Crown My Heart Cowboy (Hearts of Mule Stop #4)

Chapter 1

CHAPTER 1

The mountains outside Mule Stop, Wyoming

August, 2019

The lively sound of people brought together to celebrate traveled up the gentle Wyoming hillside from the pristine Elkhorn River. The fresh scent of pine from the grouping of tall, skinny trees that bordered the new paved parking lot at the top of the slope wafted down in a soft breeze, filling the hot morning air.

Standing midway between the parking lot and the people, on the wide paved trail that switchbacked down to the river, twenty-six-year-old Prince Maximilian turned to the publicity-seeking woman beside him and gave her a dazzling smile.

“There’s the bridge we’ll be dedicating, Your Highness,” Mayor Kimberley Blake of Mule Stop, Wyoming, told him, pointing down the grassy hillside to a sturdy wood and steel structure that crossed over the small, fast-moving river. Midheight, early thirties, and wearing a Western cowgirl shirt with the accompanying Western jeans and hat, she smiled brilliantly, too, not at him, but at the television cameras aimed their way.

“It’s Max,” he reminded her.

On either side of them, uniformed Mule Stop law enforcement officers watched the large crowd of what had been explained to Max were locals and tourists. Max’s own people—in plain clothes—covered him forward and aft.

Max, having had a hand in designing the bridge, nodded as he got his first glimpse of it in person, pleased with how well the simple lines of the structure blended in with the surrounding land. A great deal of land, which he’d had the pleasure of turning into a new wildlife sanctuary that, in addition to the bridge, was being dedicated today.

The mayor turned away from the cameras set up at some distance on the grassy slope, sun glinting on the silver and turquoise jewelry she wore around her neck. “You’ll hand me the trophy cup,” she told him as they continued down the trail, nodding toward the foot-high, two-handled silver trophy Max’s assistant—and former military buddy—Nelson held, which was catching its own share of the sun.

Disapproving of this whole event, Nelson—a couple of years older than Max, a couple of inches shorter, and wearing at the moment, besides his Saville Row summer-weight suit, an impassive expression—nodded at the mayor from behind his dark glasses and pretended to hand the cup to Max.

The mayor pointed to the small, portable stage erected at the foot of the trail, in front of a temporary metal grandstand, the river tumbling behind the stage. “I’ll announce your gift of the new bridge and wildlife sanctuary, Your Highness. You’ll cut the red ribbon strung across the center of the bridge.”

“Right,” Max said, keeping pace with her. He’d done more dedications than he could count since he was ten, could do them in his sleep, but the foreboding he’d felt when he’d woken that morning, a foreboding that had no basis in any fact he knew of, feathered down his spine again, tightening in his back.

He scanned the excited crowd gathering around the grandstand, which sat on a level patch of ground forty feet above the riverbank, Max searching for any likely source of the foreboding. Perhaps it was these people’s dislike of his infamous ancestor who’d first bought this land in the 1800s.

Perhaps it was jet lag.

Nearing the level patch of ground, he smiled as a little dark-haired girl not more than four years old skipped up to him from the bustling crowd. Wearing a long, nineteenth-century dress of blue patterned with little pink flowers, and accompanied by a stern woman in a matching outfit who looked like her mother, she held out a small posy of white daisies. “For you, Printh,” she told him with a lopsided grin, her front tooth missing.

Max bent and gently took the posy from her small hands, the flowers’ scent sweet. “Thank you…” Max raised a questioning eyebrow for her name.

“Thamantha,” she said, her grin deepening.

The mayor frowned at the mother. “Belinda, I told you?—”

“Thank you, Samantha,” Max said to the little girl. “A lovely welcome indeed.”

Belinda gave the mayor a look that even in Max’s country of Zalgravia said ‘so there,’ and led her daughter toward the rapidly filling grandstand.

Max straightened, posy in hand.

“ Scum ,” a man shouted from the parking lot up the hill, from the group of cordoned-off protesters who waved hand-lettered signs, protesting Max’s gift of the sanctuary.

Protesting his very presence.

Max fought a flinch.

The mayor frowned. “I do apologize,” she told him. Raising her sunglasses, she narrowed her dark eyes on the protesters. “Some folks have a long memory.”

A hundred-and-twenty-two-year-old memory, for a different—a nineteenth-century—prince.

Max wondered if the mayor had a similar feeling as those who’d opposed the dedication ceremony—a good portion of the townspeople, he’d been informed, did—and suspected she’d been too polite to say anything today, now that he was there.

Likely, the development funds Zalgravia had pledged—had already placed in escrow for the Mule Stop County Land Resources Fund to use for environmental preservation—had a lot to do with that.

Silently, Max sighed, then took a deep breath, the green T-shirt given him by the mayor stretching across the muscles of his chest, a bit tight. ‘Prairie Days,’ the shirt said in white letters across the front, and he wondered if the tightness had been intentional, another nod to the cameras, the press loving to call him Prince Six-Pack Max.

“Mayor,” a short, stout man in a lightweight tan suit called out from the stage farther down the trail, urgently beckoning her with his short arm.

“Excuse me, Your Highness,” Mayor Blake said to Max and strode fast downhill toward the river, remarkably steady in her high-heeled cowgirl boots, the day as much her glory—more so, most likely—as his.

“Don’t worry,” the law enforcement officer on Max’s right side, Sheriff Larson, said to Max as the protestors began to yell a chant, the sheriff—midheight and stocky—closing the gap left by the mayor.

On Max’s left, the sheriff’s deputy—Deputy Henderson, as tall as Max and as broad shouldered—moved in closer as well, the two officers dressed in khaki uniforms, cowboy hats, and boots.

Sheriff Larson eyed the growing crowd, then the protesters, from behind his mirrored sunglasses, his gold badge bright in the sun. “Folks will get over it,” he said to Max, “once the land conservation efforts get going. Money has a way of easing off the harsh edges of memory.”

Max gave him a sharp look, but the voice had been friendly, as friendly as the expression on the sheriff’s genial, round face.

“It’s a good thing you’re doing,” the sheriff said, and some of the tension between Max’s shoulder blades eased.

And tensed right up again at the quiet sound of disgust that came from Deputy Henderson. Max’s ancestor, known among the family as Evil Prince Hugo, had not been liked. Not back in the late 1800s when he’d bought this very land from a local Mule Stop resident.

Not now.

“About time it was done,” Max said to the two officers. It had been Max’s doing to make amends, to spearhead the donation of a portion of his family’s immense ranch for the wildlife sanctuary, to protect the wildlife and the land, and to restore the natural habitat.

The sheriff gave him a down-to-earth nod. “About time, too.”

Too bad the rest of Mule Stop didn’t agree. But Max had found the people in the area to have long memories, especially for the foul deeds of his ancestor, who’d terrorized the local populace when he’d briefly lived here a hundred and twenty-two years ago.

Max scanned the crowd milling around the grandstand, to judge for himself the prevailing winds. Overall, like most Americans, it appeared friendly—all but the small group of protesters, who seemed to know his family’s history in the area, and were likely descended from those his ancestor had wronged.

The crowd grew larger, more and more people coming down the hill, many dressed as in the Old West, a common occurrence, he understood, during Prairie Days. The rushing sound of the Elkhorn River softened the hubbub of voices.

On the other side of the bridge, another paved trail zigzagged up a gentle grassy slope, ending at the top with a panoramic view of the small, narrow Elkhorn Valley carved eons ago by the river.

From where Max stood, the valley stretched for a couple of miles to the west, the river entering from the far end, cutting through low hills, and exiting behind