?" Morrison's look at the old lawyer was as sharp as the sting of the stiletto between his shoulder blades.

Judge Reyes seemed to appreciate Casey's argument more than he should have. "That's a very good point." His attention turned. "Do you have any such proof, Mr. Morrison? If not...." He let the sentence trail off meaningfully.

"Wes…" said Sara with low fear.

Knowing that in less than five minutes the entire case could be over, that in a few hundred seconds he would be looking back on having won or lost, and that winning depended on every single word he was about to say, Morrison waved off Sara's interruption with a short stab of his hand. Trying to contain his indignation, sensing again the invisible connections that skew so many judicial decisions, he said quickly, "Your honor, the minute I read the will to her, Mrs. Owen identified the testator by the incident described therein involving her husband and some horses. I hardly think anyone else could have done that except the particular person involved."

Casey seemed to smirk. "Anyone can say that they remember something, once they're told what happened. I'm sure the court's experience would back that up."

"That's true," Reyes agreed.

"And," Casey pounded home his point, "anyone could make up unverifiable details to flesh out an unverifiable remembrance."

"True again," Reyes said, now pleased with Casey. His earlier clarity appeared to be dimming. A simpering grin began to show on his face as his head loosely swung back and forth.

Morrison could see Casey's viewpoint disappearing in irretrievable acceptance behind Reyes' blurry eyes. He had less time than he had anticipated, and he could not stand the thought of having brought Sara Owen so far for no purpose other than to see her case lost.

"Your honor, I can offer the testimony of Donald Hupper. He's a U. S. Forest Service Ranger who knew—"

In his dry voice, now enlivened, Casey interjected, "Your honor, this is the time and place for this hearing. If there was any evidence to be presented, counsel should have had it with him now."

Something scratched Morrison's right hand. Grasping without looking, he took several pieces of paper from Sara, instantly recognized them for what they were and what their significance was, and said, "Well, it just so happens that I do have that evidence with me right now."

Casey held out his hand, his friendly manner lost in the imperiousness of aged experience. "Let me see that."

Morrison turned his head, and their eyes met, Casey's a hardened gray, Morrison's a rocky greenish-brown. "These are the originals."

"You've sent me copies, have you?" Casey challenged.

Morrison's State Bar card was a guarantee that he knew how to avoid a direct answer to any question. "You haven't gotten copies yet?" he asked blithely.

"No." Casey's voice betrayed an edge of frustration. "When did you send—"

"May I see those?" As the curiosity of the judge centered on the attorneys' conversation, his voice strengthened and quickened.

As the bailiff again transferred the papers, Morrison leaned forward and jotted something meaningless on a pad of paper, saying lowly to Sara, "I hope you kept a copy for yourself."

"Yes," whispered Sara, never taking her eyes off the judge.

Morrison nodded to himself, impressed with this pretty young woman who was his client.

The effort of trying to understand the documents brought Reyes closer to himself. "Just what are these, exactly, Mr. Morrison?"

Morrison's chin rose as he answered, "One is a campfire permit issued just six days before the date of the will. The other is a wilderness permit for a trip taken by Jack and Sara Owen." Morrison had filled out many similar Forest Service documents himself. "The wilderness entrance date corresponds with the date of the campfire permit. And as I'm sure the court has noticed, the exit date is exactly the same date as the will."

Reyes adjusted his bifocals, squinted at the two pieces of paper and at the material in the court file, and said, "So it is."

Willis Casey turned toward Sara and croaked, "You kept those? All this time?"

Sara’s lips smiled, but the expression held no warmth. It was not, Morrison was sure, the smile she gave to her friends, the smile that he knew happiness would bring to her face. "Of course," she answered the old man. "They're memories, part of your life. Where you've been and what you've done. Doesn't everybody keep those kind of things?"

Some memories aren’t worth keeping, Morrison wanted to say. But they won't go away.

The only answer Casey gave was the disgust on his face as he turned away.

"And access to and from the trailhead they used," Morrison put the icing on the cake, "is by the road that runs right in front of the testator's property." As Casey opened his mouth, Morrison shut it. "If the court can't take judicial notice of that, Donald Hupper will testify to it, I'm sure."

"No, counsel," Judge Reyes' lips formed a thin flat smile, "that's not necessary. I've caught my share of Rainbows and Eastern Brooks up there, too. I imagine everybody in this courtroom has. I know where the roads go."

"Very good, your honor."

Jowls flapping, Casey lowered and shook his head.

The last coherent comment Morrison would ever remember Judge Reyes making was: "I'm persuaded that your client is who she says she is, and that she is the person named in the will. I am admitting the will to probate, and appointing your client executrix. Letters testamentary are hereby granted to Sara Lynn Owen. So ordered."

The second the judge's gavel slapped down and the court reporter's fingers phonetically placed the order in the official transcript, the moment Morrison felt the elation of doing something right and good for someone else, he heard Casey speak again.

"Your honor," said the old man, with what seemed to be an apologetic glance at Morrison, "my clients at this time would like to file a contest to the will. Would your honor like to hear that now?"

Some cases never found their end and this had every mark of being one of them. The slight flick of Casey's eyes had not been apologetic, it had been condescending. Steadying Sara with a glance, Morrison addressed himself once more to the judge.

"Your honor," he adopted a gracious willingness to deal with something beneath the dignity of everyone except Willis Casey's clients, "an authenticated will has been admitted to probate. The beneficiaries have been found. The executrix has been appointed. Letters have been granted. Both practically and legally, it seems to me much too late to file a will contest."

Both attorneys waited, but for long seconds received no response except a blank stare from Simon Reyes.

"Your Honor?" Morrison asked.

"Your Honor," Casey began.

The judge's clerk knew the judge very well. She had seen him have momentary lapses before, sometimes stretching into minutes, but she had never before seen the look that he had now. She caught the bailiff's eye.

"Court is recessed," boomed the voice of the deputy sheriff.

Amid the instant shuffle and scrape of bodies and shoes, of papers and briefcases, Casey took one step toward Morrison. "You know I'm going to file for revocation of probate, don't you?" His amiable smile had returned.

Morrison now saw the old man's expression for what it was. He stared Casey in the face, heedless of the battle he did not want to fight. Carelessly defiant, he replied, "You do what you have to."

The announcement of the recess emptied the courtroom. While Casey tried to talk to his clients, Morrison ushered Sara out into the bright white corridors of the courthouse, down the broad granite steps to the first floor and out of the building.

To Diana, a little bit of justice seemed to depart with each of the men and women who walked out of the room until, when even the bailiff had gone, there was absolutely nothing left. She wanted to reach out to stop the people as they passed her, to keep them around her, to prevent the room from emptying and leaving her alone, leaving her without the truth she sought. As the door closed behind the deputy sheriff, thudding softly in the silence, she heard Barry Kroeber sigh as if he were expelling his last breath. She turned wide, disbelieving eyes on Willis Casey. "What happened?"

As Kroeber groaned with disgust and turned away, Casey tiredly rubbed his balding head. The strength and skill of Wesley Morrison's challenge had raised his old fighting spirit, but now that the hearing was over he regretted what he had said and done, and again regretted not retiring as he had intended. "Well, we're going to file for revocation of the will," he spoke slowly and calmly, as if he were just now beginning to map the course of the case. "We'll argue undue influence, of course, lack of capacity, or incompetency, fraud—all the things we've already talked about."

"You mean we lost?" Diana's voice was too loud and rose at the end to a thin, high pitch. The illusion of her special life, which she had come to think of as real, vanished before the common reality of the days to come, which seemed only a terrible hallucination.

Barry snorted at her words. He turned in circles and arcs, his attention roaming about the room. "Of course he means we lost!" he snapped, but the anger of his words could not hide the fear on his face. The investors would sue him. The banks would crucify him. The property he had pledged as security was gone. It had not even been his to promise. The project now was grossly over-leveraged, his personal credit fatally overextended, his dealership answerable for a debt load a dozen times its annual net profit. He would have to declare bankruptcy. He would lose everything—including the new house his friends had helped him over-appraise and over-mortgage. His face twisted with viciousness as debilitating helplessness gathered in his gut.

Into the abyss, Casey said, "You pretty much lost the same day you told me there was no will. I might've been able to help you better, if I'd—"

Flame burned and flared in Diana's eyes. Her face reddened suddenly. "What are you talking about? This is ridiculous! How can anybody believe that Jerome intended to give everything to that little—that little—" The epithet she sought was lost in her anger. "My God!" She stared at Casey. "I'm not giving up my inheritance because Jerome went out of his mind and fell for the first pretty face to come along!"

Casey gritted his teeth in a ghastly grin. "Is that what you think happened?"

Kroeber stared at his sister, at first shocked, then unsure whether he should be impressed or concerned.

Diana's head snapped forward. "Yes! What else could it be?" Her stare took in Casey, then Kroeber. "My God!" she exclaimed again. "He'd been alone since Kathryn died, hadn't he? And here this pretty, prissy little girl comes along—and you'll notice she came up several times during the spring of the year, to the same area—and the next thing you know, Jerome is giving her everything he owns! Are you all idiots? Don't you see?" she implored the empty chambers.

As repelled as Willis Casey was, Barry Kroeber felt himself drawn in. The argument had a kind of impetus. Her thoughts made a rudimentary sort of sense to him. "Maybe so," he thought aloud. "Maybe so."

"Maybe nothing!" Diana spat. She raked in and spewed out a huge breath while staring at Casey. "We're going to win this! We're going to appeal!"

The old lawyer saw the imperfect passion of youth in front of him. He knew what it was like for every cause to be of national importance, for every lawsuit to be presented to the courts as a landmark decision. And every case to be just like the one before it. "So we are," he murmured. "So we are."

Standing at the intersection across from Morrison's office, head swinging back and forth, Sara said, "It seems so strange...." A short sigh left her as her feelings refused to form into words. "After all this time, to be back here again."

The fighter in Morrison submerged when he was not in court. Eyes on Sara's pensive face, he soothed, "Well, it's almost over now. You'll be home soon."

She nodded. Then, as if they were parting, added, "You did a very good job for me, Wes. I want to thank you."

With deliberate cheer, trying to keep her from dissolving back into her reminisces, he answered, "Well, I'll let you. Though you may change your mind after you get my bill."

She glanced at him out of the corner of her eyes, lips briefly curving upward.

"Now," he asked, "do you want to go out and see what you're administering? It's not all that much, I guess, but it's something. Maybe you could get some idea of what you want to do with it?"

Sara's face and thoughts turned back toward the building and the litigation still to be fought within it. "But—"

"Don't worry." Usually nervous about the results of each of his cases despite his skill, Morrison now felt at ease, as if he already knew the outcome of the future contest.

The feeling of something not done, yet finished before it had started; of memories that would not fade and of remembrances not yet created, stirred Sara's pretty face. She examined her shoes, thought of what Jack would have done, and looked into the deep, thoughtful eyes of Wesley Morrison. "Okay," she said firmly. "Let's go see what we've got."

Chapter Eleven

Beneath the sapphire sky, in front of the timeless gray stone mountains, in the heart of the flat green fields, Jerome Pitcher's little white house sat in forsaken solitude.

Slowing the Bronco on the winding river road, Sara bit her lip. Every day, more and more of that summer afternoon returned to her. Unbidden, to her memory came more of the looks and sounds of Jack and Jerome Pitcher, more of the fearful wonder of bringing the beautiful baby horse into the world.

She turned off the highway, onto the long dirt driveway. The key to the house was in her pocket. A telephone call from some pestiferous client named Wiley had delayed and exasperated Wesley Morrison.

Dust, dry and brown, hot summer dust, swirled around her on a warm breeze as she brought the truck to a halt in front of the old home. Withdrawing the ignition key, her hands fell into her lap and she sat for a moment, until the dirt had settled on the hood or had blown away in the wind. Then, she sat in the quiet a few seconds longer.

"It's only a house," she told herself as the moment stretched too long. Finding the will to move off the seat, she climbed out of the truck and looked about her. It was all just as she remembered—except that far away, in the distant upper valley, dark yellow earth-moving machines were crawling about, grunting and disgorging diesel fumes into the clean air. The beginnings of the development that Morrison had mentioned, she thought, walking up to the front door. With the wooden frame of the screen door resting on her left shoulder, she slowly inserted the key into the aged knob, turned the lock, and stepped inside.

In the back of her mind she had been expecting a scene from a movie, with sheets draped over all the furniture and enormous cobwebs in all the corners of a dark room stiff with a damp, musty smell. The house surprised her, greeting her just the way it had before. It was sunny in the front room and the still air was heated. From the carpet to the sofa and tables to the draperies, it had not changed. Doilies were still pinned to the backs and arms of the chairs. The furniture was all in exactly the same spot. Fissured charcoal logs still lay in the fireplace. Sunlight still beamed through the dirty windows. And Kathryn Pitcher's portrait still sat in its spot on the bookcase in its silver frame. But no one polished the frame anymore.

Leaving the door open, Sara crossed the room and held the photograph before her eyes. The image of the woman, of Jerome Pitcher's pretty young bride, smiled back at her over almost half a century.

"Poor, sweet man," Sara whispered.

From the living room, she wandered into the unused second bedroom, past the small bathroom and then into the master bedroom, and finally into the kitchen, where at last she saw something that had changed.

The cardboard box sat on the kitchen table, just where Sam Kinney had left it. Its open top drew her, pulling her through the doorway and across the kitchen floor in just a moment. And then she stopped.

Only about one foot square and one foot high, within it was a confused jumble of papers and packets. A thick roll of white paper stuck up out of one corner. Circling the table and the box, she looked down into it warily, from a distance, not sure that she should touch it, knowing what it probably was. Fingertips of her right hand tapping her lips, she rounded the table, completing her circle and reaching her starting point. She wanted to look, but did not want to see. Faltering, she cleaned and filled the coffee pot, turned to the stove, carefully lit one of the gas burners, and set the pot on to boil. Then, as if her actions had broken her indecision, she turned and berated herself. "Come on, Sara, don't be a dope." With far more certainty than she felt inside, she sat down at the table.

The thick roll of white paper was the first to be removed. Carefully, she pulled off a desiccated rubber band and unrolled the sheets, spreading the broad documents on the table, flattening the rolls with pressure from her palm, just the way they had been displayed and examined so many times before. The diagrams were forty years old, but what the faint lines depicted was plain enough. On the first sheet, in faded ink, was an architect's front elevation of a sprawling, ranch style house, a beautiful thing surrounded by precise landscaping, with enough rooms drawn in for a large family. On the side of each successively numbered sheet, from side and rear elevations to site plans to roof details, even to the plans for the numerous small outbuildings, had been penned the names: Pitcher, Jerome &Kathryn.

A home that no one had ever known. A quick breath shunted aside feelings she could not tolerate. Hurriedly, the rolls of paper were repacked, bound together once again, and set aside.

Standing, she took another breath, deeper, more calming. When her eyes reopened, though, the box was still before her and she could not ignore it. She had started now, and she would have to see it through.

The water in the pot was boiling, and she found the coffee in the cupboards where some sense remembered it to have been. Though no longer fresh, she used the grounds anyway, waited by the counter for the pot to brew, then poured herself a mug full of the black liquid. In the stuffy kitchen, barely a wisp of steam rose from the cup as she sat again at the table.

The taboo surrounding the box had been broken. Her hands dipped inside, and retrieved an overflowing handful of paper treasures.

Her first huge bundle appeared to be legal documents of some kind, with endless numbered paragraphs of fine print, and she set those to one side. Beneath them in the box, collected with another dried rubber band, rested a huge handful of battered photographs. One by one, she began to review them.

On the top of the uneven stack was a faded black and white shot of a family she barely recognized; a man and a woman and two young boys, one much younger than the other. Jerome, his younger brother Mitchell, and their parents.

Pitcher himself had kept that one.

A shot of a wiry older man, a man who had never known anything but the hardest manual labor, leaning on some kind of long-handled tool in front of a huge roll, his eyes squinting in the sun that brightly illuminated him.

Pitcher's father.

Sara's fingers slid one thick piece of photographic paper behind another. Pitcher posing on the seat of a tractor in his thin youth. A smile on his young face seemed so strange to her.

Then Pitcher in the uniform of an Army private, with Class A creases in his trousers and blouse. And Pitcher hugging a beautiful young brunette named Kathryn Wolcott in front of the San Francisco Ferry Building.

Kathryn had kept all of those.

Then, a gap. Nothing, until the faces were older and harder. Sadder. The old man and his two sons posing in laborers' hard hats in front of the just-completed Shasta Dam—600 feet of manmade obstruction holding back four and a half million acre feet of water—where so many out-of-luck men had tried to salvage a living. Then, a desperately cheerful group of the same but different men, clustered around the rear of some kind of tractor, trying to put on the looks of successful farmers, trying to look as if they were not working their lives away. A group picture of Pitcher, his brother and father and all their wives, and two very small children who must have belonged to Mitchell. All in poor clothes on the steps of the family home. The home in which Sara was sitting right then.

Kathryn, perhaps, had put those away, and Pitcher had been unable to say no to her.

And then: Mitchell in an Army uniform like, but unlike, what his older brother had worn, his face without the sure morality of his older brother's war. Next, Pitcher and only his Dad trying to proudly show off the results of their one good harvest in half a decade.

And then another long gap.

Before she had set down the last of the next six photographs, Sara's eyes were watering and she had to hunt in her purse for a tissue. Kathryn, her husband and another unknown couple grouped around a restaurant table somewhere during a happy dinner. A professionally posed portrait of the bride and groom, resplendent on their wedding day. Snapshots of the two of them on trips to places Sara did not recognize. Pitcher pointing proudly at the burgeoning crops in his small fields. And then the last: A black and white photograph of Kathryn, in shorts and a brief top, smiling and pointing to the sign that her husband Jerome was pretending to nail to the newly sunken gate posts at the entrance to the driveway.

At the kitchen table, Sara mouthed the words that she read on the sign in the picture, a weather-beaten, forgotten sign with the words that a few minutes ago she had noticed for only the first time. The Pastures of Heaven.

There were no more photographs.

"Oh, no," Sara breathed softly.

But her hands would not stop digging further and further into the box. Below the bundle of photographs rested a small, tin box with a broken clasp. Inside, she found a Purple Heart and a Bronze Star medal awarded to Mitchell Evan Pitcher. Beneath the medals were news clippings of the Korean War actions in which the medals had been won and the official announcement from the Department of Defense. Killed in action, Sara read, and wondered why Jerome, not Mitchell's wife, had kept these things.

Slowly, she leaned against the hard wooden back of her chair. Perspiration prickled her skin. The back of her neck beneath her hair was damp. Throwing open the kitchen door to create a draft, she sat down again, one arm clutching her waist, while from her other hand dangled her coffee mug. Life seemed too hard for some people. So unfair. The best people. So often so much unhappiness was visited on just the very best people.

She had to finish it now. Tipping the box toward her, she found loose in the bottom an old train ticket from San Francisco to Redding—Kathryn coming up to Jerome?— a dried sprig of violets, a small corsage in a glassine envelope, a collection of yellowed letters that Sara just could not bring herself to read, several colored theatre stubs. Removing each in turn, the box finally was empty, save for one small book with a white cover festooned with cherubs.

A book of names. Names for babies. Hesitantly, almost fearfully, Sara flipped through the book and saw underlined the favorite choices of Kathryn and Jerome Pitcher.

"Oh, my dear Lord," she murmured. A sip of coffee helped her swallow.

In her own bedroom far to the south, hidden away beneath the ruffles of the flowered comforter on the bed, in a handmade wooden box her brother had brought back from his travels to some faraway land, Sara had hidden her own memories. Her box, too, held photographs, of a pretty mother holding her eleven-year-old daughter for the last time; of that daughter on the night of her senior prom, when her father had tried so hard to take his wife's place; of her being hugged by her father and brother on her college graduation day. And the snapshots of Jack and her, together at the beach, at a Fourth of July picnic in the city park, washing their Bronco together, in front of some waterfall in Yosemite, in front of the first rundown house they had scraped and saved to buy. And in a special album, cherished portraits of their wedding day.

As important as the photographs were the little mementos: wilderness permits from all the backpacking trips she and Jack had taken, tickets and programs from special nights at the theatre; a button from her blouse, lost at night in a car during a passionate courtship and not found till years later. And with the mementos, instead of in her jewelry box, was the first thin, cheap gold bracelet that a poorly paid young man had given to his love long before proposing.

But Sara's box was still mostly empty. She had not been granted enough time to fill it as full as Pitcher had. And what was in it was all there ever would be.

"Oh, Jack," she quietly cried to herself and wiped from her soft cheeks the first real tears she had shed in almost a year.

The slam of the pickup truck door startled her, bringing her head up and her attention back to the small, old kitchen and the baking interior of the house. Hastily, she dried her cheeks and eyes and cleared her throat. Rising from the table and smoothing her skirt, she put her coffee cup in the sink and walked toward the front of the house.

Through the front windows, she could not see where Morrison had parked. The yard seemed empty, so as she walked she peered through the windows on the side of the house. Across the ground, the dilapidated old barn was clearly visible. Just as her gaze left one window to move to the other, Jack ran from the barn where the mare was foaling, saw her and waved excitedly. He darted to his right to catch her at the next window as he called her name.

Sara!

In two steps, Sara was at the next opening, the pounding of her heart filling her chest.

The side yard was empty, nothing but dirt and weeds and the shadow of the trees. But from the window, she could see through the black opening of the barn door and down the aisle, where Jack turned his silly, helpless face toward her and silently begged her not to leave him alone with Pitcher and the birthing horse.

A weak smile found Sara's face, but it could not last and quickly broke apart. Clenching her teeth, pulling her gaze away, she exhaled one quick, sharp breath. Gathering her struggling feelings, she placed them together, carefully tied a wrapping around the bundle, and placed it, too, into her box of memories.

In the front room, through the screen door, she could see Wesley Morrison, pants flapping about his ankles as his legs pumped up the brick steps to the porch of the house. He had left his coat in the truck and rolled up his shirt sleeves. With a metallic groan, the ancient spring closed the screen door behind him.

Sara was standing in the middle of the room as he entered and he viewed the expression on her face for only an instant before asking, "Hey, are you okay?"

Arms folded, her head bobbed up and down in a quick nod, eyes taking one last hasty look out the window. "I was just...remembering."

He took a hesitant step toward her. He had lost far more than enough of his own hours to thoughts of things that once had or might have been. "That can be good or bad."

"This was both." She didn't want to talk about it. Turning, she led the way back to the kitchen. He stood in the doorway as she ran her fingers around the rim of the empty box. Finally, she asked the question that up till now she had not wanted answered. "How—?" She turned her eyes to his. "Wes, how did—?"

The materials spread on the small table told him all he needed to know. He could see the reason for the sorrow that still marred her pretty face, and he marveled at her kindness.

Gently, he said, "I think it was a stroke. I'm not sure."

Sara nodded.

"I haven't talked to the doctors." But he had enough of the story from Sam Kinney to know most of what had happened.

She nodded again to stop him. He had said enough. Somehow, she had known that was the way. "At least it was quick," she told herself, but Morrison's silence said otherwise. She looked at him sharply and saw in his expression something that made her afraid. "No, don't tell me," she blurted as his lips started to move.

She was tender as she was kind, and he closed his mouth, keeping to himself how long it had been, and how it had ended. Instead, he crossed from the doorway to the table, eyeing the pile of papers that to him obviously were legal documents. Picking up one set, he unfolded it and quickly scanned the fine print. "Lease," he announced.

Sara watched as he tossed that paper on the table and flipped through several others. "All leases. Dozens of them." They shared their surprise in a look.

"Leases for what?" Sara wondered.

Morrison’s eyebrows arched. "Land." A moment of thought delayed his answer. "Lots of land. A hundred sixty acres. Another one for a hundred sixty acres." He turned the documents in his hands more carefully. "Three hundred twenty acres."

"Three hundred?" Sara echoed from her chair, staring up at him. What he was saying made no sense, no sense at all. "But why in the world would he lease that much land from anybody? He couldn't even farm what little he had here." Her hand swept the forty or so acres surrounding the house.

Morrison was a statue. He could guess, now. Barry Kroeber and Diana had known, of course, and that was why they had fought. His heart quickened as he squinted at his client. Sara's face was as innocent as he had ever seen. She had no idea. "No, Sara, that's not it," he rejoined lowly but distinctly, "He was the lessor. He was leasing his land to other people."

Her lips parted and her mouth fell open without her uttering a sound.

Rapidly, he shuffled the leases, comparing the dates of execution. "He'd been doing it for at least three decades. Leasing a tract out for ten years, then renewing it." He lifted page after page. "And for next to nothing, for God's sake."

Sara's voice returned to her with disbelief. "But, Wes, he didn't have that much land."

Attached to every lease was one special sheet. Morrison tore one loose and turned on his heel. One hand trailed behind him, beckoning to her. "Come on."

Sara half walked, half ran to keep up with his fast stride.

He held the screen door open for her, then bounded down the steps and away from the house. By the time she caught up with him, he was standing in the middle of the yard, holding the sheet of single-spaced typing in front of him like a divining rod.

"Okay. 'From the northernmost corner of that tract named in Book'...." He faded into a rapid mumble as he read the peculiar legal language of property descriptions. Looking up, he marked the point of beginning. " 'Thence, in a northwesterly direction'—"

His face grew grim as he oriented the azimuth in his mind and read on, and fear of what she did not know began to hurt Sara's chest. Turning again and again as his eyes bounced from the paper to the horizon, Morrison eventually completed a full circle.

Sara had matched him turn for turn, and when he stopped he was silent so long she thought she would burst.

The paper dropped to his side as he finished calculating. Mostly to himself, he said, "I'll be damned."

"Wes?"

With a twitch of his head, he noticed her again. "Sara," he began, not knowing how to tell her except to show her, sure now that she had never suspected, any more than he had. "Your land runs from the driveway, along the river road—" he swung to his left and aimed a finger to some spot in the distant west "—about three miles that way."

"Three miles?" She thrust her face at him.

Pivoting, he marked a peak far to the south. "Then to the top of that mountain."

Both hands flew to cover her open mouth.

"Around this way, to about there, I guess," he showed her some eastern point, then swept an arc northward, "then to there, then there, and then back to here." With her by his side, they completed their second circle.

Wide eyes darting from place to place, marker to marker, her head shook violently as she refused to believe. "Oh, no," she told him. Her tiny island had become a universe. "Oh, no." She stared fiercely, almost angrily, at him. "You're crazy. All this?" Hands spread away from her sides. "That can't be right. This must be over a thousand acres."

Morrison shook his head. He already had done the figuring, rounding off the distances, squaring the angles. A rectangle of seven to eight square miles, each square mile holding 640 acres. As levelly as he could, facing a suddenly very rich woman, he said, "More like five thousand acres. Sara, this place is worth millions. Millions."

She stepped back from him and almost lost her balance. Folding her arms in the stubborn way she had, her head swung slowly from side to side. "Oh, no. Oh, no. No, no, no. That's not right. I'm sorry, Wes, but that's not right. You're wrong."

He just shook his head. He did this kind of thing for a living.

Her eyes flashed with frustration. This was all wrong. If Wes was not wrong, then Pitcher must have been. Perhaps she wasn't the Sara Owen the old man had meant in his will. A dry, warm breeze blew dust around their feet and swirled in a miniature dust devil up toward her eyes. But who else had been there with the foaling mare?

"But he didn't have this much," she insisted. "He said his father had sold off most of what they'd had. All these crops," her hand waved sharply, "belong to somebody else."

Her soft brown eyes pleaded, but in the bright sun Morrison's pale green irises had become an inflexible, translucent gray. An urge to help her abruptly surfaced, only to be caught and submerged. As his face remained vacant, she looked away.

"His father's holdings must've been much bigger at one time," Morrison reasoned aloud. "And besides," he held up the sheaf of leases, "they are somebody else's crops."

She left him and walked past his small pickup, gaze sweeping the length of the green valley floor, the ring of timbered mountains, the sky of high cirrus clouds.

"Sara, don't you realize what you've got?"

Morrison appeared in front of her as she opened the eyes she had shut. A pejorative glance left him behind as she escaped toward the barn. "It's wrong," she said, almost not caring if he was there or if he was listening. "It's just wrong. I only met him once. If I'd known there was this much land, I never would have agreed with you to come up here. This place should go to his niece and nephew, just like they said. They're his family. I hardly knew him. It's their inheritance."

They were at the entrance to the barn. Down the dark aisle, horses moved and craned their necks outside of their stalls, hoping to see a visitor who would feed them carrots. At the gaping doorway, Sara stopped and crossed her arms again.

Morrison stopped behind her and marveled. Bequeathed a fortune, a dream come true, she thought she didn't deserve it. He shook his head in disbelief. "Then why did he give it to you?"

"I don't know!" The sun was too hot on her back, the inside of the barn shady and familiar. She stepped inside and he followed. The cool darkness softened her voice. "His horse had fallen in the trailer. All we did was stop and help him get her back up." To her right a white appaloosa with sly eyes watched her pass. "Then Jack helped him with the foaling of the mare. I didn't do anything."

Except make coffee for him and talk like a fool until he couldn't stand it any longer. She remembered that much all too vividly.

Morrison had passed her. From a stall farther down the aisle and on the left he asked, "This the foal? Little sorrel mare named As You Dream?"

Above the hand-carved wooden nameplate, the blazed face of the young horse looked at Sara as if she had been away only a day. The mare was much bigger than she had expected, almost fully grown. In the next stall was the roan mother, the black mare with the white specks named Nightsnow. Sara's eyes fell to the filly's hand-carved nameplate, and she knew in her heart what it meant. "Oh, my God," she whispered slowly.

Somewhere far in the distance, she heard Morrison say, "She's got good conformation. And big hooves, for a quarter horse."

Sara couldn't swallow. Her head was spinning. The excitement of rescuing the old mare, the fear of the birth. Silly Jack trying to make conversation. Her standing at the window in the warm sunlight and telling Pitcher about her dream. And he had heard every word. Every single word. She wiped the corners of her eyes.

Through the doorway at the far end of the barn were the thousands of acres that Kathryn's death had frozen in time. Sara clenched her teeth and squeezed her eyes shut, but she could not stop her feelings. He brought her to this place, this quiet, beautiful place, this idyllic place, where life was plain and sometimes hard but never hurried, and after she saw it she named it for just what to her it seemed to be: The Pastures of Heaven. With his family gone the two of them had tried to earn their living from the rich earth, but they had been unable to take all that it had been able to give. Like the good parents they would have been, they chose not to bring their children into the world until they could care for them.

And then she had died. Jerome's beautiful, loving wife had died, and his life had stopped. His farming had stopped, his life had stopped, his hopes had stopped. And then he had ensured that the land, too, would stay just the way it was when Kathryn had fallen in love with it. Just the way it was when she had named it. Just the way it was when he had lost her. In its unparalleled, unchanging beauty was her love of it and his love of her. In the rich earth and the clear running water, in the waving green fields, the tall pines and the clear blue sky. He would have kept it this way forever, if he could have. Forever.

Wes was close to her now, one hand reaching for her but not touching her. "Sara?"

A painful sweetness was all around her now. Inside, too. She shook away from Morrison. She understood Pitcher's strained, far away look, understood one small part of the taciturn old man. All the generations, the traditions, coming down to the hopes and dreams of two special people, and then so many lonely years later to one last chance on a stranger. ‘Who in her heart and in her dreams is so much like my beloved Kathryn’. Her cheeks suddenly were streaked with wetness as Jack's smiling face came to mind. To forever keep and hold for them and their children as they know is right, said the thin, shaky script of the will.

All her barriers were falling. Wes' kind and honest face implored her, but he did not know and could not help. Turning her eyes to the young mare, she could not stand it any longer. She and Jack were to have lived the life that she had dreamed, the life that Jerome and Kathryn had never had. That was what Pitcher had wanted, what the name of the young mare was supposed to tell her.

But now there was no Jack. There was no Jack, and there would be no children to sit with her in the sunny living room of her imagination. Pitcher's hopes and dreams would die along with hers, just as his had. Hiding her eyes behind her hands, she began to cry.

In the quiet darkness of the odorous old barn, as the horses stamped in their stalls and the pigeons cooed on the rafters, as the dry breeze moaned softly through the cracks of the old planks and the afternoon sun cut the air into yellow slices, Wesley Morrison held Sara's shoulders in his strong hands and in his low, sure voice told her over and over again that everything was all right, even though he did not know himself that what he said was true.

Wiping her eyes a final time in the center of the ancient barn, Sara took a rough breath, held it, and let it out unevenly. She had embarrassed herself enough and had encumbered Morrison. Pulling away from him, she avoided his eyes. "I'm sorry."

He shook his head, though with her back to him she could not see. He did not need to be told what it was like to lose someone loved beyond measure. "It's okay."

Her head bobbed up and down very quickly for half a second. Again, the rich emptiness that was all around her and everywhere inside of her began to well up wetly in her eyes. A short, sharp breath and a shake of her head scattered the feeling. An impulse to run wrapped around her, but it too fled as soon as she looked at the sorrel filly that was the last child of the old mare named Nightsnow.

Morrison stayed by the young horse's stall as Sara walked to the other end of the barn. She stood in the middle of the doorway looking out. In the far distance, the shining blades of a harvester silently whirled and flashed, mowing countless stalks of mature alfalfa. A warm wind, funneled through the barn by the openings at both ends, blew down the aisle and ruffled Sara's skirt and hair. The sun was high above the forested granite mountains bounding the quiet farmland. Spreading before her, beneath a blue sky that seemed to have no end, the rippling green fields belonged to eternity.

It was beautiful and wonderful and utterly overwhelming. Closing her eyes, feelings tumbling erratically, she pressed a hand over her heart. She could not live here, not without her husband, not without any of her family nearby. Not with a job that paid only a meager teacher's salary and called her back each fall to try to win tenure. Every day that this land was hers, every time she saw it or thought of it, the memories would come back. The wounds would never heal. Alone, she could not fulfill Jerome Pitcher's wish. She just could not. Taking one last deep breath, she turned her back to the panorama and walked up the dirty concrete aisle.

As she stood in front of him, Morrison waited patiently, seeing though not understanding her tumult. In the filtered yellow light, her face was soft, her brown eyes deeply sad.

She cleared her throat, hoping that he would not make her explain, that he would not argue with her. Not make her do something she did not want to do. Something she could not do.

"Wes, I don't think—"

The image swept before her eyes and her face suddenly grew taut. The combine was not the only machine working the land today. "Oh, Lord," she gasped, instantly chilled to the core.

Morrison saw nothing. "Sara? What's the matter?"

His repeated question chased her as she ran from the barn and erupted into the daylight. The wind was blowing from the west and she heard them before she saw them. At first, in her ears, only a low snarl, a faint squeak; then, in her eyes, the yellow machines, ponderously tracking back and forth.

Tracing the invisible boundary lines in the sky as Morrison joined her, she prayed that it was not happening already. She did not want this. She was not prepared. As if she could touch the ugly things even from this distance, she reached one small hand out toward the distant earth-movers. "Am I wrong?," she asked. "Or are they on my land?"

The graders, scrapers and bulldozers that, squinting, Morrison could just make out were well within the boundaries described in the county records. His silk tie flapped in the breeze and he calmed it absently with one hand. A cautious look out of the corner of his eyes examined his client. A moment ago, he was sure, she had been about to tell him that she did not want to even own this property. Now, she seemed about to defend it. He nodded hesitantly: "They could be."

It was a lawyer's answer and she didn't like it. She had expected more from him. "They are," she told him.

Pitcher must have known. He must have known that his niece and nephew would try to go ahead with the development they had planned for so long. They must have been trying for years. And he had thwarted them simply by staying alive.

Sara's lips pressed into a firm thin line. Pitcher had given his land to her, trusting her to keep it safe, the way Kathryn would have. To keep it safe for Kathryn. He had trusted her to prevent just what was happening now, and he never should have. He had met her only once and he had misjudged her. She couldn't do it. She did not want the burden. Even just standing in the midst of these thousands of acres she felt lost, smothered somehow by feelings and responsibilities she had never sought and could not endure. She would not be able to save his land, not today, not a dozen years from now. Eventually, Barry Kroeber and Diana Robeck would get their hands on it, and then the mechanical desecration would be completed. This special place, this paradise, would disappear. And a decade after that, no one would even know or care what had been here before.

The thin line of her mouth disappeared as she curled and bit her lip. No one would remember. The owners would walk over their bits of land and visitors would marvel at what little they saw and none of them would ever know what had been. None of them. The memories would be gone. The land would be entombed in concrete and asphalt and what it had been and meant would be forever forgotten. Everything that had mattered to Pitcher and his family would be gone. All the pictures would be only in her mind, all the feelings only in her heart. The house and buildings would be torn down, the horses inside the barn sold.

The peace of the unending green fields would be no more and the long history of Pitcher's family would end. Over time, even she would lose her remembrances, memories of the old man and his love for his wife, of the summer day and the desperate, sweating mare on the floor of the rusted trailer. Of the fearful birth of the wobbly little foal named As You Dream, and of her dear, sweet, loving Jack—

"They've got to stop." She was breathing too hard and she was getting dizzy.

Morrison exhaled heavily. One moment Sara was crying, the next she was in a rage to fight. She didn't know what she wanted, and now neither did he. One hand rose to catch her temper. "Sara, they're probably still working on the development that I told you—"

"I know what they're doing," she blurted. "I don't care. They've got to stop." In a minute she would be angry with him, too.

He scowled but turned his wrist to see his watch. Their first request for an injunction had been denied by Judge Reyes, but he might change his mind, now that he had ruled in Sara's favor. If he still could. The watch crystal glinted blindingly. It was still early afternoon. Stacey could type up a new temporary restraining order as fast as he could dictate it. "I could have a TRO drawn up by three or four and get—"

She didn't wait to hear the rest. She lunged away from him and into the Bronco. He didn't understand. There was no time to file legal papers and have hearings. The machines were ripping up her land. Land that had been given to Jack and to her to forever keep and hold for them and their children as they know is right.

Slamming the Bronco door in Morrison's face, she started the big truck and wheeled it around. Dust and rocks sprayed from the spinning rear tires as she pressed the accelerator to the floor.

"Christ!" swore Morrison, ducking away from the hurtling dirt and gravel that spattered his face. In his hand the property description flapped crazily as the Bronco raced across the yard toward the long driveway. In seconds the truck was kicking up a cloud of dust and skidding around the turn.

The sound of the tires on the gravel and oil highway roared through the open window on a buffeting wind that whipped Sara's hair. A mile down the highway from Pitcher's home, she turned onto a rough, rutted access road that had been punched into harvested fields through a rusting wire fence. The front wheels of the Bronco slammed into the dip where the paved and dirt roads met, jarring the steering wheel out of her hands. Then the rear wheels hit, spun, gained traction, and the truck straightened out.

Already, the cross-fencing had been torn out. Where months or even weeks ago crops had been growing, now backhoes and scrapers gouged out ditches and broad avenues, while front-end loaders hoisted shovelsful of rich dark earth into waiting dump trucks. Where a rectangular stack of hay bales should have been stood three stilted water tanks. Hugging the left edge of the access road were a mobile construction trailer and a ragged cluster of cars.

Wheeling in beside a dented crew-cab pickup, Sara stamped on the brake and the Bronco lurched to a halt. Leaping out, she bounded up a set of wooden stairs and threw open the trailer door.

The place was empty. No, not empty. A desk, table and chairs were crammed into one end, a small sofa, several lockers and cabinets into the other. The air smelled of tobacco and burned coffee, of dirt and sweaty men. On a peg on one wall hung a hard hat with the name Potter stenciled on it. But no one was inside.

Seconds after she entered, a deep rumble began to grow, and with the rumble the trailer walls began to vibrate. In seconds the shaking became intense and a low, pounding roar pummeled Sara's ears. As a mechanical snarl blasted its way through the open door, she turned and dashed back outside.

An immense road grader was rolling by, yellow frame towering over her, engine roaring, dark brown dirt spewing from the ribs of its colossal tires, huge curved blade slicing the ground and channeling the dirt aside. Barely missing the edge of the trailer, it bore down the middle of the access road, scraping the path smooth. Atop the machine in an open cab, a man in a red plaid shirt gaped in astonishment at the pretty woman in the blue business suit.

Diving down the wooden steps, Sara's narrow dress shoes sank into the soft earth. The grader operator saw her pursuit, but didn't know what he should do. Open mouth flapping, his face wagged back and forth between her and the path ahead of him.

"Hey!" she shouted as she caught up with him, but the clamor of the diesel drowned her out.

The man's head swung like a pendulum. "What?" he called back, but the grader kept chewing its way down the road, rumbling and cutting as if Sara wasn't there.

"Hey!" she yelled again, anger beginning to fill her voice as she ran awkwardly alongside the huge machine.

"What?"

Her fists clenched by her sides as she stopped. She shouted as loudly as she could. "Get off my land!"

The operator reached for the controls. With a clank and a metallic groan the blade stopped abrading the earth. Clods of dirt fell from the caked tires as the wheels ceased rotating. The diesel died reluctantly. In the open cab, Lee Salinger twisted in his seat, not believing what he thought he had heard. "What'd you say?"

Sara took one defiant step toward the giant machine. "I said, get off my land!"

"Your land?" A mirthless grin spread across the man's tanned face. "Try again, lady. This is a construction site."

The pickup truck flew along the river road like an arrow. Braking suddenly, its nose plunged almost to the rough gray surface. Negotiating the ditch at the start of the access road, it swiftly recovered its speed, a rooster tail of dirt ascending behind it.

Hot oil and diesel fuel stank in Sara's nose. The great yellow machine hissed and radiated superheated air at her. She tilted her head back, cheeks burning. At twelve, her mother's death had thrust upon her the responsibilities of running the household for her father and little brother; from twenty-three on, she had governed packed classrooms of unruly adolescents.

She had ceased long ago to be bullied by anyone. "Not anymore, it's not."

Surprise washed Salinger's face. Wherever he could see, work on the huge development was going on unabated. "Since when?"

"Since now."

On straining springs, a heavily laden water truck jounced up beside the grader and the driver dropped from the cab. He was a thin, young man in a dirty blue tee shirt. Brushing his long dirty hair from his eyes, he hungrily examined Sara, then looked up at his foreman. "What's up, Lee?"

Sara eyed the tattoos on the muscles of the man's bare arms. Scared and proud at the same time, in a way she didn't understand, she said, "This is my land, that's what’s up."

A barking laugh jerked the driver's chest. "Oh, like hell."

"Cool it, Bud." Salinger said as he tried to find a foothold.

Sara's dark blue jacket and skirt drank in the heat of the sun as she waited for the operating engineer to climb down from the grader. Perspiration began to bead on her forehead and dampen the collar of her white blouse. She hoped they didn't see.

Salinger jumped the last foot off his machine and walked toward her. Over a foot taller and a hundred pounds heavier, he looked down on her for a moment before he spoke. "Now, lady, you're not going to make a problem for us, are you?"

Her father had taught her well. She refused to flinch. "Not if you get off my land."

The water truck driver choked noisily. "Are you crazy?"

She stung him with a glance. "Are you deaf?"

The young man glared back fiercely and spit onto the ground. "You go to hell."

"Damn it!" she swore, unable to contain herself. "You get off my land!"

The pickup skidded to a stop in front of the grader and Morrison hurtled out. The door hung wide open behind him as he ran toward the two irate men facing his angry client. Lee Salinger had been his friend for several years, while the other man he didn't know but knew he wouldn't like. He didn't know what he should think of Sara.

Salinger saw him first and turned to him, more puzzled than when he had first seen Sara at the trailer. "Wes? You're not in on this, too, are you?"

Forcing his way between his client and his friend, where Sara's improvidence had placed him, he warned her with a look to be quiet, then took a deep breath and addressed Salinger.

"Lee, you've got to get off of here." He jerked his head over his shoulder. "This is her property."

The water truck driver gawked at Morrison. "Oh, man, you're full of shit. No way—" Whatever he had intended to say abruptly was lost to the look that Morrison snapped at him. Only the driver saw it and only he had seen it before, on the faces of the lifers at Folsom prison. A face and eyes without constraints, meant to be seen only by their victim. Without knowing it, he backed up until he touched his truck and tried to blend into the surroundings.

"I've got fourteen Cats out here," Salinger protested futilely. "We've been working on this thing for two weeks now, Wes. How come now, all of a sudden—"

"We were fighting over a will," Morrison explained, once again the placating lawyer. "The guy who sent you out here jumped the gun. He thought he'd win." Wes thought of the court battle and shrugged. "He didn't."

Salinger was hardly the kind of man to despair, but he shook his head helplessly. A few weeks ago, he had played poker with Morrison and some others and had lost more than he could afford. Morrison bluffed fiercely, but he never cheated. And he wasn't bluffing now.

"Well, Jesus Christ," Salinger appealed plaintively, without response. Morrison wasn't bluffing, and he certainly wasn't lying. That left only one alternative: They were working for nothing. Their contract was no good, and no contract meant no money, for him or any of his men. When the owner of the company heard this—

"Sorry, Lee," Morrison apologized, reading Salinger's face.

"Hell and God damn, Wes." Salinger's hands rose and fell without finding anything to grasp. There was nothing to find. He gave up searching. He had been in many a barroom fight and knew when he had won as well as when he was beaten.

"Well, I guess there ain't nothing I can do about it standing around out here." He turned. "Bud," he called to the driver of the water truck as he walked away, "run me over to the trailer. I gotta call the boss."

Sara breathed again, the first time in minutes. Her land was safe. It was hurt, but it was safe, at least for now. And it would recover. Her hand found and squeezed Wes' arm as the water truck rumbled off. She tried to find his eyes, but he looked away from her. "Thank you," she said in the softest tones.

She was pretty and sweet and smart and he never should have done what he did. He had promised himself, never again. Never again. Not him and his hopeless heart. And here he was, breaking all his vows, at the first chance that came along.

"Sure," Wes finally conceded.

Chapter Twelve

The trip had been six years ago, this coming winter, but Barry Kroeber remembered as if it had been yesterday. He had just bought the dealership from the elderly, acerbic owner who had lost all interest in sales as well as in money. Disgusted by the older man's depression and pessimism, invigorated by his own youth, he had gone celebrating in his usual style, hopping from bar to bar. Trading boast for ever larger boast with an extreme sports friend who was justifiably sure of his own ability to conquer just about anything, Kroeber at last had accepted a drunken dare to ski the wilderness of the Canadian Rockies.

Almost before his hangover had cleared, he found himself being helicoptered over the most awesome mountain snowfields he had ever seen.

The run down the unnamed mountain had been unlike anything he had ever hoped to experience. The beauty of the silent, snowy mountains, the exhilaration of skiing untouched snow. The thrill of plummeting faster than he ever had down a pure white chute overwhelmed his eyes and ears.

Only the shriek in the voice of his daredevil friend had pierced his ecstatic oblivion, and by that time it was almost too late. Eighth in line, his friend behind him, Kroeber had not heard or seen the slab avalanche that without a sound or a second of warning had crashed from the upper slopes of the mountain, hurtling downward in one discrete mass with silent ferocity.

As Kroeber had slithered to a falling, frantic stop, the first six members of the group far down the slope had vanished beneath the plunging tons of snow. With no idea of the danger above them, they probably had not even experienced their own deaths. For them, Kroeber grieved, but for the fate of the man just ahead of him, he feared. Lying helplessly in the snow, he had watched the other skier try to stop in time, watched him fail, watched him desperately seek any means of saving his life, and watched the man's soul stare upward in inexpressible horror at the avalanche of white that in a moment brought his death to him and buried him under the snow forever.

Along with the helicoptered rescue team, those who had been left had searched for hours, but they had found no survivors. For months, Kroeber had been unable to sleep through a full night, and he never again had strapped on a pair of skis.

And now the avalanche was smothering him.

The house in which he stood was unacceptably old and small, unforgivably dirty. Dust gathered in balls along the plastic kitchen baseboards and streaks of dirt caked the small sliding windows. The plastic kitchen countertops were cluttered and soiled. The orange carpet in the living room was worn and blackened with dirt in spots, the particleboard and synthetic-fiber furniture mismatched and uncleaned. Mounds of old magazines and papers sat on the tables. A sour odor seemed to pervade the musty air.

Kroeber could not understand how his own sister could tolerate a cleaning service that apparently did not clean, until he realized, without any guilt, that Diana did not have a cleaning service. She could not afford it, so she did it herself. Or, rather, did not do it, herself.

His blood rushed. Soon, he too might be living just like this. Him, his wife and children in a home like this, a cheaply built home of lower-middle class mediocrity, a home of relative poverty. A home just like the one in which he had been raised.

He had watched, observed, and replicated. Behind the counter in the deli after school, he had listened to the men who drove the expensive cars. He had read the mayonnaise-stained papers, the Wall Street Journal and others, they had left on the table and by the time he had left high school, he had known the moves to make. Twenty years later, the theory behind what he did was still a mystery to him, but he didn't care. He didn't know how the machine worked, but he could push the right buttons to get what he wanted.

And now he was going to lose it. The pledges and promises he had made, like the notes and the stock he had issued, were all worthless. All of them were backed by the land he should have had, but did not. He would not be able to cover a tenth of their value if he worked till he was a hundred years old. Not if he sold everything he owned. But that was what he would have to do. He could see no other way. He would die a pauper. Just like his stepfather had. Just like his sister would.

Diana did not understand. Sitting on her department store sofa, occasionally staring out the front window at her run-down neighborhood, the eyes she sometimes turned toward her brother were hollow and disbelieving.

Pacing on the imitation wood floor of the foyer, Kroeber turned in a circle and seized the top of a plastic recliner with both hands, squeezing the foam underneath. "They're going to name you, too, Diana. Don't you get it? They're going to sue you, too. They'll take your car, your house, your bank account, and they'll garnish your wages for the rest of your life."

"They'll take your new house, too, then." Bending at the waist, her elbows came together and rested on her thighs, while her hands clasped each other in front of her mouth, thumbs pulling at her cheeks, pushing her lips forward. Wrinkled magazines on the coffee table drew her attention.

A low, angry breath hissed from Kroeber's lungs. Already, the owners of the options for the homesites and the stock options were calling, demanding rescission of their agreements and refunds of their deposits. The banks that had funded the construction loans were calling in their notes. While the golf and tennis club members were finally starting to realize what was happening, the construction companies had been much quicker, turning their eyes and hands toward Kroeber almost immediately. With his own fabulous home burden by three unrecorded second mortgages, his dealership his only source of substantial income, he could do nothing but shift funds from one account to another. In a barely controlled panic, he was borrowing against the float, renegotiating loans, selling all his partnership interests and options in existing buildings and pending projects, refinancing his income property to cash out the equity and delaying salaries and commissions to his employees.

He was stealing from one pocket just to fill the other, but he could only do that so long, and the investors knew it. And so did their lawyers. An attorney from San Francisco and one from Palm Springs had already called him, threatening lawsuits if he did not come up with the money for their clients. He had thrown money at them and they had gone away appeased, but now more were surfacing. He would be sued, Diana would be sued, and Bruce Adamek and Cathy Welch would be sued, too. Everyone would sue everyone else. In the end, they all would lose everything.

"Unless...," Coiling ever more tightly inside, he stopped and clenched his teeth. Finally, he forced the killing words up from his gut and out of his mouth. "We declare bankruptcy."

A door opened and shut somewhere in the house, somewhere in Diana's mind. The despondency that had wiped her face clean of expression still existed within her, but now it was at some other place, some other level. The hands that had played with her cheeks and lips found her knees and thrust her heavy body upward. Turning, she slowly crossed the floor and stood a few feet from her brother.

"Barry," she softly reproached Kroeber, "are you crazy? You think that's the only way out of this?" Turned at a slight angle to him, her head bobbed gently at him with each condescending question. "We just pay all the money back? Just because some senile old man in a black robe got blinded by a pretty face? Sara, two; Kroeber, nothing—so you give up? Is that your great plan?" She shook her head. "So the Judge said the land was hers—so what? You're just going to roll over and die? You? All you can think of is to give the money back? The great entrepreneur? The would-be land baron? You want to sell everything we have, declare bankruptcy for God's sake, and just give up? Is that your grand scheme to get us out of this mess?" A short laugh sputtered. "My thirteen-year-old could do better."

Kroeber's eyes flared and he dug his fingers into the chair cushions. He, not she, had worked two jobs to help the family. He, not she, had hoarded what was left of his wages and sat at the feet of the smooth-talking brokers and developers. He had bought the run-down apartment complex that had been the first building block of his little empire. He had worked and earned and accumulated all the wealth that—that he now stood to lose down to the last penny.

"Then let's ask her," he breathed, thinking of the sassy face of Diana's young daughter. "But maybe if she had the banks breathing down her neck, she'd been trying to find the money to pay them back, too."

Diana turned a full circle, and folded her arms, a smug, patronizing smile on her face. "I never realized this was so easy," she continued in soft, sure tones that did not become her.

"If I'd ever thought that what you were doing was so easy, so incredibly easy, I would've been right there beside you."

His silk tie choked his throat. His sister had done nothing to help herself or her family since getting married. Nothing. He doubted she could.

Diana did not see the look in his eyes. She showed her teeth for a moment. "We simply don't pay it back."

Kroeber stared. She had always been erratic, but as the years had gone by she had fluctuated more and more. Lately, her swings had been dramatic, and he had wondered about drugs. "Just don't pay it back? And then what? Hop the next flight to South America?"

"Barry," Diana's head swung left and right and back again. "Oh, Barry." A faint, faraway light that had come to her eyes suddenly burned brightly. "We don't pay it back because we don't have to. It's our land."

He blinked at her. "The judge—"

Diana lunged at him and exploded. "Contest the will, you idiot! Challenge the judge's decision! My God!" Her hands flayed the air about her. "You've got one senile old man, giving a fortune in land to some pretty girl who comes up a couple times a year and visits him, and you've got another senile old man who buys the whole story. The whole thing's ridiculous!"

She beat the air again. "Anybody can see what happened. Anybody can see through her stupid story. It doesn't take a genius to figure out how she got them both to go along with her. How else could she get what's ours? Anybody should be able to show her up and show what she did!"

Kroeber's jaw muscles were tight, pulling his face down and back. "Except Willis Casey, you mean."

A long breath tumbled from Diana and calmed her with its passing. "Yes, except dear, sweet old Willis. We'll need to get somebody else."

A rapid shake of Kroeber's head accompanied his words. "He's supposed to be the best in the county."

"We'll go outside the county, then." Her cheeks were pink now. "We'll fire him, and get the best there is. We'll go to San Francisco, if we have to, and hire a whole flock of lawyers. It's worth it. We'll beat her into the ground, if it comes to that." She focused on him. "For God's sake, Barry, it's our land. Isn't it worth it?"

Perspiration beaded the pudgy face in front of Kroeber. He stared into his sister's blue eyes, knowing that what she had said was flawed somehow, yet not knowing where or how she had gone wrong. He sighed once, hard, and nodded. There was no other answer, no other choice. "It's worth it."

* * *

When Sara was downcast, she would become lost in distant thoughts, and her eyes would not see. In blue jeans and a short-sleeved striped blouse, slumped in the guest chair in front of Morrison's desk, her hands played idly with the strap of the purse that lay in her lap. By the window behind the desk, Morrison stood and watched her, knowing she was thinking, not wanting to disturb her. Occasionally, her lips would compress, or the corner of her mouth would pull up on one side. After a minute or so she raised her eyebrows, gave a short sigh, and looked up at him. "I guess you were expecting this, weren't you?"

Closing his eyes and tilting his head for a brief second, he answered. "It doesn't surprise me. If they had just quit and gone away, that would have been a surprise. But contesting the will? No. There's really too much at stake for them not to."

"And that explains the new lawyers?"

"Uh-huh." The notice of association of counsel from Willis Casey had come in attached to pleadings that were the work of a large firm that Morrison knew all too well.

"You know them?"

"Not personally. But the firm, yes. Crocker, Adams & Tower is huge, probably three hundred lawyers by now."

She studied him for a moment. She had yet to see him fazed by anything. Always, his thoughts seemed to have anticipated trouble, to have been ahead of events. Ahead of time, somehow. She knew the answer before she asked: "Are you worried about them?"

"Not particularly."

Not particularly. Not particularly. Jack would have been on pins and needles. Her own stomach wouldn't stop fluttering. Her attention wandered out the window, and in her shifting eyes Morrison could see the wavering of her resolve. "I came up for two days, Wes, and now it's been a week. I hope this won't go too much longer." Again, she looked at him. "School starts in September."

"That's not for months."

"I have to be back long before then. A teacher doesn’t work just during the school year."

He held his gaze on her, on her soft brown eyes, until she turned away. They didn't have to fight. "I found out something else, too."

Her glance touched him briefly. "What?"

"All that land in alfalfa? That's not all of it. Pitcher's got a forty-three hundred acre dairy farm over in Pyrite Valley, too."

"Oh, Lord," Sara murmured sadly. The burden only grew heavier.

"Have you given any thought to what you want to do with it? All of it, I mean?"

Again, Sara sighed. Morrison didn't know and probably wouldn't understand if she told him. "I don't know what I can do with it."

He misunderstood the look in her eyes. "Well, we can discuss your options later."

She nodded.

For a moment, he chewed his lower lip. "Sorry I got you involved in all this?"

"Oh, that's all right," she answered strongly, quickly bringing her head back around and shaking it. "You couldn't have known. And I had to come." She sat up in the chair, then stood, a weak smile on her face. "Don't worry," she said as he escorted her out. "We'll get through it."

"She's staying?" asked Stacey as Morrison closed the front door behind his reluctant client.

He nodded thoughtfully. "Yeah. But we can't afford to put her up at the motel for the next month or so. That'd be what, three thousand bucks more?"

Stacey nodded. "So what are we going to do?"

He shrugged. "I don't know. My place is new and it's got four bedrooms. I guess she could use one."

Stacey lowered her chin and raised her eyes. "And you grew up in a small town? Banner headlines: 'Court battle rages while rich young widow lives with eligible lawyer.' And a kicker: 'Will he get half the estate?'." She shook her head. "Sometimes, Wesley."

Morrison smiled, always the lawyer. "Inheritances aren't divided in half like community property."

Stacey sighed resignedly. "She'll stay with me."

* * *

The dark night sky brought quiet to the rolling, rocky hills, to the cattle bunched in the swales, to the ancient spreading oaks. Stars spread overhead in a display the likes of which the city people never see, never imagine, and they stood for a while on the flagstone terrace of the huge home, drinks in their hands, craning their necks at the view, gasping now and then at the streak of a meteor. Then the moon rose, at first a line of orange flame atop the ridgeline, then an immense disk yellowed by the dust and smoke of a recent forest fire. As the moonlight glanced from hillside to hillside, a slight breeze came to them, ruffling their hair and caressing their cheeks. For a few minutes, they forgot who they were, and thought only of the beautiful country night.

Inside the front room of Kroeber's home, the night sky outside was forgotten and unimportant. Leaning against the cold stone fireplace, Barry Kroeber looked over the men and women who had flown in that afternoon in a chartered jet. Roger Freiser and Cynthia MacGregor, the two attorneys from Crocker, Adams &Tower, were both younger than Kroeber, and were well and expensively dressed, from their shoes and socks to their eyeglasses and hairstyles. They had brought with them two young law clerks, which did not surprise Kroeber, and a pair of muscular private investigators, which did. They all gathered in the darkened room, sipping their wine and mixed drinks, with only the yellow light from two lamps in the corner illuminating their faces. Freiser stood behind MacGregor, who sat on the couch and displayed her smile and her long, shapely legs to the two male investigators who sat across from her. The law clerks cringed nervously together on the other sofa, while motionless in a leather chair in a far corner was Willis Casey.

The image of the others reflected from Freiser's eyeglasses as he addressed them in his polished voice and gestured with his manicured hands. "The pleadings to contest the will are already filed," he said, principally for Kroeber's benefit, "with the help of Mr. Casey. You've all gotten your copies, so I won't bore you with the details. Suffice it to say, we've covered every conceivable base. The rule against perpetuities. Lapsed gifts. Pretermitted heirs. Invalid holographic instrument. Invalid proof of the will. Invalid proof of the beneficiary. Incapacity. Incompetency. Undue influence. Fraud. Forgery."

"Menace," added one of the law clerks.

"Thank you, Aaron," Freiser said distinctly, rebuking the boy with his tone. "And menace, yes. And, to top it off, revocation. We've shotgunned the case. The judge can pick any one he wants. We'll put on evidence on all the issues."

MacGregor said, "We think the sexiest issue is the undue influence thing. It's the one you're naturally drawn to, so it's the one we'll concentrate on."

"Along with fraud and forgery as a strong backup," added Freiser. The law clerks, along with MacGregor, had drafted the petition. He had not read it in any great detail, but he would argue it in court. He had won the award for best oral advocate in law school and had not let CA&T forget it. "How do we know that the neighbor didn't create the will, or at least plant it? I understand that the neighbor had a key to the house, so anybody could have planted it or borrowed enough documents to learn how to duplicate the decedent's handwriting. Maybe in conspiracy with this Sara person. We're looking for a handwriting expert right now who can, or I should say, will say that there are some peculiarities about the document."

"Aaron," he aimed his gaze at the law clerk. "Has the other side answered our petition yet?"

The young man shook his head. "He hadn't filed it by the time the clerk's office closed this afternoon."

"Probably doesn't know what to say," smirked MacGregor, running her fingers through her curly brown hair. The others laughed knowingly.

Kroeber laughed loudly, too, though he did not quite know what was meant. He wished MacGregor would talk more. He liked the sound of her voice, and he could not keep his eyes off her legs.

"Karen," Freiser addressed the other clerk, "how's the witness list shaping up?"

The clerk sat forward and ticked off her points on her fingers. "Our clients, of course, are the decedent's closest relatives and the only ones who can testify as to his intent. We have a bartender who, when handled the way Roger handles a witness, will make the decedent into something of a lush, though he actually was not, not that that matters. We've found some shopkeepers who ran tabs for him who'll say he seemed a pretty eccentric recluse. Several of the neighboring ranchers will testify that they thought the decedent was crazy, literally, for leasing his land so cheaply and taking none of the profit, and we have an economist from Stanford who will back that up with some nice charts and figures even a jury up here can understand. He can also testify to the decedent's net worth, his potential income had he managed his property with reasonable prudence, and the lifestyle he could have had. That will dovetail nicely with our behavioral psychologist's testimony about the mental state of a person who would live like he did live—"

"You'd have to be crazy to live like that," MacGregor chirped, and again the men laughed.

"—and our sociologist will look at the large picture of how he fit, or didn't fit, into society," the young woman finished.

"Jesus," said Kroeber in awe.

"Very good, Karen," said Freiser to the clerk, then smiled at his client. "You wanted the best, Mr. Kroeber. That's what Crocker, Adams and Tower gives you."

"We aim to please," MacGregor smiled at Kroeber, and he wondered if he might be able to make something happen later that night.

"Now," continued Freiser, "who we're up against. Dan?"

One of the investigators rocked himself up off the sofa and pulled a notebook from his coat pocket.

"Judge first?"

"Sure."

"Kirby Howell, fifty-four, presiding judge of the Ash Creek Superior Court, filling in after Judge Reyes went around the bend. Married twenty-five years, same woman, four kids, all grown. No trouble with the law that I could find for any of them, no vices to speak of. Except fishing."

All except Kroeber and Casey twittered knowingly. Fishing was not something that civilized people did.

The investigator continued. "Good sense of humor. Well respected judge, reasonably intelligent. Can be a little lazy, especially as he gets older. Born and raised in Chicago—"

"Mark in our favor," noted Freiser. "He's a big city kid at heart."

"—took all his schooling there. Average in his class. Accepted a job with Wells Fargo’s corporate legal department and moved out to San Francisco."

"Another mark in our favor."

"Left the bank after twenty years, bought some land and moved up here, where he's been ever since. Got a seat on the court and moved up to where he is through hard work. He's a good administrator." The man closed his notebook. "No surprises."

Kroeber watched in fascination. Freiser looked at the law clerks. "Aaron? Impression?"

The young man cleared his throat. "Stable. Conservative. Doesn't like change or radical positions. He'll lean toward business, toward where the money and power are. It's what he knows, what he favors."

"Karen?"

Pausing for a moment, the young woman touched a finger to her lips before she spoke. "I think Aaron's right. He's a big money man all the way. He lived it, breathed it and ate it for twenty years. He'll feel at home, sympathetic to what our clients are trying to do, and he won't want to make a ruling that will put the funding banks in trouble. He won't take kindly to this girl waltzing in and screwing everything up."

"On point," Freiser said approvingly. "Both of you. Good. We've as much as got the judge in our pocket."

"Great," Kroeber said, then retreated as everyone turned their heads at his interruption.

"How about 'this girl', as Karen put it?" asked MacGregor.

"Jim's got that," answered the first investigator.

The other man stretched his legs and slid a little down the sofa cushion. Clasping his hands over his belly, he recited without notes. "Sara Lynn Owen, thirty-two, born in Stockton, eldest of two children. Younger brother's an officer in the merchant marine. He lives in New York, well adjusted, married. Three kids, all legitimate, which is saying something for a sailor."

He glanced at the darkened ceiling. "Mother died when she was twelve. She took care of her brother and ran the house after that. Father was a cement-mixer driver for a ready-mix company. Retired about five years ago and moved to New England for some unknown reason. Owner remembers him, and her, oddly enough. She used to ride her bicycle down to the yard to bring her Dad lunch."

"How sweet," said MacGregor without any sincerity at all.

The investigator shrugged and went on. "She's mildly pretty, hardly a knock-out. Above average student in college. Now's a high school teacher in San Jose; history and American culture. Married four years ago to a guy she met in college, who got himself shot and killed in a convenience store robbery a year or so ago. Hasn't remarried, or, as far as we know, been with anyone since then."

"No!" said MacGregor. "How could she?"

"Neighbors call her shy, smart, pleasant, a hard worker, both conservative and liberal, and compassionate. Doesn't have a temper. Likes kids and animals. Registered Republican, but votes all over the board, gives money to just about any legitimate environmental or conservation group that knocks on her door. She doesn't have much money in the bank, and may be in trouble with her mortgage—husband's life insurance wasn't enough to pay it off."

"Ah!" breathed Freiser.

"Doesn't go in for beaches or loud music or drugs. Likes backpacking and camping, gourmet cooking and collecting things. Likes to eat but doesn't show it. Took up flower gardening recently."

“Pathetic.” Freiser looked again at the two clerks.

"Open, honest, a sympathetic character," Aaron said quickly. "No flaws. Wears her emotions on her sleeve."

"Wrong," snapped Freiser, slapping his hand on the top of the sofa. "A sympathetic character?"

"No way," answered MacGregor.

"I thought—" Aaron tried.

"Karen, straighten him out."

As MacGregor looked pityingly at the young man, the other clerk said, "She's in financial trouble. She's probably resentful that her husband left her the way he did. She knows she'll never make it on a teacher's salary. She's the shy, librarian type, the kind Alfred Hitchcock liked because they're boiling beneath the surface. She probably met the decedent a number of times during her trips up here, got to know him, knew he was a widower, could see that he was lonely, could see that he found her attractive. After her husband died, she probably came up here a number of times and 'persuaded' the decedent to leave his property to her. She's a schemer, a planner, hiding behind a pretty face."

Receiving an encouraging nod from Freiser, Karen continued. "She simply exploited the decedent at a time when he was already losing his faculties. Now, she's trying to play innocent, not realizing that the very nature of the bequest makes it so improbable that there had to have been undue influence on the debilitated testator."

Nodding slowly, Freiser said to everyone, "That's the image the court needs to get." He looked at the investigators. "And, lastly, our learned—or not so learned—opponent?"

Dan looked at Jim. "Now he's interesting, isn't he?"

"He is at that," answered the other.

"Oh?" asked MacGregor. "Why?"

Jim shrugged. "Because of what we couldn't learn about him."

Dan glanced at his partner, then began. "He's thirty-six. Born in Groton, Connecticut, moved out here as a baby when the Army transferred his father. Couple of brothers and sisters here and there. Mother and father deceased a number of years ago. Graduated college magna cum laude, nineteenth in his class at law school."

"Really?" Behind his eyeglasses, Freiser's eyes widened.

“Had his own practice in San Jose with one partner. Civil, probate and appellate, pretty successful by all accounts. Name comes up a lot in the Official Reports.”

“Small-time shit,” Freiser dismissed.

"Since coming up here," Jim continued, "he's built another successful practice, mostly civil, family law, real property, a little criminal defense. He helps out other attorneys with their appeals."

Freiser pointed a finger at the man. "But does he do probate anymore? That's the question."

Dan shook his head. "He's not listed in the yellow pages under probate, and I put in a blind call to his office just to make sure. Secretary said, 'No'."

"Then he's a fish out of water now. Likes, dislikes?" Freiser was at the window, listening, hands twisting together behind his back. Knowing his opponent was all important to him, and he wasn't getting what he wanted. "Hobbies, infatuations? Weaknesses?"

Dan closed his notebook again. "I've followed him for a couple of days now. I can't find anything in particular that interests him, except hardware stores—”

MacGregor laughed out loud and shared a smirk with Freiser that said: These country people!

"—a gig with a small band now and then, and his roadster. Can’t find anybody who'll willingly say a bad word about him. I can't find anybody who'll say much of anything about him. I don't think anybody really knows him well enough to say. He's pretty much a loner."

"Jesus," complained Kroeber. "Don't any of these people have any vices, for God's sake?"

Freiser turned, smiled, and said slickly, "Everybody has vices, Mr. Kroeber. It's just that sometimes we can't exploit them."

Kroeber sighed and backed away. Looking at MacGregor, he wondered if she just happened to have been assigned to this case, or if he, too, had been investigated, his personal proclivities jotted down in some unseen man's notebook.

To the investigator, Freiser asked: "Secretary?"

"As tight as a Catholic vir—" He paused, demurring, unnecessarily, to MacGregor’s presence, but he grinned at the men. "She won't talk about him at all,” he said instead. "Irregardless, he drives a small pickup, has an old British roadster under wraps in his garage. No bad habits, jus’ a occasional penny-ante game of poker. Has a rifle in a rack in his truck, shoots regularly at a range, but never’s had a hunting license. Never married, lives alone, except for some stupid dog."

An idea dawned on MacGregor. "He's gay."

The investigator winced. "That kind of thing usually shows up pretty fast. I doubt it.”

Jim said, "Everybody seems to like him. He's good at his job, pays his help well, doesn't cause any trouble.”

“Why’d he end up here?” Kroeber wondered from his spot by the fireplace.

Dan shrugged "Out of the blue, it seems, he up and sold out to his partner, and went to work for none other than Preston, McKiernan and Sherman in San Francisco.”

"Huh!" grunted Kroeber. Even he had heard of that famous firm.

Freiser was intrigued. "Keep going.”

Dan shook a bewildered head. “Instantly got his ass in a wringer. There’s rumors of incompetence, rumors of drinking on the job, rumors of drug use, rumors of perjury, rumors up the whazoo. Didn’t last a week. They canned his ass, fast. Got a Private Reproval from the State Bar about the same time.”

“Fascinating,” MacGregor murmured appreciatively, like a con artist who finds the perfect mark. A lawyer with a black history, without credibility, was a lawyer whose words were like illegible scribbles on scrap paper.

“More like freakin’ unbelievable.” Aaron’s comment drew a whip of a look from Freiser.

“Rises to his level of incompetence, and everything comes out and comes apart. Can’t handle major-league cases, major-league pressure.”

Freiser grunted approval. He was standing behind the sofa, right behind MacGregor, Kroeber noticed. Freiser had his hands on the cushions, near her shoulders, and was looking down her blouse. She knew it, and didn’t seem to mind. Kroeber felt jealousy rising inside him.

Dan sucked a deep breath. “And about the same time,” he wet his lips, “he killed a man.”

“Good God,” everyone seemed to say at once, leaving a hollow silence to follow.

“You’ve got to be kidding!” Karen and Aaron finally awed the same words.

“Prosecuted?” MacGregor finally hoped.

Disappointment shook Dan’s head. “No, self-defense, apparently. Something about defending a friend from an intruder on her property. There was only one short story in the Marin I-J morgue. Couldn’t find any follow-up. But he moved up here pretty damn fast after that.” The investigator was not about to risk his job by telling a man like Freiser that Morrison’s friend had been killed, that the senior partner of one of San Francisco’s largest law firms had been involved somehow, and that the firm had crumbled shortly after that. No, that kind of ridiculous coincidence, speculation, whatever you called it, that was for someone else to say.

"So he falls into a shit pile and comes out smelling like a rose," muttered Freiser.

“Lucky asshole,” Kroeber said to himself.

Freiser looked at the law clerks. Aaron looked away, choosing not to venture again. "Karen?" Freiser prompted.

"Idealistic loner," the young woman answered simply.

Freiser nodded, a thin smile on his lips and in his eyes. "Loners end up alone and idealists can be blinded by their ideals." His eyes swung around the room. "Anybody see anything else in his character? The most important thing?"

The room was silent. No one would have offered an answer if they had one.

Freiser smiled again, self-satisfied. "He thinks he can do anything and everything by himself. A lone wolf, superman-complex, suffering-hero delusion. He won't ask for help when he needs it. And when he can’t deal with it, he runs."

His chest swelled with a deep breath. "So we’re going to make him need help. Need it so bad he’s got no choice but to do what he always does when he’s in over his head. He’ll run." He looked at his client. "We'll take Morrison into the deep end of the pool, and he’ll climb out and run. And he'll take Sara Owen with him. The land will be yours in a week." And, he thought, Crocker, Adams and Tower would be half million dollars richer.

In the corner, left alone and forgotten, deeply sunken in his chair, Willis Casey heard Roger Freiser speaking with the voice of his own false assumptions. Slowly, he smiled an unseen smile.

Chapter Thirteen

Worry did not suit Wesley Morrison, more because he rarely suffered that emotion than because of the look on his face when he did. Behind slightly narrowed eyelids, his pale green eyes were bright and alive. His tightly shut jaw brought a determined set to his lips and sharpness to the already strong line of his cheek. Just below his temples, a muscle bulged regularly. Slight furrows lined his brow.

Since he had been old enough to read, he had learned quickly and remembered well. Now, he could still clearly hear the exact words that his often-absent father, in a rare moment of intimacy, had used to describe the beauty of a Shakespearian passage. In junior high school he had, unknowingly, recited the longest poem ever recounted by any student his age. In law school he had learned that after one reading of a case opinion he could recall entire paragraphs almost verbatim. His memory was not truly eidetic, but close to it. That kind of recall had been both a blessing and a curse. A blessing professionally, a curse personally. Today, it was the former. As the early morning wind blew through the open window of his truck and ruffled his disarrayed hair, he glanced in the rearview mirror. He remembered.

He would have noticed the automobile even if the bumper stickers from the rental car company had not marked it so prominently. The car had been behind him, off and on, for days. At one time in his life, he had not been so observant, not as aware as he should have been, and he had learned that lesson very well.

The first time the small beige sedan had tagged along behind his truck had been an anomalous incident; the second time, a coincidence. Then the third time, and it had become intentional. That was the rule, a government employee had told him once.

Just to make sure, he made a couple of swings through the residential section of Ash Creek that had been built around the time that gold had been discovered in the surrounding hills. Then, he drove slowly down the main street toward the Interstate freeway.

He hit the highway running flat out, screamed down the road for two miles, swept off concrete and back onto asphalt, crossed two lanes of traffic, doubled back under the freeway overpass, turned down a frontage road and seconds later roared into a mobile home sales lot. Before the dust of the crushed gravel lot had blown away, he had wheeled behind a huge doublewide home with plastic pennants waving above it and had become invisible. He left the truck, trotted to the end of the mobile home, and peeked around it. For two minutes, the frontage road was empty. None of the traffic on the freeway exited. Then a semi truck and trailer chugged by.

A thin man in a yellow baseball cap came out of the sales office and walked across the yard, breaking into a jog as Morrison returned to his truck. "Did you want to see something?" the sales agent called as the pickup's engine cranked over.

Morrison gave him half a smile as he shifted into gear and toed the accelerator. "No, sorry. I'm in kind of a hurry."

"No kidding," said the man to the shrinking tailgate of the truck.

The beige sedan with the two investigators inside never found him.

* * *

The little Australian shepherd on the seat leaned against Morrison and away from his brand new fly rod in its tubular case. A new wicker creel held an assortment of flies and a couple of beers, a hat and some tools. Shutting off the engine, Morrison dropped out of his truck in his blue jeans, a short-sleeved suntan shirt inherited from his father's Army days, and his well-traveled backpacking boots. The dog grinned and panted at him through the open driver's window, breath hot in the cool morning air. Pausing, he stuck a hand through the window, and gently cuffed the shepherd's head. "Calm down, Bugeye," he said. "This is serious."

Kirby Howell had been married long enough that he was not required by his wife to hug and kiss her goodbye and promise to be careful. He slipped out the front door, his aged fishing gear draped on and over him quite unlike the robes of a presiding justice, and cast a boyish grin at Morrison. "All set?"

"You bet."

Howell hurried toward the truck, moving quickly for a man whose sedentary lifestyle was growing him quite a paunch. "Looook out, fishies!" he called softly, fly rod case twirling in one hand, a smile lighting his clean-shaven, good-natured face. Climbing the hills and crossing the pass, the valley spread before them, a medley of open pastures and harvested fields. Dropped down off out of the mountains, Morrison drove through Smith's Fork, along the curving gray road, past the land that Sara now owned, and up into the narrow neck of the valley and the river canyon. At Howell's direction, he tucked the pickup into a turnout on the edge of the bank, where they shouldered their gear and picked their way down a forested, brushy slope that had seen few visitors. At the bottom of the hill, the river curved sharply around the bluff and flowed smoothly into a huge, deep, shaded pool, ringed by flat boulders and smaller pools. Downstream, the water turned back and poured along its course in a series of broad, gentle waterfalls. The site was invisible from the road as well as the banks of the river, upstream or down.

In the shade of the conifers, the air that rose off the river was cold and chilled the sweat on Wes' neck. Surveying the scene, he shook his head in wonder.

The shepherd stood by his side, lapped from the cold, running water, and looked up at him with even more happiness than usually was in her eyes. "Pretty nice, huh, Bugeye?" he asked softly, and the shepherd closed and opened her mouth in reply.

Kirby Howell had become a passionate fisherman again. Uttering only a long sigh but no words, he reacquainted himself with the place, exchanged an appreciative smile with Wes, and assembled his rod. He pointed across the pool at a rock that stuck up and out like the prow of a ship. "Good spot over there."

Tugging his battered blue baseball cap farther down on his forehead, Morrison nodded. With the shepherd in tow, up to her belly in the river and panting with hesitant excitement, he leaped from rock to rock of a natural bridge to the other side of the streaming water. There, he sat on a stump while he assembled his rod and selected a fly, fending off the dog's curious nose, and began the ever-increasing whips of the rod that lengthened the fly line until it was ready to cast.

After an hour, his arm could take no more. The dog, too, had run around as much as she could and had sniffed every new smell she could find. She lay on the bank underneath a tree, watching attentively despite her drooping eyelids. A look at her brought her to his side, and she happily accompanied him back across the river.

Howell had edged downstream and Morrison scrambled along the rocks after him. When they were close enough to hear a normal voice over the rush of the clear water, the older man asked, "Any luck?"

Shaking his head, though Howell still had his eyes on the water, Morrison answered, "Nah. They don't seem to be interested in what I've got to offer."

"Well," mused Howell, casting again and letting the fly drift along the surface of the water, "sometimes it's not what you offer, but how you offer it."

Morrison nodded to himself, sure of the truth of that but equally unsure what to do about it. "This your best spot?"

Turning a face with a sly grin toward the younger man, Howell's head shook with short left-then-right jerks. "Oh, no. I said I'd be happy to show you a few good spots, not the best."

"So, how does this one rate?"

"Oh, about medium, I'd say."

Finding a natural recliner water-carved in the rocks, Morrison sat and leaned back on the cold stone. Spray from the low falls misted his face as the sun filtered through the tall pines and firs. "You don't think this is one of the best?"

Reeling in his line for another cast, Howell said over his shoulder, "Oh, as far as looks go, you can hardly beat it. As far as the fishing's concerned, it's only so-so."

The shepherd lay down by Morrison's side, her white paws covered in silt that sparkled with fool's gold. "You're from Chicago, aren't you?" he asked idly.

"A hundred years ago, yeah."

"Why'd you leave?"

Howell stretched his jaw in thought. "Look around," he finally said.

Morrison nodded to himself. Good start. "Besides this," he asked, "how many other good spots are there along this part of the river?"

Making sure that his fly was bobbing in a placid part of the pool, where a trout was likely to be, Howell turned at the waist. "Not as many as there used to be, I'll tell you that. A lot of dams have been built over the last few years, what with water conservation, erosion control and all. Some of the best places got lost to private people buying up the riverfront property. One of my favorite spots up on Moose Creek got bought by some patent lawyer. If you asked him to go fly fishing, he'd probably hook a line to his zipper."

Morrison burst out laughing and the shepherd climbed to her feet to sniff his face and see if anything was wrong. Howell had to grin, too.

"There aren't any plans to dam up this river, are there?" Morrison hoped aloud as the dog lay down again.

"Better not be."

"I guess there wouldn't be," Morrison seemed to muse, "until we progress to the point where we need more water than the wells can deliver."

Howell grunted. "The less progress this place gets, the better."

The judge didn't see the pleased grin that flashed across Morrison's face. "Spoken like a card-carrying member of the Sierra Club," he invited.

At that, Howell chuckled, and turned a smirk at Morrison, saying, "My wife's been a member of the Sierra Club ever since she was in college. Still is—under her maiden name, of course. I pay her dues for her." He turned back to his task.

"Well, I'll be," Morrison said beneath the roar of the water.

"No," Howell said, facing the river but pursuing the thought, "the world would be a lot better off with a little less progress—and a lot less fishermen."

It was a sure thing, Morrison thought. He closed his eyes to the sun and listened to the sounds of the water. A sure thing.

Howell's reel whirred as it wound in the fly line, and his boots clumped on stone.

Morrison opened his eyes and found the judge standing over him, breaking down his rod. "You've got a case coming up before me pretty soon in Judge Reyes' court, don't you?"

Morrison assented with a nod.

"Some kind of will contest over some farmland out in the valley that somebody wants to develop?"

Another nod.

Shoving his rod into its case, Howell asked sharply, "Don't you think it's just a little bit improper, not to mention professionally unethical, to be discussing a case ex parte with the judge who's going to hear it?"

Slowly, Wes sat up, brushed off his jeans, and looked up at the older man. "As I recall, Judge," he said, politely thoughtful, "I haven't said one word about my case. In fact, I haven't actually said much of anything." He caught the other's eyes. "Have I?"

For a long moment, Howell stared back. He had been a judge longer than he could remember. He closed the cap on his rod case, pulled his hat back down on his head, and smiled at Morrison with his eyes. "No, Wes," he said, "I don't suppose you have."

* * *

Every day for a week Morrison saw Stacey out at closing time and returned to his law library to continue his work. Every morning of the next day he interrupted his work and left the library to open the door for her. With the obsessive intolerance for error that had been so unpleasantly instilled in him by his father, he researched, wrote and rewrote, planned and practiced. Repressed somewhere in his rapacious memory were the scathing words, the disgusted critiques, of his early studies by the stern man in the dress blue uniform. Somewhere, too, though not so deeply buried, were the more enjoyable lessons in tactics, imparted on a shaded patio, on a wobbly picnic table, with matchbooks serving as armies. And so, to keep his opponents guessing, to keep his strength a secret and his strategy unrevealed, Morrison waited until the last hour of the last day to file his response to the attacking petition.

Encamped in Willis Casey's law library, the law clerk, Aaron, saw the pleading the moment the mail was matched to the file, and he whistled lowly as he scanned it. On the other side of the table, the other clerk, Karen, looked up from one of the volumes of California Reports. "What?"

"The long awaited Answer. Only it isn't." Aaron shook his head in admiration. He was beginning to like anyone who took on the goliath of Crocker, Adams &Tower.

"To our petition?" Karen's interest peaked. Although Roger Freiser had approved the final draft, she had been instrumental in drafting that document. "What's he say?"

Aaron tossed the score of neatly typed and stapled papers across the library table to her. "He says, 'Yeah? So what?' "

Mouth falling open as she picked up the pleading, Karen's eyes grew wide with disbelief. "He demurred? My God, he can't demur. We stated a cause of action! I know we did. A dozen causes of action, in fact."

Aaron nodded, tapping his upturned lips with the end of a pencil. "Maybe so. Maybe we did. But now, instead of defending his case, we've got to defend our own petition. If we lose, we've got to re-plead. And even if we win, we've wasted time that our client can't afford to waste. This guy knows what he's doing. I like it."

Karen threw the pleading back at him. "If you like it so much, you tell Freiser."

* * *

Every day, when she was not sightseeing or shopping, Sara drove out to the valley, to her land. She did not know why, but she couldn't stay away. She had the feeling, which Jack would have laughed at, that the old home needed her somehow. Stocking the refrigerator after her first visit with the makings for lunches, she would sit in the living room with a sandwich and a Coke and read her class textbooks and lesson plans, or when she was tired, try to tune the old rabbit ears on the ancient black-and-white Philco television. Always she would dust and clean up after herself, and she never failed to feed at least a dozen carrots or small apples to the horses in the barn. Once she arrived as Sam Kinney's boys were cleaning up the stalls, as they did every day for her. She made them big sandwiches and invited them into the kitchen, but they shyly took the food and ate it out in the barn.

The day the hearing was to take place, Sara drove from Stacey's home over the pass and into the valley, but found herself restless, unable to relax. Sitting in the sunny front room, she had the oddest urge to slip off her shoes and walk along the riverbank in her bare feet, letting the sun warm her, brushing through the reeds, feeling the mud under her toes.

It would be a wonderful, carefree life. But it would never be hers. All because—

She poured out an untouched cup of coffee, locked up the house and headed back into town.

Donning the coat of his best blue suit at Stacey's call on the intercom, Wes found Sara standing in the waiting room. She had bought a pleated skirt and jacket in a muted tan plaid, and added a burgundy blouse and matching shoes and a thin gold necklace. Her hair was gently curled, and she wore a minimal amount of makeup.

Morrison examined her appearance carefully. She apparently was a very perceptive woman, a quick learner, and she had good judgment. She knew what she had to be today. She was well dressed but not gaudy, attractive but not overtly sexual, conservative but not too orthodox. And though she didn't know it, the sweetness of her expression could remedy any flaw Judge Howell might see in Morrison's arguments. "Perfect," he decided.

"I thought this would be all right," Sara smiled, then added, "That's a nice suit, too."

Morrison glanced down. "This is my 'this-is-an-important-case' suit."

Stacey slapped the return key on the keyboard and caught their attention. "It's going to be your 'I-dawdled-around-and-didn't-get-to-court-on-time' suit unless you get a move-on," she warned.

* * *

"I would like to remind counsel," Judge Howell began, "that while I am only filling in for Judge Reyes during his...illness ...I have read your pleadings, I am familiar with the facts and the law. Please, both of you, keep your arguments brief and restrict them to any new material you might have." To Freiser, he said, "It's your petition to revoke probate of the will?"

"Yes, Your Honor." Freiser opened his leather-bound notebook. His annotated copy of the petition drawn up by his law clerks was on one side, his outlined arguments on the other.

"And you, Mr. Morrison," said Judge Howell, "are demurring to the petition?"

"That's correct, Your Honor."

The judge turned to Freiser. "What's your position on the demurrer, counsel?"

The attorney said flatly: "I think our position is obvious, Your Honor."

Howell's lips formed a displeased smile. "Well, maybe so, but why don't you just state it for the record anyway?"

Freiser shrugged with impatient resignation. "Your Honor, we feel that the demurrer is a meritless dilatory tactic, and nothing more. We would ask that it be dismissed."

"Oh, you would, would you?" Howell said. "Well, I'm not inclined to dismiss anybody's pleadings, counsel, including yours, without at least a cursory examination."

Freiser shrugged again. "As you wish, Your Honor." This small town court was run very differently than the elegant courtrooms he knew in his city.

"Do you want to state your arguments for dismissal for me?"

Freiser nodded to the judge. "Our argument is simply that each of the points in the petition has merit, and therefore the demurrer cannot stand."

"And what are those points?" Howell asked. "Why don't you go through them briefly for me?"

"Your Honor," Morrison interjected, leaning forward to get the judge's attention, "I trust I'll have a chance to respond?"

"Count on it, counsel."

"Perhaps it would be better for the court if I stated my response to each argument as opposing counsel presented it?"

Howell's eyes smiled much more broadly than his lips. "That might work out," he thought aloud. "We'll do it that way." To Freiser, "Go ahead."

Flipping the pages of his pleadings with a papery snap, Freiser took a breath and began. "Initially, Your Honor, the bequests violate the rule against perpetuities, since the gift might vest beyond a life in being plus—"

"Excuse me?" Morrison's surprise stopped the intonation. "The rule against perpetuities? The gift has already vested." How things come around. I use it years ago for revenge, and now it’s used against me. Karma has sharp teeth.

Pulling off his eyeglasses, Freiser stared for a moment at Morrison with distaste, then turned his face toward the judge. "Isn't it conceivable, Your Honor, that—"

Howell leaned forward. "I'm not here to deal with what's conceivable. Counsel is correct. The gift vested in Mrs. Owen within the time period of the rule against perpetuities. Go on."

"But, Your Honor, the Rule deals with the possibility that—"

"Go on."

A quick, nasty glance came Morrison's way from Freiser. "Your Honor," he continued, "it's obvious that we are dealing with a lapsed gift here. The gift to Jack Owen lapsed, since he died before Jerome Pitcher did. My clients should take title through the residuary clause to the property as tenants in common with Mrs. Owen." His face squished up with self-admiration.

Morrison spoke to the older lawyer as if he were instructing a child. "First of all, counsel, the anti-lapse statute applies only to gifts to kindred, which Jack Owen and Jerome Pitcher were not. Second, your clients would take through the residuary clause only if the gift to Jack Owen actually did lapse, which it, again, did not."

Freiser mimicked Morrison's earlier surprise. "No? He did predecease the testator, didn't he? Or is there some miracle I don't know about?"

Morrison glared. Crisply, he said, "The will says: 'If, before I die, God takes one from the other, then I leave everything to the one who remains.' Now, that isn't the absolutely technically correct language, I grant you, but—"

"That's right, it's not."

"Counsel, counsel, counsel," Judge Howell intervened. "Could you please direct your attention and your comments to the court? If that's not too much to ask?"

Turning toward the bench, Morrison said, "Your Honor, Jerome Pitcher was not a lawyer. He didn't know the statutory language, the words of art we use. But he knew what he wanted, and I think we all do, too."

"Well." In his Italian suit and French cuffs and gold collar stay, Freiser looked as haughty as he sounded. "Perhaps learned counsel would be kind enough to share just how he knows what the decedent was thinking when he wrote this will."

Morrison shook his head. "No, I won't, but thank you for conceding that he did write the will."

Blood flooded Freiser's cheeks. "I didn't—"

"Gentlemen!" Howell slapped his gavel down. "I agree with Mr. Morrison. The anti-lapse statute does not apply, by its own terms, and even if it did, what the testator wanted is clear enough. Since Jack Owen predeceased the testator, all the named property was devised to his wife."

Sitting in the front row of benches, Sara kept to herself any feelings that the reference might have created.

At the counsel table, the tightness of Freiser's face drove away all his expression. "Yes, Your Honor."

Howell tugged his black robes farther up onto his shoulders and asked, "You have other arguments, I presume?"

"Of course, Your Honor." Index finger running down the lines of his notes, Freiser read for a moment, then looked up with renewed confidence. The next legal point was the undeniable winner.

"Your Honor, my clients were the testator's closest living relatives, yet they take nothing under this will. Everything goes to a stranger to the family. My clients are supposed to take the remainder through operation of the residuary clause, but there is no remainder. Under these circumstances, my clients must be considered pretermitted heirs, entitled to receive the entire estate by intestate succession."

Howell stared at Freiser for a long moment. It sounded right, but it felt wrong. Abruptly, he swiveled his head to stare at Morrison. "That true, counsel?"

Wes had been waiting patiently. "Well, not exactly, Your Honor," he answered, swallowing a smile that threatened to creep onto his face. "It just so happens that there is a United States Savings Bond, purchased by Jerome Pitcher during the Second World War, in a safe deposit box in a bank right here in town. There are also some old bank statements, some foreign coins, and a watch. By the terms of the will, only the property over in the valley goes to Mrs. Owen. The rest goes to the niece and nephew. Therefore, they do take under the will. Granted, it's not a lot, but they certainly are not pretermitted heirs. Therefore—"

Freiser choked. "That's absolutely insulting!"

Now Morrison had to smile. "And that's not a legal objection."

The judge asked Freiser: "Did you know about the bond, the statements, or the—the other things, counsel?"

"I was not previously advised of the existence—"

"Have you got another argument, then?"

Papers flipped rapidly in the leather notebook. With ferocity, a single breath entered and left Freiser. He set his glasses higher on his nose. Now he would get to the heart of it.

"Your Honor." His voice, harsh at first, deepened and assumed its usual polished luster. "This case really is not about anything we have discussed so far."

"It's not?" asked Morrison, just loud enough to be heard.

The court reporter grinned up at him from her Stenowriter for half a second.

Judge Howell's voice was low and slow. "I trust you haven't been wasting the court's time, Mr. Freiser."

Morrison hid his face in his notes. He may not have caught any fish on his little fishing trip, but he certainly had not come home empty-handed.

"What this case is about," Freiser continued unresponsively, "is the validity of this will."

"I assumed that's why we're all here," Howell replied, the slight sarcasm in his voice magnified by the hidden loudspeakers.

In the back of the courtroom, Barry Kroeber leaned toward Willis Casey and whispered, "What the hell's going on here? The other night, Freiser said we had the judge in our pocket. We're getting our asses reamed."

Casey's tired old face showed genuine amusement. Tilting his head toward Kroeber, he murmured, "I'd say your boy's got a big hole in his pocket."

Freiser would not give up. "We have a situation here involving an invalid holographic will—"

"Which is entirely in the testator's handwriting, without interlineations or preprinted material," interposed Morrison.

"—plus invalid proof of the will—"

Morrison's head shook violently. "The issue of due execution and validity of the will is not open to collateral attack after an unappealed order admitting it to probate, which is what Judge Reyes' prior order is." He added the case citation for Howell's benefit: "Estate of Caruch."

As the volley ended, Howell's face was turned toward Freiser. "Anything else, counsel? If not, at this point I am inclined to rule in favor of the demurrer."

"Oh, God," Diana groaned to her brother.

Freiser swallowed hard. "I think that would be an error, Your Honor. There are many other peculiarities about this case that warrant your consideration. For instance, I am still far from satisfied in my own mind that the Sara Owen who sits here today," he waved a hand at Sara, "was ever in this area, in particular on the day she was supposed to have met the testator. I think I'd have to have testimony on that, or see some more documents, before I'd be satisfied."

Morrison shrugged. "Counsel's personal satisfaction or lack thereof is no basis for contesting a will."

"Please try to keep your personal views to yourself," Judge Howell said drily.

Freiser blanched. "Your Honor—Your Honor, the question of the testator's capacity to make a will—"

"There was no adjudication of incompetency," Morrison broke in, "nor was there ever any suggestion of the need for a conservator during Mr. Pitcher's lifetime. He was always lucid, both in person and in writing." He sighed and shook his head, as if dealing with an obdurate child.

Freiser slapped a glance at Morrison as his voice edged upward. "Judge, what we have here basically is an incompetent old man, as evidenced by his lifestyle—"

"Idiosyncrasies and peculiarities of behavior are insufficient to prove incompetence," recited Morrison. "Estate of Wright."

Freiser's teeth ground together. "He leased invaluable land for mere pittances—"

"Inability to transact business—especially the way we think it should be transacted—is not grounds for a finding of incompetency." Morrison glanced at his notes for the next case citation. "Estate of Nolan, Your Honor."

Through clenched teeth, Freiser argued: "He gave almost everything he owned to someone outside his family."

" ‘An unnatural or eccentric will, which disregards the normal objects of a testator's bounty, such as his immediate family, is inconclusive.’ Again, Estate of Nolan."

"Perhaps not," admitted Freiser. "But all of them together lead to the inescapable conclusion that the will in question was not written by a man who had the mental capacity to understand the consequences of his actions. He lacked the requisite testamentary capacity. He was legally incompetent. The will is, therefore, invalid, and my clients should take the entire estate by intestate succession."

As the courtroom grew quiet, Freiser's spine straightened. The recovery was not as good as the one that had earned him the title of best oral advocate, but it would do. It was enough to make Morrison, as inexperienced as he was, as unsure of himself as he obviously was, give in. Every second that Morrison was silent, Freiser gloated.

Morrison could feel Sara's eyes on his back. He had his response on the tip of his tongue, could deliver the quotation and its citation verbatim, but he held back. With his eyes locked on those of Kirby Howell, he said simply, "I'm sure that the Court knows that the law is settled on this point."

Howell's lips were firmly set when he finally swung his attention to Freiser. "Counsel," he said, reading from notes he had made from his benchbook, "it has been held, over and over again in this state, that old age, feebleness, forgetfulness, filthy personal habits, personal eccentricities, failure to recognize old friends or relatives, physical disability, absentmindedness or even just plain old mental confusion do not furnish grounds for holding that a testator lacks testamentary capacity. It's hornbook law, and you should know it. Even if I were to agree with you and find that any of these conditions existed—and I do not—I would not be able to also find a lack of capacity."

Freiser tossed his pad of notes onto the table. "Would Your Honor be receptive to arguments on the issues of undue influence—"

"Wait a minute," Morrison objected. Deliberately, he turned toward Freiser. "Didn't you just argue that there's no proof that Mrs. Owen was ever here?"

Freiser took off his glasses. "There's not."

Morrison glanced from the attorney to the judge. "So how could somebody who was never even here exercise any kind of influence over anybody?"

Freiser’s silence filled the courtroom.

Howell smiled.

Their most important argument, MacGregor's 'sexy' issue, was now only a point of ridicule. Freiser stared at the Judge for a long moment, accused MacGregor and his law clerks with a look over his shoulder, then faced the bench again. He closed his leather-bound notebook.

"It's happening again." Diana's whisper was a high-pitched whine.

"Move that the demurrer be granted," said Morrison.

"So ordered," Howell smacked down his gavel.

Chapter Fourteen

Pupils shrunken in her icy blue eyes, cheeks blotched with red, Diana's hands clenched and unclenched spasmodically. Her voice ripped from her throat. "Get rid of them."

Down the corridor of the courthouse lobby, the attorneys her brother had hired were knotted together in fervent conversation.

Kroeber patted the air with one hand. "Calm down," he ordered his sister. "They'll appeal it."

She exploded again. "I don't want them to appeal! I want them gone." Her eyes bulged at her brother. "Everything was going along just fine until you got these damned lawyers involved, and nothing's gone right since. We'll both end up in jail, at this rate."

A fibrillation almost stopped Kroeber's heart. Wide eyes stared at his sister. Everyone around them must have heard, but in the next few seconds no one turned to see.

Diana saw her brother's look and said, "Don't be an idiot, Barry. No one knows."

"They will if you tell them."

She sighed angrily. A hateful look stabbed down the corridor at Casey, Freiser and the two law clerks. Then, unable to stand the sight anymore, she turned away. Her brother didn't know what had to be done. "Just get rid of them," she told him. "From now on, we'll do everything ourselves."

Only the bailiff and court clerk remained in the courtroom as Morrison tucked his file into his briefcase and dropped in his legal pad. The only sign that he wanted to jump up in the air and celebrate was a small, cool smile.

Sara joined him at the counsel table. Her admiration was soft and slow. "That was fantastic."

His smile broadened slightly. She was happy, and he was almost as pleased to see that as he was to have triumphed. He closed the briefcase and turned from the table. "Thanks, but all we've done is buy some time. We haven't really gotten to the merits of the petition yet. They can still redraft their pleadings and try again."

She laughed to herself as she walked with him between the wooden benches. Here he was, a small-town lawyer who had just beaten the best that the big city had to offer, and he was brimming with modesty.

"But after what you did to them today," she murmured toward his ear as he held the courtroom door open for her, "what else can they say?"

Out of the corner of his eye, Willis Casey caught sight of Morrison and his client descending the stairs to the first floor. With a muttered excuse he left the earnest post-mortem that Roger Freiser was conducting. "Wes?" he called.

Sara caught Morrison's arm and they waited for Casey by the glass case of gold nuggets and historical photographs that was bolted to the wall near the courthouse doors.

The elderly lawyer stood close by, so his tired voice could be heard. Running a hand over his head, he said: "You know, Wes, when you first called me about this case, I could swear you said you didn't do probate."

Morrison grinned like a well-fed cat, and at the sight Sara bit her tongue. He looked Casey in the eye. "I don’t do probate. I didn't say I'd never done it."

For half a second, Casey's face was empty. Then, the wizened expression of the aged lawyer wrinkled with a dry, knowing laugh. Patting Morrison on the shoulder, he nodded. Turning, still laughing quietly, he walked away.

"So," Sara asked, "you'll call me back up if you need me again?"

Morrison's exultation vanished. He faced his client. Having the upper hand in the case also meant that Sara's presence was no longer essential. The case had moved from factual dispute to legal argument, at least for the foreseeable future, and she could not help with that. She would leave tomorrow. Possibly—in fact, quite probably—she would not return.

"Sure—" he faltered.

"I'm sure Stacey will be thrilled to see me go."

"Well," he heard himself say, tinnily, hurriedly, "how about if I buy you a going-away dinner tonight?"

She hesitated and Wes was at once disappointed and relieved. Then she smiled broadly and her eyes sparkled in a way Wes had not seen in years and did not expect to ever see again. Diamond blue eyes, glossy medium brown hair ribboned into a ponytail, looking up at him from a beautiful, adorable face; a smile that lit up that face like a star-shell lights up the night. The face, smile and eyes of a petite woman who should have stood beside him once and then forever. Gone, and never knowing why. Jesus God, it still hurts so much. How could you even think of risking such misery ever again?

"I should probably buy you one," Sara said, misinterpreting the convulsion of emotion on Wes’ face. "You've done such a great job for me."

She was going to leave tomorrow. It would not matter either way. He could break his rules, for one transient moment, without harm. "You haven't seen my bill," he replied.

She gave a tiny laugh. "In that case, you can buy. But promise you won't bring little Sno-cone along?"

He pushed the door open for her, sure that the night would be too short. "Promise."

* * *

At the spot on the road that crossed the mountain pass, where the breadth of the valley was first visible, Sara slowed the Bronco almost to a halt. This would be her last visit. From this vantage point, she could see all the land that Jerome Pitcher had left to her, the fields and pastures, the wooded slopes, the running river, the scattered homes. From now on, it would exist only in her memories, for she would never come back here again. But she had to see it now, this one last time, to place the beautiful visions in her heart where she could always recall them. She crept along the steep road while cars ran up behind and then by her. All this precious land was hers. And not just the land, not just the earth and the trees and the river. The beauty that together they all composed, that was hers, too. Hers forever.

She swung the Bronco around a curve and descended into the mouth of the valley. The many families that farmed Pitcher's land could do so as long as they wanted. And she would see that it stayed that way.

The Mercedes crept up behind her, unnoticed. It turned onto the dirt driveway, grille almost touching her bumper, before she saw it. Then, in the rear-view mirror, she watched it hug the rear of her beaten four-by-four until she slowed to a stop in front of Pitcher's old house. As she slowed, it pulled up beside her.

Ensuring that the truck doors were locked, she dug in her purse for the tear-gas canister she had become licensed to carry after Jack's death.

Diana Robeck waved to her through the passenger window of the Mercedes. Despite herself, still clutching her tear gas with one hand, Sara popped open the Bronco door.

"She's getting out," Diana turned her head and told her brother. "Go make your pitch."

Smoothing his hair and straightening his tie, Kroeber climbed out and walked around the front of his car. He extended his hand and put his best smile on his face. "Mrs. Owen?" he said boisterously. "I'm Barry Kroeber, Jerome's nephew. I don't think we've ever actually been introduced."

He was much taller than her and as slick a talker as she had ever met. Taking his hand for the shortest possible time, Sara replied, as calmly and politely as she could, "Not formally, no."

Kroeber kept smiling. Now that he saw her up close, he decided that Sara Owen was attractive, even though her figure was much slimmer than he liked. He continued as Diana during the drive had insisted he do: "Mrs. Owen, I know we've been adversaries in court—" he looked at the ground, as if in apology, then back up at her, "—or at least our lawyers have been. But there shouldn't be any hard feelings between us personally, should there?"

"No." She couldn't condemn someone she didn't know.

"So we can talk?"

"If you want to." She wished he would stop grinning so much. He looked like a silly little boy when he did.

Kroeber extended a hand toward the house. "Inside, maybe?"

"I'd rather not, if that's all right."

Kroeber took back the step that he had made toward the porch.

"Sara—may I call you Sara?"

She nodded, wondering why, behind his transparently boyish grin, he continued to appraise her.

She was the kind, he had decided, to whom etiquette and manners meant so much that she would do anything to avoid offending another person. A prissy Momma's girl, so unsure of herself that she would apologize for being in the way if he spit on her. He smiled at her as if he had been her friend for years. "Sara, this is a lot of property you've got here."

"Yes, it is." She had to agree to that.

"Ever own anywhere near this much land before?"

"Of course not."

"Ever manage any land? Any kind of income property?"

"No."

Kroeber nodded to himself. "Know what the property taxes are on a place like this?"

Sara found herself looking up into the sun. "I never thought about it."

Leaning back on the sedan's front fender, Kroeber looked intently at her, vaguely bothered by her lack of attraction for him.

From beside him came the cracksqueakwhirr of a power window going down a few inches. Diana listening.

"Look." He was confidential, conspiratorial. "As far as I'm concerned, the legal battle is over. You won, fair and square. We could appeal and tie this place up in litigation for years, but the attorney's fees would eat us both alive and neither of us wants that. Right?"

Sara nodded. He probably had no idea how horribly obvious he was.

"It would really be a tremendous burden, wouldn't it? You live so far from here, so there's the trip up, there's the leases to deal with, there's the paperwork, there's dealing with the problems of the tenants, there's the property taxes, there's just the management of the property generally. And there's dealing with a barn full of animals, dealing with the people you'll have to hire to feed and care for them while you're away most of the year, dealing with the insurance, the constant cost of repair of the house and barn, the problem of trespassers and vandals...." He spread his hands as if to receive some kind of benediction. "Doesn't it just seem like too much trouble?"

"If you look at it that way." She did not, and Wes would take care of those things for her anyway. She would be happy to give him the business. "Well, if that doesn't seem like something you'd like to do, I can tell you, I've got a dozen years into things like this.

Apartment buildings, office buildings—"

"I'm sorry, Mister Kroeber," Sara interrupted. "But just what are you getting at?"

Kroeber's face darkened seriously. He sucked in a breath and glanced at Diana, barely visible behind the glaring windshield. Lowly, as if someone might be able to hear them across acres of open ground, he said: "I'm suggesting that you let us buy you out."

Sara blinked. "After all we've—"

Kroeber continued as if she had just agreed. "Half a million dollars. We can give you a couple years' salary up front and a note for the rest, payable in, say, five years. How long would it take you to earn that much money, Sara?" He let her think about that for a moment, then asked, "How does that sound? That sounds good, doesn't it?"

Unconsciously, Sara lifted the spring-loaded cap over the button on her tear-gas canister. It fell back with a snap.

Kroeber stared suddenly at her hand.

She said: "Well, I'm sorry, but it sounds to me like all you're trying to do is find another way to develop this place, now that you've lost in court."

Kroeber didn't understand. "Well, of course we want to develop it."

The car door latch clicked. Slowly, Diana levered her body out of the seat, unable to believe what she had been hearing. She glared at her brother, then at Sara. Her heart and lungs strained in the growing heat and humidity of the morning. Squinting in the bright sun, her vision narrowed until it contained just Sara, her brother, and Pitcher's old house. As she closed the car door, her eyes jerkily traced the lines of Sara's face.

Sara was slim but not diminutive, yet as Diana drew near, she took an involuntary step backward. The truck door hit her in the back and stopped her.

Rapt gaze never leaving Sara's face, Diana asked, almost sweetly, "Why are you doing this to us?"

Kroeber was watching intently as Sara picked her words. "Mrs. Robeck, I'm truly sorry if you think that I—"

"I want to know." Diana changed abruptly, becoming insistent. "Just what do you think you're doing?" She scanned the surrounding pastures, then with an effort focused again on Sara. "First, you come up here and take our land away from us, land that we're legally entitled to as Jerome's only heirs—"

"But he didn't give—"

"—and now, after we come here in good faith to try to settle this problem peacefully, like businesspeople, you slap us in the face."

Flat against the dusty side of the truck, Sara held up one delicate hand. Kroeber continued to peer at her, and she could not tell if he intended to just watch his sister, or to do something. Or if both of them intended to do something. She swept the horizon for signs of visiting neighbors. She saw no one, not even Sam Kinney's boys. Her thumb crept again under the cover of the tear-gas canister and onto the red release button.

"I didn't mean to offend anyone, Mrs. Robeck," she protested softly. "Really. I had absolutely no idea that there was so much property involved. If I'd known what this was all about—if I'd known how much it meant to you—I might not have even have come up here."

Diana caught her breath and squeezed her eyes shut. They had been so close to getting it. "Then why did you?"

A long sigh flowed from Sara. "I didn't know, Mrs. Robeck."

Kroeber bent forward at the waist. "Are you telling me," he asked earnestly, "that if you had known what was at stake from the very beginning, you might have just let us have it?"

Sara nodded. Had she not come back here, had she not seen the place again, not learned what she had.

Diana inhaled sharply.

Kroeber pushed off the fender of the Mercedes and cocked his head. "Then sell it to us now."

"I'm sorry," Sara said again. "It's not what your uncle wanted."

"Why not?" Diana's temper flared.

Kroeber grinned, not understanding. "How do you know what he wanted?"

Sara scraped along the hot, dusty door of the Bronco. "He said so in the will."

"Forget the will," Kroeber ordered. "How do you know? Did he tell you?"

Pitcher had said little that summer day. "No," she conceded. "No, he didn't tell me."

"Then you can't know. You can only guess. You might be doing the wrong thing."

"I'm not," Sara declared.

"You might be."

"Jerome wanted us to have this land," Diana broke in. "He meant it for us."

Sara had learned from watching Wes. Instantly, eyes boring into Diana, she asked, "How do you know that, Mrs. Robeck? Did he tell you that?"

Barry and Diana said nothing. "It's different, now," Sara told them. "Now I know what's at stake."

Diana's purse fell off her shoulder and she caught its strap in one hand. "Do you?" she asked coldly. "Do you know what's at stake?"

More than ever since Jack's death, Sara wished that she was not alone, that Wes had not gone back to his office to work a few hours before dinner, that he was here with her now. She turned from Diana to Kroeber. "I've really got to go now."

Bleakly, Kroeber turned from Sara and walked to the driver's side of the sedan. "Come on, Diana," he said to his sister. "We'll talk in the car."

Breaking her stare with an effort, Diana felt her way to the car door. She cast one look back before she sat in the passenger seat. Kroeber started the car. "You don't know what you're doing," she said to Sara as they pulled away.

* * *

"A dress?" Her fingers frozen over the keyboard, Stacey gazed at Sara. "You mean, like a cocktail dress?"

Stacey's shock made Sara uncertain. "Just something nice, is all," she said. "Isn't there any place around here to buy anything like that? Wes and I are having dinner tonight."

"You and Wes?" Stacey's hands fell on the keys of the keyboard and a moment later the machine beeped at her. Lifting her hands, she felt a frown weighing her lips. Standing in the middle of the office in plain brown corduroy pants and a pale yellow cotton blouse, Sara did not display the kind of curves that Stacey had seen her boss admiring—her own curves, in fact. Sara even seemed so girlish at times that Stacey wondered if she'd ever had a permanent or knew how to put on a pair of stockings.

Still, Wes could do worse, and if she stretched her imagination Stacey could see how he might think that Sara was attractive. She did have a pretty face and a nice smile.

Stacey's mild scowl began to reverse its bend. "Oh, there's places," she confessed. "But nobody wears that kind of thing to dinner up here. Cocktail dress around here is blue jeans and a shirt. If you're expecting candlelight and waiters in tuxedos, forget it."

"But—" As Stacey read her mind and caused her to blush, Sara found interest in the carpet. She could hardly appear for dinner with Wes in the same clothes that she had worn since she had arrived. "No, I wasn't expecting anything like that," she fibbed. "But I'd like to look nice, you know, if only for...."

Sara was not a good liar, and for some reason Stacey approved of that aspect of her. The look on Sara's face was one of honest worry, worry that she might not do the right thing. That was the right kind of look, Stacey thought. She poised her fingers to resume her work. "Don't worry," she told Sara. "You look fine. And besides, it's not your clothes that count."

* * *

From the hot buttered rolls to the cups of creamed spinach soup, from the rare T-bone steaks and huge baked potatoes to the immense slices of pie and hot coffee, Sara traded story for story with Wes. He told of a backpacking trip in the Sierra ruined by the huge bonfires, bone-jarring yells, campsite trespassing and garish outfits of an environmental group dedicated to the peaceful enjoyment of the mountains. She told him of how a bear that had wandered into their camp had cuffed Jack when he had tried to make enough noise to scare the animal off, and how Jack had hidden in his sleeping bag until she had thrown enough stones to drive the hungry beast away. He offered the case of a janitor who wanted to sue whoever it was who had made a violent genie erupt from an empty bottle of drain cleaner. She countered with a high school student who, with diploma in hand, had been refused a job because she didn't know how to use a simple ruler.

He was like her Jack in many ways, and yet he was very different. There was none of the lighthearted boyishness that had been Jack, but there was a witty, self-deprecating humor that hid something complex and serious. He could appreciate the world in ways that Jack never could have understood.

She had been the guiding force for Jack, but Wes neither needed nor would take direction from anyone but himself. That bothered her somehow, but had she met him years ago, she thought, under different circumstances, she might have come to like him.

Over black coffee she told him about the meeting with Pitcher's niece and nephew. He shook his head. "Some people don't know when to quit."

That wasn't quite it, she thought. Leaning over the table, she lowered her voice. "Don't take this the wrong way, Wes, but—there's something wrong with that woman."

His smile was too brief. He had known more than one person confined to the County medical hospital for the safety of themselves or others. Most were released without problems. "She did seem strange," he agreed while fingering the buttons on his cuff with his own thoughts. "I guess you'll be glad to go home tomorrow and not have to see her anymore."

She folded her napkin and gently laid it on the table next to her dessert plate, then studied her half-empty coffee cup. "I'm afraid school just won't wait."

The waitress came by and took the small tray with the check and Wes' money on it. He waited for her to leave. "Don't forget to stop by tomorrow on your way out, okay?"

Sara smiled softly. For so many reasons, she thought, she would miss this place. "Don't worry."

* * *

Packing her suitcase to leave was far more difficult for Sara than packing it for the trip north, and not just because of the additional baggage, though there was plenty of that. She had bought several outfits during her stay, and the soft-sided suitcase seemed to have shrunk. Stacey gave her a hand before she hurried off to work, though, and together they strapped the straps and zipped the zippers. Sara then showered, dressed casually and ate a quick breakfast.

As she trotted up the steps to the law office, exactly as she had on her first day in town, her heart pounded several times. She found the brass door knob and opened the door. Wes and Stacey were waiting for her.

"Good news and bad news," Stacey greeted. "Take your choice."

The door closed behind Sara. She put her hands on the paneled wood behind her and leaned back. Now she knew why her heart had been beating so hard, why her breath had been short. Stacey looked sad. Morrison bitter, angry. "Bad news first," she braved.

Morrison was in slacks and shirt sleeves, tie loosely knotted, obviously not expecting to receive any new clients or appear in court today. He weighed the papers in his hand. "One of the contractors that Barry Kroeber hired has filed a mechanic's lien against your property," he told her solemnly. "For the cost of the work he did."

Shoulders rounding involuntarily, nausea rising in her stomach, Sara leaned toward the sofa. It was a recurring nightmare, haunting her peace like the dreams of terror that had come in her sleep for months after her mother had died. Her gaze dropped to the floor. "God help me," she implored in a voice only she could hear.

"I guess I should have seen it coming," Morrison tried to soften the blow. "Once you refused to sell to them, they were bound to try something like this."

Stacey saw the look on Sara's face and spoke for her, asking of her boss, "So what's our next step?"

Morrison shrugged disgustedly. "Pay or play."

"Pay?" Sara gasped, stiffening her back. "Why should I pay? No one asked me if they could work on my property! They're not my bills."

"That's right," Stacey agreed.

"Doesn't matter," stated Morrison. "You own the land."

"But that's not fair!"

Morrison grimaced with experience. "Fairness and the law have nothing to do with each other, any more than do evidence and truth. We'll just have to go back to court and hope the judge agrees with us again."

Sara was fierce. "I'm not going to pay somebody else's debt."

She was intense, principled, and pretty even in the most modest clothes. Wes liked everything he saw. With a long, approving nod, he said, "Okay. Then we're going back to court."

Sara sighed abruptly and sat on the sofa. Feet and knees together underneath hands and wrists that had joined each other, Sara's shoulders rounded wearily. More days in the courtroom, more nights worrying about what might happen. More time away from her home, more time away from her job. "If we do, what's the worst they can do to us?"

Morrison stood before her on the other side of the coffee table. "If the lien is upheld, they can sell the property to satisfy the debt."

"Sell it!"

"And you can imagine who's going to bid on it."

"Just like you can imagine who convinced the contractor to file the lien in the first place," Stacey offered.

"The brother and sister," Sara stated.

Stacey nodded. "You'd better believe it."

They were like ticks, like leeches, Kroeber and Diana. They had buried their barbed heads in her and she could not get them out. She shuddered at the image she had created and looked up at Morrison. "I don't know if I can take another lawsuit, Wes."

They looked at each other for a long moment. "There's no other way?"

He watched her carefully. She would fight, if she had to, but the toll of another drawn-out court battle on her was plain, and he decided before he even realized that he could not have that. "Maybe," he thought out loud, even as his mind began to turn toward the unconventional resolutions for which he was becoming noted.

Stacey saw the look in her boss' eyes and her head bobbed decisively. "If there is," she promised Sara, "Wes will find it."

* * *

Ten years ago, Maggie Corcoran had gone to Ireland to trace her roots, and for three weeks had stayed every night in a bed and breakfast. When she returned she brought with her what she had learned, and she immediately changed the name and menu of her little restaurant. Since that day she had not looked back.

Breakfast offered a stack of buttermilk pancakes dripping with melted whipped butter straight from one of the local dairies and three kinds of warm syrup, Belgian waffles with strawberries dusted with powdered sugar, two slices of French toast garnished with nutmeg, four eggs any style with abundant servings of steak, bacon, ham, or sausage, again fresh from the local farms. Wheat, white or French toast came with a crock of fresh whipped butter and refillable pots of homemade grape, strawberry or orange marmalade, and the same for her fork-split and toasted English muffins. Each breakfast, brought to the table on a tray by a smiling waitress, came with a patty of hash browned potatoes, a huge glass of fresh-squeezed orange juice, a bowl of cereal with sliced fruit, and a pot of real black coffee. If two were ordering, a pot of strong Irish tea with a pitcher of cream and a bowl of sugar was added.

With cracked and leathery hands, Bob Wheaton arranged the many plates and bowls on the small table of the booth as carefully as he arranged his contracting jobs. His lean, crevassed face, appearing much older than his fifty years, studied the bounty before him. Then, he poured some cream into his coffee, sampled a rasher of bacon, and finally answered the question that had been posed. "Didn't care for him much, really."

Across the table, Wesley Morrison gingerly took the hot handle of the teapot and poured himself a cup, adding cream and sugar to the strong brew. His hot ham and creamy scrambled eggs beckoned to him, but he smeared an English muffin with butter and marmalade and crunched into it before he spoke again. "So," he ventured, "is it fair to say that you probably didn't care much for his project either?" He looked at Wheaton over a forkful of eggs.

"Well," the other man shrugged, "I don't know that is fair to say. Any job that involves construction is good for me. You know." He dug a spoon into his bowl of hot cream of wheat, topped with cream and a ripe strawberry, and grunted with approval.

Slicing off a section of ham, Morrison said, "You know that he was trying to build on land that wasn't his."

Wheaton nodded, sipping his coffee. "So I've heard."

The ham was sweet and smoked in Morrison's mouth. He said around it, "That didn't bother you?"

Splitting open an over-easy egg, Wheaton sopped up some of the yolk with his wheat toast, chewed off the end of the piece, and looked at Morrison. "Didn't then, when I didn't know it. Can't say I care much for it now. But...." he shrugged again and continued carving up his eggs and guiding the pieces to his mouth with shards of toast or bacon.

Morrison glanced from hot cereal to tea, from English muffin to jam pots, from orange juice to ham and eggs. He was beginning to feel full, though he was just halfway through. Only now and then could he eat like this. "But what?"

Wheaton did not interrupt his assault, stuffing forkful or fingerful into his mouth without pause. He barely looked up. “Man’s gotta live. Gotta provide for his family. Gotta pay a crew. Got a business to run, expenses to pay."

Wheaton had been a subcontractor, responsible for digging part of the miles of trenches for the water lines and plumbing. He did not have a big business, and worked the machines himself along with his men. Morrison was not surprised that Barry Kroeber, with all his financial influence, had been able to pressure this man into filing the mechanic's lien on Sara's property.

"You know," he satisfied his professional conscience, "that I'm representing Sara Owen, the new owner of the property."

Wheaton merely nodded.

Morrison took a breath. "I suppose your expenses include legal fees, for contracts and labor problems, things like that? Liability, workers' comp? Lawsuits over performance? People who hire you and don't pay? Things like that?"

With bread crumbs still on his upper lip and his fork in his hand, Wheaton turned his hard gray eyes at the young man across the table from him. He swallowed the food in his mouth. "You know it does."

Laying down his utensils, Morrison said quietly, "A lawyer's fees can be pretty expensive these days."

"That's damn straight." Wheaton's fingers corralled his coffee cup and his lips sipped from it.

Wes slipped further down the path he knew he should not travel. "If you didn't have to pay anything to any lawyers for a while, that'd be a help, wouldn't it?"

Wheaton's cup of coffee clinked against its saucer. "Might be," he said in a voice only Morrison could hear, but a voice that was as matter-of-fact as his manner.

"Well," Wes said, hoping his direction was correct, "if I were to do some work for you without charge for a while, kind of a pro bono thing, you think you could dismiss that mechanic's lien? It's probably no good anyway, and this way you can still go after your general contractor, or the development company, for what they owe you. That way you and I and my client and everybody can get on with their lives."

Wheaton stuffed the last of a rasher of bacon into his mouth, followed it with a corner of wheat toast heavily laden with strawberry jam, and washed it down with lukewarm coffee. His eyes took in Morrison's image as if the contractor had never before seen the young man. He swallowed and ran his tongue over his teeth, then wiped his mouth on his paper napkin. Finally, he looked at Morrison. His lined face eventually broke, and his thin, dry lips said, "That include my family?"

Morrison knew he had crossed the line. "Sure."

Wheaton emptied his coffee cup, breathed deeply once, and nodded. He stood. "That's real nice of you, Wes."

As Morrison's hand hunted inside his coat, Wheaton dug his wallet from his hip and tossed some bills on the table. "Guess this one ought to be on me," he murmured as he left.

Wes looked down at the empty plates. While the clatter and conversation of breakfast continued all around him, he shook his head to himself. You've done it now.

Chapter Fifteen

The slab of hardened oak easily gave way to the razor-sharp blade of the shrill router. Spinning at twenty-thousand revolutions per minute, the whirling steel cut the seasoned wood cleanly and smoothly. Behind plastic safety glasses, Wes' eyes smiled. As always, his father had been right. Over and over during his early teens, his dad had said that the right tool always made the job so much easier, but Wes, as with everything else, had to find out for himself. Now that his inbred obstinacy had tried a dozen different ways, he had to admit the truth. His dad had been right after all.

Clean, sweet-smelling wood dust filled the humid morning air and covered him from head to foot, making his blue jeans and work shirt a fuzzy beige. The dust coated everything within ten feet of his garage workbench and in order to inspect the cuts he had made on the soon-to-be-shelf, he had to sweep away the powder with a soft-bristled brush.

In one of the spare bedrooms of his home sat a dozen or more cardboard moving boxes, still not unpacked, harboring scores of books. Hardbound and softbound volumes of popular and classic fiction, of humor and history, of science and philosophy. He could have just bought bookshelves for all his favorite works, but building the wooden pieces for himself satisfied his craving to create and at the same time pleased the memory of his deceased, penurious Irish grandparents.

"You're not going to leave it like that, are you?" There was tartness in Sara's sweet voice and she was smiling impishly as Morrison turned from the workbench.

"Well, hello," he grinned back, quickly slapping his shirt and jeans clean and combing his hair with his fingers. He had not been expecting her and wondered how long she had been standing there. "What?"

He didn't look much like a lawyer to Sara, but he did seem to be enjoying himself. She walked into the open garage and pointed an accusing finger at the evolving bookcase. "That. You're not going to leave it like that?"

Morrison studied the incomplete shelf. Impatient to see the results of his work, he had simply set the pieces of wood together, so they fitted loosely at the joints and leaned crazily to one side. "You don't like it like that?"

"No."

His face became deeply serious. "But it's built in the liberal self-deterministic nonjudgmental style—every piece gets to fit however it wants. See the result?"

"Change it," she ordered. "Make it conservative."

He put one hand on the shelf and gently pushed it straight. The carefully cut joints slipped into place. "Glue the joints, sink and set some finish nails, putty over 'em, stain and finish, tack on some glass doors, and viola."

"You can do all that?" she doubted. Jack had been a good electrical engineer, but he hadn't been able to drive a nail without bending it.

"This'll be my third."

Sara perched on a short step-stool next to Wes’ covered MGA roadster, leaning forward to rest her elbows on her knees and her chin on her hands. As she did, her brown corduroy pants stretched tightly and the neckline of her knit blouse hung loosely.

Wes stared admiringly for a moment, then looked away before he could be caught.

Sara was studying the bookcase, imagining it as Morrison had said it would be. "It'll be pretty," she approved, sweet once more, impressed with this side of him.

"Thanks."

She looked at him decisively. "I came to tell you that I've decided to move into Pitcher's home for the duration, till this is all finally finished."

"Pitcher's home?" He let the bookcase lean again suddenly and it almost collapsed.

She nodded. "I think it's the best thing, don't you? I can't impose on Stacey anymore, and neither of us can afford the motel. I've got all my things in my truck." A tilt of her head indicated the Bronco, parked along the road beyond the sturdy rail fence. In the cargo compartment of the vehicle were all her clothes, the things she had bought at the local department and drug stores, and some full grocery bags.

Morrison did not think it was the best thing. Stacey lived in town, close to the office, in a quiet residential area. At Pitcher's place, Sara would be alone and far from anyone.

"I mean," she said, "it's my house now, right? I don't see why I shouldn't stay there. Besides, somebody needs to look after it."

He could tell now when she had made up her mind. Her lips were pressed together a little, her cheeks a little more firm, her eyes a little less soft. Arguing with her wouldn't do any good. And Pitcher's home did have a telephone. "All I've got to do is finish the inventory and appraisement, and then the final distribution," he said reluctantly. "I guess there's no reason you can't stay there until then."

Her hands dropping into her lap, her head rose. Her smile challenged him. "Unless some other contractor puts another lien on it, right?"

He turned to straighten the tools on the workbench. "Oh, I don't think that'll happen again."

While her smile remained, a certain sharpness found its way into Sara's eyes, and a kind of doubtful understanding into her voice. "You never did tell me why Wheaton withdrew his lien."

Morrison gave her an ingenuous expression that had rescued him from many an awkward moment. "I guess he just decided not to pursue it."

The look didn't work on Sara. Her frozen smile melted into thoughtful amusement. "You don't announce, do you?"

Morrison blinked. "Don't what?"

She pulled on her lip. A quick shake of her head disturbed her hair. "Some people," she said, "they tell you everything, you know? You can see what they're thinking a mile off. And then some people," her chin climbed, "you always have to guess at."

He looked at her, wondering if it was interest or just curiosity.

"You're one of those, aren't you?" she asked.

"Am I?" Not giving of himself had become second nature over the last few years, almost instinct, but the disappointment he saw on Sara's face made him wish that he had not evaded her.

"Yes, you are." The corners of her mouth turned downward with her face. "But I guess you have to be, to be good at what you do, right?"

He brushed dust from his jeans. He liked her sitting there, talking to him. "I never really thought about it."

She looked up and into his pale green eyes. "Oh, I doubt that."

* * *

The air conditioning unit on the side of the house was rattling and whistling but failing to cool the air inside. The afternoon sun heated the living room with light tinged orange by draperies the same color as the carpet. Several large flies buzzed lazily in the center of the hot, humid room.

On the sofa, one arm sprawled above his head, grease from the garage where he worked staining his undershirt, slept Phil Robeck. His mouth was open and he snored occasionally with a light, whistling wheeze. Two empty Coors beer cans stood on the coffee table beside him, as did a small portable radio playing the last innings of a distant baseball game.

From the back of the house came the steam-engine pounding of a rap band on a boom box, while in the kitchen, spread across the plastic counters to warm and then spoil were the fixings of a sandwich and a drink.

Diana walked down the hallway, any sound she might have made masked by the noise that her children called music, and peeked through the barely open door of her son's room.

Sixteen-year-old Jason was at his desk, building his models, one of his father's beers at his elbow. Slowly Diana retreated back down the hallway and into the master bedroom. Her son was going to turn out just like her husband.

On the little letter desk in the corner, she laid the box of stylish stationery she had stolen from the store where she worked. In the small master bathroom, she splashed her face with cold water for several long minutes. Then, on the bed that had not been made in weeks, she lay down in her clothes and hugged a pillow to her.

Yesterday, she had seen a birth-control device in fifteen-year-old Clarice's school things. Diana had not known what to say to her daughter, or even if she should say anything. Or could, under the law. Right now, she did not even know where the girl was. Both Clarice and Jason talked back to her with impudent disdain, and she held out little hope that either of them listened to her guidance anymore, just as their father had virtually ceased to hear their mother.

Diana could still picture herself the way she had been, a slim and pretty eighteen-year-old bride in a frilly white blouse. Philip had been young and slim then, too, bright-eyed and hard working, with what they thought was a future ahead of him. Now, two children had brought her thirty pounds and a small, dirty house; during almost twenty years of marriage Phil had received a number of raises and compliments from customers, but no significant promotions.

They had talked of buying a shop or opening his own, but Phil saved so little on his salary that Diana had been forced to begin clerking at the stationery store just to make both ends of the food bill meet. She had known for years now that they would never have any kind of retirement, that they would never travel, never even own a recreational vehicle. The best vacation she hoped for now was a trip to a crowded state park on a three-day holiday, where they would sleep in a rented tent and eat half-cold barbecued hamburgers and hot dogs with the children.

She rotated on the bed, curled up tighter and with the pillow hid her face from the light. Every other woman she knew, even her own neighbors, seemed to have a much nicer home, much nicer children, a much nicer husband, a much nicer life. Even Barry's wife.

The thought of her brother and the home he had pressed a moan out of her. She should have a home like that. She was worth it as much or more than he was. At some time when she had been much younger—all her good memories seemed to precede her marriage—she had traveled with her mother and stepfather to a huge home on a hill. She had no idea now where it was or why they had gone, but she could remember what it looked like. Built like a French chateau, she had walked up a steep driveway, past a real stone retaining wall and a real stone foundation, up sweeping steps bordered by luxuriant vines, into a foyer as cavernous as a cathedral, and then into an even larger living room filled with well-dressed people. Her parents had seemed to feel quite out of place, but she had wanted ever since that time to live in a house like that.

All her life, she had kept and nurtured that dream. During her marriage, she had waited for her uncle to die, so she could take her inheritance, leave her family far behind and live in her mansion on the hill. And now, instead, she was condemned to live in her little pigsty of a home with a husband and two children who probably wanted to leave her as much as she wanted to leave them. All because of some slim, pretty girl who had been nice to old Jerome and his stupid horses.

At that moment, she began to hate Sara Owen.

* * *

The bulge that Wes was beginning to feel around his middle told him that he had been eating far too well lately. His first dinner with Sara had been as fattening as it had been enjoyable; his breakfast with the contractor Wheaton had filled him for that entire day; and now Barry Kroeber had ordered him the largest steak in the small but extremely popular Redding steak house.

Kroeber ordered a bottle of cabernet sauvignon—the only red wine he could identify on the wine list—and sent the waitress for some cocktails.

Pulling a slice of bread from the hot baguette in front of him, Morrison wondered whether the man really thought that the size or cost of the meal would make any difference. He buttered the piece, bit off part of it, and decided that Kroeber probably did think exactly that. Barry was the kind of man to use his money that way when entertaining women, and he probably knew no other means.

Al's restaurant was a hole in the wall, sided by a vacant lot on one side and a thrift store on the other. Al lived on the second story of the small white building, beneath a roof crest that reminded Morrison of the Alamo. Outside Al's window was a blue and white neon sign that flashed “Choice Steaks” at passersby. The sign didn't lie. Behind the glazed windows on the first floor were served the best beefsteak dinners in town. As the young, thin waitress removed their empty salad plates and refilled their wine glasses, Morrison took a deep breath. Already his belly was full, and he had no idea where he would be able to put the immense slabs of sizzling beef he had seen being carried to other patrons. Still, his nose and taste buds clamored for more, and when the waitress set down the platter—an ordinary plate was too small—he ignored the protestations of his stomach and his own good sense and began to saw off hunks of juicy meat.

Kroeber had been to the restaurant many times before, but he still ate as if he was not sure what had been placed before him. Peering at his dish from beneath his bushy black eyebrows, he worked his way around the edges of the huge steak, then poked for minutes at the interior of his softball-sized baked potato. Finally, he returned in thought to where he had started. Cleaning his black moustache with his napkin, he focused on Morrison. Wes' pale green eyes looked back. Kroeber paused, looked at his food and decided to take a sip from his glass. "I remember," he eventually said, "years ago, not long after I'd bought my dealership, some old guy came into the store wanting to get a de Ville, and trade in an old deuce-and-a-quarter he'd had for who knows how long. Thought he'd get top dollar for the Buick 'cause he'd taken good care of it, and thought he knew what it cost me to buy each Caddy on the lot." He lifted a forkful of potato into his mouth, chewed briefly and swallowed. "He was as hot for that car as you probably are for your client—not that I blame you, really. She's got a nice ass."

Morrison's fork fell from his open mouth back down to his plate, but before he could think of a retort, Kroeber continued. "Anyway, we went around and around and around, him trying to get twice the blue book for his old clunker, me trying to keep every last cent of my markup." Examining his steak, he cut a one-inch cube and chewed on it. "He came and went and then came back. But by the time we closed up for the day, we weren't any closer. He had to drive home in the same old car, and I still had that yellow de Ville on my lot. Man, that taught me a lesson."

In the bowl of Morrison's glass, the dark red claret swirled to the movement of his fingers on the stem. Kroeber, he thought, drank cabernet sauvignon because it was highly regarded by connoisseurs, not because he could appreciate a fine wine. He ate at Al's not because he enjoyed the food, which he seemed to down without tasting, but because everyone said the place was great. He was a man perpetually in a state of uncertain arrogance. He thought he was better and smarter than everyone else, but was afraid that he really wasn't and that everyone else knew it. And he was about as subtle as the Smith &Wesson .45 that Wes kept locked up at home.

"You want to cut a deal," Morrison stated.

Kroeber's eyes narrowed. "Willing to listen?"

"I'll always listen. But probate's almost closed."

"Doesn't matter, for what I've got in mind." He massaged his glass with his fingertips, then leaned forward over the table, almost dragging his tie in his food. He lowered his loud voice. "Wes, my dick's in the wringer."

Morrison leaned away from Kroeber's protruding face. "You put it there."

"No thanks to you." His words fell off suddenly and he fell back in his chair, only to suddenly bend forward again as his voice crescendoed. "And nobody made you crank the handle so god damn hard!"

Morrison sipped from his glass and waited.

Kroeber calmed himself, hoping that in the dim, smoky light of the steak house, the deep lines of his face were hidden. His credit lines were over their limits. He was borrowing against his wife's credit cards just to pay the interest on his own. He practically had to prove he was solvent every time he wrote a check. But that was no excuse for getting angry with a customer. He pushed his plate away from him, called to a passing waitress for another Manhattan, then snatched a paper napkin from its dispenser and pulled his gold pen from his pocket. Oblivious to the hungry patrons packing the tiny bar, hoping to be seated and finish their meals before the late news, he began to sketch awkwardly.

"The property is shaped roughly like this," he said, "with this line being the river."

"Roughly," agreed Wes.

"Basically, before, we were going to take the entrance road right down here, remove Jerome's old home," his pen jigged over the white paper, "and put in homes and condominiums on either side. The golf course would run out front, along the river. The other facilities would be scattered around the rest of the complex. And we'd have undeveloped land at either end to expand."

Seeing Morrison's nod, Kroeber crumpled that napkin and seized another. Drawing the same boundary lines, he bent still further over the table toward Wes. "But we don't have to do that," he offered.

"You can't do that."

Kroeber ignored the reminder. "Instead," he began to draw again, "instead of taking Jerome's house as the center point and spreading out to both sides, what we could do is just, basically, work with one end. Just shift everything down this way, toward the far end of the valley, toward the canyon."

"Not enough room," Wes noted. "Even if it was your land."

A blank look crossed Kroeber's face. "It is our land."

Morrison stared.

"Never mind," said Kroeber hurriedly, dropping his gaze to avoid a look that made him feel inferior. "We could scale down. Cut back the number of homes down a little, chop the condominiums in half. Build nine holes instead of eighteen. Add a couple of tennis courts and another spa to make up the difference. Make a smaller skating rink." His pen flew, scratching the napkin, leaving a wild set of lines and squiggles in blue ink. "Like that."

Wes shook his head and swirled the last of the wine in his glass. "Interesting. But I don't think Sara would go for that."

Kroeber's pen slipped through the fingers of one hand while the other landed heavily on the napkin. He had not expected such a quick rejection. "Can you ask her?"

Wes could imagine Sara's face. "I don't see why I should."

"Damn it, why not?" Kroeber almost barked, then caught himself.

Wes knew better than to answer an opponent's questions. He tacked: "Who's going to pay for the damage that's already been done?"

Kroeber could not afford one extra bill, not one extra cent, but that didn't matter. If Morrison was willing to sell this compromise plan to Sara, he would find the money somewhere. "I will," he promised. "I'll personally make it good to her."

"And restore the land?"

Kroeber saw himself being derailed. Swallowing everything he knew about negotiating, trusting a man he barely knew, he said, "Look, Wes, I'm in one hell of a fix here. I've got a stack of bills and notes this high," he held a hand above his head, "and no money coming in. I'm strung out so tight—"

Morrison's face was sour. "That's the way it works, Barry. You screw up, you pay for it."

Kroeber slumped. "So you just won't go for it?"

"No." He was not about to give away the victory he had fought for in court.

"It's up to your client, though, isn't it?" Kroeber asked, mimicking something he had heard some other lawyer say at some distant time in the past. "You've got to ask her, don't you?"

"No, I don't," replied Wes simply. Kroeber seemed to know that Sara's emotions were her best yet weakest point. "There's no litigation going on anymore, so this isn't a settlement offer."

Kroeber felt sweat underneath the back of his collar, but he suddenly was no longer scared. Morrison had just given him an idea. He tucked the thought away. "But will you ask her, Wes? Will you at least do me that favor? Don't you owe me that much?"

The waitress came and removed the platters. Kroeber ordered another drink for himself.

Morrison flicked the napkin with his forefinger. Sara had wanted to let Kroeber and his sister have the land at one time. And they had never talked of a compromise. "Even if you built this," he said, "you wouldn't net even half of what you were after, would you?"

Kroeber saw the slippage and almost lunged across the table. "It doesn't have to. I'll make enough to cover my ass, and I'll tell you the truth, that's all I care about right now. I've got a first, a second and a third mortgage on just about every property I own, including my house, I've got three banks that want to skin me alive, and I've got a god damn lynch mob of investors behind me." He shook his head rapidly. "Forget about getting rich," he laughed weakly, "I'm just trying to stay alive."

Wes poked at the napkin sketch, knocking it around the table with short little stabs, as if touching it firmly would concede some point.

Kroeber softened his voice. "So can we cut something here? Or am I going to have to keep going?"

Morrison pulled his hands back. "Where else do you think you can go?"

The erosion was continuing. "I can still appeal, right?" Kroeber asked, his voice was louder now, faster.

Wes smiled. He had not lost a case at the court of appeal in years. "You can try."

Kroeber saw that avenue close and tried another. "Fine. If that doesn't work, I'll dig up something else." He sighed, eyes squinting at the silhouetted form of a passing waitress while his forefinger ran across the line of his lips. "There are other contractors who might still want to file liens, you know."

"I don't think they will," Wes answered flatly.

Kroeber smirked. "But what if they do? You can't provide them all with free legal services if they pull their liens."

Wes frowned. He did not like his machinations being discovered.

Kroeber kept rolling. "And even if you deal with them, there's always the farmers, right? It's a tough living up here sometimes. Don't you think some of them would be willing to sell me their leases? And what are they running, ten, twenty years? That's more than long enough."

Wes filled his lungs with a slow breath. All the leases Pitcher had signed terminated automatically if the property was ever used for anything other than its original purpose, but Kroeber's point was clear enough. The man would continue to push and pressure Sara until either he or she broke. The prospect was unappealing and unacceptable. Sara did not deserve to suffer anymore, especially not through years of acrimonious litigation.

Kroeber sat back, dragging his palms across the table, saw Morrison teetering, and slid forward again. He looked at Wes as if they had been fraternity brothers, which he had been but Morrison had not. "So, you'll ask her?"

Morrison left his thoughts. He shrugged. "I don't know. It sounds to me like you're getting what you want, but she doesn't get anything."

"Are you kidding?" Kroeber's mouth fell, even though he had been expecting this. He played his last card. "All right. I'll tell you what." Grabbing a new napkin, he began to sketch again. "Besides paying top dollar for the land, we'll do this for her. We'll take down the old house, and put in a new one for her, her choice, her design. Pool, tennis courts, spa, anything she wants. And here," blue ink formed a swirl of circles across the napkin, "between her place and the complex, we'll plant a tree barrier, something thick and fast growing. Her own private forest. Not only will you not be able to see the development from the head of the valley, she won't be able to see it at all even though she's right next to it. Plus, she'll have a beautiful new home and enough money to retire on." Again, he slid the napkin across the tablecloth, forcing it into Morrison's possession.

“Can you live with that? How does that sound? You think she can live with that?”

Pulling the knot of his tie from his neck and unbuttoning his collar, Wes thought of Sara. She would have no more fighting, no more worrying. She would not have to depend on her history teacher's salary. And if she wanted, she could live up here in the home of her choosing. He looked at Kroeber, and said, "Maybe. Maybe she can.”

Chapter Sixteen

The empty aluminum beer can made a hollow, metallic clang as Phil Robeck set it on the tile kitchen counter. The noise had assaulted Diana's ears and grated on her nerves many times before. Standing in the garish fluorescent light of the overhead kitchen lamp, his face deep in discontent, Phil wiped his mouth on the sleeve of his white tee shirt and stared with small eyes at his wife. "You going to look at those damn things all night? Isn't it about time for bed?"

On the sofa in the living room, lit only by a small lamp in the corner, huddled forward over the cheap coffee table, Diana turned another page of the photo album. As she did, the plastic sheets on the stiff cardboard pages crackled. Another album, of her as a very young girl, was to her right. Already, she had examined all the photographs in that one and removed all the good memories. The book she was going through now, page by page, photograph by photograph, was of her in her happy, teenaged years, through high school and her short try at college, up to her marriage to Phil. The third album on the table contained all the snapshots they had taken after their marriage. She had decided not to open that one.

On one corner of the page in front of her, she was a smiling eighteen-year-old, in a blue taffeta dress her mother had made for her and a white corsage that her date for the high school prom had bought for her. She had seemed very special then, and her face held a smile of which she could not remember ever being capable. The night of the dance, too, had been a very special one. Her mother had never known what she and the football player who had been her date had done in the back of his father's coupe. She could remember him still, big, tall, dark Rueben, who had said little but had made her feel like a princess for a few short hours.

Rueben should have been her husband. She deserved him, deserved the way he treated her and the way he made her feel. She should have pursued him. Instead, she had stood by passively and lost him to a slim, lithe brunette cheerleader, a pretty, vivacious girl with brown eyes and a brilliant smile. A girl whose image seemed to have returned over the long years to frustrate her again.

Diana had not answered. Phil had not expected her to. Spreading his hands on the cold tile counter, he ducked his head underneath the kitchen cabinets and leaned forward to fix his gaze on her. "You going to work tomorrow?"

She could not hide it forever. "No."

"Why not?"

"I don't feel well."

"You stayed home today, too. The kids told me. Didn't you feel well today, either?"

"No."

His fingers drummed the pitted tile in slow, silent rolls. He could guess what her timidness meant. "You still got a job, Diana?"

Concentrating as hard as she could on the photograph of herself and Rueben, she did not answer.

"Sheee-it," Phil swore lowly. "You lost your goddam job, didn't you? They fire you? Why? What happened?"

The photograph suddenly seemed worthless. The old, thin, crusty owner of the stationery store had been furious to learn that since her first day on the job she had been taking paper, envelopes, pens—anything she thought she needed and deserved to have. She had not been stealing, she was sure of that; other people did that. She was entitled to what she took. It was nothing more than compensation for all the other shortfalls in her life.

The irrational owner had not agreed and had fired her on the spot. She had not protested, not fought. The man simply had not understood. The fault was not hers. The fault was not even his.

The fault was Sara's.

All Sara's fault. Had Sara Owen in her self-righteous way not usurped Diana's inheritance, had she not stolen her dream, Diana would be a wealthy woman. It was Sara's fault that Diana had to work, Sara's fault that she had to take what she could not afford to buy. It was Sara's fault that she had been fired. All that was undeniable, and Diana was amazed at how coolly she could face that truth. Even Phil did not see that only Sara was to blame.

Diana turned the album page. "I'll find something else."

"You're damn right you will. I'm not going to support this goddam family all by myself."

She did not care what he would do. For years, she had been pushed and pulled by people who did not care about her. She had been dragged and shoved to places she did not want to go, to be with people she did not like. Her father and mother, her teachers and friends, and even Phil, had stolen a score of precious years of her life. Instead of a handsome, successful husband and a fine house and family, she lived in a squalid tract house with two insolent children and a husband who always smelled of grease and beer. They all thought they had taken everything from her, but they had forgotten about her future. Secretly, she had coveted that tomorrow, dreaming of her treasure in the quiet moments when the house was empty, or when lying awake in bed late at night. No matter what her family and friends might have taken from her, she had always had the bright day when her uncle would die and she would become rich.

But now Sara Owen had stolen even that. Because of Sara, she had nothing. Because of Sara, nothing would ever change.

Each day of her life had been spent hating her uncle for taking her father's share from her, hating him simply for living. And at the moment her misery was about to end, slim, pretty, pleasant Sara Owen had stepped in front of her and ripped her hope from her. Her patient, abiding hate had brought her nothing. The land was gone, given away by her brother's bungling, by a mad judge, by a conspiracy she could not discover. Given to a younger and prettier woman. The land was gone. But the hate remained.

Phil was by her side for some reason, standing, his voice somehow apologetic though somehow still rough. "Come on, Diana," he pleaded. "Why don't we get to bed now? Okay?"

Her voice denied him. "I'll stay up for a while."

An angry sigh rushed from him, but he said nothing. Diana saw his fists clench and unclench. She ignored him. She would not compromise herself anymore. Not for him, not for anyone.

"Diana, come on...." Phil exhaled pent-up frustration. "It's not right, for us, like this.... It's been weeks."

Her vision was fuzzy, confined to the world that was the dim living room, and in that dark world Phil seemed to drift away. "That's all right," her voice said as she felt the brush of the taffeta being pulled from her skin and smelled the flowers of the corsage as they were crushed by Rueben's weight. Somehow, between that wonderful night and this, the best part of her life had been squandered on nothing; on a nothing man, on children who would amount to nothing. There was still time, though. She was still young, still deserving, still capable of having what she wanted. She turned back the album page. The smiling teenaged girl beneath the crinkled plastic sheet could still have her dreams. All she needed to do was crumple the frail image of the woman who stood in her way.

Phil was leaning on the kitchen counter again. He had washed his face, put on a clean shirt and combed his hair. "I'm going out, Diana," he told her. Car keys jingled in his hand as he checked the contents of his wallet.

She shrugged imperceptibly. Phil was only a distraction, an unwanted deviation. What he did or did not do was of no consequence any longer, any more than who took care of their children. He wanted a woman like Sara. He had always wanted a woman like her, a woman with a slender, supple body, not a woman with a bloated, rolling figure like his wife's. He wanted a woman with an ageless face, a woman who pretended somehow to be full of grace and kindness. Perhaps he would find her tonight. She doubted it, but she did not care.

When Phil let himself in several hours later, the lights were out in the kitchen and living room, but on the television set a late night talk show was playing soundlessly. The light from the screen lit Diana's empty face. She watched the images, but did not see. Phil did not speak to her as he slipped through the kitchen and toward the hallway that led to the bedrooms.

Diana saw the sated look on her husband's face and knew that he would not bother her for a day or two. For a moment, she wondered what he had spent for his moment of pleasure, then decided that she did not care. Taking a long sip from a tumbler full of watery sherry, she curled into a tighter ball on one end of the couch, blotting the last decade from her mind, convincing herself that time had not passed, that her marriage was yesterday and her future was tomorrow.

Sara was a weak and greedy woman, far from any friends. Alone, she would not resist long. Soon, Diana sighed to herself, the nightmare would be over.

* * *

The headlights of Wes' little British roadster cast a feeble, ineffective glow in the twilight, trying to illuminate the day not yet gone, the night not yet come. In the shadow of the eastern side of the mountains, night had already arrived, yet off the waving stalks of alfalfa in the fields beyond the mountains, off the rippling surface of the twisting river, the fading sun still glinted with weak golden light. As he turned the convertible off the river road and onto the dirt driveway to Pitcher's home, a pair of matched sorrels ran in their pasture, reddish-brown coats glistening, straw-colored manes flying. His own hair, ever unruly, whipped about his neck, limited only by his old blue Yankees cap.

On the front porch of Pitcher's home, Sara stood waiting. Arms crossed, clothed in blue jeans, an embroidered blue cotton work shirt and oxford shoes, her hair loosely gathered behind her head, she was in Wes' eyes both plain and quite feminine.

Sara had seen and recognized the little gray sports car as soon as it had left the paved road. Wes had uncovered the 1960 MGA to her with the pride of a new father the day she had visited him at his home. Now, as she watched Wes' tall, lean frame struggle slowly out of the cramped cockpit, she smiled broadly. She moved from the porch to the brick steps to welcome him. Perhaps he would give her a ride in it, together in the small car, on this beautiful evening.

Choosing a country twang, she called, "Well, hi there. What brings you-all a-calling?"

Wes shut the MGA’s door and stood for a moment, looking at her in the fading twilight. Soon, her case would be over and he would lose contact with her, but she was here now, the summer breeze was blowing warmly, and far from home special things could always happen. Trotting up the porch steps he stood as close to her as he dared, yet not as close as he wanted. "I've talked to Barry Kroeber," he said. "He's got a proposition for you."

"Do tell," she continued her Southern impression, though she lost her playfulness. "Well, why don't you-all step inside and tell me all about it?" She gestured to the warm, bright home on the other side of the screen door.

Inside Jerome Pitcher's old house, the air was still hot and humid, still stuffy. Old- fashioned lamps burned brilliantly all around the front room, beaming their electric light out the windows, through the torn screens, into the growing darkness and onto the dusty ground. Sara gathered herself on the sofa to the right of the door, bright but serious and expectant.

As Wes sat in Pitcher's old chair next to the cold, sooty fireplace, Sara's touches were apparent everywhere. The room had been dusted and swept, the furniture brushed clean, the doilies laundered, the knick-knacks on the shelf neatly aligned—and the frame of Kathryn's picture brightly polished. The fireplace was cleaned of logs and ashes and through the adjoining doorway, in the small kitchen, the counters sparkled cleanly. New, colorful dish towels hung from the drawer pulls.

"Sara," he began, "how serious are you about all this?"

She pulled back instantly. Wes was different today, somehow. Not her friend. A hidden enemy. She discarded her Southern accent. "About all what?"

He cast a quick glance in her direction, hoping she would not see the uncertainty that he felt. "About keeping all this." His eyes roamed to the land that now lay in virtual darkness.

She didn't move. After all he had done—after all they had done—she could not form an answer.

"I talked to Barry Kroeber today," he tried to explain.

Her back straightened. "So you said."

"He knows he's got a real problem, Sara." He heard his own voice, sounding like someone else. Sounding like some cheap, greedy salesman. "He had an idea for a deal." Sounding like Barry Kroeber.

She was rigid. Unrecognized, unconscious hopes for the future became stillborn. "I thought it was too late for deals."

The room was suddenly too hot, too humid. "You suppose we could go outside?"

On the other side of the screen door, the cool evening air soothed away the heat. Wes led the way down the brick steps and across the dirt yard, but as the porch light faded behind them, she was by his side. Behind their backs, unseen, moths and fireflies tumbled through the electric darkness.

The last pale glow of yellow disappeared from the sky as they neared the river. They stood on the wooden bridge and listened to the soft gurgling and plopping of the running water. With the passing of the sun, crickets began to chirp and the darkness of the night rolled across the sky, unveiling the Milky Way and the many constellations, undimmed by the light of any city. A kind of stillness settled with the night, as the mountains that ringed the valley lost their depth and seemed to rise straight up from the valley floor. The night air was cool.

Sara leaned both arms on the ponderous bridge railing and stared into the mirror of the water. Moonlight from above reflected from below and flickered on her face. She didn't want to talk, didn't want to hear what Wes had to say. But she had to know. "What does he want?" she asked softly.

Wes leaned an elbow on the rail, wanting Sara to look at him, but she didn't. "Sara," he began hesitantly, "he's willing to cut his project way back. Way back. Back to something that's just enough to get him out of the hole he's in."

It was as she feared. Wes had never understood, never known, and now—

"He's willing to settle for just the uppermost part of the valley, near the river canyon," Morrison went on. "He'll pay you a good price, a real good price, and he'll build you any kind of house you want right here, even plant a screen of trees so you'll never even know the development is there. You could both have what you want."

Completely unaware that he was compromising his client for his own unrecognized desires, Morrison pushed on. "If you could stand to give up some of the land, you could give up teaching and live up here—and never have to work again."

She stood. She would not acknowledge hearing a single word from him.

"He's trying to compromise, Sara," Morrison urged.

Her resolve collapsed. She had to speak. "I know that."

As the last few imperceptible rays of daylight were lost and the night became total, colors began to appear silently in the northern sky. In the black space far above them, a solar storm that had been hissing and crackling in their radios for days was finally finding its way into the atmosphere near the north pole and spiraling downward, sparking and flashing with rosy plumes and silver fire, spreading violet sheets and green streamers across the skies.

Sara stared upward at the faint glow, her awed face lit by the dancing lights of the sun in the night. "Oh, how beautiful," she breathed. Her eyes darted up and around, following the shift of the colors above the distant horizon.

Beside her, face also turned upward, Wes nodded. "It's the aurora borealis."

"It's so beautiful," she said again. A breath came and went from her. "How do you ever get used to it?"

The lights flared and receded, leapt back and forth across the sky, faded and returned in different colors. "I don't know," he confessed. "I've never seen it, before tonight."

Red tinged to amber and flared into gold, swept across the sky, darted, dimmed, and spewed forth again, spilling against the black.

"I can't, Wes," Sara said as the colors ran and mixed. "I'm sorry. I just can't. I can't do that to Jerome's land."

Their eyes met for an instant and she could tell that he did not understand. The river swirled and lapped over a half-submerged log, gurgled, paused, then ran along its way, its watery mirror a kaleidoscope.

"No." For a moment, her eyes closed. "No, it's not mine."

The gold that once had been in the hills flared in the sky and became copper, and the copper degraded to mutating blues and greens that set off storms of red and pink and yellow.

Face tilted upward, Sara filled her lungs with the cool night air. She wanted so much for Wes to understand, to share her feelings. "If I let this place go, any part of it—"

Crimson and aquamarine sparred across the sky, were split by flickering golden bands that vanished into blue streamers.

Wes had to listen, had to understand. It meant so much. "He kept it just like it was," she said so softly that Wes had to strain to hear, "so it would never change, so he would never lose her." Jerome Pitcher had given his land to Sara if for no other reason than because he didn't have anyone else to take care of Kathryn's love after he died. Sara wiped dry the corners of her eyes and tightly clamped her arms around her waist. "It's not mine to change," she said. "And if you don't understand that—"

The northern lights throbbed and ran, spilling and scything, rose and amber spears, opal and golden shields, arrows of crimson and sweeping clouds of silver.

He could only barely see past her words. But he could hear through the darkness that what she was saying had touched her deeply. Hers was a vision of pure emotion. The hours of legal research meant nothing, no more than the strain of the court appearances that Morrison at heart hated to attend. No more than the rancor that had been created, the lines he had crossed and the rules he had bent. Whatever Sara envisioned, Wes could not see. "So you were doing all this for Pitcher? All this time?"

She looked at him as the last of the aurora played itself out on the fringes of the horizon, and when she spoke she feared that he could see her thoughts in her eyes. "Yes," she said, "Who were you doing it for?"

Chapter Seventeen

Crossing the pools of blue-white light that garishly lit the lot of Barry Kroeber's dealership, Diana left the hot and humid summer night and entered the air-conditioned showroom.

Breathing the supercooled air, she looked about for her brother for a moment, then walked deeper into the store. Rose Sickle's clerical staff had gone long ago and only the duty salesmen were left to keep her out of the corridors that led to Kroeber's private office. Passing the sales cubicles, she asked of one of the men: "Barry?"

The man on the telephone pointed to the innards of the building. "He's with a customer, though," he tried to caution, but Diana strode on without listening. The salesman merely shrugged his shoulders. Diana was his boss' sister. She had the right to come and go. He would not interfere.

Winding her way through the warren of corridors, Diana at last recognized her brother's office. Without knocking, she twisted the knob and swung open the door.

Discovery. Shame. Screaming silently, spinning, falling.

Young and exquisitely shaped. Bright red dress pulled off shoulders and bunched up above hips, exposing large breasts and shapely legs wrapped tightly around Barry. Light reflecting off black stockings. Red high heels lying on the floor. Long, curly blonde hair straying across closed eyes. Painted mouth open.

Horror. Wretched, ugly horror.

Barry in front of her, sweating. Trousers around his ankles. Shirt tails hanging loose. Moving, moving, moving. Pounding her, holding her against him. Framed awards shaking on the wall.

A fraction of a second. Obscene, appalling, sickening.

Kroeber heard the door open and flung a wild look over his shoulder. He saw Diana's abhorrence and his face twisted.

Diana fled the monster in the office, fearfully abandoning what she had seen and heard and even thought. She ran through the labyrinthine corridors, shaking and stumbling, with the horrid, haunting images of her brother's sweaty, angry face and the woman's long, clutching fingernails pursuing her every step.

It was so vulgar, so cheap, so wanton. They had not been raised that way. Barry and she didn't talk about it, they didn't enjoy it, they didn't do it unless they had to. She had done it with Phil to have children, and to please him, and that was all. Barry—the filthy, sucking image swarmed over her.

She hid in the customer lounge, cowering on the plastic couch, drawing in upon herself, fending off the persecuting visions that pried at her with cold, revolting fingers. Occasional customers came by, saw her and shied away.

She rocked back and forth and the minutes passed without notice. The images could not settle if she continued to move, and if they could not settle they could not stay with her.

Not real. Not real at all. It couldn't be. Not in any way she understood. Not her brother. Something like this could not happen in the world she knew. Her denial grew with each second.

The images tired of chasing her and began to fade. Slowly, one after another, they disappeared. And as they left, they uncovered another picture. Diana saw it at once, before it had fully emerged, and her understanding began to burn. The ugly moment with Barry became far away, so far away that she couldn't see it or remember any part of it. As the last bedeviling vision faded, she already had seen what had really happened, already had seen the image of the real cause of her miserable, unending torment.

Red high heels clicked on the hard tile. The shoes stopped abruptly at the entrance to the lounge.

Emerging from her protective ball, Diana spread her arms on the couch and raised her gaze from the floor of the small room. The woman in the red dress was standing in the doorway. She was tall and very pretty. "Oh," she said, obviously surprised, but somehow disdainful. She tried to smile but the effort failed and her expression wavered from embarrassment to shame and finally settled into the same defiance that Barry had shown.

Diana smiled back, a strange, warped expression. She knew this pretty woman from somewhere. The woman was unfriendly but didn't mean any harm, didn't know what she had done. It was the other woman, the woman who truly haunted Diana, who had sent this woman to Barry.

Feeling exposed in the short red dress, the woman did not approach the vending machines, as she had intended. For another long moment she stared at Diana. Seeing something that she could not understand, something that frightened her somehow, she turned and walked out of the dealership. As she did, the envious eyes of every salesman turned and watched the swing of her breasts and hips against the tight red fabric of her dress, the scissoring of her stockinged legs above her spiked heels. Every one of the men, married or not, followed her every move, dreaming of what she was like, dreaming of being in Kroeber's place, dreaming of what it must have been like. They watched until the woman was lost in the night.

Staring at his sister as if he never had seen her before, as if she was nothing more than a troublesome customer, Barry Kroeber finally asked: "Did you want something?"

He had appeared in the doorway without her seeing him, his suit and tie properly arranged and secured. Yet, the thick black hair that always covered his forehead was still damp at the ends with sweat. She had no idea how much time had elapsed.

He was her brother and yet he was not. Something had happened to him, and she could well imagine what. She should have known. She should have known. Her big brother did not do what, deep inside her, she knew she had seen. "I thought of something," she said, meekly testing.

"And it couldn't wait?"

He hurt her with his manner. Biting her lip, her face darkened. For years after their mother's divorce, while Barry had been building his career and his wealth, while Diana had been praying for her marriage to amount to something, they had seen little of each other and had spoken even less. When he had first approached her about all this, she had sensed, perhaps known, that he had wanted to reconcile only because he needed her to get to their uncle's land. Now, even though Sara Owen had beaten them at every turn, even though Sara had refused to sell them even a fraction of the property, Barry seemed not himself. He seemed to need his sister no longer.

Still sitting, Diana looked up at him, wanting him to be himself, to understand her again. "It's the land that's the problem, Barry."

"What?" His words were clipped. Diana was in another world. "What the hell does that mean?"

Her expression had not changed and for a moment Kroeber wondered if she had even heard him.

She had. She tried again. "The land, Barry. It has to stay where it is."

"No shit." He inhaled an angry breath. "What in the hell are you talking about?"

He wasn't going to understand, she thought. It really had happened. "We can't move it, Barry. Don't you see?" Her hands met and drew apart, met and drew apart. Separating. She watched the division intently. Separating. Why didn't he see?

To Kroeber, Diana seemed to be pulling salt-water taffy. He moved inside the room, into her line of sight. The last thing he needed was her making some kind of scene while he was trying to sell cars. "Are you okay?"

It all seemed so plain, so obvious to her. Separation. Separation was everything. "We can't make the land go away, Barry, don't you see?"

Kroeber grimaced. Five years ago, with her husband threatening divorce and her children about to enter their teens, Diana had become dependent on diet pills and prescription drugs just to get her through each day. In her face tonight was the same agitation, and in a way the same dependence. She needed help, of some kind, from somebody, but he had neither the time nor the inclination to be the one to give it.

"Let's talk about this another time, okay?" he suggested. "I've still got customers in the store. All right?"

Diana caught her next thought as it began to pass her lips, and sucked it back inside of her with her breath. As her spine began to straighten, her shoulders pulled back and she grew in height. Gaze fixed on her brother, she continued to rise, as if peeking over some fence at some horrible, hidden thing. The arrogance that Barry had always shown to her once again cloaked his face and his every manner, cloaking him so well that he could not see.

They could not take the land away from Sara. It would stay in the valley forever. That was its place. It was such a simple thing to see. The only thing that could change, the only thing that could move, the only thing that could separate was—Sara. If they were to keep the land and Sara apart, Sara would have to go. Their only chance was to force Sara out of the valley, far from the land that was theirs. If he could not see something so plain, it was because Sara had blinded him.

Balancing for a moment, she abruptly collapsed into the confusion of her former self. Her head swung loosely. Nausea began to sweep over her. A cold rock found its way into her throat and she couldn't swallow it.

It was true. Just as she had seen it. Just as the visions had revealed. He had been corrupted. Her big brother Barry had been corrupted. He had fallen for Sara, too, just like everyone else. Sara's pretense of sweetness and grace had overwhelmed him, blinding him to what she really was, blinding him to what his own sister had to say. Even his expression said to Diana that he did not understand her.

"Never mind," she whispered. She edged by him and out of the lounge. He did not try to stop her.

Across the street, in her little compact car, Diana sat and stared until the lights were put out at the dealership, until the doors were locked and the salesmen drove away. Minutes later, Barry's big sedan swung onto the road and headed for his rural mansion, oblivious to his sister.

She was alone, and she would stay that way. She would not come here again.

* * *

She had been just past twelve, her brother Will barely ten. Her mother had died only two months earlier, and she had not yet learned how to go to school, keep the house clean, take care of her brother and help out her dad without exhausting herself every day. She had been small and slight then, barely covering a corner of the seat in the big yellow school bus, hardly strong enough to lug the textbooks that her father had strapped together for her with an old leather belt. She had her father's persistence, though, and his stubbornness, too, and together those two traits had helped her win through the bullying that her size had invited.

She had tried to be a mother and a sister to Will, a daughter and a friend to her father, and still be the woman her Mom had taught her to be. Over thousands of days and nights that now seemed so few, over a stream of birthdays and holidays celebrated and anniversaries passed over, Will had grown up and her father had grown old, until one day she found herself leaving her home, married to a wonderful man who promised that he always would care for her. On that bright summer day, she saw her father cry for the second time.

She had not been at the hospital when her mother had died, had not seen her father's grief. But two months later, he had driven them in their old two-tone Chevrolet station wagon out to one of his favorite fishing spots along the Sacramento River, a ragged spit of land with deep, dark holes hidden along its curving banks.

With the car parked on the sandy soil, its tailgate their picnic table and stovetop, its cargo compartment their changing room and tent for the night, her dad had helped Will and her rig their dime-store fishing rods and cast for spiny catfish and foot-long trout. All day, they had plucked fish from the water or played along the miniature beach, hunting sand crabs and eating bologna sandwiches for lunch while their father listened with one ear to a Giants baseball game on the car radio.

In the evening, building a fire from driftwood and downed limbs, they had gutted their catch and cooked it on green wood skewers over the coals, eating it hot with their fingers right off the stick. Then her father had dug around in the car and produced what had seemed to her to be an enormous bag of plump, sugary white marshmallows. Browned on the ends of new twigs, they had been hot and gooey in—and all around—her mouth. Will had roasted one after another, popping each into his mouth while grinning from ear to ear, but after too many such treats he had complained of a stomach-ache, so her father had risen from the fire to prepare the car for the night.

He had been gone a long time when Sara finally went to look for him. She had found him standing on the river bank, watching the slowly rolling river, his cheeks wet with silent tears.

Sara rolled over on the lumpy little bed, struggling out of her dream, moaning, reaching for Jack. Her gently patting hand found only the edge of the bed, and then the small wooden nightstand. Pulling the pillow from her face, through her blurry eyes she saw the bright patchwork quilt that covered the twin bed in the second bedroom of Jerome Pitcher's home. As she raised up on one elbow to orient herself, the bed seemed to spin inside the dark room. In a moment she recognized the closed door, her clothes on a chair across the room, the moonlight outlining the curtained window. What she had dreamed and where she now was came together upon her and with a sharp groan she collapsed back into the bed, face down into the pillow.

Digging her way into the mattress and the rumpled bedcovers, clutching the pillow to her face and chest, she squeezed her eyes shut again and held her breath, waiting for the sadness and loneliness to go. The dream left her slowly, the very real sensations of the sand between her toes and the sun on her face, the water around her legs and the marshmallows in her mouth, the sight and sound of her father, gradually faded away as her heart calmed and her breath slowed. But when the dream was gone, she could feel how small and empty the little house was, how far it was from its neighbors, how big were the spreading fields of the valley. Rolling onto her back, she gazed at the darkened ceiling, wondering how Jerome Pitcher had been able to live so alone for so long. And then she realized, the thought coming unbidden, how much alike the old man and her father had been.

Its ring muffled but still harsh, the old black telephone in the living room sounded out again, and it occurred to her that it had been ringing for some time. Sitting up suddenly, tossing the pillow to one side, Sara pulled her hair up out of her face with one hand. "Not again."

The telephone bell jingled again insistently as she flipped the bedcovers off of her. The short-sleeved top and oversized shorts of her pajamas were light green satin, but she did not collect her robe before stumbling against the door. Twisting the loose old knob and pulling, she felt her way down the hallway to the front room.

"You'd better be there this time," she said to the telephone. For two days now the metallic ring had summoned her to speak to no one. She had run from the barn, left the dinner table and even wrapped a towel around her wet hair just to answer the thing. Each time the line had been dead. Three times last night she had crawled from her bed to stop the ringing that always continued until she lifted the receiver. The second time last night the line had not gone dead immediately, and she had heard a noise in the earpiece after she said hello. A cough, a laugh, she could not tell. She had waited, only to be rewarded by a click and the buzz of the dial tone. Today, she had been disturbed five times, once in the morning, once while having her lunch and three times in the evening.

The luminescent hands on a small electric clock next to the telephone read almost two o'clock in the morning. She sighed heavily at another night of disrupted sleep. The telephone was a very old model that could not be unplugged from the wall and leaving it off the hook simply brought a raucous beeping that kept her from any sleep at all.

As she reached for the lamp the set jangled again and she jerked back her hand as if the thing had fangs and had lunged at her. In the short silence between rings, she stabbed at the lamp and clicked the switch. Reassuring warm yellow light poured forth. Lifting the receiver to her ear with one hand, she kept the switch hook depressed with her other. As the next ring ended, she slowly released the hook and listened. She had about four seconds before the next ring was due, before the person on the other end would know that she was on the line.

She heard nothing. For two seconds, the line carried not even a whisper of static. Then, shockingly loud because she was not expecting it, there was a sudden rustle and the sound of someone clearing his or her throat. Four seconds after that, a woman said, "Oh!" and the line went dead.

The night was warm but a shivering chill ran up and down Sara's back. She had played games with the telephone when she was a child, and supposed that even Ash Creek or Smith's Fork had their share of mischievous children. But this felt different. This was more like a call she had received shortly after she had been married, when Jack was still working the night shift. At three o'clock in the morning, the man on the line had warned her that she only had six weeks left. For what, he hadn't said. She had not been able to shake the ominous fear for days.

The dial tone was buzzing in her ear. She lowered the receiver into its cradle and reached to switch off the lamp, but paused. Retrieving her robe from the second bedroom, she turned on the old black-and-white television set, bent the rabbit ears, and began twisting the channel selector, hunting for a familiar old movie or two to keep her company till dawn.

The Saturday morning sun eased through the windows of the kitchen first, finding the linoleum cold, the coffee pot empty and unheated. Warming that room first, it began to trickle into the front room through the windows that faced the barn, and when it had reached its full strength it climbed to the top of a side table, leaped upward and touched Sara's sleeping face.

Pulling the blanket she had stolen from her bed closer up around her chin, she murmured, complaining to no one about the chill on her bare feet and her cramped position, the crick in her neck and the heat of the sun that warmed her cheek. Her eyelids fluttered as she began to hear the hissing of the snowy television screen, and she licked her lips at the thought of hot, buttery coffee cake and steaming coffee on a lazy weekend morning.

The bell shattered the morning, blasting like an alarm. Sara's head flew upward as her legs kicked off the chair and her hands threw the blanket from her. Before the telephone rang again, she had gasped, found her breath, risen to her feet and laid one hand over her pounding heart.

The ring pealed again throughout the old house, much quieter now that she was up and awake. Staring at the old black set in disbelief, her eyes narrowed and her face became set. "All right," she said. Marching across the room, she lifted the handset in the middle of the next ring.

"Yes?" she asked angrily.

"This is Western Union in Redding," said an older man's voice. "I have a telegram for Sara Owen."

Animosity vanished instantly but its absence left confusion. "Western Union?"

"I'll read it to you now," the agent's patient, professional voice said. "And you'll get it in the mail in a day or two, all right?"

She held her head with her free hand. "A telegram? From whom?"

"It's from a doctor named Clarence Hobarth. It reads—"

"I don't know—"

"'Father gravely ill.'"

"Oh, my God."

" 'Your presence needed urgently. Come at once.' "

"Oh, dear God," Sara whispered.

The agent lowered the paper from which he was reading. "Did you get that?"

Her voice barely carried over the line. "Yes."

"Do you need me to read it again?"

"No."

"All right," said the agent. "Like I said, I'll mail this to you."

"Okay."

"Okay. Goodbye."

The line clicked and went dead and she dropped the handset into its cradle. "Daddy?" she said in a tiny, strained voice.

Rushing to the kitchen, she seized her purse from the table and dashed back into the living room. Pawing frantically through the bag, she dug out her little address book and flipped through the pages until she found the number she needed. Crouching over the end table, she cradled the receiver between her shoulder and her ear and with shaking fingers began to spin the dial.

The line clicked and hissed and clicked again as she bounced on her feet and hugged her waist. Then she heard the ringer and thirty seconds later a woman's greeting, spoken in a strong New England accent.

"Frances," Sara said quickly to her stepmother. "This is Sara. I just got Doctor Hobarth's telegram. What happened? What's wrong with Dad?"

"Sara?" In a small seaport on the coast of Maine, the second woman Sara's father had married looked at her lunch on the kitchen table and said into the telephone, "Sara, honey, there's nothing wrong with your father. Whyever did you think there was?"

Sara's motion stilled. "I just got a telegram, Frances." From Redding, she thought, not Maine. "Western Union just called with a telegram from Doctor Hobarth, saying Dad's really sick, and I should come right away."

There was a pause on the other end of the line. "I don't think we know a Doctor Hobarth, Sara," Frances finally said. "Are you sure that was the name?"

Though she could not be seen, Sara nodded. "Clarence Hobarth, is what the agent said. Isn't that Dad's doctor?"

Her stepmother's voice was firm. "No, dear, your father sees Doctor Cooper, not that he needs to all that often. Salt air seems to have done him some good. But it's Ralph Cooper, up the road a ways, in Bangor."

With one hand, Sara pulled back the hair that had fallen into her eyes. "That's right," she remembered. A square of sunlight shone through the kitchen window and into the living room. She focused on it and shook her head. She had slept in a chair all night long and now was standing in the living room in her pajamas making a frantic long-distance call. Just because of a prank. "So there's nothing wrong, as far as you know?"

"Nothing wrong that I know of, dear. Your Dad's down at the hardware store, at the moment, or I'd put him on and you could ask him yourself."

"Oh, that's all right. What's he doing now?"

Frances sighed. "Oh, he said something about needing a whoppitidoodle to fix some thingamajig that's not broken in the first place—you know your father."

A smile appeared on Sara's lips. He'd like Wes, I'll bet. "Yeah, that sounds like Dad, all right."

Sara's stepmother, though wholly unlike her natural mother, was a strong, amiable woman who liked Sara very much. Frances asked, "Dear, are you sure that telegram was meant for you?"

Sara's nod was imperceptible. "It was for me, Frances."

"Well, that's very strange. I don't know what to say, then, dear. But your father's fine, I'm sure of that. Believe me, I'm as concerned as you are."

"I know, Frances," Sara answered, trying to hide a minute amount of resentment that for some reason had surfaced inside of her. "I guess there must have been some kind of mix-up."

"You want me to have him call when he gets back?"

Dropping the speaker from her mouth, Sara sighed again. She was tired and perplexed, and all she wanted to do at the moment was relax. Back into the mouthpiece, she answered, "No, that's all right. Just tell him I called, and that I'll call tonight."

She said goodbye and hung up. Frances must think she was a fool. Calling long distance just because of somebody's practical joke. Her Dad would probably laugh at her tonight. She held a deep breath for a few seconds, let it out, and turned toward the bedroom to get dressed.

Her shriek was sharp and short, not even a scream, just a half-second squeal that emptied her lungs as she whirled about.

In the friendly light of the morning sun, the black telephone seemed innocuous, but then it rang again. It rang twice more before she slowed her heart and forced herself to step toward it. From three feet away she lunged at it, ripping the handset off its cradle and holding it to her ear in angry silence.

Someone breathed at the other end of the line. She gathered her own voice.

"Sara?" someone said. "Are you there?"

She let out her breath. "Wes?"

"Yeah," he answered. "Did I get you up? You sound...."

She could picture him grinning and she smiled too. Running a hand through her tousled hair, she began to relax. "No," she responded, "I'm up."

"Well, good. I thought, if you weren't busy, I might drop by later to have you sign some papers. Would that be okay?"

Carrying the phone across the small room, Sara kneeled on the sofa and pulled back the curtains on the front window. Already, beneath the clear blue sky the air was warming and a light summer breeze was blowing across the pastures and fields. It would be a beautiful day to be with a friend. "How long before you get here?"

Chapter Eighteen

Bounding out of the MGA and across the dusty yard, the Australian shepherd was a blur of black, white and tan, a flash of peaked ears, wild eyes and panting pink tongue. She charged up the steps to the porch of Pitcher's house, screeched to a sitting halt at Sara's feet and licked Sara's unsuspecting hand.

"Hello, little one," said Sara.

Wes was grinning as he climbed out of his roadster, another suntan shirt inherited from his father tucked into his blue jeans. He looked at Sara, standing on the porch in white tennis shoes, pale yellow shorts and a tank top striped in blue and white. "I'd say she likes you," he said as he approached.

"I'd say so." Don’t think I haven’t noticed you driving that little sports car more often, and what that means.

He climbed two of the three steps. "So, how've you been?"

"Pretty good," she nodded happily, forgetting the night and the prankish calls of the days before.

"I've got some stuff for you to sign," he said, remembering the papers in his hand.

She stood back and waved toward the door. "Come on in."

Inside the small house, Wes lay the unimportant papers on an end table and immediately forgot about them. The dog found a spot on the floor and spread out, watching Sara and Wes with her bulging eyes.

"I don't suppose I could get a cup of coffee?" Wes asked.

Sara smiled to herself at her intuition. She had finished her lunch and had put a fresh pot on the stove only a few minutes before he had arrived. "I think I can manage that."

He chose the chair near the door, the one in which Jack had sat. She gave him his coffee and sat near him at the end of the sofa. "So what all have I got to sign?"

He shrugged. "Oh, you know. Some inventory statements and distribution schedules and a declaration. It's all pretty routine, since you're the only real beneficiary."

She nodded again, insides whirling. He had brought nothing that couldn't wait till Monday. For all his intelligence, Wes could be so transparent. She tossed her hair and looked at the shepherd. Then again, she thought, maybe he was just trying to seem transparent. To her surprise, she tingled.

"I noticed," he was saying, "that the barn's still pretty clean. Sam Kinney's kids still coming over to feed and clean?"

Her head jittered up and down. "Sometimes before I'm up, too. I don't know how they do it."

A hidden thought made Wes smile. "The advantage of youth," he said to himself.

"Well, all they do is feed, clean and go back home."

"They don't exercise them?"

She felt a pang of guilt. "I haven't seen them—"

"Sara, they've got to get some exercise." Wes looked at her as if she had stolen the crown jewels.

She leaned back from him. "Well, don't look at me!"

Standing, resolute, he said, "Come on."

They walked together to the barn with the shepherd running circles around them as her herding instinct demanded. "What are you going to do?"

The shepherd ran down the aisle, sniffing intently. Wes stopped at the makeshift tack room, hunting for what he needed. "We're going to pick hooves and curry them up and work them a little." He snatched two hoof picks from a collection of the tools in a rusty coffee can and offered one to Sara. "If you're lucky, we might even ride a little."

She shied away from the proffered tool. "I don't want that! And if you think you're getting me on a horse, think again!"

Wes smiled slowly, tossed one pick back into the can and stuck the other in his back pocket. "You don't like horses?"

"I like horses fine. They just don't like me."

Selecting two brushes, one hard, one soft, Wes rubbed them together to clean their bristles. "You just haven't been around them enough."

Sara waved away the spewing dust. "Where we lived in Stockton, when I was little, there were lots of farms around. Sometimes Mom and Dad would take my little brother and me for a walk out to one farm or another to see all the animals and everything. I always ended up watching the horses. Watching, mind you."

Wes walked down the aisle and stopped in front of the stall containing the white appaloosa. A nameplate on the box said Jester. He said the name to himself. Then aloud: "Jester, my name's Wes." The gelding and he warily appraised each other. To Sara, he asked, "You never took any riding lessons?"

"Oh, no." Sara's expression dimmed. "We could never afford anything like that, and after my Mom died, there was no time. Somebody had to take care of Will, and Dad drove a truck for a ready-mix company, so he was always too busy."

The appaloosa's halter and lead ropes were on a peg on the wall of the stall. Setting the brushes on the rail, Wes took the halter, attached the rope, opened the stall door and stood quietly for a moment.

Sara watched him as warily as the horse. "Sometimes," she continued, "when Dad couldn't leave us alone, he'd take us along in the dump trucks or the cement mixers." She crossed her arms. "We'd ride around to his jobs, bouncing around in the cabs of those big old trucks, on those high seats, way up off the ground, with him pushing and pulling those long, skinny stick shifts, and the gears grating every time...."

Wes was trying to approach the horse without scaring it. "Uh-huh," he said distractedly.

She was talking too much, Sara realized, something that Jack had said was her only fault. "Anyway, I guess there was never really enough money or time for horses after Mom was gone," she concluded. Over the years, she had come to realize the relative poverty in which she had been raised. "Maybe there never was."

Wes glanced at her. He didn't want her sad. "My Dad," he recalled, "always used to say that when he was young, his family was so poor, sometimes all they had to eat was dirt—and sometimes not enough of that."

She smiled, perfectly well aware of what he was doing. "So anyway, no, I've never ridden."

"Well, today might be your chance." He cooed to the gelding until the horse approached. Showing him the worn green nylon halter in his left hand, with his right he slipped the fraying lead rope over and around the animal's neck, forming a loose loop. "Come on, Jester," he said softly. "I'll bet you know this." He put gentle pressure on the rope. In several seconds, the horse yielded and lowered his head so Wes could slip on the halter.

Sara hung over the low front wall of the stall. "How'd you get him to do that?"

Wes flipped the halter strap over the horse's neck and buckled it into place. "Oh, he already knew that. If the rest of his training is as good, you'll have a good ride." His smiled teased her.

She backed down the aisle as Wes led the thousand pounds of appaloosa from the stall and tied it to a post. The horse watched her with one eye. She watched back with two.

Wes softly ran his hand down the horse's left front leg, and a moment later the gelding responded, lifting his leg. Wes caught the hoof by the tip, extracted the pick from his back pocket and began flicking out dirt and manure. He worked his way around the animal, repeating the process on the other three hooves.

Sara watched, instinctively learning by watching. She also kept watching the horse. Every time it moved, she did, too.

Wes began brushing the horse, hard brush, soft brush, again. Finishing one side of the horse, Wes walked to the other, running his hand on the appaloosa's hindquarters as he did. He studied Sara from over the animal's withers and under the brim of his Yankees cap. So alike, so different. He had moved hundreds of miles away, but the unjust and unexplainable loss, the forlorn and insatiable longing, the incessant and insoluble wondering, stayed with him wherever and whenever. At some point in the day or in the night, every day or night, he wished and wanted for what had been but never could be again. But still he hoped. He would always hope. And with the hope that never died came the hurt that never lessened. You’re being a fool again, he told himself. A total fool. Again. But he would not listen to himself. His mind had no control over his heart.

He glanced at Sara between each brush stroke. "Being in the country is a different kind of life, you know. More relaxed, more basic. It's not like the city at all." He bent to brush the horse's belly. Sara could not see his face. "But you'd be surprised how quickly you can get used to it."

"I can't even get used to the fact that there aren't any parking meters," Sara said.

Standing again, Wes cleaned the brushes. Dust and horsehair flew everywhere.

"Pffft," said Sara.

Wes showed a small grin. "You should see it when they're losing their winter coat." He rubbed the horse on the withers, looking in its eyes, seeming to talk to it without talking. "Okay, boy," he led the horse down the aisle, "let's see why you're named 'Jester'."

Sara and the dog tagged after him and when he left the barn they walked by his side. At the sagging gate to the rusting fences of a round pen, he slid the bolt on the gate and led the horse inside.

Sara closed and bolted the gate behind him and stood on a hay bale so she could lean easily over the top of the fence. The shepherd put her paws on the hay, decided against it, and lay down in the dirt next to her. Beyond the round pen, looming above the nearby mountains even though it was fifty miles away, was Mount Shasta, its now bare, rocky slopes hovering in the air above a puffy belt of white clouds.

In the middle of the pen, Wes stopped and unsnapped the lead rope and coiled it. Holding his arm out in one direction, he flapped the coiled rope with his other hand. "Walk on."

The horse obligingly circled the pen along the fence. After half a dozen circuits, Wes clucked to the horse. "Taar-ot," he called. "Taar-ot." He clucked again, and the appaloosa broke into a slow, even trot. He clucked in time with the diagonal movement of the horse's legs, guiding her around the circle with his hands. "That's a good horse," he praised, pivoting at the center of the circle.

As Jester completed yet another circle, Wes called out. "Can-ter! Jester, can-ter!" he called again, making a kissing noise until the horse broke into a slow lope.

"Beautiful," Sara called. Wes had a sure hand, a calm, confident manner that seemed to encourage obedience, something that seemed instinctive to him, something that up till now, she had seen only hints of.

Wes turned his head, smiling. "He’s pretty nice, huh?"

Jester skidded to a halt, whirled about and galloped full out back around the circle.

Wes heard the sudden charge and spun about. "Whoa!" he shouted. Jester ignored him and bolted by dangerously close, a flying, hurtling mass. Rocks and dirt flew through the fence from his hooves. Sara ran away from the fence.

Sprinting into the appaloosa's path, Wes whipped the lead line in a circle in front of the horse’s face. "Whoa!" The animal skidded to another stop, lowered its head, blew into the dirt and looked at him.

Wes and Jester stared at each for several seconds. "Don't do that," he finally spoke, severely though not harshly. The horse blew again, though not as intensely.

Sara, yards away, was now laughing softly. "Well, now we know why he’s got his name."

Wes cocked his head and frowned. If horses could grin, Jester was doing it. Wes stared at him and twirled the rope slowly. If the horse was as clever as it seemed, he would know what that meant. The animal stood up straight. Wes pointed at the appaloosa's hindquarters and waggled the rope. “That way,” he called patiently.

Jester obeyed and Wes kissed him up to a canter again. Eventually, the horse dropped his head and rounded his back as he performed his circles.

In court, Sara realized, Wes was only acting. His brashness and coldness were a play-show, a role, just a part of his job. Here, while he had no doubt about what he wanted to do, or how to do it, he was not mean, not heartless. He did not touch the horse once.

The horse completed his loping circles quickly, rocking along in an easy stride, dirt puffing around his hooves each time they struck the ground. Wes reversed his course several times, until he finally returned him to a trot, and a few minutes later to a walk to cool the animal down. Half an hour after he started, the horse willingly followed him as he walked back to the gate.

Wes assessed Sara. "Ready to get on?"

“Me? Aren’t you going to ride him?”

“Ah, I ride all the time.”

He wasn’t catching on. “Are you sure he’s safe?”

“The only way you’d be safer is if you don’t get on.”

“That’s fine with me.”

“I’m sure it is,” he smiled.

“I’m glad you understand.” She smiled happily, because he understood, and because she had her way.

“Completely. Now, get on.”

Her happy smiled vanished in an instant. "Don't make me. I’m serious."

He chuckled lightly. "Come on." He lead the way to the tack room, picked the best western saddle off a rack, found a matching saddle pad, a bridle, and hauled them all back out to the pen.

Jester craned his neck as if to approve or not of how he was being saddled.

Sara watched in trepidation. "Do you think this is a good idea?"

"Sure." Wes fed the latigo through the cinch ring, expecting Jester to take a full breath to prevent him from cinching the saddle tightly, but the horse's belly didn't swell.

She tried again. "You're not really going to make me do this, are you?"

Wes tied off the latigo. "You'll love it," he promised, enjoying himself.

"What if he gallops off?"

"I'll keep the lead rope on him and just walk you around.”

"But what if he runs?"

"Tell him to stop.” He was beckoning to her, a playful, inquisitive smile on his lips.

Sara didn’t know what to do. Wes looked so good in his work shirt and tight blue jeans. So at home, so sure of himself. And he wouldn’t take no for an answer.

Jester snorted.

"He says, 'Well, get on!' " Wes interpreted. He watched the horse carefully. The animal may not have been ridden in some time and might still be a bit fresh, despite the exercise, despite his seeming calmness. He kept a secure hold on the lead rope.

Smiling anxiously, not wanting to disappoint him, Sara slipped through the gate and cautiously approached the horse. "What do I do?"

Wes scratched his cheek. Mounting a horse was not easy, and Jester was tall, while Sara was short. "Here, I'll give you a leg up. Grab ahold of the saddle and bend your left leg. On three, just pop up."

Her bare leg was smooth and soft against his hands. He stood close to her and waited, hoping she wouldn't move too soon.

She took a quick breath and hid the thrill of his touch. Bouncing as he counted down, she suddenly was high in the air over the appaloosa, swinging her right leg across the saddle and then abruptly she landed and was sitting on top of the horse. Jester jerked only a little. Seizing the saddle horn, she stared down at Wes.

"You made it!" he encouraged.

The horse moved, shifting its weight, and Sara realized just where she was. Immediately looking for the way down, she said quickly, "Okay, that was fun."

"Stay loose. Move with the horse."

Under her, the appaloosa rocked like an earthquake and she clung to the saddle horn with a gasp. Even at a slow walk, they seemed to be moving at breakneck speed. Wes stayed by the horse's head, his strong back toward her, leading the animal in small, gentle circles. She couldn't see how tight his hand was on the lead rope, how close to the halter ring. The horse knew who was in control.

"Okay, I'm done now," Sara said at the close of the first circle. Wes walked on.

At the end of the second circuit: "He's probably getting tired now, don't' you think?" Wes started another round.

"I'll cry?" at the end of the third. Wes stopped and loosened his control of the horse.

"Had enough fun?"

Her attempt at a scowl didn't dampen his grin. "Get me down."

"Just swing your leg over, hold on, and slide down. I'll catch you."

She seemed to drop an eternity until she felt his hands catch her at the waist and lower her the few remaining inches. When she reached the earth, for a moment she didn't try to move away and for a longer moment he didn't try to let go of her.

She gave him one long challenging look, hmmped, and walked toward the gate. "Okay, now let's see you."

Wes smiled while she couldn't see. He slipped on a headstall and curb bit. Checking his stirrup length, he gathered the reins, patted the horse's neck and swung himself up into the saddle. Don’t make me look like a fool, horse.

Sara already had fled through the gate. She stood beside the Australian shepherd, which couldn't make up her mind if she wanted to sit or lie down.

The gelding was well trained, Wes soon found. At a slow walk, hands and legs seeming not to move, he put the horse through some easy moves. Jester was quick to respond but quick to cheat, too, and Wes had to put him through the same exercise three times before the appaloosa accepted the fact that the man in the saddle really did know what he was doing. He turned on the forehand, then the haunches. Soon, he trotted smoothly, loped readily, stopped like a reiner and turned like a cutter.

Sara felt warm and cold at the same time as Wes easily dismounted. She shook her head as he kindly patted and scratched the animal and thanked it for the ride. He was so different here.

"See? Nothing to it." He led the horse back to the barn.

Sara rubbed both arms, following along at a safe distance. “Oh, sure. You’ve been doing it all your life.”

With the appaloosa tied, Wes lifted off the saddle and pad, hefted it to get a better grip, looked at her and shook his head. “Not quite.”

“I’ll bet you’ve got a wall full of ribbons.” She didn’t think so, really, but wanted to see his reaction.

It was a small laugh that sounded sad. "No, I'm not much for shows."

That, she thought, was in a strange way very true. She followed him back and forth as he put away the horse and the tack

Wes wiped his hands on his jeans and leaned against the stall rail. It was a very nice feeling to be working with horses on a warm summer afternoon in the valley, with a pretty girl like Sara around. But it also was like lying on his back, eyes closed, on a raft on a fast river, rushing toward rapids he could hear but refused to see. He took off his hat and wiped the sweat from his forehead.

Sara remembered her manners. "You look like you could use a Coke."

He nodded. "That'd be nice."

She ran to the house, but went into the bathroom first. The wind had blown her long brown hair about, and she brushed it quickly. Turning on the water, she took a bar of soap in her hands to wash her face, but then stopped. Her image looked back at her from the mirror. That would be too much. She set the soap back in its dish and turned off the water. It would mean she was hoping too much. Smoothing her cheeks clean with just her hands, she went from the bathroom to the kitchen and pulled two ice cold cans of Coca-Cola from the old refrigerator.

She found Wes standing in the middle of the round pen, holding the lead rope of the two-year-old filly, As You Dream. He clucked to the young horse and told her to walk on, but she refused to move. He twirled the rope, but she ignored it. Her young, strong back was straight, her coat glossy, her hooves firmly planted. He looked at her huge brown eyes a long moment. Her soft ears twitched and turned to catch Sara's arrival, then twisted toward Wes again. She did not want to behave.

There was a catch in Sara's throat as Wes unclipped the lead and coiled it in his hand. The filly had not been started, and he didn’t have the time to do so now. "Go on, Dreamer," he gave in, knowing that it was wrong, that he was teaching her that it was all right to resist. He just knew how she felt.

The mare's chestnut coat gleamed like silk in the golden sunlight of the early evening, her straw-colored mane and tail flying behind her as she pranced and galloped. White stockings flashing as she thundered around the circle, black hooves kicking up dust and dirt into their faces, she ran and stopped, twirled and ran again. She rolled on her back in the soft dirt, legs flaying about, stood to shake and galloped wildly again. She played a game with them, standing defiantly still, making Wes come into the pen and whush at her to make her run around the circle. Outside the fence, Sara ran too, waving her arms, feeling as excited and uninhibited as a little girl. The shepherd barked excitedly whenever the horse moved. Full of spirit, the mare skidded to a halt in the middle of the pen, with the green fields and hills around her and the immense blue sky above her, turned her white blaze toward Sara and Wes and the little dog and whinnied as long and as loud as she could.

With all the horses cooled, fed and watered, with the sun dipping below the highest ridge line of the western hills, Sara walked Wes and the dog to his MGA in the middle of the yard. Pitcher's house was dark and lonely just a few feet away, the lights not yet on, and the day seemed to be ending too soon. Wes scraped at the grime on his hands, then looked at Sara. He extended a dirty hand toward the house. "Mind if I wash up before I go?"

Her quick glance saw the house all lit up and full of the joy that Jerome and Kathryn had felt. "Of course not. Besides, I've still got to sign those papers you brought."

His eyes darted away from hers. "Oh. Right."

"In fact," she brought his gaze back, "how about if I try to scrounge up something for dinner?"

Emerging from the small, old bathroom, hands and face scrubbed clean and unruly hair combed into a semblance of order, Wes found Sara in the kitchen. A heavy cast iron skillet on the stove was sizzling away, while a loaf of bread, a cube of butter and a mostly empty carton of eggs sat on the counter. On a scarred wooden cutting board, Sara was slicing red, ripe tomatoes.

She wiped her hands and with an apologetic smile said, "Canned corned beef hash. Pitcher ate just like my dad. Is that all right? It's not exactly California cuisine, is it?"

Wes sat at the little kitchen table, office-idled muscles weary. "That's fine."

"Dad always made it with some toast, an egg, and tomatoes. Is that okay?" she asked again. Spatula in hand, she gestured around the kitchen. "There's not much else here, even if it's not."

His smile appreciated her concern. "It sounds great."

When the food was ready, she set full plates in front of them, then settled into the little metal-framed chair across from him. Paper towels were spread as place mats and napkins. Above them, the ceiling lamps burned with dark yellow light, while the open windows were black with night. Through the window screens came clean, cool air that cut the hot, greasy climate of the small kitchen, and carried on the air came the undulating chirp of countless crickets.

The rest of the house was still dark, but in the light thrown from the kitchen Wes could see the outlines of the aged living room furniture, the sofa and chairs, the lamps and tables, sitting unchanged in style or position, as it had through thousands of days and nights. Around the doorway from the kitchen to the living room, the wooden frame was cracked and dry, the flaking paint continuing to adhere where it did only through long habit. Black cracks in the painted ceiling radiated from the light fixtures, while on the floor the faded linoleum was worn almost through just inside the doorway. It was indeed an old, old house, well lived in but not well cared for, its once bright colors and cheerful atmosphere now long gone. The decades that had passed, the unhappy stagnation that had settled over the home, were suddenly oppressively real.

"Thirty years," Sara said his thoughts aloud.

A forkful of hash hanging over his plate, a half-eaten piece of toast in his other hand, Wes nodded slowly. "Hard to believe." His eyes swung back from the dark living room.

She set down her utensils and linked her fingers. "Not so hard. Not if it's somebody really special."

He ate the hash off his fork and watched her.

"You didn't meet him," she said. She had, in person only once, but many times after that. "Pitcher was a very simple—" She didn't like that word. "A very straightforward man, honest and loyal. He didn't see things in shades of gray, the way we're taught in college. Only in black and white. To him, a promise meant forever. Especially to the only person who'd ever been special in his life."

She tried to look into Wes’ eyes but he inspected the contents of his plate. She continued, ever softly, "Can't you just see him bringing his new bride here, to this special place, trying hard to make a living before starting a family? And then after Kathryn died, deciding to keep everything just the way it was, so in a way he could still have her—and she could still have her dream?"

Wes poked at a piece of tomato. Sara hadn't really explained before. He had seen in her face and eyes something more than what she said up till now, but until tonight he had not known what it was. She was a sweet, loving, understanding woman, smart and pretty and spirited. Just like before. Oh, God, just like before. Wrinkling his forehead, he pushed the last of his food across the plate with his fork. A glance found and left Sara. "I guess it could happen."

A smile faintly lit her face. Rising, she gathered the dishes and began to scrape them clean. He swiveled in his chair to watch, but soon found that he had to close his eyes to slow his heartbeat.

In a minute she set the plates in the sink, rinsed them under the faucet, then returned to the table. Leaning forward on crossed arms, she smiled impishly and asked the question that had been on her mind for days: "So, Wes, who're you carrying a torch for?"

His innocent face disappointed her. "Me?"

He was in court again, she saw, answering a judge's question with no answer at all. "You."

He shook his head, hoping to evade the inquiry, hoping she would not let him. "Nobody."

"Nobody?" she doubted him again, but sat back in her chair, hands loose in her lap. Waiting.

His very brief smile was both false and genuine. He had protected his privacy all his life, even to the point of locking his bedroom door against his snooping and tattling teenaged sisters. This intrusion, though, was welcome, despite the unhealed wound it probed. "Oh," he said, trying for glibness, "everybody has somebody in their past, don't you think?"

Had the light been dimmer, she would not have been able to see how well he was hiding his expression. He didn't want to tell whatever it was. She rose slowly from her chair. She wouldn’t push any more. She had learned enough already. "I suppose."

He helped her finish cleaning up and make some iced tea, which they drank while sitting on the sofa in the living room, talking, with only a light or two on to keep back the night.

When it came time to leave, they stood for longer than they needed to on the cool porch, while as far as they could see the stars spread across the sky.

"It's so beautiful," Sara said quietly. "In the daytime, in the nighttime.... Every time I came up here," she again chose not to mention Jack, "I always wanted to see this place. But even now, after I've been here for a while, I still can't get used to it. I can't put my finger on it, but...."

"Yeah, it's like that." Standing so close to her, he was all too conscious of how attractive she was—and of the fact that she was still a recently-widowed woman. Still his client.

She let him say that he had to be going, and even let him and the dog slip down the brick steps and halfway to his roadster before she stopped him.

"Wes?" she finally called.

He turned and looked at the indistinct shape on the porch. Her, there on the porch that could have been the portico of the house in San Jose, him leaving for the evening…. Her slim figure in shorts and a blouse, a delicate face, the MG behind him… If Sara’s hair had been up in a pony-tail, the resemblance, in so many ways, would have been too much to consider, let alone to bear. But he did it anyway. Did she, would she, kiss just as tenderly?

"I had a really nice time today," Sara told him, one of those sentences that means so much more than is said.

She could not see his fearfully gratified smile. "Me, too, Sara."

"See you tomorrow?"

"Sure," he agreed before he could stop himself.

She was not sure. He was holding back, holding back something, holding back for some reason. Before he moved she called again, "Come and exercise the horses for me?"

There was not enough light for her to see, so he promised her with his voice. "I’ll be here.”

Chapter Nineteen

Kroeber had no interest in the massive grain pits or the electric conveyors that climbed to the sky, in the towering silos or the bustling loading docks that his cousin Bruce Adamek wanted to show to him.

In a yellow, short-sleeved shirt, a clip-on tie and blue jeans, slim frame moving with energy as he escorted his cousin about the grain elevator and processing plant, Adamek was enthused. Rarely did he have the opportunity to talk to anyone about his work, and never had he had the chance to impress his rich cousin. He led the way along steel mesh catwalks through the immense, busy plant and the dark, dusty warehouse, pointing out the various stages of the storage, processing and shipping of the grain products, stressing how vital was his own job in quality control.

The plant was engulfed by never-ending noise. In Kroeber's ears was a continually changing din. By the end of the tour, despite the foam ear plugs that regulations demanded he wear, his head ached from the clanking of the conveyors and the huuussshhh of the grain sliding through chutes and funnels, from the wet rush of water through flumes and the sharp grinding of the processing machines, from the hot roar of the grain driers and the constant hum of the chaff and seed separators, from the high-pitched whir and piercing beep of the forklifts, from the bass growl of the fully-loaded semi trucks pulling into and out of the broad asphalt yard.

Kroeber tolerated the noise and boredom as best he could, a practiced but still rather stupid-looking smile pasted to his face. He understood very little of what he saw or heard, about moisture content, ventilator fans or inflammable dust, but he did not care. He assumed that the torture would not last forever, and that by enduring it, by pretending to be awed, by pretending that he did not mind the dust soiling his expensive suit, he was gaining favor with his cousin.

On the tarmac that served as a speedway for the big trucks that lugged the grain into the elevator in bulk and carried it back out to the Interstate as processed goods, Adamek halted and turned to Kroeber. "So, what do you think?"

Wind blew hot afternoon air into Kroeber's face along with dirt, grain dust and the stink of the omnipresent diesels. The breeze flapped his coat around legs that were so tired from walking they were beginning to twitch and spasm. He heard the grinding roar and rush of a grain truck close behind him, but refused to look around.

"Pretty damn impressive," he bellowed. "I'd no idea."

Those were the words that Adamek had been seeking. "I didn't think you knew." Adjusting the eyeglasses that he just recently had begun wearing, he pushed his hard hat farther down on his head.

Nodding grudgingly as he looked about, Kroeber stroked further. "You've got one hell of an operation here." His cousin's chest swelled and Kroeber knew that he was pushing the right buttons. He pushed another. "When're they going to put you in charge?"

Adamek laughed, taking the question as half jest, half prophecy. In the back of his mind he too thought that he was long overdue for a promotion, though the chances were growing slimmer every day. "Not soon enough," he returned, only half-joking.

"So," Kroeber's eyebrows arched, "down to business?"

Adamek nodded reluctantly. He had staved off the issue as long as he could. "Come on." Leading the way into the cavernous plant, he climbed a long, steep stairway on steel rungs stamped with raised diamonds and showed Kroeber into a long, rectangular conference room. Several cheap tables abutted each other, packing the room full, while around the tables folding chairs were crammed side by side. On the walls were charts of production schedules, safety posters, and a picture of this month's safest employee. Half empty in one corner stood a water cooler, while on a counter were several pots of coagulating coffee. Adamek poured himself a Styrofoam cup full of the stuff and added a packet of sugar; to be polite, Kroeber accepted his cousin's invitation and took a cup also, cutting the acidic taste as much as possible with a heaping amount of powdered creamer.

He sipped and tried to look as if he was used to such things.

"You know," he began as they sat near the head of the table. "Cathy's already agreed to this. I don't see why you've got a problem with it."

"I've got a problem with it," Adamek answered quickly, "because I already stand to lose everything I've got—including my wife. She'll never forgive me for being so stupid, you know. She said that she knew I was dumb when she married me, but she didn't know I didn't have the brains God gave a goat."

Kroeber waved away the castigation. He brought his wife into his business deals only long enough for her to sign her name where he told her to. "Women don't understand money."

"Except Cathy."

"Except Cathy," Kroeber's head bobbed. "But she's your sister—and she's already agreed to this. And you should, too. You've both got it." He tapped his skull with his forefinger.

"And your sister?" asked Adamek.

Kroeber stared sharply at the table. "I don't know about that. Diana's been in never-never land for a while now."

"Huh." Sipping the hot, thick coffee carefully, Adamek set the cup on the table and turned it slowly with his fingertips. "What I don't get is, since you already were trying it yourself, why didn't you just keep at it? Why'd you give up?"

Just like the time a customer had pointed out an ugly scratch on a prized showroom vehicle, Kroeber shrugged indifferently and moved on. "The important thing to remember is how much this means to us all. You have to keep the big picture in mind. It's the only way we've got left." His voice dropped as he leaned toward Adamek conspiratorially. "And I'm telling you, Bruce, I'll back you up on this." With a closed fist he tapped the air and nodded. "All the way."

Barry was big on promises, Adamek thought, staring at his white cup. He knew that he was not a financial wizard, but he had been following what had been happening, and he had a good idea of his cousin's situation. He put down his feet to brake but felt himself being pulled forward anyway. "And Cathy's already agreed?"

Kroeber knew he had him. "So, what do you think? Can you do it?"

Adamek let a long breath out of his lungs. One path led to ruin, the other—perhaps to worse. "I don't know." His head dipped toward the table. Then, his thin face swung up toward his cousin. "I'll have to think about it."

You'll do it, thought Kroeber.

* * *

Not wanting to be seen in public with him, not wanting to be alone with him, not even wanting to be near him, Cathy Welch had reluctantly agreed to meet her cousin in the bar of a large moter inn in Redding. Amid the universal decor, a small band was playing. It was Tuesday, and people were dancing, coming in for motivational drinks, and going back out again.

Kroeber was waiting for her on a bar stool halfway from the entrance. As she walked up and sat next to him, she knew she should have dressed more plainly. She could see if not feel his eyes on the curves of her figure. She wore a white, soft knit top, blue jeans that over the years had become a size too small, and red high heels. That combination was a mistake this evening, but it was the way she had become accustomed to dressing, a fashion designed to show off her shape and attract the attention that made her feel so good. Now, she wanted no such attention. Kroeber's examination had started at her feet, worked its way up along the curves of her legs, thighs, and buttocks, then focused for a long moment on the way her sweater hung over her chest. Finally, his leering eyes had risen to her face. Why she had wanted to look nice tonight, she just could not imagine.

"Now what?" she skipped any amenities.

Kroeber ordered her a white wine. "You still want to make some money off this thing? Or doesn't that interest you anymore?" he went on before she could answer. Waiting until her face shivered with uncertainty, he added, "Or your husband?"

Her lips turned downward. "I think what he'd like to do is kill you."

"Or you." Kroeber could see that much in her expression.

She was caught and she knew it. The blame for the loss was hers alone. She had persuaded her husband to risk so much of the money that was so dear to him, based only on the wildly optimistic representations of a man she knew to be nothing more than a slick car dealer dabbling in areas beyond his competence.

Her husband had not let her forget that. He had taken control of her social life. She had to report her daily schedule to him, especially who she was going to meet and why. She had to tell him when she was leaving and check in when she returned, and she suspected that he was recording the mileage on her Mercedes. She had no financial independence anymore. He had taken away her credit cards and her checkbook, and had put her on an allowance that he audited. In the bedroom his domination reached its peak. Tonight, she hurt to move, and she had a painful archipelago of bruises from his strong fingers. She loved him and she hated him, all at the same time—and what he might do to her if he knew she was meeting Barry Kroeber again, she did not care to imagine.

"Your brother's already agreed to it, you know," Kroeber lied.

"He would." She sipped her wine and made a face. "So, just what would we have to do?"

"Nothing. Just sign your name."

"And then?"

"I'll have all the work done."

"Who'll pay?"

Kroeber's face reflected the assurance he gave to every customer concerned about the cost of a purchase. "Don't worry about that."

Cathy was not as guileless as she had been earlier this year. "Who'll pay, Barry?"

He sighed, as if he was being forced to give up something, which he was not. "All right. I'll cover all your costs." His neck dipped and hands rose in false subjugation.

"How?" Her husband would have asked that, so she did too. She would have to have all the answers up front this time.

Kroeber exhaled again. There was an open oval in the front of Cathy's sweater, formed when the single button at the top of the curved neckline was fastened. Just down from her neck, the oval displayed a patch of bare skin on which Kroeber's deep-set, dark eyes focused. Below the oval, her breasts rose and fell underneath the draped fabric.

His attention was as obvious as it was disgusting. Cathy's voice lost nothing in tact as she insisted, "How?"

Kroeber's face suddenly wound up with annoyance. Brushing back his hair from his forehead without effect, the annoyance became a collusive smile. "Just don't worry about it, okay?"

She pushed her wine glass across the bar and slid down off the stool. She had known many men like her cousin, and before her marriage even had slept with some of them. Trust, however, was not something she had ever given. "You'd better be right this time," she said as she passed.

* * *

As if misplaced from some existentialist play, the gleaming black luxury sedan rolled down the dirt driveway, only its shining top visible above the waving tops of the green alfalfa. Its powerful engine murmured softly as it propelled the car in virtual silence, the sound of the rocks being crushed under the tires its only real noise. It traveled down the dirt road at a pace it never exceeded regardless of its destination. Its progress was inexorable, as slow as it was undeniable, and the very sight of the vehicle as it crept toward Jerome Pitcher's house was ominous.

Several hundred yards from the small white home, Sara stopped and watched. The mid morning had been too beautiful to stay inside, and after donning her sneakers and some shorts she had gone exploring along the soggy river bank. Now, the glint of the sun on the rooftop of the car was bright in the corner of her eye. Its advance was deliberate, meaningful.

As the sedan slowed its pace still more and eased to a never-ending stop in front of the home, Sara walked, then trotted back toward the house. Still fifty yards away, she paused where the grain had been cut back almost to the ground and squatted among the dusty fragrance of the waving stalks.

The man who emerged from the black sedan was her childhood image of Ichabod Crane and the mere sight of his straight, spiny back sent a shiver over her. He climbed to the porch and stood for a moment. He was not overly tall, nor inordinately thin, but his suit was dark, his collar white, and his long arms hung far down by his sides. His hair was brown and short, and steel-rimmed eyeglasses clung somehow to the elongated oval of his face. Under his left arm, he clutched a leather attaché.

Lightly and slowly, his knuckles rapped the wooden frame of the screen door, rattling the screen and the rusted spring. After a few seconds, his neck flexed forward in a slow curve toward his shoulder, as if by doing so he could peer around the inside corners of the old house. The fingers of one hand loosely gripped the lapel of his coat.

The sound of the slow, deliberate rapping carried across the dry front yard as Sara neared. At his third knocking, she was at the edge of the porch. From the base of the brick steps, behind his back, she asked, "Can I help you?"

She expected him to jump, but he did not. Instead, hand caught in mid swing, he turned slowly at the waist, a small crescent of a smile on his sweaty face. "Mrs. Jack Owen?" he inquired.

"Yes," Sara said before she had really heard the question, and despite her usual talkativeness with strangers, stopped there.

The little arched smile on the man's face seemed to remain fixed even when he spoke. "I'm William MacNeil, Mrs. Owen. We have an appointment?" His voice was as sweet as a summer melon.

Ascending into the shade of the covered porch, Sara stood just a few feet from MacNeil, her hair gathered into a band that left curled wisps to tickle the sides of her face as she shook her head. "I'm not expecting anyone," she said, sure that her faded shorts, muddy tennis shoes and frayed short-sleeved blouse showed at least that much.

"We spoke just the other day?" he prompted gently.

"I don't think so."

"Oh, but I'm sure we did."

His free hand fell slowly and spread away from his side. As Sara followed that movement, she saw him in his dark suit, his gleaming black sedan, his valise and his sad smile all together at once. "Oh, no," she breathed to herself, taken back in time.

Something stabbed inside of her, more fear than pain.

MacNeil clasped his undertaker's hands, while his smile curled farther up his face into a half moon. "It's easy to forget, at times like this."

"This isn't one of those times," she told him sharply.

He let a moment pass, waiting for her to look back at him, and when she did he blinked at her, the semi-circle of his smile rising and falling uncertainly. "Mrs. Owen—?"

Why did he think he was here? she wondered. Had Pitcher risen, only to die again? Had Jack sensed her feelings about Wes and tried to remind her of their short marriage? "Please, I don't mean to be rude...."

His head and eyes dipped in obeisance.

"But what are you doing here?" Her breath trembled. "Just who do you think has died, Mr. MacNeil?"

The man's cheeks bulged as he gritted his teeth. "Mrs. Owen, please excuse me, but I was told that it was your husband who had recently left us. If there's been a mistake—"

"My Jack died two years ago." Sara heard the snap in her voice, and felt, for the first time, a peculiar emptiness, the absence of the familiar pain that had accompanied her long hurt. Then, the harassment became starkly plain, far more than must have been intended, enough to cause her to turn hateful eyes on the innocent man in front of her. "Who sent you out here, Mr. MacNeil?"

His smile vanished and was replaced with nothing.

"Somebody's been playing tricks on me, Mr. MacNeil. And let me tell you, I don't appreciate it. Who sent you?"

Embarrassed, flustered, the man gave way, digging in his inside coat pocket for his appointment book, flipping hastily through the pages while glancing at Sara as if to make sure that she was not raising her hand to him. As he cleared his throat, his unctuous manner receded, but he did not drop his poise. "I don't know what to say, Mrs. Owen," his smooth voice apologized. "I'm sure there's been a mix-up." His eyes flicked up at her.

"Somewhere." He stuffed his calendar back into the recesses of his coat. "I'm very sorry to have intruded."

"Who called you?"

Stepping off the porch, leaving her question behind, he paused at the bottom of the steps and twisted his shoulder to look back at her. "I really am sorry."

She nodded curtly. No one had ever been happy for her loss. "So tell me. Who called you?"

Grasping the door handle of the black sedan, McNeil’s expression fell again. His lips parted, then clamped shut as he sighed heavily in the summer's hot air.

She guessed. "Me."

His oval face nodded once. He eased down one brick step, into the bright sunlight, and for a moment they stared at each other.

She said, finally, "I'm sorry you had to come out for nothing."

He started to fold up into his car, but paused. "I'm sorry, too, Mrs. Owen."

As she watched in angry silence, he slid behind the wheel, started the engine, and after a moment drove away.

Even when departing, the gleaming black sedan traveled at the same agonizing speed, churning low clouds of dust as it rolled along, nosing its way down the narrow dirt lane at the same slow rate, at the same forever pace.

Chapter Twenty

She saw him walking across the dirt of the sunny front yard and wondered if he ever was not serious. He had climbed out of his pickup truck without a wasted movement, without a second of distraction. The sights and sounds of the farm had claimed not the briefest moment of his attention. Now, he walked across the hot, rocky dirt and climbed the steps to the house with the same straight, deliberate purpose that seemed to guide everything else he did.

Everything. She had called and he had come right out, though Stacey had said that he might be delayed a while. Always intent, of one mind. He even groomed and rode horses with the same close eye that made his legal papers models of perfection. Even when he laughed—she had come to like his unrevealing laugh and the boyish smile it sometimes evoked—he seemed to be measuring the cadence and duration of the sound, the volume and propriety of it all. As if everyone else but he was allowed to make mistakes. As if everyone was allowed the human frailty of being less than perfect, except Wes himself.

Only in the final stages of one of his projects had Jack been like that, when the electricity had demanded it and would have told everyone if he had cross-connected something or overloaded a circuit. The rest of the time Jack had been a goof, sweet and silly and carefree, working hard and caring for her the way she had always wanted a man to, always romantic and thinking no further ahead than the next day. He had been such a sweet man, so fun to be with, never a harsh word for anyone. Never reluctant to spend his last dime on her if she had wanted....

The winter sun had been weak but still she had been unbearably hot in her black mourning dress, and sweat had run down her back under her clothes. Everyone from Jack's company had wanted to say something, all of them trying to help her by telling her what a nice man her husband had been and thus only hurting her more. She had listened interminably and breathed huge gulps of the cool November air and tried to keep from fainting. The minutes had blurred along with the faces and not until days later had she remembered leaving the cemetery and squeezing her father's calloused hand as hard as she could while they had ridden home in silence in the back of an immense black limousine.

MacNeil. She hated Mr. MacNeil and his black funeral-home car. The manifestation of all her memories, the awful reality of her dreams. She hated the niece and nephew who had sent MacNeil out here and hated them all for what they had done. Two years of her life had been thrown away, two years during which those tearful memories and their twisting, wrenching pain had faded and grown distant. Two long years of learning how to live without Jack, of night after night learning and relearning that he would never come home again. Of one morning waking without finding the pillow wet with tears shed in sleep. Of eventually being able to think of him with only a quick, sharp rending of her heart. Of finally being able to let go—almost—and look ahead once more.

The feeling of being alone descended on her, a cold, black, smothering blanket. She would never forget how quiet and empty her home had been at first, how isolated and unnoticed she had felt, even in the middle of her own neighborhood. She had been as isolated and apart as was Pitcher's house in its immense sea of green fields. Her lessons and lectures had been as lifeless to her as the history she taught had seemed to her students. Yet that futility, like the imperfection of her work in her backyard flower garden, seemed as nothing compared to the pointless, troublesome effort of this long summer, so far from home. Far from home, with hopes she never should have had.

All gone, lost. Torn and destroyed, as if it had never been. She breathed deeply of the warm air inside Pitcher's house. A million different roads had claimed her attention, and she had given in to the most obvious.

The wooden screen door banged closed and the rusty spring vibrated with a rattle that seemed like it would last forever.

"Hey."

Wes stood inside the doorway with a thick roll of white papers in one hand and looked down at Sara with the kind of expression that she had hoped to one day see in him. More than polite concern, more than just the worry of a friend. The enigma that had shrouded him when they had first met was still there, but thinning. The quiet, sure manner that had cloaked him and had kept him from her had begun to fall away. But now it was all too late.

"You all right?" he asked.

She tried to smile while she stood, smoothing her hair and then her jeans. She had changed her worn red pullover for a blouse in a muted plaid, her muddy old tennis shoes for her oxfords and her shorts for jeans, but despite the fresh, new clothes her voice sounded flat, even to her. "Hi. Yeah. Thanks for coming so quickly." So quickly. Because he was just like that, she wondered, or because of her? He shrugged and as he did she felt the cold wash over her again. It didn't matter anymore.

Wes raised the papers in his hand, uncurled them, sighed, and rolled them back up once again. "This shouldn't take as long as the first time, but I thought you'd want to get it over with as soon as possible. I know you can't stay much longer."

Her eyes rose from the papers to his face. He meant what he said, but he didn't like it. He wanted her to contradict him. A second look at the papers and she saw the neat typing, the numbered lines, the caption box and the court filing stamp. She guessed what it was and felt sick all over. Her arms folded tightly. "Not again."

He stepped farther into the room. "Didn't Stacey—" He trapped the thought. As upset as she was, it was plain from Sara's face that Stacey had not told her what had happened.

Quickly, he said: "It's okay. We'll win."

"I don't care."

Her unhappiness hastened his words even more and he riffled the edges of the document as he spoke. "It's essentially the same thing as the last time, though there are one or two—"

Her eyes were on the land outside the window, where the sun lay far too brightly on the bright and dark green rolls of harvested alfalfa. Wes didn't seem to want to hear her. Her head swung at him. "I don't care."

He stared at her until he could be surprised no more, and then a grimace cracked his face. Sara had not known. The papers in his hand were not the cause of her distress. As his eyes searched the room for what was amiss, he let the rolled pleadings drop to his side. "It's not that bad."

"Not for you." It was too much. Too much land, too much responsibility, too much sadness. Too wrong. She hadn't wanted it in the first place, hadn't asked for it, and didn't want to be a caretaker for it for the rest of her life. And now somehow Jack was telling her that what she was asking, even hoping for—that it was all just too much.

And now. Now Pitcher's niece and nephew wouldn't give up. They wouldn't quit. No matter how hard she fought them. If she returned to her home and her job, she would not be able to flee the trouble this land had brought her. It would reach across the distance and it too would haunt her. She would be chained to the land and the trouble it had brought her. All because she had forced Jack to stop and help an old man and a horse. OH, Jack. Without her sweet husband by her side to cheer her and be cheered, to make it all worthwhile—

"I can't do it, Wes." Her head shook violently, whipping her hair across her face. "I can't wait, I can't go through another fight. I've got to get back and get ready for school and—get on with my life."

She raised her eyes from the faded floor. "I can't stay here anymore."

His hand tightened on the thick legal document, squeezing it with a papery scrape into an even tighter roll, until it would contract no more. Another step brought him next to her, but she didn't move away. Pain and sorrow seemed to distort her face and he had to stop his arms from rising and holding her. She couldn't leave. He heard his voice, rapid, low and clipped. "Why not? What's wrong? What's happened?"

As her head moved, her hair swept across her back again. She could not explain, could not tell him. She had wanted to tell him about the telephone calls and the telegram and MacNeil from the funeral home, but now none of that mattered. That was not the reason, and there was no way to explain that the feelings she had for him would have to give way to a memory. "I just have to go home."

"Why?" The scaffold he had built was falling, dropping away beneath him, plunging him downward along with it. "We've almost got this thing won."

"I'm sorry."

The rolled papers cracked and collapsed within his grip. If she left now she would never come back. And he would have been tricked again, would have erred once more. His voice was harsh. "You're sorry? We've been in court the whole damn summer, Sara.

Do you know how many—" times I crossed the line for you "—hours we've spent on this thing? We're this close." His fingers were an inch apart. "What do you mean, you're sorry?"

Her voice, too, was suddenly loud. "I mean I'm sorry. I can't do this anymore. I just can't." How could she say that Jack wouldn't let her? "I don't want to be up here, I don't want to fight these stupid people.... Let them have what they want—I just want to go home!"

Fury arose in Wes' eyes and collided with her grief. Scared, hurt, Sara stared back at him for one brief moment. He was angry with her, thinking only of himself, caring nothing for her. She put her head down until she couldn't bear to stand there anymore.

"Oh, you don't understand!" Rushing by him, throwing open the screen door, she fled down the crumbling brick steps, trying to escape, yet wishing he would catch her and stop her.

Instead of Wes the dry heat of the yard seized her and she stumbled to a halt. A light, warm breeze that barely moved the reeds along the riverbank blew over her face. Above her was a thin blue sky, behind her only silence.

Until the screen door slammed shut with a bang that made her jump.

Then silence again. Only the quiet wind. He wasn't going to come after her.

Arms wrapping her waist she tried to tell herself that she was right. She should go home. She did have to go home. She had to go. She just had to.

"What do you think you're going to do, Sara?" From behind her shoulder, Wes' voice was low and deep. "Just walk away? Just like that? After Pitcher gives you all this land, you're going to just walk away from it?"

He waited while the baking sun beat down on him. Under the collar of his cotton shirt, his neck was prickling with sweat. With her back still to him, face toward the ground, Sara said nothing. He took a breath of hot air, thick with the dust of the yard, exhaled it, and stepped in front of her. He tried to see her face but couldn't.

"Don't you know what you've got here?" He peered at her again. "All of this is because of how much he loved his wife, Sara." He held a breath that said: Like you loved your husband. Sara's pretty face remained downturned. "And because of how much she loved this land," Wes said. Just like you do. "All because of this beautiful land." His eyes and arms swept the valley. "My, God—look at this place!"

At last her face rose to his and she looked at him. Sadly. Hopefully. Wonderingly.

"He gave it all to you," Wes' head shook slowly. "You can't give it back, Sara. You just can't. Why do you think he gave it to you?"

She squeezed herself tighter. "I don't know." She hadn't forgotten all those things. She hadn't forgotten at all. But now, Wes too seemed to understand. It was just that—

"And he didn't." A spark of defiance lit inside her. "He didn't give it to me. He gave it to me and Jack." The ember cooled as quickly as it had flared and her gaze returned to the earth. "It's different now."

Scanning the mountains, Wes exhaled a long breath. She had finally said it. It was clear, finally, though why it had come out now he could not imagine. And yet, now, in an odd way, everything was much easier. Stubbornly, he shook his head again. "It's no different than when we started, Sara. And besides...."

At the touch of his hand on her shoulder her face jerked up at him for just one second, then abruptly turned aside to stare down the length of the valley. Eyes on her profile, his chest rose and fell with a short, sharp breath.

She heard the sound and held her breath. One little sign, and she would abandon all her doubts, gladly dismiss all her fears. Just one little sign.

Before her heart could begin to pound, he took her other shoulder in his hand and she quickly turned her face up toward him. Whatever had lain beneath the surface of his green eyes ever since they had met was gone. She could see all the way through now, see all the intensity she knew had been inside of him. He was not in court now. Not acting.

He saw the willingness in her and blessed whatever fate still governed him. "You don't have to do this alone, you know," he said softly.

Touching sweet happiness for the first time in years, she closed her eyes and slid into his arms. "I know."

* * *

Four times, Diana drove the river road, from the town at the head of the valley out to the road junction and back, and then again, each time slowing almost to a stop as she passed the driveway to her uncle's old home. Even from the road, she could see the big Bronco still parked in front of the home, sitting in plain view with a kind of vicious, insolent, hurtful defiance. Each time she drove by, the frustrating pain inside her abdomen somehow grew sharper; each time she almost stopped, her heart thrilled with the idea that she might be seen, that she might be caught, that by observing her, Sara Owen might understand the wrong she was doing and the hurt she was causing. On the second trip by the farm she even had the urge to pull off the road, race down the driveway, dash into the house and scream at the woman who had stolen her life and her land to give them both back. But as her foot pressed the accelerator and she drove on, she had what she thought was an even better idea.

* * *

Verbosity and tautology were the banes of the profession, no less so in the restaurant conference room of the County Bar Association meeting than in the courtroom. For the hundredth time, Wes shifted in his seat, toyed with his empty water glass, and checked the time on his wristwatch. He would not be able to make it back to Pitcher's house tonight. Not be able to see Sara. He had hoped for a few minutes with her between attending the meeting and returning to his office to complete hours of neglected work, but the Bar Association meeting had begun late, as it always did, and the speed of the dinner service had done little to move the night along. Now, the summer sun had long ago set and the speeches and introductions that were spoiling dessert and coffee were as dilatory as they were rich with self-congratulation, numbing statistics, and vulgar attempts at humor. The featured speaker, a Deputy District Attorney, was spending more time addressing her own political ambitions and lauding her own accomplishments than dealing with the current issues and the pending new laws.

At Wes' long sigh, the lawyer next to him at the table leaned over and said lowly, "Remember, patience is a virtue."

"True," Wes murmured, nodding. "And virtue is its own punishment."

* * *

A thick, black cup of coffee sat by Wes' elbow. Strong enough to take the plaque off your teeth, his father would have said. Leaning wearily into his chair, he contemplated the stacks of files capped with dictation cassettes that weighed down his credenza, waiting to be transferred to Stacey's bookcase. A good night's work. He finally was almost caught up. Only one more to go.

Sipping the steaming caffeine in his mug, with the fingertips of one hand he tapped the many papers of the In re Estate of Pitcher file that lay scattered over his desk. Topmost was the petition to revoke the probate of Jerome Pitcher's will. Undoubtedly instigated by Barry Kroeber and Diana Robeck, the petition merely mirrored the earlier unsuccessful attempt.

Wes sipped again. He could beat this attempt more easily than he had before. A loose reading of the collateral estoppel doctrine by Judge Howell—and Kirby could read the law as closely or as broadly as he wanted—and it would all be over.

Yet....

Wes sipped once more.

Yet.

Yet Barry Kroeber was no fool. Arrogant to a fault, conceited beyond tolerance, immature and almost amoral, he was nevertheless not stupid. He was astute, in his own way. Astute enough to realize that what had failed once certainly would fail twice.

The coffee cup was half empty and Wes rose to fill it. A useless effort by a man who wasted no energy was a mystery, and Wes could not abide a mystery. The morning crossword unfinished beside his cereal bowl would find its way next to his easy chair that evening. Any proposition in his work that needed a case citation to bolster it would have it before the pleading left his office. All too well he knew that puzzles left unsolved could lead someday to disaster.

He returned to his desk, where an incandescent bulb burned brightly inside the green glass shade of a banker's lamp. The light thrown by the lamp glanced off the many pieces and pages of the file, the stark white sheets of the formal pleadings and the even more formal notices, the scribbled notes ripped from a lined yellow tablet, the neat letters printed in black on cream-colored stationery.

Thoughtful, intelligent people sometimes miss the huge and obvious in their pursuit of the minute and hidden. You especially, he thought, smiling grimly to himself. He, too, was falling prey to the very aspect of the profession that he deplored. Can't see the forest for the trees, he reworded his thoughts. Pushing his chair away from the desk, leaning back as far as he could, he studied the papers from afar. Always remember who the players are, his old mentor had said.

The crack in his office door widened as the little Australian shepherd nosed her way in, trotted to his side and licked his hand with her warm, pink tongue. He petted her twice, then began gently scratching a certain spot on her neck. The dog's eyes closed in pleasure as Wes continued to think.

Barry Kroeber had been around lawyers. He knew the kinds of things they did, knew how much of what they did in a lawsuit had little or nothing to do with the merits of the claim. Interrogatories and requests for production of documents were served to harass and wear down an opponent; objections were made in depositions to test the mettle of the other party's attorney or dissuade him from pursuing a point. Peripheral assaults like that sometimes weakened the core of the claim—sometimes they even influenced the ultimate outcome of the case.

Wes held the new petition before his eyes and the light from the banker's lamp glared over the crisp top edge of the pages. In the shadow that the document cast upon itself, the black letters and the white page of the pleading all were dim gray. A knowing smile darkly lit Wes' face. Kroeber knew what he was doing, and all too well. This new petition had no chance of success. Legally, it was nothing. It wasn't supposed to be. In his own way, Kroeber had known that if he couldn't win his case in court, he would have to win it by persecuting an innocent woman into surrender.

Tiredly, Wes rubbed his eyes. The man was amoral. And he had talked his second cousins into joining him. Pitcher's father's brother's son's children. The lure of money had brought them down, too. He folded the document to the last page, where the new petitioners had signed their names: Bruce Adamek and Cathy Welch.

The chair fell forward with a jolt and a squeak as Wes sat up straight and hurriedly flipped through the paper leaves of his file. At the bottom of one thick brad he found it, one all-important piece of paper. Wildly, he tore off all the layers above it and held that single sheet next to the new petition under the light of the banker's lamp. His eyes danced from one to the other for only half a second.

The chair back rocked as he fell against it. Slowly and softly, he spoke to the darkness of the empty office: "I'll be God damned."

The shepherd scooted closer to him, licking madly.

He swiveled to face the dog. "Look at that," he commanded, holding both sheets out for her to see. The shepherd peered up at him with her bulging brown eyes, ears alert and head cocked, but as smart as she was, as hard as she tried to understand, she could not see that the signatures on the new petition were exactly the same, in name and in style, as those of the witnesses to the power of attorney that Barry Kroeber and Diana Robeck had used to end their uncle's life.

Chapter Twenty-One

The four tall, rounded silos of the grain elevator stood side by side in a short row, reminding Wes of wooden toy soldiers he had seen in a Laurel & Hardy movie in the irretrievable innocence of his youth. These guardians, though, wore flat caps, not the plumed shakos he remembered, and without eyes or noses or even faces, they all seemed blinded to him.

He walked briskly across the hot asphalt yard. The macadam was hot under his feet, hot enough to begin to liquefy and reek its particular odor into the heated air that rose from its surface. The stinking air abraded his face. Instinctively, protectively, his eyelids closed over his eyes.

Bruce Adamek did not like Wesley Morrison. He had not liked the lawyer's smoothly condescending manner on the telephone and he had not liked the man's appearance the moment he had seen him.

This meeting would be their first and only encounter, but Adamek would remember it always. In a plain blue suit, white shirt and muted tie, Morrison had walked across the yard of the plant with such determination in his step that Adamek had never even thought of trying to hide from him. The burly laborers, the confrontational truck drivers or the posturing, part-time weight lifters who populated and ran the granary had none of the quiet assurance that this slender man had. The rough, hard-working men who made their living reaping and processing and transporting the grain might talk loud and be quick to anger or to swing their fists, but none of them had in their eyes the cold certainty that seemed to be inside of the man who had hunted down Bruce Adamek.

Adamek stopped his slow retreat when he felt against his back the steel railing around the catwalk high above the grain hopper. No one ever came up here, though the sight could be quite hypnotic. The immense hopper squatted inside a huge building with exposed framework. A few dim, dirty bulbs lit the scene, casting feeble rays on an atmosphere perpetually ridden with dust. Hundreds of tons of raw kernels collapsed slowly from all sides of the bin toward an invisible maw in the center, falling over each other with a soft and gentle rustle, disappearing into the depths of the middle of the container in a never-ending tide. Thence, they wended their way through the processing sections of the plant and became various forms of animal feed. Adamek came up here now and then, when he needed to think, needed to contemplate—or just didn't want to work. It was a good place to be alone.

Morrison was not intimidated by the solitude, by the scene, size, noise or industry of the plant. To Adamek, Morrison seemed unlike Barry Kroeber in every way—until he realized that Kroeber probably had been lying about his own impressions. Suddenly disappointed with his cousin and himself, Adamek rested his hips on the bars and spread his hands out on the rail.

"I don't know anything about it," he said, wishing that he had brought Morrison to some place more public.

"That's not a good answer." Morrison stood three feet away from Adamek and waited, his face featureless in the dim, dusty light.

"Well, that's just too bad."

"For you, yes."

Somewhere beneath them, the jaws at the bottom of the bin opened, and the grain again began to slide. The folded document in Morrison's hand meant something to the lawyer, something important, something bad for Adamek, something bad for everyone involved in what Adamek thought of as a total fiasco. The fear of not knowing what confronted him, of not knowing what wrong he had done or what was going to happen to him, quivered in Adamek's stomach. Trapped physically, mentally, he shifted uneasily on the rail.

"I don't even remember signing it, okay?" he offered.

"It's not something you'd forget."

"Well, I did, okay?" He scrambled to excuse behavior he could not even recall.

"But you did sign it?"

"That's my signature, but that doesn't mean I remember doing it. I was real busy then. I signed a lot of things. I can't remember every goddam thing."

Morrison's voice was cool and sharp, like a blade through the warm, thick dust. "You declared under penalty of perjury that you saw Pitcher sign this power of attorney." He slapped against his leg with the paper that had given Barry Kroeber the authority to decide what medical care his uncle would or would not receive. Adamek twitched at the sudden sound. "If you said you did when you really didn't, it's a felony."

Adamek had visited a cousin's husband in Folsom Prison. He hadn't forgotten what it was like. His lips peeled back from his teeth. "I didn't commit no felony."

Morrison was a statue. An unyielding, unforgiving statue. "Then just what did you think you were doing?"

Adamek's head turned slowly from side to side. Something terrible was happening to him and he could not stop it. With each question and answer he seemed to be sliding farther and farther down. Sinking like the grain. "I don't know."

The paper slapped again. "You and Cathy swore that Pitcher gave Barry the right to make medical decisions for him. Three months after you executed this, he had a stroke and Barry decided to pull the plug on him. Didn't you read it? Didn't even wonder about it?"

Adamek inched across the rail and fell back on the only answer he could. "I don't remember," he said miserably.

Wes' voice dropped low, just above the rustle of the descending kernels. "When you signed this you both swore that Pitcher voluntarily gave control over his life to someone who would inherit millions if he died." And after that, Pitcher was in a hospital bed with his life in the hands of his brother's son. Disbelief thickened the dust. "And you're telling me that you can't even remember doing it?"

Adamek had no more answers.

Wes continued. "Did you go to his house?"

"We might have," Adamek said, thankful for simpler questions.

"What time of year was it?"

"I can't remember."

"Winter? Summer? Spring?"

"I can't remember."

"Who else was there?"

"I don't know."

"Was Cathy with you?"

Adamek guessed correctly. "Yes."

"Who else was there besides her?"

"Pitcher," Adamek tried again to satisfy.

"How about Barry Kroeber and Diana Robeck? Were they there?"

Adamek guessed again. "They must have been, if they signed it too."

Morrison seemed to smile, a thin slit in his face that opened onto some perverse pleasure. "They didn't sign it, Bruce," his voice slid from him. "Just you did. Just you, Cathy and Pitcher did."

Something stuck in Adamek's throat, a sharp, jagged hunk that hurt him when he spoke and blocked his breath. "It was a long time ago. People forget."

Wes' triangular face appeared in a ray of particle-filled light that glinted off his pale green eyes. "You also swore that you weren't related to Pitcher in any way," he said. "Did you forget that, too?"

Arms crossed on his chest, the thin frame of Adamek's body creased at the waist and seemed to bend in two like a folding jackknife. As his face dipped toward the stamped figure-eights of the steel catwalk, the tons of grain below him seemed to rise and swell and propel him back upward. His back straightened, but his eyes stayed fixed on the folded sheets of paper that Morrison tapped slowly against his thigh.

He had no choice. Morrison knew of sins that Adamek himself did not, and there was no mercy in the young lawyer's eyes. Weakly, Adamek confessed. "I don't remember anything about it, okay?"

Shallowly, Wes tilted his head, unconvinced. Adamek might be what he seemed, just a hard-working man whose only fault was that he wanted to have something better than hauling, packing and shipping grain products for the rest of his life.

And then, he might not.

"Well," he breathed, "maybe your sister has a better memory, huh?"

* * *

The house on the wide curving lane was as big and ostentatious, as showy and overbuilt as its neighbors. It was one of the many huge family homes that had been constructed over recent years in the suburbs of Redding, designed to give the family that lived in it enough room to escape each other and still have enough room for their very occasional family gatherings. Cathy Welch loved it and did not want to lose it, yet she would have considered trading it for just a chance at getting back at Barry Kroeber. He had promised her that nothing would happen—and now there was this.

Driving her precious Mercedes out of the three-car garage, Cathy headed for one of the favorite stops of her two young children, a drive-in just off the interstate that still offered freshly-made cheeseburgers and ice cream cones hand-dipped in chocolate. There, she ordered a plain vanilla cone and sat in the shade at a painted metal table that was smudged with dried catsup and spotted with drips of milk shakes. Bright summer daylight heated the surrounding concrete hot enough to scorch bare feet and even warmed the metal table to the touch of her bare arms.

She had no trouble recognizing Wesley Morrison when he arrived. Her brother Bruce had called to warn her, but he had not described the lawyer's outward appearance. By Morrison's manner and intent, though, she knew he was the man she was supposed to meet.

Parking his pickup next to the dark blue Mercedes sedan, Wes hopped from the cab, cuffs of his blue cotton shirtsleeves folded up onto his forearms, knot of his striped tie loosened around his neck. He had never seen Cathy before, but she was not difficult to spot. The only woman sitting alone amid the comings and goings of parents and children, her auburn hair was a bright contrast to the creamy white ice cream she licked. He sat on the opposite side of the table from her.

She frowned inside. He had not looked and now could not see her legs, streaming sexily between her white shorts and her high-heeled sandals. Nor now could he see the way the stripes of her tight top curved over her figure. Her figure always was the thing that men first examined, and it always earned her a quick advantage in any situation—yet Morrison's attention from the moment he had driven in had been on her eyes. That bothered her.

"Bruce tells me that you can help me with this," Wes said pleasantly, unfolding the power of attorney and showing it briefly to Cathy, but not letting her touch it.

"Did he?" she asked flatly, pulling back her empty hand and lying it in her lap. "That was pretty big of him."

"Well, I guess he figured you'd know more than he did."

"That's usually a safe bet."

Wes' lips touched each other. She was not like her brother. She obviously relied on her looks more than her brains, but she didn't need to. She was intelligent—not as smart as Sara or even Stacey, but intelligent enough that Wes felt a vague kind of link. Laying the unfolded papers on the table, he spread the document flat with fingers spread just the way he played the piano. For a moment, he squinted at his hands. Then his gaze bounded upward at Cathy. "Have you seen this before?"

"I don't think so."

Wes blinked in the shade. "You signed it."

She leaned forward and peered more closely. "That's a lousy copy. I can't tell if that's my signature. Don't you have the original?"

Wes shook his head. "No."

"Who does?"

He stared at her. "Now, that's a good question."

"Thank you," she said without gratitude.

"But you do know what it is?"

She thought as she licked the ice cream, filling her tongue before closing her mouth and swallowing. "I have no idea. I doubt I signed any such thing. If I signed it, I would know—wouldn't I?"

Only Wes' eyes smiled. "I don't know. That's what I'm trying to find out."

"Too bad for you."

A vile smirk puckered his face. Maybe she was like her brother.

"Just what is it that you think we did, anyway?" she asked, holding her ice cream cone off to one side.

Wes let her wait a few seconds for his answer, while he looked blankly at her. Her bluffing was admirable, though her chances of winning were not. "I know part of what you did already."

Cathy scooped the last of the melting ice cream into her mouth with her lips, swallowed, bit off part of the packed sugar cone and cocked her head at him. "Then why are we here?"

He ran his tongue over his lower lip. "I want to know if you know."

She chewed and swallowed. "Let's assume I do, okay?"

Another smile that was not flickered across Wes' face. "If I assume that, I might as well leave right now."

As if she didn't care, Cathy bit off another chunk of cone and watched another car pull into the drive-in, air conditioning whistling in the heat. "Then why don't you?"

A gaggle of young children passed, their innocent faces and wide eyes turned upward at the collection of frosty, chocolate-covered ice cream cones in the hands of their poor, patient parents. Wes waited until the family was out of earshot.

"Because," he finally answered lowly, "I don't know the way to the District Attorney's office. Do you?"

The insolence that had been masking Cathy's face began to crumble. She had done something very wrong, but she had not thought, not even after Bruce had called, that whatever it was could really be criminal. Morrison, though—in her eyes far more heartless than she ever would have judged him to be—was acting as if she had murdered someone.

Wes sighed to himself. On Cathy's face was the fear of being caught, the instinct to run and hide. "Who took you to Pitcher's place?"

Without the confidence in herself that experience would have brought, and with an upbringing that had taught her to respect power and authority, she could no longer refuse to respond. It was easier to pretend to her husband than to look this intense, unyielding man in the eye and lie to him. She answered. "I don't remember ever being there."

"You know where his house is?"

Cathy pointed over her shoulder. She knew that much. "Up north someplace. I forget where exactly," she added a half-truth.

Every fabricated tale eventually became twisted in its own lies. The tangled web, Wes thought with another self-deprecating smile. "Did Barry explain to you and Bruce what was going on? Or did Pitcher tell you?"

"I don't remember anybody explaining anything." Her face expanded then narrowed. "You know, I actually don't know much of anything about this."

"So it would seem," Wes agreed. "All right, then, were you involved in your cousin's development deal?"

It was her husband's money, her husband's affairs, that he was asking about now. "I don't think that's any of your business."

He gave nothing to her. "Well, guess what. I'm making it my business."

Glancing quickly at him, she wrapped the uneaten stem of her ice cream cone in a white paper napkin. "Look," her gaze fell to the table, then climbed back up to Morrison's face, "I don't really know any more than Bruce does. And he doesn't know anything. Okay?"

Still, he said and ceded nothing, and her expression began to falter. Her husband was a strong and strong-willed man, but nothing he had ever done scared her as much as Morrison's manner. Softly, she conceded, "My husband might've put some money into it."

"When did Barry first talk to you two about it? About the deal?"

She had little resistance left. "After the first of the year, I suppose."

"This year?"

"Yes. No. I don't know. I don't really remember. It seems like a long time."

"How long?"

"I don't remember."

Morrison swore to himself. That one answer could have made all the difference. "Did you or Bruce talk to him before he got you involved in all this?"

She pouted as she thought, then scowled. "Bruce and he talked now and then. I don't know. We met once in a while at family gatherings and things like that. Birthdays, parties, anniversaries, graduations. You know."

The afternoon sun was hot on Morrison's back. His voice was flat. "So all you know is that your uncle asked you to sign, and you did."

Cathy nodded. Speaking the lie would have been too much.

"You're sure about that?"

She made a face. "I think I'd remember."

Wes stood. "You haven't remembered much else."

She felt him staring down at her, his face dark, the brilliant disc of the sun behind him, looking like some strange embodiment of justice come to earth to confront her with the truth. Her voice shrank inside of her with shame. "I'm sorry," she said, very weakly. For a long moment, her fingers twisted the ends of her napkin, until it broke into shreds. Her eyes wandered over the hot, stained concrete of the drive-in. When she looked up, Morrison was gone.

* * *

The tricolored Shepherd heard the car door slam on the street outside the law office and she like Sara rose and went to the window to look between the curtains. Stacey pretended not to notice their actions, pretended not to notice that Sara's hair had been freshly cut, that she was wearing a new pair of tan corduroy slacks that clung to her hips, that a creamy, knitted blouse draped nicely over her slim figure. Moments later, Stacey watched both return to their spots, Sara to the sofa and the shepherd to Sara's feet. The dog sighed, head on her paws, while Sara began to flip through the magazines on the table for the third time.

"Sorry," Stacey finally said, pulling the last dictation cassette off the last file on the small bookcase next to her desk. Morrison must have been at work late the previous night to have turned out so many tapes, but he had not left enough to keep her busy all day. "He said he'd be back by now."

"It's all right." Sara turned a few more wrinkled pages of a week-old news journal, but suddenly lost what little interest she had. She gathered her purse and stood. The shepherd rose with her. "Well, just tell him I came by," she tried to sound lighthearted.

Stacey nodded. "Want me to have him call?"

"No, that's all right." Sara reached the door, the shepherd by her side. She looked down at the dog, which for once was not grinning. "You stay here," she said to it. "I'm sure he'll come back eventually."

"I'll tell him you were in," promised Stacey.

* * *

A cute, elderly lady, a hospital volunteer, directed Wes to the office of Peter Whistler, M. D., Chief of Medicine. He found the rotund doctor in a tiny room, crammed behind a tiny desk that was almost buried by cascading piles of books. An open window in one wall let in a breeze that ruffled loose papers and smelled of the hot, dry hills on the eastern side of town. Despite the heat, Whistler's sleeves were buttoned at his wrists and his tie tightly knotted. Hands clasped, he leaned forward across the desk, between two piles of books, as if he was trying to reach the other side. His suspenders dented his shoulders and the eyeglasses on his unhappy face reflected Wes' visage.

"How important is this?" the doctor asked.

Wes tried to appear unconcerned, though his heart would not cooperate. "I'm not sure yet. Do you have the file here?"

"No, we'd have to pull it. Do you need to see it?"

"Not if you can remember."

Whistler sat back abruptly and sighed, a long, grumbling sound. "Oh, I remember. I made doubly sure we had a copy, so the nephew must have had the original."

Wes was short. "Did you see it?"

"I believe I did." The doctor leaned forward slightly. "Is there going to be some kind of problem coming out of this?"

Wes found the scene out the window of sudden interest. “Malpractice? Not for the hospital."

"Then why are you here?" Whistler once again was the officer he once had been, somehow shedding pounds as he raised up in his chair.

Wes met the doctor's eye. He ran his tongue against the back of his teeth. "There's a question of the. . . legality... of it all," he said.

Whistler pushed himself to his feet and came halfway around the desk. He stared down at Wes' unblinking eyes and ran a hand over his thin beard one slow time. "Are you telling me that my patient didn't have to die?"

Wes rose also, unbending from the chair until he had reach his full height. Peter Whistler was an honest, intelligent man. "The power of attorney may not have been any good."

Whistler's eyes filled the lenses of his eyeglasses. "Are you serious?" Wes did not respond. "Well, goddammit," the doctor swore, seeing the answer in the silence. "How the hell could it be no good? The nephew told the review committee he'd seen a lawyer, so how the hell could this happen? And what the hell are we supposed to do about it? When the administrator finds out about this—" He broke off and sucked in a breath, small eyes intense on the closed office door. "So I let my patient die when I could have kept him alive. Goddammit to hell." He looked at Wes. "How in God forsaken hell can something like this happen?"

"Not by accident, I think," Wes murmured.

Whistler was only inches from him, staring upward at the taller, younger man. His tone became very formal. "Mr. Morrison, are you aware of what you're saying here?"

Quietly, Wes replied, "I've got a pretty good idea."

"Well, goddammit," Whistler swore again as he turned from Wes. "I let him talk me into letting my patient die. The son of a bitch." By his desk, he rotated again. His face had colored. "I should have seen it. God, I should have seen it. The way those two looked at that old man...." He picked up a patient's chart and let it fall. "Ah, Jesus."

Wes stepped to the edge of the desk. Something had clicked. "You said he saw a lawyer? You remember who?"

The doctor was hardly listening, instead in his mind recounting the arguments he had made to the review committee and wondering what else he might have said, what he might have said more strongly, if somehow he might have produced a different result. "No," he answered. "I can't remember names, never could. But the review committee had one of those girls at the meeting."

Wes tilted his head, trying to see into the doctor's eyes. His hair fell across his forehead and he brushed it back. " 'One of those girls?' "

Whistler nodded. "With one of those machines—I don't know what they're called—they use when they take your deposition?"

Wes' heart stopped. "A court reporter? They had a court reporter at the meeting? Who was it? You remember her name, her firm name?"

Whistler did not. He fell into his chair. He had been in charge of Jerome Pitcher's care, and he had simply let his trusting, helpless patient die. "Ask the administrator," he said thickly, his melancholy face sadder than ever.

* * *

Kroeber took the call in his private den, a virtual vault on the ground floor of his home, sequestered from the annoying sights and sounds of his family. His wife thought nothing of it, having long ago given up any hope of any real intimacy in their marriage.

Cathy Welch was not the forgiving kind. "You screwed up," her voice hissed thickly through the receiver. "You promised, and you screwed up."

Kroeber stood next to his desk. Even he could hear the falseness of his bravado. "What are you talking about?"

In the huge, expensive living room of the home her husband had bought for her, Cathy sat in the deepening twilight and whispered into the telephone. A half empty glass of straight Red Label waggled in her hand. "What the hell have you done? He's been here, you idiot. He's talked to me and Bruce. He knows something. He’s got some sort of legal document he thinks we signed. I’m asking you, what the hell have you done?"

Cold—sudden, icy cold—stiffened Kroeber's back. Knew what? "Who's been there?"

Cathy's voice was slurred. Unaccustomed as she was to the potent effect of the liquor, she tried to pick her words. "You stupid idiot. What have you gotten me into? Morrison's been here. He knows something happened. What did you do? What did you have me do that I don’t know about?"

Half a city away, Kroeber grimaced and held the telephone away from his ear. Cathy didn't know what he and Diana had done—in fact he had almost forgotten it himself—so she could not have told Morrison. There was no way he could know anything. He might suspect, but that was all. Ignoring the sudden pounding of his heart, into the telephone mouthpiece he said, "Don't be crazy, Cathy. He's got some wild idea that he thinks can get him some leverage, that's all."

"The hell he does," she swore, vision swimming, thoughts scattering. "You'd better get us the hell out of this, Barry, whatever you've done, that's all I've got to say."

"Don't—" The line went dead before Kroeber could voice his practiced platitudes. In the dark sanctuary of his office he carefully hung up the telephone. Cathy was an alarmist, an extremist at times. She knew nothing of business and he would not bow to her baseless worries. Morrison didn't know anything. He could not. He could not know anything.

Catching his breath at his next thought, he opened a cabinet and, like his cousin, reached for a decanter of liquor.

Unless Diana had done something.

* * *

The pounding on the front door woke Diana almost immediately and she rolled over in the big bed to find that Phil had not yet returned. For weeks now he had been leaving home after dinner—sorry affairs of inexpensive, fatty foods, poorly prepared, eaten in silence—staying out until two, sometimes three o'clock in the morning. The pounding on the door right now was probably him. He had lost his keys once before, he had said, though more likely he had forgotten them on the night table next to the bed of whoever was now occupying his time.

Rolling heavily off of the mattress, the bright red numerals of the small bedside clock stabbed Diana's bleary eyes. Only six o'clock. Depression had forced her to bed, into sleep, and she had lost all track of time. The pounding continued, and she rolled from her bed.

Through the peephole in the front door, her brother's warped face leaned toward her.

"Barry!" was all Diana could say before Kroeber pushed by her and into the living room. Shutting the door behind him, she followed.

He turned toward her, eyes inspecting the unfamiliar shapes that hunched about the darkened room. "Phil's not here?" he asked in a coarse whisper.

Diana shook her head, feeling shame that she knew she did not deserve, and answered in a quiet voice. "No, he's not." She approached her brother, her flannel robe flopping loosely around her legs. "What do you want him for?"

Kroeber seemed lost. His gaze wandered. "I don't know. I don't, really." He found his sister's face and sucked in a breath. "I just talked to Cathy Welch. He's been asking her questions." His lips shut, blocking the next thought, the next logical, frightening progression. He looked at Diana, hoping that she would understand.

Only her detached stare answered him, a faraway look that her sudden awakening could not explain.

Even as he said the words, he knew she would not understand. "He might have found out, Diana," he hissed in the darkness. "He might have found out." Still, she was unchanged, as if she, like Morrison, knew something that he did not. His voice rose.

"Morrison's talked to Bruce and Cathy—and God knows who else," he ended sharply.

A slight wobble disturbed Diana's head. "They don't know anything. Nobody knows anything at all." She wrapped her robe around her body and slowly tied the belt.

Kroeber's voice dropped into a deep tone. For an instant, he squeezed his eyes shut, knowing inside that he was talking for no purpose. "You've been doing something, haven't you?" he demanded. She didn't answer. "For God's sake, Diana," he said, "have you been doing something I don't know about? Have you?"

In the pockets of her robe, Diana's hands curled into fists. Thickly, but softly, she replied, "I haven't done anything wrong."

He could see the detachment now, the way her eyes looked at one thing, while she saw another. He swallowed as his head shook. Still in a rough whisper, he said, "I'll tell you what you've done, my sweet little sister." He held his hand in front of her face, thumb and forefinger extended and almost touching. "If you've set him on us, if you've somehow put Morrison onto what—we did—you've put us this close to the gas chamber. This close. Whatever you did, if it comes back at us, everything's over for both of us." Even as he spoke, he began to lose the feeling of being connected to anything outside the shadowed room, as if the things in his life did not exist if he could not see or touch them. Would his wife be there when he got home? He wondered. Would the house? He said it again. "The whole thing, Diana, if you've done something."

Diana did not even hear the accusation. She long ago had ceased to be able to cope with blame. The fault was not hers. It could not be. The plan had been Barry's, not hers. She had merely tried to do what he would not. And, in any event, she was not the problem. The problem was Sara. She was a woman who seemed to be able to corrupt anyone, like the devil corrupts the good. Morrison was her minion. He worked for her, spreading her disgusting corruption. Even now, Barry was taking Sara's side. Siding with Sara against his own sister, against their futures, against their birthright.

"You're an idiot, Barry," Diana said in strangely soft tones. She walked toward the door. "Go back home and go to sleep. Everything'll be fine in the morning."

As she opened the door he stepped outside, feeling lost and empty. He had hoped, he realized, that Diana would have provided comfort to him, as had the mother she so resembled. He looked at her and tried one last time. "Just don't do anything else, Diana. All right? Nothing at all. Okay? You don't know what's going to happen if you do."

"Whatever you say, Barry." He was corrupt, now. Like all those before him. Not to be heard. All had fallen to Sara's hidden evil. All would have their voices taken from them.

Diana did not see the look of saddened pity imparted by her brother as he left. She shut the door without looking at him.

Pulling a crack in the draperies hanging on the front window, she stared into the coming night. Somewhere far to the north, that same blackness covered the land that was hers, that covered the woman who kept it from her. Soon, the blackness would seep with Sara's malevolence over the mountains and down into the central valley, into the city, over Diana's house and life. The blackness of the grave. "Oh you're an evil, evil woman," Diana said softly to the approaching night.

Chapter Twenty-Two

In the early evening, Sara parked the Bronco before Pitcher's little white house. She was tired, and the thought of poring through the borrowed textbooks on the kitchen table to extract lesson plans and test questions for her students made her more tired still. Her notes and plans from last night's work, along with some half-conceived ideas for projects that might spark some new interest in children raised in the limitless electronic universes of video games and cell phones, today seemed mundane and uninspired. Still, with a pot of strong, brewed coffee by her elbow and her work in front of her, much that troubled her might be banished. She left the Bronco, trotted up the brick steps and let herself into the front room.

And screamed.

Spinning and leaping away from the door, her purse with her tear gas canister inside flew from her shoulder and landed against the wall. Her hips hit a table as she backed away from the living room and the man who was sitting in Pitcher's chair. In a corner hidden from the last of the daylight, in a black shadow made still darker by her unaccustomed eyes, the man was staring straight at her.

She forced herself to inhale a flood of air her lungs did not want. High-pitched gasps escaped her open mouth. Fingers that clenched the edge of the table turned white. The man continued to stare at her, hostile, silent, waiting. Wanting to see every last bit of her fear, his face hid in indefinable shadow.

The table seized her hips, the floor her feet, and she could not move. Her chest rose and fell with constricted, rasping breaths, while a sharp pain stabbed over her wildly beating heart. As fear dilated her pupils, she began to pick out details. The man's pale, clean hands on the armrests of the chair, his wan, almost featureless face. His eyes staring at her seemingly without life.

Words she tried to speak disintegrated on her lips. Her eyes fled his cold, unwavering gaze and scoured the floor, reaping only the colors of the threadbare carpet.

Color came to the murky light and with her perceptions a wave of dizzying fear. Above worn work boots were a pair of olive drab fatigue trousers. Trousers held up by suspenders draped over a faded blue shirt. The man's face was waxen and gaunt, his sharp nose holding a pair of old eyeglasses.

Jerome Pitcher was sitting in the chair. His own chair in his own home. He was staring at her, not moving a muscle, as quiet as the grave from which—

She couldn't breathe. She tried to inhale and couldn't. She choked. Trying to back up another step she tilted the end table and sent a lamp shattering on the floor.

Still Pitcher didn't move, still he didn't speak. As if robbed of the ability to communicate as he once had, he held forth a sign for her to read. Her eyes picked out the letters, black ink on white cardboard.

GIVE BACK MY LAND!

The room swirled about Sara but Pitcher held firmly to the armrests of the chair and didn't move. She seized her head and the room stopped. The crude sign seemed to float in mid air. Pitcher's hands were on the armrests of the chair. He was not holding the sign. It hung around his neck by a string, like the chains around Dickens' Jacob Morley.

She lunged jerkily to a standing lamp, afraid that somehow the old man might rise and stop her before she could reach it. Yellow light burst from the bulb and she turned, expecting to find his hands almost upon her.

A cardboard sign on a string. Hand lettered. Lying against the background of a shirt of gray gingham checks. The shirt tucked into a pair of loose blue jeans. Eyeglasses with black rims and only one earpiece. A young man's face with a full head of hair. Skin waxen from the peculiar sheen of hard plastic. Hands and legs immobile because they could not move from the position in which they had been arranged. And eyes that could not see because they were not real.

"What—?" A step carried her closer to the chair and she could see the scratches and chips on the mannequin's face and hands. While her breath still trembled, she lifted the corner of the cardboard sign and let it fall. The mannequin's head wobbled as the sign struck its chest.

Sara stepped back into the middle of the room, heart pounding inside her chest with enraged fear. “God dammit!”

Suddenly glancing over her shoulder at the darkness that remained within the rest of the house, she hurried into the kitchen and switched on the lights. Down the short hallway, she lit the bedrooms, the bathroom and finally every corner of the front room with light. With the retreating of the darkness, her breath calmed and her heart slowed. In the living room, though, her eyes could not leave the inanimate figure. It sat in the chair limply, harmlessly. Another, though very frightening, prank.

Picking up the broken pieces of the lamp, she laid the porcelain chips carefully, with a certain sorrow, on the end table. And as she did, like a reluctant rain, anger began to speckle and then blanket her fear. No. Not just another prank.

* * *

The sunlight was almost gone as the pickup pulled into the barren, dirty yard, headlights shining faintly. It rolled to a stop under a sky that had become smoky just above the hills and a translucent yellow above that. While the truck was still rocking, Wes leaped out. The Aussie at his heels, he vaulted up onto the porch, where Sara held the screen door open for him, and into the old house. Just inside the room he lurched to a halt. "What the hell is that?"

Instantly in front of her master, the shepherd barked excitedly at the strange, stiff figure.

From behind Wes' shoulder, Sara's bitter-edged voice said, "You tell me."

With ears flattened tight against her head, crouching close to the floor, the shepherd stalked the chair, sniffing the air, nose twitching at the thing that was a person, yet was not.

Suddenly she backed up and barked again, but when the figure still didn't move, she planted her feet and looked up at her humans.

Wes slowly approached the chair. Barely had he returned from the County Hospital before Stacey had shoved him back out the office door to answer Sara's urgent summons. His suspicions were still inside him, unspoken and unproven, but now he knew. The case had crossed the line. It had crossed the line long before he had become involved, before the legal end of things had even begun. His beautifully crafted pleadings were just wasted paper, his courtroom eloquence only jabbering echoes. The judgments of the court that he had fought so hard to win were nothing but vapid decrees by senile husks in black robes. All the honors of the law had meant nothing. He fingered the frayed collar of the gray checked shirt on the mannequin. The dog barked another warning. Lowly, and all to himself, he said, "Damn."

Sara's gaze was locked onto the thing in the chair. Even Wes seemed mesmerized by it. She had looked to him for comfort, waiting long hours just to see his face and feel the assurance his presence had begun to give to her, but now even he seemed overcome by this assault. In the chair, faintly smiling into empty space, the mannequin sat, plastic and inflexible, insolent and insulting. In Pitcher's chair. In her house. The trespass became too much and she could stand it no longer. To Wes' back she pleaded, "Can you get it out of here?"

The oddest reluctance to touch the thing held Wes back for just a moment, and when he overcame that odd revulsion the shepherd barked twice more, then twice again. Heaving the stiff, hard body into his arms, he carried it from the house and to his pickup. With each step down the brick porch steps the rigid plastic arms and legs taunted him with grotesque hints of rigor mortis, until he threw his strangely repulsive burden from him, and it landed with a loose, clattering bang in the open bed of the pickup.

As the last of the clang of plastic on metal faded, so did the last thin strip of sunlight that had been resisting the night. The sky began to darken.

Wes turned from the truck. Sara was close by his side. She glanced at him briefly, focused on the gray barn that was fading into the night and said, "I told you there was something wrong with that woman."

She did not see his stabbing look. She still had no idea. With a worried breath, he answered, "Yeah."

Her mouth was set. "This has got to stop, Wes. At first I thought it was nothing, but now I'm sure. They've been harassing me, calling at all hours, sending fake telegrams, sending morticians out to the house—"

"Sending—?” he gaped.

She nodded but went on without missing a beat, "—to talk to me about funerals. And now this." Something flew through the light of the floodlamp with a sudden, black flickering shadow. "It's got to stop." A bat, she thought. She had seen a bat, for the first time in her life, and she wasn't afraid. She looked at Pitcher's home and the land that spread behind it, fields a black plane in the night. "This is mine now."

As the night settled in, the weak porch lamp of Pitcher's home reached out, across the dark yard, to mix with the glare of the floodlight above the barn. Where the halos of light met, the two buildings became connected.

Sara felt Wes' hand suddenly seizing hers and a moment later she was being pulled behind him as he strode across the yard. Paws flashing spatters of white, the Australian shepherd instinctively led their way to the aged, odorous barn.

Inside the inky portal of the entry, Wes stopped. While her eyes tried to adjust, Sara could feel his presence, closely invisible beside her. In a few seconds she was just able to see by the harsh, blue-white glare from the floodlight that pushed through the open door, hit the walls and posts inside the barn and reflected weakly into the dark corners.

Reaching upward, into the shadows, Wes found then fingered the finish nail on which had hung the house key that any neighbor had been free to use. Only the thin, rusty spike met his touch.

"It's gone, isn't it?" asked Sara, half knowing, half guessing.

His hand fell to his side. "Yeah."

She broke away abruptly, shooting out of the dark hole of the barn and into the garish aura of the floodlamp.

Though heat was still rising from the earth, Sara felt chilled. They had the spare key. They could get inside the house. Somewhere behind her, down the dark aisle of the barn, straw rustled mysteriously as horses moved about in their stalls. As in her childhood, the darkness beyond the door seemed to hold something unknown, something huge and dark and threatening.

"I think you should come into town tonight." Wes had followed her, and the sound of his voice made her shiver for some reason.

Sara shook, and the feeling left her. She heaved a sigh. "No," she said with Pitcher's stubbornness but her own seething anger, answering before she had the chance to thrill at the thought that he might have meant for her to stay at his house. Quickly, she went on: "I thought about that, before you came." She edged away from the bright light above her.

The night was deepening, blue becoming purple becoming black, tiny holes appearing for stars. Around Sara and Wes, gray moths and stray fireflies erratically darted and flittered. Sara stared toward the small white house that seemed so warmly lit. Beyond the house, luminous rays of a rising moon fell flat and silver-green on the fields and the pastures, tall and shimmering on the steep slopes of the forested mountains.

Quietly, she said, "They've been fighting me and tormenting me ever since I got here, Wes. If I leave, they get exactly what they've wanted: they get rid of me. They win. But we're going to win." Her face settled with her thoughts. "No matter what."

A breeze that minutes before had rippled the alfalfa fields rolled unseen through the night and with soft hands lifted the loose strands of Sara's hair. Wes swallowed a breath. He had much to do. Much to do for her. Much to settle. He found his voice. "Think you'd be all right while I got rid of that thing?" His head tilted toward his truck, where the plastic figure lay half hidden below the walls of the bed. He couldn't just leave it there in his truck—and he had much to do. "I might be a couple of hours."

She thought for a second or two, wondered about the delay, decided to trust, not to ask, and turned to him, nodding. "Hurry back?"

His chin dipped as his head bowed to one side. "Sure. But—" a strange sense made him pause "—keep the dog with you, okay?"

Sara cast a short glance downward. Sitting between them, the tricolored Aussie grinned up at her, eyes bulging, ears popping up and flattening. "Her?" she asked. "What for?"

A quick grin flashed. "She's an Aussie," Wes said. "She might surprise you."

Sara looked down at the dog again. "I'd rather have a gun."

Before she looked up, Wes said quietly, "I can arrange that."

Sara raised her eyes. The look was there again, in his face, in his pale green eyes, even in the darkness, even though she could barely see him. Something hidden away, something she didn't understand. Something that might frighten her, if she knew what it was. And she had thought she had discovered everything.

"No," she answered, looking at the Shepherd's sweet face. Whatever hid within Wes, she would have to learn at some later time. "Little goofball and I will do just fine."

Chapter Twenty-Three

Karen Smyck jerked when the doorbell rang. Midnight was only half an hour away. No one had any business at her door at this hour.

In a hallway linen closet converted into her office, a bright fluorescent light shone overhead and her third mug of hot cocoa steamed beside her computer. Half of a chocolate chip cookie protruded from her guilty mouth as she turned toward the front door. Crumbs from cookies gone by clung to her lips. Today, a seventy-year-old Alabama shipyard worker with a bagful of cotton in his mouth had talked—mumbled incoherently was a better way to put it—a country mile a minute about the hypertechnical aspects of things she had never heard of. Every one of the attorneys at the deposition had sat there like a bump on a log, never asking for clarification or repetition. Every one of them had been sure that even though they had absolutely no idea what was being said, the court reporter undoubtedly was performing some miracle beyond their grasp, hearing every single unintelligible word that was spoken and writing it verbatim. And no doubt they thought that they could read all those indistinguishable words at some later time, in perfect clarity and in the quiet comfort of their offices. And when the deposition was over they had asked her to expedite the transcript.

"Jerks," she said of her clients as the lines of incomprehensible questions and even more nonsensical answers scrolled up the screen. "Serve you right if I don’t clean you up."

The doorbell rang again, insistent, ominous. Saving her file, Karen popped out of her cubbyhole and walk-trotted to the front door, trying to keep away an unreasoning fear that hovered just behind her back. Her husband Mike and their two sons were at a Boy Scout camp, and their absence was a Godsend, given this expedite. She was alone.

"Who is it?" she asked through the door, hand unwilling to touch the knob.

"Karen Smyck?" a man's voice asked.

She gulped. "Yes. Who is it?"

"I'm Wesley Morrison," she heard. "I'm an attorney from Ash Creek."

Wes tried to sound as nice as he could, but he knew that his exhaustion cut through. His suit jacket felt heavy on him and his cotton shirt felt soiled. He had not bothered to cinch up his tie. He had to have the answers to his questions—he had to—but since dawn he had been to Redding and back, and now he was in Redding again, and he had eaten nothing except a half-cold hamburger and some wilted, greasy French fries that had fallen on the floorboards as he had raced down the highway. Sunset had passed behind him as he had flown down the highway. And after this trip, a hundred miles still lay between him and Sara.

Sara. A hundred miles away. Pretty Sara sat at home alone. He had left her in Pitcher's house and had driven out of the valley, through Ash Creek and to his own home. There, he had propped the mannequin in his garage on boxes of exhibits from other cases, hoping as he did that someday he would be able to look at the weird thing and not grimace.

"Do you—?" Karen could not begin to imagine why a lawyer unknown to her had sought her out. The way she was treated when she went out on her jobs was bad enough, but now she was being hunted down in her own home. Instantly both irritated and dispirited, with three days of little sleep, incomprehensible colloquy and dropped objections just behind her, she snapped, "What is it, exactly, that you want?"

At the door, Wes sagged. "I'm sorry," he offered, "but I really need your help with something."

She shook her head, trying to remember on what job this Wesley Morrison person had appeared. "I'm sorry, too," she finally called through the door. "But I can't get this job out any faster than—"

"No," Wes tried again. "I don't want a transcript. I just need for you to look something up for me."

"On a job?" she asked and instantly felt stupid. "Of course it's on a job, Karen," she said to herself, looking down at her dirty tennis shoes. Brushing wild strands of hair from her face, she said, "Was it transcribed?"

"I don't think so."

"How old is it?"

Wes shrugged. "Five, six months."

She started to give in. "And you just want me to find something for you on my notes?"

"That's all. I'll pay you what a copy would cost, if that'll help."

He was pleasant, not pushy. She could use the money. Tiredly, she surrendered, then caught herself. It was midnight. "Let me see your State Bar card."

A genuine smile creased Wes' face for a moment as he dug the white plastic card from his wallet and held it up to the peephole in the door.

On tiptoes, Karen peered out at the distorted image, satisfied herself that it was what it looked like, and dropped back down. Telling herself that she knew better than to trust a lawyer, she called, "All my old notes are in the garage." "If you'll go around front, I'll open the garage door for you."

The garage door opener hummed and clanked and revealed to her a young man who, if he were not so tired, might be good looking in an unusual sort of way. He had a nice smile for her, though, as he walked in and stood beside her old Camry. She brushed the crumbs from her mouth and wished that she was not dressed in old blue jeans and a sagging white tee shirt.

Along one wall of a garage littered with children's toys, bicycles, garden implements, piles of laundry and the flotsam of ten years of marriage were shelves laden with bulging cardboard boxes. From the dark residential street beyond the opening, the humid, late summer air crept in. Under a single, bright, bare bulb which immediately drew several fluttering gray moths, she searched the alphabetically arranged boxes for the manila envelope that Morrison wanted. Hauling the box off of the shelf for her, he watched over her shoulder as she kneeled and searched the endless flaps of steno notes for the correct spot in the proceedings. Outside, in the darkness, a young boy whirred by on a bicycle.

"What's FRPBLGTS mean?" Morrison asked, eyes on the thin, skinny brown sheets of reporter paper.

" 'Answer,' " Karen said without thinking. The day she had taken the job Morrison wanted, her mind had been in the clouds, on the trip her family was going to take to Disneyland at the end of the school year. Everyone at the hospital conference table had been facing away from her, their voices fading into the acoustical tiles, and she had heard only half of what they had said and had worried even less. Since her firm had assured her that no one would ever want a transcript, she had forgotten the matter.

And now here in her home was the reason she was never allowed to do that.

Karen's heart fluttered like the moths around the bulb. It would be just her luck to have missed the one thing this young lawyer needed to know. With relief she saw a red dot on her steno paper, a mark she had inserted for the express purpose of reminding herself to ask for the spelling of a proper name. And there, added to the paper in her large, curly script, was the name.

"'Question:'" she read. "By Mister Everett—he must have been the attorney there—': Then how did you come to this?' I wrote 'indicating', so there must have been something they didn't mark as an exhibit."

"Uh-huh," Wes nodded.

"'Answer'—by Mister Kroeber—: 'We talked to a lawyer.'"

Wes tried to see the next line in the jumble of letters.

Karen went on rapidly, surprised that her notes were so clean. "'Question: Who? Answer: Jim Alarcon, in Redding.'" She looked over her shoulder at Morrison. "Go on?"

"Please."

She turned back to her notes. "'Question: Why isn't he here representing you today? Answer: We just talked to him. We didn't hire him. Diane—'"

"Diana."

She glanced at Morrison, accepting the correction with a pinch of professional resentment, and continued in the stilted voice of someone reading and translating at the same time. "'Diana and I wanted this to be something just within our family. You just have no idea how personal or difficult this is for us. We don't want to involve a bunch of lawyers. We don't want the state involved. We don't want the press involved. Even this meeting is extremely hard for us."

"I'll bet," said Wes, irony rich in his soft voice.

Karen folded her notes and looked up at him. "Is that what you needed?"

"Yeah," said Wes, softly still, a faraway look on his face. "I think that's going to do it."

* * *

Popcorn the old-fashioned way was something that Sara had not made for two decades. She burned a score of kernels in the hot oil in the bottom of the saucepan, but after several persistent tries the big plastic bowl was full with fluffy white pieces, all of them covered with melted real butter and popcorn salt. Pitcher's little home was filled with the delightful warm smell, with remembrances of safety and happiness, of long-missed Sunday nights at home, of gelatin desserts, warm baths and clean pajamas, of magical family movies, variety shows and cowboys, all gone so long ago.

On the sofa under a strewn blanket, the shepherd on the floor beside her, Sara munched happily and noisily. Long after the crickets had finally stopped, when the few television signals that could reach the isolated valley had faded away and the old set hummed with featureless electronic snow, Sara put down the empty bowl and rose to peer out the window.

Dawn was only a half dozen hours away. Wes had not returned. She sighed and started to prepare for bed, more disappointed than concerned. Wes, she had decided, was able, and always had been, to take care of himself. If he had not returned it was because something had delayed him beyond his control, not because anything had happened to him. He would be back tomorrow.

As she folded the frayed blanket under which she had cuddled, the dog asked to be let out. When the shepherd returned, she dutifully followed Sara into the small second bedroom. Sitting by the end of the bed, she watched while Sara donned her pajamas and climbed under the covers. Then, the shepherd leaped onto the foot of the bed and curled into a tight ball in the crook behind Sara's knees.

Sara rose up on one elbow. Craning over her shoulder, she asked, "Excuse me, but does he let you sleep on his bed?"

The shepherd opened her eyes, grunted once, and shifted into a tighter ball.

"Of course he does," Sara answered herself. She thought for a moment, turned out the light, and, as she lay her head back down on her pillow, said to herself, "He's like that."

It was the strangest thing, Sara thought. Jack was working with As You Dream in the small round pen, and she was talking to him, with Wes standing beside her. Then, suddenly Wes had the rope and was guiding the horse, while Jack was beside her, as he always had been. Then she was gone, and only Jack and Wes were there at the arena. She found herself in the house, doing something, wanting to go out to them, but for some reason she could not. They started arguing, then, and she wanted them to stop. Their noise woke the shepherd, and she lifted her head as if she never had been asleep. She growled as she jumped off the bed and ran outside. The more Jack and Wes argued, the more the shepherd barked. Sara, too, tried to run out to the arena to stop the argument, but the harder she tried, the farther away she seemed to be. The dog kept barking furiously, while Sara's legs kicked wildly underneath the blankets, whipping across the bed.

With a start she awoke, at first afraid that she had kicked and hurt the shepherd, then twice as frightened by the sound of the dog barking out in the front room.

They had come back. They were trying to get in the house.

Heart pounding faster than it ever had before, she snapped on the bedside light and ran from the room, turning on lamps as she went, until the house was ablaze with light.

Front paws on the window sill, the little shepherd had stopped barking, but she was still peering intently outside when Sara switched on the last lamp in the room. Ears popping up and down, the dog emitted a single low bufff, then dropped off the sill, turned and grinned at Sara.

"What is it, girl?" Sara asked. "Did you see something? What did you see? What is it?" In her light pajamas and bare feet, she picked her way across the old carpet on the floor of the room, stood beside one of the front windows, steeled herself, and peeked out.

The porch lamp was still lit, as was the barn floodlight, and the illumination from both showed Sara an empty yard. Twisting left and right, she peered at as much of the property as she could see, but discovered nothing except the chill black night and a low mist that hung over the buildings like a canopy.

A shiver ran up and down her as the burst of fear that had overwhelmed her faded away. Turning from the window, she saw the shepherd with her head in the popcorn bowl, black nose and pink tongue carefully selecting the last few good nuggets. A good-natured frown tugged down Sara's lips. "Oh, great," she complained. "I get hysterical while you eat."

Something slapped at the window behind her, rattling the glass, tapping to get inside. A short, sharp cry spun her about and carried her backwards into the middle of the room while the shepherd forgot the bowl and barked at this new threat.

At the window, a huge yellow moth beat its wings in the attracting light from the single bulb of the porch lamp, butting its head against the window panes, flitting back and butting again. Each time its head hit, the window tapped; each time the wings struck, the window rattled. The moth danced from pane to pane, disappeared into the night, and attacked again.

"Oh, cripes," whined Sara wearily. Clicking off the outside light, she sank onto the sofa. "A moth," she said to the dog. "You got me up and scared to death all because of a moth?"

Finally quieting, the shepherd came and sat beside her, licked her hand, and gazed up at her for forgiveness and approval.

Sara smiled sternly, tiredly, forgivingly, and scratched the little dog's ears. She just could not keep a temper. "Now, don't do that again," she warned in a voice that drew the shepherd's silly grin.

* * *

The hours after midnight were cold and misty, and the heater in Diana's old Toyota whistled as it warmed her feet. She drove the river road slowly, carefully staying within the gray lanes that materialized just outside the glowing pools of the headlamps. This was not the time to attract the attention of some nosey deputy sheriff, for at every curve the paper bag full of paint spray cans that she had tucked underneath her seat rolled slightly with a dry crackle and a liquid clunk.

There had been no dog before. She was sure of that. It, like the road she now drove, had materialized out of the dark just in the nick of time. But, unlike the road, the dog had blocked her path, not furthered it.

She had studied carefully, and she was proud of it. She could visualize the hex signs she had found in the library books even without referring to her carefully copied drawings. She would have been able to paint them in just a few minutes. Just a few, carefully chosen signs, ancient and dark, foreboding and evil, arranged around an image of Mount Shasta. A picture of her own making, of the mountains with caverns beneath it. And in the caverns the people who had lived in frightening childhood stories.

Diana smiled in the faint green light from the dashboard. Everyone would have blamed the Lemurians, the survivors of a lost civilization said to exist beneath the dormant volcano. Her hints were cryptic enough; only after hours of wondering would anyone have thought of the lost people below the snowy fields. And after that no one would ever have thought of her. Sara Owen would have been terrified. It would have been perfect.

Except for the damn dog. The miserable little thing must have heard her drive up, for within moments of stopping in front of the house it had appeared in the window and begun barking. The house had remained dark long enough, though, for Diana to turn about and hurry back toward town. The weak and unstable suspension of her old car had bounced her onto the pavement of the river road just as, far behind her, the last light in the house had begun burning.

One of the spray cans escaped its sack and bumped against her heel. Impatiently, she reached down and tucked it back under the seat. She did not need to be reminded. She would not give up on her idea. In Smith's Fork at the head of the valley, all the stores had been closed for hours and nothing but the bars remained open. But in Ash Creek there was an all-night grocery store, and there, somewhere on the cluttered shelves of the narrow aisles, underneath the high ceiling of fluorescent lamps, she would be able to find what she needed.

* * *

The shepherd's eyes opened first, and then her head lifted. As with all her breed, she learned quickly, sights and sounds and meanings. She had heard this sound before, just an hour ago, and a growl rumbled lowly from her throat. Sara didn't move. The noise, inaudible to a human even in the quiet country night, grew closer, and the shepherd growled softly a second time. As Sara stirred, fighting her way from a dreamless sleep, the dog climbed to her feet and jumped carefully from the bed, collar tags jingling.

Bleary eyed, far more asleep than awake, Sara tumbled from bed, stumbled down the hallway and found the shepherd standing in the middle of the living room. As she entered, the dog issued another growl, louder than the others, but still from deep in her throat. Hoping it might be Wes finally returning, almost too tired to feel frightened even if it was not, Sara flipped on the porch lamp and peeked outside for the briefest moment. Seeing nothing, she closed the switch and turned into the now nearly pitch dark living room with a mild rebuke on her lips.

The dog had turned away already and before she could speak it trotted back toward the bedroom, a moving spot of glossy black in the flat shadow of the night. In the shepherd's ears, the sound of the vehicle that had been there earlier was already fading, and there was no longer any reason to raise an alarm or stand guard. Pausing in the hallway long enough to make sure that Sara was tottering after her, the dog reached the bedroom, leaped up onto the bed, waited for Sara to lie down and cover herself once more, then lay down her own head to sleep.

From deep in the pillows, Sara muttered to the Aussie, "You tell Wes I'm going to get him for this."

* * *

Pitcher's house was dark, inside and out, as it should have been in the very dead of night. Sara had not waited up this long, and Wes could not blame her. It was too late, and he knew it, yet that knowledge had not kept him from hoping. For an unjustifiable minute he sat in his truck, engine running, just to make sure.

For the third time that night, the Australian shepherd awoke. Accepting her weary duty without question, she listened for a moment, but this time did not alert or issue any warning. Rising slowly, her front paws skied slowly down a sagging ramp of blankets and quilts toward the floor, until her hindquarters had only a short jump from the bed. As she trotted out, Sara did not stir.

The front windows were dark but the curtains were open and the Ranger's headlamps lit up the white of the Aussie's muzzle and blazed head as she stood on the sill and looked out.

Wes saw the little face and smiled to himself. Just like at his own home, woken by the sound of her master's pickup, a sound she knew well, the dog had come to greet him. Climbing out of the truck, he left the engine quietly idling and the driver's door wide open. Faint light from the interior dome lamp spilled light into the yard as he padded up onto the porch.

On the other side of the glass, front paws still on the window sill, ears subserviently flat against her head, the shepherd stared up at him and tried to sniff his hand while her tongue slipped in and out of her mouth.

Wes looked at the dog's brown eyes for a long moment. Just inside the house, just down the hallway he could dimly make out, Sara lay sleeping. Slowly, he knelt in front of the dog and touched the cold glass window panes with his fingertips. "You take good care of her now," he whispered.

Chapter Twenty-Four

In the cold, clear dawn, dewdrops hung heavily on the waving green alfalfa and shone wetly in golden orange on the windows of Sara's Bronco. The wooden frame of the old screen door banged damply behind the Australian shepherd. The dog bounded down the brick steps of the porch, out and across the dirt yard, while Sara with sleepy eyes shut the front door and tottered back to the warmth of her bed. Beneath the heavy quilt, she curled up with a pillow and in the silence of the country morning dreamed of the summer days before her mother had passed away, when responsibilities and early mornings were things she had never known.

With the sun rising above the eastern mountains and fanning its rays through a thin sheet of white clouds, the dew began to warm, stirring invisibly, while wet patches on the gray river road began to dry and the windows of Sara's truck began to clear, while faraway farm vehicles began to cough and rumble, while inside stables saddle horses began to stamp.

With the sun bright inside the front rooms of Pitcher's house, the yellow rays slipped alongside the south wall to the second bedroom on the western side of the building and crept through Sara's curtained window. Air warmed by the sun flowed from the front rooms into the colder back of the home, and the door to the second bedroom swung ever so slightly with a creak. Rolling and turning, Sara opened one eye, and after a moment recognized that she was not in her mother's home, recognized where and when she really was. With a groan that she would not have made had anyone been there to hear her, she lifted the blankets and quilt from her legs and sat up on the edge of the bed, tousled brown hair collapsing around her face.

As she set the coffee pot on the aged stove, the dew was warm and patchy, and as she finished her breakfast of toast and jam the condensation was beginning to form spotted islands. As she cleaned the dishes, the farmers around her had been at work for hours, though the shopkeepers in town had yet to open for business. And as she looked out the little window over the sink, past the faded cotton curtains, Wes had yet to arrive.

By the time her first class would have started, Sara had dressed and called the shepherd back in, and the dog had responded, panting from, Sara supposed, hours of frolicking in the fields. Lying down by the couch, the dog turned her silly grin toward Sara and watched while the woman wandered about the house, now and then looking out the window, sometimes sitting for a moment, sometimes rising to straighten things that were not in disarray.

Stuffing her pajamas under the pillows, Sara heard the grinding of the rocky dirt yard under the wheels of the pickup, and with relief she hid from herself ran to the windows of the living room. By the sofa, the shepherd raised her head and watched while Sara went from window to window, watched while Sara's hopeful smile faltered and faded away. The dog coughed again, a sound like tires sliding on dirt, and Sara bent down by her.

"Are you okay, little one?" asked Sara softly, gently scratching the dog's ears. "You didn't catch that big bug from last night, did you?" When the dog only panted in return, Sara pushed herself to her feet. "I know what you need," she said. Filling a bowl from the cupboard with water, she set it by the dog's muzzle, waggled her finger in it, and straightened once more to gaze for a wishful moment out the front windows. After a moment, she decided on another cup of coffee, though that meant dirtying and then recleaning the pot and a cup. Setting the steaming mug before her on the small kitchen table, she sipped slowly, trying to make time pass more quickly.

* * *

Fall was coming early, north of Lake Shasta. This year, the third season was presaged by a cooling and dampening of the air, by pale blue skies daubed by white cirrus clouds. The mare's tails curled and whirled over the blue heavens in such wonderful fashions that should an artist have brushed that kind of sky in oil on canvas, his depiction would have been scorned as utterly fanciful.

Wes drove southward for the third time in two days, eyes more on the wispy sky than on the road, even though he was, as usual, speeding. Worn down, tired inside and out, he hurried on, watching the miles pass in quick yet interminable succession, a bleak set to his jaw.

Bruce Adamek and Cathy Welch had signed the power of attorney that ultimately had been the instrument of Jerome Pitcher's death. Yet, they had lied to him about it. For over ten years, Wes had been reading people, taking their depositions and examining them under oath, and he could spot a fraud or a liar as well or better than as the next man. Bruce and Cathy were not the best of liars, but they were lying.

He squinted against the sun. But exactly what were they lying about?

Cathy, like her brother Bruce, had not offered the most innocent and persuasive explanation—that of simple ignorance of the meaning of what they had done. The cousins had not tried to say that they had simply made a mistake, the way they would have if they had actually signed the document in good faith, at Pitcher's request, without knowing that they were doing something wrong. And at the same time they had not prepared a persuasive story to explain their actions, as they would have if they had known what they had done was unlawful. If their signatures were genuine—and Wes was sure that they were—then they either had signed the document knowing full well what it was and what it meant, or they knew absolutely nothing about it.

Wes shifted in his seat. Before he had set out today, he had chosen the latter option. When he had questioned them, the cousins had extemporized lies because they had sensed, but had not known, that if they told the truth they would be in very serious trouble. Therefore, they did not know that they had signed the power of attorney.

The concrete freeway was almost empty, but Wes did not notice, and he sped by cars without seeing them. He had enough to prove that the power of attorney was invalid; of that much, he was sure. The cousins were improper witnesses—even if they had truly witnessed something, which he doubted but could not prove just yet. Regardless, the authority that Barry Kroeber had wielded had not been his to use.

Wes toed the accelerator and the Ranger surged forward. He could prove that the power of attorney, and the actions taken under it, were unlawful. Invalid. A nullity. Kroeber legally could not have done what he did.

But that wouldn't bring Pitcher back to life. Again, the law meant nothing.

South of the high, desolate country around Ash Creek, still spread with sagebrush and wild grass wherever the cattlemen had not cleared the land, the highway climbed into the mountains whence the rivers flowed, whence the blue fingers of Lake Shasta formed. Under a sky traced with clouds, pines and firs began to people the steep slopes, and in the canyon below the tumbling river began to grow the wide, slow waters of the Sacramento Valley watershed. Within a score of miles, after the pass above the dam was reached, the road dropped into the valley, into a flat, hot, busy land of buildings and farms and civilization impressed upon nature. That far, Wes did not need to go.

In the small roadside coffee shop that advertised the best BBQ in town, in the little town at the base of snowy Mount Shasta, the customers could hear the constant rush of the interstate only when they closed their eyes and thought of that distant world. The two-lane path that ran through town was a state highway, but it was little traveled even by the poachers and the occasional licensed hunters who roamed the mountainous, forested country outside the little restaurant's windows. Few people made the trip from the broad concrete freeway to the town, and those who did were on their way somewhere else. None of them wore the kind of wool suits or drove the kind of luxury sedans as did the tall, silver-haired man at the counter. He was so large that even with arms and legs crossed, he dwarfed the stool and hung far over the counter.

In blue jeans and a striped, short-sleeved top, the plump, middle-aged waitress was recognizable as such only by the coffee pot in her hand. She studied the face of the man at the counter for a moment. During the quarter of an hour he had been here, he had not even opened a menu. Freshening his cup with a short, practiced spill of coffee from the glass carafe, she asked again if he wanted anything, even a piece of pie. He raised a pleasant face to her, but politely declined. Smiling tolerantly, she carried a plate heaped with breakfast fixings and one laden with an overstuffed luncheon sandwich—it was that overlapping time of day—to a tableful of her regulars. As she walked away, the man turned back to the counter and hugged his cup of coffee between his strong arms.

The waitress was still chatting minutes later when the pickup passed by. Through the plate glass windows that faced the road, they could see the head of the young man who was driving swivel suddenly toward the restaurant. He swung his truck around, drove onto the broken asphalt of the parking lot, hopped out and entered the coffee shop. At the counter, the older man turned his face toward the other and raised his eyebrows in a kind of unfamiliar recognition. The fact that a suit also clothed the new arrival was carefully noted by the regulars.

As Wes crossed the floor and sat next to him, Jim Alarcon asked lowly, with unexpected humor, "Doctor Morrison, I presume?"

"Mr. Stanley?," replied Morrison, and saw Alarcon smile with what seemed to be an instant liking.

"Ever been here before?"

Wes shook his head. "Never even drove through. Don't know a soul."

"Good. Me neither."

"Coffee?" the waitress asked, turning over the creamy china mug in front of Wes and filling it while she smiled a welcome. She glanced at Alarcon and then back at Morrison. They looked nothing alike, yet the first—bigger, taller, older, with a deeper voice—seemed like he was the father of the second. And they were alike; they both had masks for faces. "Would you like to see a menu?" she asked of Morrison.

Alarcon answered first. "Thanks, but we won't be that long."

Her expectations fulfilled, the waitress wandered back to her friends and resumed her own conversation—while keeping a curious rural eye on the two men at the counter.

"Well?" asked Alarcon's impatience.

Wes peered through the steam of his coffee at the still turbulent black liquid and spoke to the counter. "Your name was mentioned at a meeting of the peer review committee at our County Hospital a while back."

"Is that right?" Expressionless, seeming not to speak, Alarcon mused, "People take my name in vain all the time. Sometimes they're even my clients."

Wes' head dipped to hide his amusement, then rose as he sobered. "Well, that actually may be the case here."

Alarcon turned slowly, the experience in his blue-gray eyes plain with doubt. A faint, tolerant smile found his lips. "Oh? And just who do you think it might have been?"

"I know who it was. There was a transcript."

Alarcon's eyes widened slightly, though the rest of his face displayed no change. "Is that right?"

Waiting until the waitress passed them by once more, flicking a glance out of the corner of her eye, Wes rotated his mug and murmured, "You remember talking to a brother and sister about a power of attorney over health care for their uncle?"

"No." Alarcon's answer was instantaneous, a forceful single word. His head swung resolutely back to his coffee and he sipped deeply from the white china mug.

Wes stared as the seconds passed. The trail had ended abruptly, though the map said that it would lead further. As he would have done in the wilderness, a heavy backpack weighing him down, he double-checked his field and map bearings and pressed on, relying on the chart to be truer than his senses. "The brother's name is Barry Kroeber. The sister's name—"

Alarcon's voice sparked like country lightning. "You know, I really don't feel comfortable talking about my clients, Wes." Then, with a curiously deliberate movement, the big man removed his silver-rimmed eyeglasses and began cleaning the lenses with a white linen handkerchief drawn from his inner jacket pocket. His eyes seemed to laugh at Morrison.

"—is Diana Robeck," Wes finished, enunciating the words into the purposeful silence with the same irresistible persistence that so often irritated his friends and exasperated his opponents. "The brother was the one who mentioned your name at the meeting."

Alarcon was a model of indifference. "So?"

Wes turned his head slightly as his tone sharpened, sure now that what he was facing was only the act of a very learned professional. "So," he retorted, less maturely than he would have liked, "they said that they had consulted you about their uncle—and that you had told them about a power of attorney over health care."

Alarcon's face was bothered now. He thought for a moment, taking a deep breath as he did, and said, quite pedantically, "I don't know what kind of practice you have, Wes, but in mine I don't go around willy-nilly violating my clients' attorney-client privilege."

The rebuke slapped but didn't hold. Been there, done that. Coldly, Wes returned the man's stare. Few lawyers adhered—or tried to adhere—to the Rules of Professional Conduct more than Wesley Morrison. Yet, some things could be more important than keeping a client's secrets. And besides—"You said they weren't your clients."

Alarcon was practiced, experienced. He didn't hesitate. "Maybe I was wrong."

"So were they?"

"Maybe. Why should I tell you?"

Bartering, thought Wes. Information for information. A reason to tell for what was to be told. He picked his words, each quiet sentence skimming like steel across a whetstone.

"They used a power of attorney that may not have been valid. A couple of distant cousins signed as witnesses. After the uncle had a stroke, he went into a coma, and your clients used the power of attorney to terminate his life support."

Alarcon's face flickered with surprise, with disgust, with something so much like recognition that Wes could not hope to put a name to it. Then the man's expression returned to cultivated indifference. "Did they really?"

"You know they did."

"Do I?"

"Yeah, you do."

"Well, what of it?"

Wes' coffee was cooling. He continued rotating the cup, sending the steaming swirling in gentle cyclones. Alarcon was a difficult adversary. He had the same detachment that Wes himself had, the ability to step back from a situation and see just what was happening and just what needed to be done. Wes liked him.

"What of it?" Wes repeated.

"Yeah." Alarcon's smirk challenged.

Wes sipped from his cup. The coffee was lukewarm and acidic. Cup and saucer clinked together. "I have reason to believe that the cousins never knew what they were signing. Or even that they were signing."

A low grunt escaped Alarcon. "You want to tell me your reasons?"

"No," said Wes, and felt Alarcon smile. "But I don't think they signed it before the uncle had his stroke."

The counter stool on which Alarcon sat squeaked with a long, high-pitched squeal as he turned. At the sound, heads, too, turned, of regulars and visiting hungry families alike. Alarcon waited until the spots of interest had swiveled away and vanished. This was what the young lawyer next to him wanted to find out. When. He focused on Morrison. "Why not?"

Checking again to make sure that the ubiquitous waitress was not nearby, Wes asked quietly, "How could anybody have planned on the uncle having a stroke?"

Alarcon's back straightened. He had suspected, had been sure, had even known, in his heart. Barry and Diana had been so transparent. They had forged, not found, the power of attorney after he had mentioned it to them, after their uncle had suffered his stroke. He had thought of it now and then, over the months, and had wondered. But he had not known enough to act. And even now, he still could not. He could not reveal what his clients had told him. At least, not directly. The last of his coffee suddenly called back his attention. He studied it.

Wes could not wait for an answer. "Did they ask you for advice after he'd had the stroke?"

Alarcon grimaced, though his eyes never left the refrigerated pie rack on the far wall. "There you go again," he chided, "asking about confidential stuff."

"I just want to know what they said—"

"Geez, Wesley," Alarcon's face turned sour as his head swung toward Morrison, "didn't they teach you anything in law school?"

Wes' hand found and rubbed his eyes. Again, the path seemed to end, lost in trackless dust. His mind raced once more, back and forth, like a dog along an unbroken fence, until he saw the glance that Alarcon gave him out of the corner of his eye. They had in fact, he thought, taught him quite a lot in law school. And he had not forgotten all of it. Facts not communicated in confidence were not privileged.

"When did they come to see you?" he asked sharply.

Alarcon smiled benignly, and answered truthfully. "I don't remember exactly."

Wes leaned at him. "Was it before or after their uncle had his stroke?"

Alarcon's smile vanished. They were on the edge. The attorney-client privilege, the sanctity of client communications, was the most holy of all of a lawyer's privileges. He had to be very careful. "They came into my office twice," he offered, plunking down the lure, offering it up, playing it as best he could.

Wes' voice fell abruptly. "They came and saw you twice?"

Alarcon stared back at him. The conclusion should have been obvious.

"Then—"

"Of course," Alarcon interrupted, "they could have found it in his papers...."

Voice barely distinguishable from the hum of the overhead fans, Morrison whispered, "They came to you the first time, after the stroke, but had never heard of the power of attorney?"

Alarcon's eyebrows rose and fell above a grim mouth.

The sudden thud against Wes' breastbone was his heart. "And after you told them about it, they came back? A second time? They searched their uncle's house and came back with the power of attorney? After he was in a coma?"

Alarcon stared.

"But," breathed Wes, "when they searched the house, they didn't find the will."

"That all for today?" asked the waitress who somehow had slipped along the counter without being noticed. A fresh pot of coffee was heavy in her hand.

Abruptly, Jim Alarcon had no interest in the conversation.

With a quick, deep breath, Wes hurriedly stood, slipping off the stool, glancing to where his truck was parked. He had it. "I've got to get back."

Alarcon tossed several bills on the counter, smiling at the waitress. "No, thanks," he said. "I think we're all finished for today."

* * *

She felt alone. For a long time after Jack had died, the emptiness of Sara's home had oppressed her, as if she had been able to be alone in it everywhere at the same time, as if all the loneliness inside of it could gather upon her all at once. Over time she had learned to live with that feeling, but it had returned now, somehow the same, somehow different. If Wes would only come, the emptiness would go, and for a sudden cold moment she wondered if something had happened to him, if something had happened to him last night and everyone had forgotten to tell her.

She rose and peeked through the lacy curtains on the window in the kitchen door at the mountain behind the house. The morning was long gone, and a late lunch was digesting inside of her. The evening was only an hour or so away. The house was quiet, save for the sound of a light breeze that had picked up, that now and then puffed out the curtains over the kitchen sink. On the breeze was carried the smell of the dark, tilled earth and the cold river water, the endless acres of rich green crops and the pungent, musty odors of the horse barn. And rain. Yet the wafting currents brought no sounds to her. Except the panting and occasional coughing of the little shepherd lying by the couch.

Sara had no children, yet she knew a mother's instincts. As the shepherd pulled herself to her feet, looked into the kitchen, then walked slowly to the front door, Sara rose quickly. The dog began to cough from deep inside, head down, sides heaving.

"Oh, no," worried Sara. Covering the last few steps in a run she shoved open the door and the Aussie made her way out. There on the porch the dog stopped, unable to go further, and vomited reddish liquid.

"Oh, God!" Sara shouted. As she knelt and touched the dog's back, the animal heaved a second time, then backed away and stood by Sara, staring out toward the river. To Sara's hand, the dog's nose was hot and dry, and she was sure that was a bad sign. "What's wrong, little one?" she asked to the dog's upturned face. "What's happened?"

Another hacking cough and renewed panting were her only answer. She stood. "All right, come on." Holding open the door, she guided the Aussie into the kitchen, where the dog quickly found a corner and slid to the floor against the wall, head in her paws. Pulling a ragged blanket from the top shelf of the hall closet, Sara made a bed for the dog and coaxed her onto it.

By the time she had cleaned the porch and picked up the water bowl from near the sofa, the dog had left three more sticky red pools in front of her and had made a horrid red mess of her blanket. Her eyes were starting to roll back in their sockets. Throwing the stinking, soiled bedcover out onto the small stoop behind the kitchen, heart pounding, Sara hurriedly cleaned up the cracked linoleum floor as best she could. Then, from the mass of papers that filled her valise, she extracted Wes' home telephone number.

Face tight with worry, with nervous fingers she spun the dial, and then listened as, twenty miles away, the ring of the telephone echoed through an empty house.

She heard the shepherd hacking again as she depressed the receiver hook and dialed again. This time, a voice came on the line, pitched with surprise.

"Sara!" exclaimed Stacey. "I was just trying to call you."

Sara's eyes closed with relief. "I was just trying to get ahold of Wes at home."

"He's in Redding today, again," Stacey said. "I just had to cancel a deposition for him. I don't think he even remembered he was on calendar today. He must not have had a good night."

As the dog coughed behind her, Sara asked quickly, "Will he be back soon, do you think?"

Stacey flipped open the master calendar. Nothing but the afternoon deposition in their office had been scheduled. "Well, I don't really know what he was going out on, to tell you the truth." She grimaced at the embarrassing admission. "So I can't really say. Sorry."

Around the corner, in the kitchen, the dog lay down heavily once more. Rapidly, Sara said, "Stacey, I think Wes' dog is sick. She's been throwing up all over the place, and there’s blood in it, I think. She's really weak and she won't drink anything. If he's not going to be back soon, I think she needs to see a vet. Do you know who he takes her to?"

Another line rang on Stacey's telephone, but she ignored it. The cards on her card file spun with a flapppppp as she looked for the listing she wanted. Finding it, she said, "I don't know whether or not that he's ever taken her to a vet, Sara, but we did do some work for one of the veterinary hospitals in town a while back—you want their address?"

Yanking a wrinkled sheet of paper and an uncapped pen from her bag, Sara scribbled down the information as Stacey read it to her. "Will you call them and tell them I'm coming?"

"You're leaving now?"

In the kitchen, the shepherd coughed once more. Sara nodded into the receiver. "I don't think I can wait any longer."

Chapter Twenty-Five

Sara's foot had just touched the ground when Wes' pickup raced in off the street and roared to a stop next to her Bronco. He was out and beside her in a moment, touching her shoulder, sticking his head through the open door and inside the truck. On the Bronco's passenger seat lay the shepherd, wrapped in a clean blanket, eyes closed and muscles limp, breathing heavily.

"What happened?" asked Wes as he reached across the seats to the ragged bundle.

"I don't know." Sara's chest was tight with fear and guilt. "I let her out early in the morning. When she finally came back this afternoon all she wanted to do was lie down. And then she just started to throw up."

Gathering the blanketed dog in his arms, Wes grunted. Lifting her from the seat and hugging her close to him, he put his lips next to the shepherd's ear and softly said something that Sara could not hear. Then that crack closed and he became stern again. With a glance that told Sara to follow, he rapidly carried the animal into the veterinary hospital.

The woman behind the intake counter quickly took down the personal information she needed from Wes, then looked at the small tricolored face half hidden in the folds of the blanket. "And this is...?"

Wes hesitated.

"Mickey," volunteered Sara, steadfastly avoiding Wes' sudden glance.

"Mickey," nodded the woman as she scribbled on the veterinary chart.

The door to the hospital interior opened suddenly and a young veterinary assistant with long, coarse red hair poked her head into the room. "Mr. Morrison? Come on in. We've got a room ready for you."

In a small examining room down a yellow-painted hallway were two plastic chairs, a tiny counter with a basin, and a stainless steel table extending from one wall. Wes laid the shepherd on the table. As Sara offered comfort, the assistant took the dog's temperature, felt her glands and listened to her heartbeat.

In a green smock and pants, the veterinarian who entered minutes later was slightly older than Wes and wore a full beard over a pocked face. Critically examining the shepherd while Sara related what had happened, when he finished he merely grunted and unceremoniously ushered them back out to the reception area. "Get some coffee or a sandwich," he advised as the green smock on his back turned toward them. "This could take a while."

* * *

The pickup was full of worried silence as it carried them down the road to a crowded barbecue pit. They walked without talking into the converted old house. The interior was dark, like such places should be, with moving, blurry shapes for people and a rich hickory smell as thick as the wood smoke that poured from the chimney above the roof. They found a booth in a corner and sat on lacquered wooden benches that had been carved up only a fraction less than the lacerated table top. Wes ordered the first thing he saw on the menu. The waitress brought iced teas before Sara said anything.

"You've been gone a lot." With a straw, she stirred a wedge of lemon into the cold amber liquid.

How to tell her. "I know." Whether to tell her. "I've—" He stopped and looked at her face. There was no distraction there. Only worry. Don't tell her now. "—been real busy, lately," he finished.

"I know." If she heard the lameness of his excuse she didn't show it. She nodded understandingly. "It gets like that sometimes."

The food must have been sitting on the grill waiting to be served, for the waitress appeared from nowhere and sat the sampler plate of sizzling meat and sauces in front of them. A pile of napkins and hot towels were slid next to their elbows.

"Enjoy," smiled the blonde woman as she departed.

Sara lifted the end of a barbecued rib but let it fall back with the rest. She stirred her tea again, unable to eat. Her hands and elbows gathered together over her knees, cradling her purse. She looked up to find Wes' eyes on her. He hadn't touched the food either. She had to ask. "She's going to be all right, isn't she?"

He didn't answer right away. They were alone, surrounded by the smell of good food, happy people, chattering conversation. They could talk of anything. Yet for her there was only concern, a worry that displaced all else. For a little dog she hardly knew. He nodded, to himself. She had more love, more compassion, inside of her than anyone he had ever known. Anyone? What if this had happened with—her? Behind closed eyes flashed a vision from years ago, a lovely face and smile that would not leave his past, that would not let his dreams or days just be.

Reality came back as he opened his eyes. A reality that was temporary, a façade only to an unended past, yet a reality that had to be lived as if it were truly real, for indeed it was, as real as the plaguing past. Who would have written such a scenario? Camus? Kafka? Sartre? She would have understood and known. Yet there was Sara, waiting for him to speak, thankfully due to the darkness not seeing what was at the end of the distance in his eyes. How much time had passed he did not know. But Sara wanted reassurance now, so he promised, “She’ll be just fine.”

Unsure though wanting to believe, she rocked at the waist. "She just looked so sick, lying there...."

His hand slid across the table. Without looking at him she took his fingers gratefully and squeezed tightly. "She'll be all right," he promised again.

Head bouncing up and down, she said, "I know," and their hands pulled apart. Her attention stayed on her lap. She did not feel her agreement. Thick within her was guilt that said it was her fault that the little Aussie was ill. Something she had done, or not done, was responsible somehow. If the shepherd did not pull through, she would never be able to forgive herself. And she never would be able to apologize to Wes.

The feel of his eyes on her grew intense, as if he were reading the words in her mind even as she thought them. She raised her face to his. To her astonishment, the slightest smile was on his lips. "What?"

The small grin grew just a little broader. "Mickey?"

Despite herself, she felt her own lips turn upward. She knew very well what she had done. "Well?"

He waited.

"Haven't you ever noticed," she asked defensively, imagining the face of the little Australian shepherd, "that when she puts her ears up, she looks just like a cartoon mouse?"

In less than a second Wes' grin flashed, vanished, then flashed again. "But—Mickey? For a dog? My dog?"

She sounded the smallest defiance. "What's wrong with that?"

For half a second, his face turned away slightly as his eyes searched the smoky darkness. He found the answer he sought and looked at her with it. The surprised smile, now strangely amused, flashed again. "Sara, you can't name her after a cartoon mouse."

Ready, she shot back instantly. "Why not? You named her after a scoopful of colored ice in a paper cup!"

Swooping next to the table before the retort had died away, the blonde waitress replenished their iced teas and looked askance at the untouched plate of food. She took a step away, then thought better, turned, and hastily shoved a grease-spotted paper check onto the edge of the table.

Wes drew the tab to him, turned it over, scanned it, and grimaced. Sara caught the edge of the glance he threw at the uneaten meal. "We can take it back," she suggested. "For Mickey." She twisted the name with unintended effect.

Digging at his hip for his wallet, Wes only scowled and nodded. He thumbed through the green paper between the leather folds. "She might need someone to take care of her tonight," he said. He seemed to stare into the recesses of the wallet, then added: "Maybe for a few days, even a week." He pulled out several bills and tossed them with the check onto the scarred table without looking at her.

Not wanting to hope, for a brief second Sara sought, then found her voice. When she heard herself, though, she sounded like the shy, inexperienced young woman she once had been and now could not stand to remember. "School's about to start, Wes. I—I'm going to have to go. I can't—"

She felt transparent. Out of time. Obvious. He must have seen. "I have to get back." She smoothed her hair, pulling it behind her head so that for a moment it formed a short ponytail, her bangs curling across her forehead, sweeping away just above her eyes.

God, I wish you wouldn’t do that with your hair. Wes looked away, only to see another face. A name formed on his lips, a thought, a sentence never said. Stop, stop, stop. That was years ago. This is someone else. Sara’s voice was continuing. He pulled himself back, racing back through the years to the present.

"I've got classes to teach, students—" He had to see. She played with her drink. He just had to. She looked at him. His expression was flat, defiant, mocking her and the insincerity of her refrain. Just as she had hoped he would do.

"We have schools up here," Wes said beneath the din of conversation. He waited, watching her. "Last time I checked, they had teachers, too."

Sara dipped her eyes, suddenly as thrilled as a high school girl and twice as embarrassed. She felt herself wanting to smile and look at a man in ways she had not done for seemingly endless years.

And then she thought of the shepherd.

He saw her eyes dart outside the restaurant, saw the look of pleasure disintegrate, and guessed the reason. Crumpling his paper napkin, he began to slide out of the booth. They would both have to wait. "We'd better get back."

* * *

"Toxin?"

The veterinarian heard the disbelief in Sara's voice and his face drooped. People who didn't know how to take care of their animals shouldn't be allowed to have them. In his practice, neglect had to be cured much more often than trauma. And every one of the owners who listened to his spiel had the same look that this lady did now. Still, they were paying the bills. He tried to soften his reprimand, yet his staccato voice still rattled at them.

"Well, she's had some kind of shock to her system. She was dehydrated and her temperature's up a little. We've given her some liquids and antibiotics, IV. The white stuff that's caked on her mouth and chest is some barium we gave her to calm down her tummy—she wouldn't sit still for that."

"What kind of shock?" Wes' voice sounded slow and dull compared to the doctor's.

"Good question." He glanced again at Sara and made her guilt small. "Could be any one of a number of things. Parvo. Corona virus. Or she could have accidentally ingested some kind of toxic substance. The symptoms, especially the diarrhea and the raspberry-jam stool she had, are pretty much the same for all of them. Right now, there's no way to tell, and the treatment's the same for all of them anyway. She can go home tonight, but if she gets worse, she'll have to come back and spend the night."

"All right."

The doctor's look suddenly became a sharp interrogation. You have any reason to believe it might be any one of those things, more than another?"

Wes answered first. He had already considered the possibilities, and the veterinarian had not named the most likely cause. "She's not around other dogs," he said distantly. "I don't think it could be parvo or anything like that."

"She hasn't been kenneled lately, or run with some other dogs at the park during the last two weeks, anything like that?"

"No."

"Well," the vet sighed tiredly, "she could still pick up something, from some stray dog that crossed your property, especially if she hasn't had all her vaccinations." The doctor's eyes shifted toward Sara once more. "Or she could have gotten into something. Is there anything like, oh, say, antifreeze stored in your garage that's leaking that she might have had access to?"

Sara's eyes dipped. "There's nothing like that around where she was," she said stiffly.

Wes shook his head. Pitcher's place was clean. Whatever she had gotten had not come from the farm.

Resignedly, the veterinarian flipped open the metal cover to a clipboard chart and wrote as he talked. "Well, there had to be something. Think about it, look around, and see if you can come up with something. In the meantime, be glad you caught it in time. When you get home, after a couple of hours you can let her have some water and ice cubes, then tomorrow a real bland diet, like rice and cottage cheese. Call after a day or two to tell us how she's doing, and bring her back in after a week for a checkup." Ripping a pink sheet of scrawled notations from the clipboard and handing it to Wes, the vet whirled out of the room in a blur of institutional green.

The sky was streaked with orange and bands of clouds that looked black against the light. A light wind fluttered the blanket around the shepherd as Wes settled her on the passenger seat of the Bronco. Though her eyes were barely open, the dog's tongue weakly tried to lick the hand she could see.

Sara held herself tightly as Wes shut the door and turned. There's nothing out there," she insisted. Wes had to know that she had done nothing wrong, that she had not been careless. That she had not almost killed his dog. "There's nothing she could have gotten into. She just went out like she always has, and—"

"Sara—" His hand took her arm.

She looked up at him. "There's just nothing out there, Wes! I promise! The place—"

"I know."

She broke off at the flat certainty in his voice. His face was blank and she waited for him to explain, but he only looked at her.

Kill once. Pitcher. Kill again. The shepherd. Maybe kill one more time. He had already reasoned that much. Sara's eyes were deep and brown in the pale rose of the sunset and he watched them move as she studied him. He could not stay with her, for someone had to go. He could not take her with him, since the dog could not travel. And he couldn't take her in any case. Not with what he had to do. "Come into town tonight, okay?"

It was just the look, she thought. Just the something of his eyes, for his voice was as soft as ever. But the something told her all she needed to know, and she felt scared and thrilled and important all in one strange moment. Barry and Diana. She tried to hide a shiver that chilled and tingled her behind a deep, uneven breath. Her own intuition should have told her—and would have, she knew, had she not been so locked on Wes.

She exhaled. They were disgusting. Below even the worst human indecency. They would kill a little dog, just to try to force her off the land.

She breathed in the stubborn foolhardiness that had made her father's back so straight. Her gaze traveled past the ridgeline, toward Pitcher's valley. What was it her dad had said? Something he had learned in the Army, long before she had been born. She had laughed when she had first heard him repeat it, but she had been only six. His hard, clear voice, in a low tone, as he had looked out the window and talked to his wife about his troubles with the union. Never concede ground to the enemy in the field. It sounded funny, but it meant so much.

Her eyes were sharp as she looked back at Wes and finally answered him. "I thought we already settled that."

His head dipped after only a fraction of a second of hesitation. He had expected that. Expected that of Sara. She knew. She wouldn't leave the house. Turning to the pickup behind him, he popped open the driver's door. On the seat lay a small aluminum case, which he opened with a key from his key ring.

The stainless steel Smith &Wesson had a full clip in it, which was unlawful but not, experience had taught him, unwise. He racked a .45 caliber round into the chamber, turned slowly and held it out to Sara. "Then take this."

The sun was almost gone and a floodlight over the hospital's parking lot buzzed to life. The compact semi-automatic was cold and heavy in Sara's hand and it hung there awkwardly as she stared into Wes' pale green eyes. She could feel it, now. She didn't understand, but she could feel it. What was inside him, what she didn't know. Something black and sad and frightening. But only to him.

"Five second lesson in gun safety," he said. "Safety off." The ribbed lever clicked to reveal the red dot. "Safety on." The lever clicked down again. She looked up from the pistol. "Most importantly," he went on as their eyes met, "never point it at anything unless you intend to shoot it, and don't shoot anything unless you intend to kill it. Okay?"

She felt herself nod, heard herself speak. "Okay." He was going too fast. There was too much to understand, too much to learn. She stared at the shiny gun. Too much to lose.

"I'll be back as soon as I can," he said.

He was in the truck, keys already in the ignition. Leaving her. Leaving her in far worse a way than Jack had. As he pulled the door shut she lunged after him and clung to the open window with her free hand. "Where are you going?"

The pickup engine burst to life. As the noise died away, he snapped on the lights, and looked from the glowing dashboard to Sara. "I'm going to put an end to this."

She could not stand the pounding of her heart, the breathless panic of his leaving. "Wes-!"

The truck rocked as it shifted into gear. He left one hand on the wheel and reached for her with the other. His fingers were soft and strong as they caressed her cheek and neck and drew her head toward him. She closed her eyes and leaned through the window and their lips met. Startled despite herself, she didn’t know how to react at first. Wes started to pull back, as if he thought he had been and had done wrong. At the last moment, she responded to what she felt. She touched his cheek, and he leaned closer and kissed her longer. Through the caress, she somehow felt an immense relief in him.

Wes let her go. She does kiss just as tenderly. He did not look at her, afraid that even in the darkness she would see how sadly hopeful his eyes were.

The parking lot and the hospital were swirling around Sara. "I'll be back as soon as I can," she heard Wes say. And then the red taillights of the pickup were racing fast away from her.

Chapter Twenty-Six

Across the black night sky, turbulent gray clouds hurried to obscure the waning half moon. A wind had arisen and on the low, rocky hills that rolled under and around the huddling tract homes, dry stalks of yellow straw waved stiffly. From all around, out of the night, came the incessant rush of the city.

Beaten cars and pickup trucks spotted the curbs on both sides of the street. Where the vehicles were not parked, oily black stains smeared the asphalt. The sidewalk in front of the house was gray and pitted, cracked and worn by the heat, abraded by countless running sneakers, roller skates, bicycles, skateboards. Weeds that grew in the jagged concrete cracks had migrated to the small front lawn and overcome it. A small monkey puzzle tree stood to the right of the walkway to the front door. Dead and barren, its intertwining branches stretched upward like a hundred arms beseeching the moon.

There was no gate, not even a fence. The walkway to the front door was narrow, uneven, broken by roots from an elm tree that once had grown huge in front of the living room window but now was only a forgotten stump half hidden in the lawn. The window itself glowed orange from light within thrown against the draperies.

Wes stood before the dark flagstone stoop. At his sister's, Barry Kroeber's wife had said. Talking about a break in the development project. No, she didn't know what. Or when. Or who. Actually, she really didn't know much at all about the proposed development. She left those things to Barry. Barry had a special knack for that kind of thing.

Wes took a long, slow breath. Except that Barry wasn't here. Kroeber's Mercedes was nowhere to be seen. The huge sedan surely would have been noticeable in this line of poor houses and even poorer cars.

Poor house. The kind of house into which his father had been born. No, thought Wes. Better. But his father had pulled himself out. When public school had failed him, he had taught himself. When the great depression had made work scarce, he had worked harder. When opportunity had presented itself, he had taken it; when it had not, he had made it. And, ultimately, Frank Morrison had raised his son the same way.

The doorbell rang and the peal of the chime roused movement within the home. Footsteps eventually approached from inside and with a dry crack the door opened. Warm air from within flowed past Wes' face and out into the cool night. The invisible stream made him blink.

In that fraction of a second Diana Robeck saw and understood. "You!"

Sara Owen's minion. Sara's familiar. Sara's ally, her agent. Wesley Morrison stared at her from her own doorstep. A visage of unending persecution. Unredeemable purgatory. Perdition's eternal flame. "What do you want?"

The green irises of Morrison's eyes were coldly insistent, his features cut from the stone on which he stood. Diana was alone. Barry had never been here. But it didn't matter. Unmoving, he said, "This won't take long."

Diana's gaze fell to the rough flagstones of the stoop. It was most important not to show Sara what she felt. A pronounced shrug lifted and dropped her shoulders. "It better not," she exhaled. Stepping outside, she swung the door shut but did not latch it, and light seeped out through the crack.

They moved off the stoop and onto the walkway, where anyone inside the house could not hear. The yellow rays escaping from around the front door strained to reach them but were too feeble to cross the void. Diana stood limply in the silver-blue darkness, passively defiant, arms hanging at her sides, hair swept to one side of her head by the wind that bore the clouds. She could not be turned back, not diverted. Providence was with her, in her hopes and in her prayers. She could not be stopped. Her fate would come.

Morrison was much taller than she. She looked up at him. "It's too late, you know."

A sudden stale breeze rattled the dry branches of the tree and scurried through the bushes with a rustle. The dry, furtive crackle took forever to fade. Forever. Wes barely breathed. Lying in his hospital bed, Jerome Pitcher had been unable to say what he had thought, what he had felt. Unable to say what he had wanted. Unable even to ask for his own life. Now he would be silent. Forever.

One step carried Wes to within a foot of Diana. "You're damn right."

Beneath Diana's bloated face, her muscles twitched. Her jaw hardened and her mind lowered into the hatred that stoked her burning heart. Her own home. Sara was attacking her in her own home. The viciousness ripped out and ran loose inside her. It was unbearable—but she could not show it. She swallowed and held it still. Morrison was staring at her. She found an insolent voice. "Then what are you doing here?"

The moon began to slip behind a blowing field of dark clouds. The night became heavy and quiet. As the moonlight fled, Morrison's features sank into a shapeless black mask. All he could think of was how Jerome Pitcher had died, and what he would have said and done if he had survived. But Pitcher had been deprived of his voice, his life. From the black field that covered his face came his answer: "Speaking for the dead."

The last vestige of guilt inside Diana swarmed over her, then fled in fear. Her expression shrank in upon itself. The night was very dark, very close, filled with things she could only sense. Things that hovered all around her, waiting for her. Things that Sara had sent.

As the clouds rushed on, Wes' face emerged from the darkness. Life was replaying itself. The partially uncovered moon sent a shaft of silver that shone on a pair of green crystal eyes. "Murderers can't inherit, Diana. Didn't you know that?"

No, don't. Don't, don't don't. Diana shook her head and closed her eyes, but the words and the pictures they drew pursued her.

"Didn't you think about that?"

He didn't wait for her to answer, didn't wait for her to say that it wasn't her fault. "It's not going to be hard for me to prove to the court what happened, Diana," she heard him say. "And after I do, no matter what you do, you'll never get the land. If you'd only known when to quit—"

He wouldn't stop. He just wouldn't stop. He talked on and on, words spilling into the night, vanishing, then returning like furies to torment her. "Now," his voice finally sank to the merest whisper, "they'll convict you without even trying."

Diana was white, her cheeks hollow. She hugged her waist while the wind arose from the night and blew dry, crackling leaves across the gray sidewalk. She couldn't see, but she could hear, she could feel. The netherworld evil that was Sara. The graveyard cold that was Morrison. So evil. So cold.

"First-degree murder," murmured Wes. “It’s a capital offense.”

She closed her eyes more tightly. He was so cold. As cold as the ice that was Sara's heart. And yet—her lids snapped open—every little Girl Scout knew how to drive away the cold.

For a moment, Wes thought that he could look into the woman's eyes and see all the way through her, and then the starlight reflected off her shifting blue corneas. "Life in prison, Diana," he continued softly, wondering if she knew how weak, how speculative, his case was. "Or worse."

Her blue eyes looked up at him, unblinking. In her mind, the ideas were already forming.

"Tell your brother," someone said quietly to her. She looked and saw Morrison's back, watched him walk down the narrow concrete path, stilled her breath as he stopped and turned again. "And remember," his voice carried clearly as a frightening smile played on his lips, "if the law doesn't get you—I will."

And then he turned, climbed into his pickup truck and drove away from the run-down house, leaving Diana frozen by the chill wind to the buckling walkway, leaving her as fixed in time and place as the dead monkey puzzle tree.

* * *

She had made him feel like a schoolboy again, and she still did. Her shy smile, little girl's voice, long straight hair, large breasts and exquisite legs had left him dizzy and dry-mouthed as he had sat beside her the first time years ago. Every now and then that same feeling returned. Squirrelly. That was how he felt. His insides felt squirrelly. Unable to control his glands. Just like in high school.

Jo Ann lay on her back across the motel bed, naked, head lolling off the edge of the hotel mattress, one leg bent at the knee. Eyes closed, she was smiling and sighing. Barry Kroeber poured himself a drink and watched her in the mirror. He could barely restrain himself, even though they had finished just minutes ago. No one, especially not Nance, had ever made him feel this way.

In just his trousers, he sat on the edge of the bed. He was late already, but it wouldn't matter. Nance wouldn't question him too much at first, and not at all after he started spewing technical details. She was good that way.

Jo Ann felt his weight and muttered something he could not understand. Slowly, Kroeber began to caress the soft curves of her body. She made no move to stop him, and soon began to move with him.

Kroeber could not believe what he was feeling. He swung himself onto the bed. He would be home quite late tonight.

* * *

As night fell around the little white home in the middle of the green fields, the tricolored shepherd slept in a makeshift bed made out of a cut-down cardboard box and a jumble of tattered blankets. With a solitary dinner prepared and eaten, Sara tucked the box near the doorway to the kitchen, where she could see it from the sofa, and where the dog could choose, if it had to, to go into the kitchen or out the front door. Every half hour or so, when her impatience got the best of her or her agitation would not let her sit still anymore, Sara tiptoed to the animal to make sure she was still all right, to gently stroke her head as she slept.

Never had time passed so slowly. Never had the valley seemed so huge, the night sky so endless. Yet Sara, through some half-felt defiance, kept the windows and doors open to the unusually cool summer breezes, leaving nothing but the weathered screens between her and the starlit darkness.

They had tried to kill the little dog, just to scare her away. She couldn't get over that. What kind of people were Barry and Diana, that they could do such a thing?

And, she thought, tapping a finger against her lips, what else would they try to do? The semi-automatic pistol lay on a stack of magazines on the coffee table in front of her. Wes knew more than he had told her. In so many ways, he knew more than he told. Someday soon, she hoped, they would be together, and she would have enough time to discover what was inside of him, perhaps learn who it was that had left his heart in the condition it was.

The shepherd groaned and twisted and Sara left the sofa to stroke the side of the struggling dog. What hadn't Wes said? What should she know? Were Barry and Diana really a threat? To her? Why? And, she wondered with a sickness in her stomach, if Wes had given his pistol to her for her safety—then what of him?

The sounds of the night were magnified a thousand-fold and stalked the house. Stray leaves tapped on windows while the wind tugged at the edges of the screen door. Crickets abruptly stopped and then just as suddenly started their song. The shepherd seemed to calm, but continued to grunt now and then as she slept. At each noise, Sara cast a worried eye at the black windows that looked out on the wide open fields. Each time, there was nothing, nothing to see, nothing to concern her. And even if there had been something, the nearest neighbor's house was way to the east, almost too far to see, too far to hear, much too far to be of any help.

The silence of the small house told her, eventually. The sitting and listening, the looking at what once had been. The thinking and waiting. She sat on the couch and watched the sleeping dog, and all those things came to tell her. The sadness and the sorrow. The burning resentment and the insatiable greed. They were there one by one, passing, hurting, throbbing deeply, burning. Wes' stainless steel Smith &Wesson glinted at her from the table, and it, too, told her. The coldness of the starry night, the empty iciness of space, invaded her and consumed her.

Jerome Pitcher had not died a natural death.

Something skittered across the porch just outside the door and Sara lunged for the pistol. The weapon was cold and heavy, unfamiliar in her hands, and when she pointed it at the door a tiny pair of red eyes in a black and white mask stared back at her from the top of the brick steps. Before she could think, before she could open her mouth to gasp out the unreasoning fear and surprise that had seized her, the raccoon twisted around, slipped down the steps and returned to the darkness from which it had come. She ran through the house, making sure that all the windows were closed, until she was in the front room again.

Shuddering as much from revulsion as unexpected fright, Sara turned her back to the door, her fingers white around the black pistol grips. Oh, Wes, please come back.

* * *

Providence must have guided her every move, from the first day that this had all begun. Saved under her kitchen counter were the many bottles of sherry that Diana had emptied during the late nights when Phil was gone. And, too, Phil had always had plenty of spare kerosene and rags in the garage, where he was always retreating to get away from her or the children, to drink beer and work for free on someone's car.

Sara was trying to kill her. Diana was amazed at how calmly she accepted the realization. Sara was not trying to corrupt. She was trying to kill. It was so obvious. Convicted of murder by Sara's corruption, Diana would die in the gas chamber. Only that way could Sara keep the land to herself, out of Diana's hands. But Sara shouldn't have sent Wesley Morrison to threaten her. That had given it all away. And now Diana knew.

Providence had shown Diana the way, when she had thought of Sara's icy heart. She would fight that coldness with fire. Fire against ice. And fire against fire, too. Sara was trying to kill her, and she would fight back, fire against fire. Fire was flame, and hell was a place of brimstone and never-ending flame. Devils lived in hell, and Sara was a devil. Sara had to be returned to the flames from which she had come. Flame to flame to flame.

It came full circle. It made perfect sense. It was all so perfect that providence must have planned it all for her. Diana drove on across town. She was intent, happy in her world, happy to listen to the faint musical clink of the half dozen kerosene-filled sherry bottles in the cardboard box in the trunk, happy to smell on her hands the acrid fuel of the firebombs she had prepared especially for the woman who had stolen her life.

* * *

Emergency lights sparkled like Christmas tree ornaments in the heavy fog that hugged the steep mountain slopes. The red and blue overheads of the Highway Patrol flashed with tireless urgency, flickering against the bright yellow lights of the big-rig tow trucks and the red lamps on the fire engine. On the northbound freeway that climbed and dived over the forested mountains that made Lake Shasta what it was, flare patterns burned in crimson smoke. A pair of tow trucks jockeyed for position around a jackknifed and overturned semi-truck and trailer, while the rescue crew from the fire engine and two paramedics fought to extricate what survivors there might still be inside a crushed mini-van.

Northbound traffic was sparse but all lanes had been blocked a long time, and Wes sat in his pickup behind a dozen or more stalled vehicles. Window rolled down, the acrid smell of the flares assailed his nose, while every minute his heart seemed to quicken still more. Half an hour, the Highway Patrol officer had said. The road would be closed at least that long. For that long, he would be unable to reach Sara. Maybe an hour more, the officer had said, minutes later. And then: Not for at least an hour and a half. Not until the Life Flight helicopter has airlifted the victims away.

Wes shut off the truck engine. The automobiles ahead of him were already long silent. Through the blowing fog came the whines and snarls of the tow trucks, the calls and curses of the paramedics.

He cursed helplessly and violently and slammed the rim of the steering wheel with his fist and thought of Sara at home all alone, but none of that made the tow trucks right the big rig any sooner. None of it helped the jaws of life spread the mangled steel any faster. He cursed again and condemned fate and time and the unfortunate people who had wrecked their vehicles in his path, then breathlessly checked his watch to find that only a few minutes had passed. And then he heard the thudding chop of the approaching helicopter.

* * *

She was waiting for him, which was unusual. Diana never came to his house without calling first for permission. Yet, times were not what they once had been, thought Kroeber as he parked his Mercedes.

They met him at the front door, in the immense foyer, Diana and Nance together, and by the look on their faces, they had been talking. They knew. At least, Nance knew. Diana's face was blank, yet at the same time held something, a look he had never seen. He tried to smile, to sluff it off as he had so many times in the past.

Nance's face was bitter wood, her smile sadly vindictive. "Diana came to talk to you, Barry," she quietly told her husband. "Something important about the resort, I gather. You'll have to go." She turned and took a few steps toward the interior of the house. Then she looked back. Her teeth glittered horridly in the light from the crystal lamps. "And don't bother to come back."

* * *

Diana's old Toyota was cramped and drafty, its plastic seats too small, its window seals cracked and broken. A noisy wind whistled by Kroeber's ear and chilled his neck as they drove the dark highway. From somewhere near the front of the vehicle, there was a worrisome, grinding noise that grew louder every time Diana turned the wheel. And the car smelled. It was a sour smell, reeking from somewhere in or behind the back seat, and he hoped it was not urine, but he suspected that it was. His nose longed for the fragrant odor of the rich leather in his sedan, but he could not trust himself with a car right then. Before arriving home to meet Nance, his favorite bartender had been happy to serve him his fill of stiff, neat bourbons. He was probably legally drunk; at the very least, it was a struggle to get thoughts into and out of his mind, and his hands didn’t always seem to go where he aimed them.

In his heart, Kroeber longed to be in his old home, back when he was still struggling to make the dealership profitable, back when Nance and he had lived in a cheap tract home and counted their pennies for lunch. Until now, he had forgotten all about it.

Nance knew, of course. He had told her he was going to meet Diana at her house to talk about a break in the project, and then Diana had appeared at his own home hours later with the same story. It was obvious that they had never met.

Nance had known, this time. She had suspected before, but he didn't think she had known. Or, if she had, she had been willing to tolerate it, to tolerate him and his weaknesses, in return for the house and the cars, the clothes and the country clubs....

He was ruined, now, though. The money, his house, his car. His friends. And his marriage. And somewhere in the back of his mind he wondered why he always thought of his marriage last.

"Not much longer," sighed Diana.

The night was cold and wet, thought Barry, too cold and wet for early autumn. The winter would be a bad one. To Diana, he said, "She should have called me."

Diana had been driving as if she could see only one path, as if the road did not turn, did not climb or dip, did not narrow and widen. For a moment, though, she seemed to hear her brother, and a look came to her face that Kroeber took for a smile. "She said she'd had enough of men, Barry. You'd sued her, so she didn't trust you. Morrison had stood in her way every time she had tried to sell the property, like she had wanted to, so she didn't trust him. It's been your fault the whole time, you know, you men. She's always wanted to deal with me. I'm the only one she trusts."

Trust. Kroeber sank further into the dirty, smelly seat. Any trust he'd had was now gone. Anything he'd once had was now gone. How much, he wondered, would the alimony payments be? And would there be anything left to pay her with? If he could, would there be anything left after that?

"We'll see her in person, you know," Diana smiled again. "That's the way it has to be done, I think."

Seeing her brother's doubt, the look that was a smile, yet was not, appeared again on Diana's face. "Trust me," she assured. "I know. There's a thing between women."

Kroeber cast another doubting glance at his sister. Something was very wrong with her, very wrong with all of this. But—he turned his face to the cold, black window—there was too much money at stake to care.

* * *

In the outside rearview mirror, Wes saw the headlights speeding up from behind, at first in the lane in which all the traffic was stopped, then swerving out, wildly, racing forward madly.

He had no time to signal a Highway Patrol officer before the little car blew through the flare pattern as if it wasn't there, careened around the emergency vehicles in crazy, swinging arcs and, motor still screaming, blasted its way into the empty darkness of the northbound interstate.

The shouts and screamed expletives of the officers raged for more than a minute before anyone thought of setting out in half-hearted, dilatory pursuit, and two minutes more passed before it all came together for Wes.

Gunning the pickup's engine, he dropped the Ranger into four-wheel-drive, cranked the wheel over, hit all the lights and charged down the dirt embankment dividing the freeway lanes. Bouncing the wrong way along two hundred pitch black yards of southbound freeway, he found another swale and ripped upward, across the median, and back onto the interstate. He hit the northbound concrete and pushed the accelerator to the floor. Far behind him, the clustered emergency lights quickly faded.

* * *

Lights dark and engine dead, Diana's car rolled to a stop far from the lighted house that had been her uncle's home, just where the dirt driveway opened into the bare front yard. Leaving the key in the ignition as she had planned, she clicked off the dome light so that it would not shine as she carefully opened the driver's door.

"What are you doing?" Kroeber hissed, the bourbon still reeking on his breath, his unsteady hand on the door latch, but not pulling it.

His sister paused with one foot out of the car and looked back at him. The light from the house could not reach her face, but her voice was serene. "You want somebody to see us and know we've been here?" With an effort, she pushed herself out of the car.

Kroeber shoved open his own door, found his wobbly feet, and hurried to his sister's side as she opened the small trunk of the sedan. In the dim rays of a tiny bulb, cylinders of blued steel and stocks of checkered walnut glinted up at him. Making out the lines of a curved bolt handle and a powerful scope, he blurted under his breath, "What the hell are you doing with that?"

An impatient sigh left Diana as she shook her head. "It's Phil's," she explained softly, picking the hunting rifle off the folded top of a tall cardboard box. "Don't worry. He must've left it in here after his last trip." She pushed it at him. "Hold it for me while I get this.”

A rifle and sling were an awkward and unfamiliar thing to Kroeber, especially in his intoxicated state, and he struggled for a way to carry it while Diana slipped her hands underneath the cardboard box and with a grunt lifted it from the trunk. Inside the box, glass clinked against glass as with one arm she cradled the heavy container against her chest. Through the folded end flaps, Barry thought he saw the neck of a wine bottle, but as Diana with her free hand closed the trunk, the faint bulb went dark and his vision ended.

"Diana," he whispered, "what is that?"

She pushed down on the trunk lid until it clicked shut, then wrapped both arms around the box. "Something special," she murmured as she brushed close by him and walked quietly but quickly toward the house.

The acrid odor that Kroeber had smelled during the entire drive assailed him as she passed, and in one dizzying moment he realized what it was. He stood for long seconds, staring at the starlit sky and the dark, jagged mountains, trying to get his mind to work through the liquor, then turned and ran raggedly after his sister.

* * *

Curled in a tight, colored ball on her crumpled wool blanket, eyes closed, motionless for hours, the little Australian shepherd waited for the writhing agony inside of her to subside. Asleep, yet awake, she rested, yet heard the sounds of Sara's movement, of the words she spoke only to herself, of the television that Sara finally turned on for the small comfort it might lend.

Hours later, long after the woman had stopped moving and talking to herself, the shepherd heard the sound of the approaching automobile. First a low whine, then an uneven idle. And then nothing but the crunch of tires on rocky dirt. The same sound that had woken the dog last night. She opened her weary hazel eyes. The sounds were unwelcome. Unfriendly. Slowly, she lifted her head, raised her ears, and looked toward the woman for whom her master seemed to care so much. The woman who was at once her master and her charge.

Sara sat on one corner of the sofa, feet tucked under her, arms wrapped around loose pillows. Her head lay on the backrest, her eyes were closed. She couldn't see the ghostly black and white images on the television screen, couldn't hear the fuzzy voices that emanated from the speakers. The shepherd watched for a moment, then slowly blinked. She understood.

Deep within her, unknown and unrecognized, lay the instinct of uncounted generations, a heritage that had served her breed from the snowy Basque mountains to the baking Australian outback, from the southwestern deserts of America to the windswept prairies of the central plains. For over a hundred years, without thought for themselves, small tricolored and merled shepherds like her had chased thieves and clashed with predators, protecting their masters and their flocks with unfailing devotion.

A dozen generations of domestication, a young lifetime spent living in small, fenced yards, could not eradicate that history. Forever true to her breeding, knowing what she had to do if not why, the little Aussie found the last bit of strength in her weakened muscles, uncurled her sickened body, and forced herself to her feet.

Unable to stand up at the window sill and look out, she spread her legs and ducked her head in the way that nature had taught her to prepare for a fight. Even while her legs quivered uncontrollably, a low warning growl issued from her throat. When that caution failed, when Sara did not respond, when she heard the car doors click shut and the people begin to approach, she summoned all that she had left within her, and began to bark.

Chapter Twenty-Seven

Sara's troubled sleep exploded, shattered by the shepherd's deafening alarm. Wildly, she bolted from the sofa, blinded by the shining lamps, disoriented by the frenetic barking.

Adrenaline pounded inside her with each spasm of noise that burst in her ears. The room whirled brightly for only seconds, and when it stilled she saw the dog, crouching, snarling toward the yard, hackles raised, ears laid back. Instinctively, Sara leaped back onto the sofa and, ignoring the fear of what she might see, pulled the draperies from the windows.

Kroeber caught up with his sister as she opened the cardboard box, but by then the dog had begun to bark and he looked toward the noise in time to see Sara as a shadow on the curtains. In those scant, distracted seconds, he heard the clink of glass and the scrape of the flint of a small lighter, saw a flame and smelled burning kerosene.

Time stopped as Sara yanked the draperies apart. Barry Kroeber was staring at her, a rifle in his hands, his face strangely pale in the stark white light of the barn floodlight.

And next to him stood his sister, Diana Robeck, her arm cocked to hurl a flaming Molotov cocktail right through the front window and straight into Sara's face.

"Jesus!" screamed Sara.

"Diana, stop!" shouted Kroeber as he reached for but missed his sister's arm. For an instant, he thought that she had obeyed him.

Diana evaded her brother's awkward grasping, but paused in mid throw for a single heartbeat when she saw Sara in the window. The kerosene-soaked rag in the neck of the sherry bottle flared wickedly with a flame that would end her hell and send Sara into one of her own, but, with a rage she could not understand, for reasons she could not comprehend, she shifted her eyes away from her target, away from the window, away from Sara's terrified face, and hurtled the kerosene bomb onto the dry wooden roof instead.

As the flaming thing flew toward her, Sara dove for the safety of the floor. Her head slammed against the hard maple edge of the coffee table as she fell and with a stunned cry she crumpled onto the rug. She heard the firebomb explode somewhere above her and forced herself onto unsteady knees. The shepherd was beside her, breathless but still barking fiercely, muzzle raised toward the windows. Hand on her bruised forehead, Wes' pistol utterly forgotten, Sara climbed unsteadily to her feet.

"Stop it!" shouted Kroeber again, his voice thick and without authority, as his sister pulled another bottle from the cardboard box. On the roof of the house, ancient shingles began to burn, snapping like kindling. The fire reached up into the night, flickering in orange waves across the yard. Diana lit the second bottle.

"For God's sake!" Kroeber bellowed, lunging in the weirdly lit darkness for the flaming bottle. His stumbling feet caught the unfamiliar rifle sling and tangled him. He missed first his step and then his target, and fell onto his hands and knees. The second firebomb flew from Diana's hand, landed on the roof near the first and erupted into flame. She reached for a third.

She could no longer hear him, Kroeber realized. His sister could no longer hear anyone. She was going to kill Sara Owen, kill anyone she had to. And by doing so, she would kill him. As she began to walk around the corner of the house to hurl another bottle, Barry for the first time in his life felt his true father inside of him. And then he felt the rifle, heavy in his hands. Another firebomb would end it. End it all. Sara, the dog...even Morrison...one way or another, everyone would die. Using the rifle as a crutch, he pushed himself to his feet, then curled his fingers around the stock and jerked at the cold steel of the stiff, unfamiliar bolt.

Glass shattered above Sara a second time just as she dared a second terrified glance out the window. Diana was gone, but Kroeber was still there and when he saw her looking out he began to load the rifle.

"Oh, God!" Sara prayed. The telephone was just across the room but the pain above her eye was blinding her and when she finally lifted the heavy black receiver the line was already dead. The fire had already burned through the line.

In the kitchen, the window over the sink splintered into a thousand pieces as a flaming bottled broke through. The bomb hit the wall and the kerosene inside exploded, blowing out the glass in the rear kitchen door, shooting oily orange flames through the doorway and into the living room.

Near hysteria, Sara again fell to the floor beside the coffee table and gathered the shepherd under her as she landed. As the first roaring blast of flame retreated from the room and back into the kitchen, she picked up the dog and ran.

The house was old. The wood in its frame, the paint on its walls, the furnishings in its rooms were all old, dry, cracked. It was perfect tinder. The walls and ceilings scorched and began to burn. In the kitchen the light bulbs burst from the heat and electric sparks arced across the ceiling. The linoleum began to melt and burn, and at the wooden frame of the kitchen doorway the fire found its way inside the walls.

Barely had Sara entered the short hallway than from the small second bedroom came the horrid sound of breaking glass. Diana was working her way around the house. A ball of fire burst inside the room and billowed through the doorway and into the hall. Sara gasped, ducked and turned away, but she rose again, smoke was already thick along the hallway ceiling. Her lungs hurt to breathe. The house was being consumed, eaten alive by the fire.

The shepherd kicked and jumped from her arms as Sara edged down the hallway toward the second bedroom. Through the door she could see the bed on which she had slept, now an empty pyre. The hand-stitched quilt was burning with a thousand hues. With a horrified breath of heated air, Sara reached into the burning room and yanked the door shut. Then she fled toward the master bedroom.

The house shuddered with an infernal roar as she kneeled by the hope chest at the end of the bed. The dark window to her right opened onto the back yard of the house and like the others it had no shutters to protect it.

"Oh, God, please!," Sara prayed again as she flung open the chest and began to fill her arms with memories.

The roof was ablaze from end to end, a mass of yellow flame that poured like a pyramid into the starry sky. Through the windows, Kroeber could see the fire burning savagely inside both ends of the house. Sara had vanished. Backing away from the flame and the heat, he let the rifle drop to his side. He knew too little about firearms to deduce how to unsafe the weapon. He could do nothing. His life was over. "God in Heaven," he said as Diana walked from behind the house, skin glowing with the color of the crackling flames, lips spreading an insanely peaceful glee across her face.

Diana bent over and drew the last of the sherry bottles from the box. "Only two more to go," she said placidly, turning toward the barn.

Kroeber saw the bright headlights first and when he listened he could hear the screaming roar of the engine. Flying down the driveway to the homestead, the vehicle would be upon them in seconds. He ran after his sister but she had already lit the rag in one bottle and before he could stop her she threw it onto the rusted metal roof of the barn. The bottle broke and spread an almost perfect circle of flame on the metal. The symmetry lasted only a fraction of a second, for the burning liquid quickly ran down off the roof and began to drip onto the dry wooden walls. From down the dark aisle, horses began to neigh with confined terror, a primal fear for their lives that only they could know.

"Diana, get in the car!" Kroeber seized his sister's arm and jerked her away from the barn.

Diana turned her eyes from the approaching lights to the inferno of her uncle's home. Not perfect, but good enough. Her work was done. She could go now, happily.

Inside the flaming house, the air was becoming superheated and suffocating black smoke was filling the rooms. Only the interior hallway from the bedroom to the living room was still spared. Stuffing the last handful of papers and pictures into the cradle of her arms, Sara raised her eyes and saw the shepherd. Standing by the doorway, panting, eyes closed and legs quivering, head drooping to the floor, the dog had exceeded her endurance. If she took one more step she would certainly fall and never rise.

Hunching beneath the roiling smoke, Sara dumped the load of papers onto Pitcher's bed. As she lifted the dog, the animal went limp and sagged like lead in her arms. Gasping, laying the shepherd on top of the pile of papers, Sara gathered the bedspread around them all. She tried to say something to the dog, but terror had closed her throat to all but a panicked wail.

The living room was about to be engulfed. The kitchen was a cauldron of flame that was about to boil over. Fire had spilled from the doorways and set the nearby chairs and tables ablaze. The ceiling was somewhere behind a churning storm of poisonous smoke that tried to sear her lungs. In seconds the fire would vomit from the kitchen and then the only escape from the house would be gone.

She stopped for a fraction of a second. Hugging the blanket-full of papers and photographs and the sickened dog with one aching arm, Sara stole the photograph of Kathryn Pitcher from its place on the shelf and tucked it safely inside the blanket.

Behind her the door to the second bedroom gave way with a vicious crash and a funnel of flame blistered a path down the hallway. A huge flare burst through the doorway and shot across the living room, scorching Sara's back just as she smashed through the screen door and leaped down the brick steps of the stoop. One foot went too far and missed the edge of the step. She fell forward onto the rocks, driving her face into the dirt, spilling the shepherd and the blanket-full of papers in front of her. Kathryn's portrait tumbled into the night. Hands skinned and scraped, Sara rose to her knees, breathed the cold, clean air and searched frantically for her scattered burden.

"Sara!"

She looked. Kroeber had called her name. He was thirty feet away, rifle in his hands.

"Shoot her!" shrieked Diana from beside the car.

"God, no!," screamed Sara as she crawled forward. The shepherd tried to stand but could not. Sara reached the blanket and tried to gather it up.

"Shoot her!" Diana screeched again.

The shepherd groaned but did not struggle as Sara lifted her and what was left of her precious bundle. Lungs burning, dirt and blood stinging her face, she turned her back on Kroeber and ran for her life into the safety of the night.

From a mile down the river road, the house blazed like a volcano on the horizon. Wes set his foot against the floorboard and drove faster than he ever had in his life. For each median line that flashed by, his heart beat a thousand times. At the turnoff to the driveway the pickup screeched to a shuddering stop, nearly overturned, then roared toward the burning buildings. The wooden beams of the river bridge thundered under the rushing weight of the truck, but as Wes drew up to the homestead, Pitcher's home was nothing but a mass of flame, a pillar of fire outlined by collapsing timbers.

In a tornado of dust, the pickup slid to a stop next to Diana's little car. From the passenger seat, Diana looked out calmly, staring with eyes so distant that Wes could not see their color. Throwing open his door, Wes jumped from the truck and ran toward what had been Pitcher's home.

"Sara!" he tried to yell, but his voice strangled, dying in his throat. The heat of the flames reached out and stifled the breath in his lungs. Nothing was left of the house. Nothing could have lived. The ridgepole of the house, blackened and burned through, broke in two and fell. "Sara!" he shouted again, a helpless, despairing cry. Already trembling on the edge of conscious reality, the thought of Sara’s horrible, violent death and the idea that with her death his hopeless heart had been crushed yet one more time, threatened to extinguish his sanity and forced a last despairing scream. "Sara!"

Barry Kroeber appeared suddenly on Wes' right with a rifle in his hands and Wes was suddenly lucid again. With that clarity came a lust for vengeance unlike any he ever had known. He didn’t stop to think. "You son-of-a-bitch!" he shouted over the roar of the fire. Dashing to his pickup, yanking the Winchester from its rack behind the seat, he levered a round into the chamber and set his sights on the man who had killed Sara Owen.

Sure that he was about to die at the hand of this insane man, imagining the feel of the hot slug ripping through his chest, Barry Kroeber dissolved. Spitting, speechless, he threw away the useless hunting rifle and dove toward Diana's car. As the rifle whirled like chopper blades through the darkness and crashed into the dirt, Kroeber fell into the driver's seat, found the keys in the ignition where Diana had left them and blessed his sister for that one small mercy. He started the car, gunned the engine and raced for the safety of the darkness and the deliverance of the distant river road.

Wes fired three quick times, cheek never leaving the rifle stock. The first bullet shattered one of the Toyota's windows, the second punctured the back door. He swung the rifle, led the accelerating car, and his third shot punched through the thin sheet metal of the front fender and bored into the left front MacPherson strut.

Sirens were wailing far in the distance but no one heard them. Kroeber was aware only of the shots, and though he felt a shock to the little car he had no idea what had happened. The road was rough, he was too drunk and had too little experience with Diana's vehicle to tell if something was wrong—and she simply sat in the passenger seat, hanging on to what she could, watching the dark fields fly by. Then, in the rear view mirror, Kroeber saw the headlights of the pickup turn to pursue him. In sudden desperation, he tried to push the accelerator pedal through the floor.

The driveway became a single narrow path, a dark, dusty streak, a thin blur of dirt that materialized from the darkness beyond the reach of the Toyota's headlights and whipped underneath the car before Kroeber’s numbed mind could react. Each rut and bend in the road threw the car about with a vicious bang and twist, until Kroeber had lost all sense of position or direction, even of how close he was to the river. And the pickup was almost upon him.

The wooden river bridge came at him out of nowhere, far to his right. As he wrenched the steering wheel around the strain finally collapsed the mangled MacPherson strut. At almost sixty miles per hour the little car sagged toward the ground for only an instant before the left front wheel slammed into the bridge buttress. As the front of the vehicle was crushed, all of its inertia was transferred into the roll that had already begun and the car was flung into a vicious spin that lasted only until it smashed into the river. Its full speed and weight behind it, the sedan plowed through the swift current and hit the soft silt bank, crumpling the roof down to the hood line. For a moment, it rested where it had hit; then, as the engine died, it slid down the muddy bank and into the rushing river, where the cold, clear water filled and flooded what was left of the passenger compartment.

Wes slid his truck to a stop and watched while the glare of his headlights shone on the slowly oscillating wheels of the overturned Toyota. He did not get out. There was no point to that. He was not about to try to help.

Far down the road, he saw the red flashing lights of the two small fire trucks of Smith’s Fork. Someone else must have seen the fire and called it in, but there was little the paramedic ambulance and the one fire engine could do. In his eyes, the distant lights blurred all the dreams—

Dreams Like This. God help him. The horses. The barn had been just starting to burn when he had driven in. The horses had to be saved. They could not be allowed to die just like Sara. Cursing himself, sick with the thought that once again he might be too late, that he might have failed at everything he had tried to do, he slewed the pickup around, gunned the engine past the red line and rocketed back down the road.

As the truck skidded to a stop, he could hear the horses neighing in panic, frantic to escape. The kicks that were splintering their stalls boomed over the roar of the fire like thunder. One wall of the barn was a sheet of flame. As soon as it gave way the entire building would collapse and all the animals would be trapped and burned alive. Leaping from the pickup, he sprinted recklessly for the barn door.

Wild eyed, the white appaloosa burst from the black aisle, blowing hysterically, a thousand pounds of muscle and hooves that would let nothing stand in its terrified way. Wes lunged to one side, and then to the other as another frenzied animal charged madly from the barn. In seconds, Nightsnow and Jester, As You Dream and all the rest were far beyond the yard, galloping for the protection of the open pastures.

And then Sara came running out of the barn, running out last, after all the horses, running in an uncontrollable frenzy of fear to escape the flames. Choking with disbelief and relief, Wes dashed in front of her and grabbed her before she ever saw him. As she was caught and fell into his arms, she cried out in shock and fright. But when she looked into his face, she simply cried.

Chapter Twenty-Eight

Quietly, late afternoon sunlight flooded the bedroom with a soft, golden glow. Through the open windows, a warm and fragrant summer wind blew lightly. For how long she did not know, Sara had lain across the big bed, awake, yet dreaming of things that once had been, of things that would someday be.

The time had come. The feeling came upon her suddenly, but she had no doubt that it was true. She had waited long enough. Enough had been done, enough time had passed. Pulling herself up, she sat for a moment on the edge of the bed, sighed to herself once with sadness and joy, then arose.

On the wide oak dresser that sat against the east wall of the bedroom, underneath the dresser mirror and between a china vase of fresh cut flowers and a porcelain lamp, stood the silver portrait frame that Sara polished every day. To the left of Kathryn's photograph, Jerome Pitcher stood in his Army uniform, faded yet still tall and straight, while to Kathryn's right Jack smiled out at her from the photograph that for years had graced her own bedside.

Opening her linen drawer and pushing the piles of soft things aside, Sara's breath was suddenly short. As she picked up Kathryn's portrait and tucked it gently beneath the clothes, she could not swallow. Laying Pitcher's photograph to rest beside Kathryn, she saw the images on the dresser begin to blur. And when she lovingly placed Jack's photograph at the bottom of the drawer and spread her soft clothes over it, she could only close her eyes and feel the tears run down her cheeks.

"Sara!"

Wes' clear voice pealed through the warm air, his distant call jolting her from her bittersweet thoughts. Sliding the drawer closed, she wiped her eyes and glanced at herself in the mirror. "No more, now," she told herself.

"Sara!" Wes called again. "Come on!"

She ran from the bedroom and down the stairs, crossed the broad oak floor of the living room and stood before the sunny windows that captured the green fields and forested mountains of her dreams. Sixty yards away, her new husband stood before the doorway of the new stable, hands cupped around his mouth.

"Sara!" he hollered once more. "It's time!"

Her heart began to pound. Kneeling on the sofa, she slid open one window. "Coming!" she called back.

With a wave of his hand and an uncontained smile, Wes darted back into the stable.

As Sara ran from the house that her husband had built for her, the little Australian shepherd Mickey dashed around one corner, barking excitedly, leading two of her blue merle puppies. The four of them raced across the green lawn, just as the disc of the sun touched the highest western ridge line.

"Just like your mother," Sara said as she stopped and looked into the stable. "You're going to be early, too."

The special stall was wide, and as warm and clean as Wes could make it. He had braided the mare's tail and was already in the box kneeling beside the steaming horse as Sara ran up to the wall. Holding back the dogs, Sara stepped inside and shut the stall door. Rolling one eye, the mare saw Sara enter, saw her take a deep breath, walk across the sweet, clean straw and kneel beside Wes. "Okay," Sara said to Wes, a wave of her hand banishing her apprehensions. Then, as if the horse understood that the time had finally come, with a groan As You Dream began to foal.

Sara saw the white stockings on the skinny legs emerge, and with her lungs burning and chest aching from the beating of her heart, with the mare groaning and struggling, she crouched beside Wes, took hold, and helped him pull a strong little chestnut colt into the world.

Together they helped the mare clean herself and her child, and together they helped the foal learn how to stand. Then they stood side by side outside the stall and watched while the little colt began to nurse, while it shakily tested its newfound legs, while it swayed and pitched around the stall and kicked straw into the air, while its mother watched it and them with her big round, soft eyes.

Sara felt Wes' arm slip around his first wife’s shoulders, lightly, strongly, possessively, lovingly. The lights in the stable were shining brightly. "Got a name for him yet?" he asked quietly.

Sara could only nod, feeling him close beside her, watching the foal stumble and jump, smelling the straw that the little colt's hooves flung into the cooling air. This was her world now, and her world had become right once again.

They left the stable and walked across the yard in the twilight. Above them the pink and orange sunset streamed across the sky while the evening stars began to appear. A gentle summer breeze caressed their faces, carrying to them the redolent scents of the green alfalfa and the rich earth. In front of them, the lights of their new home shone radiantly, while from behind them came the first whinnying of the newborn foal, Dreams Like This.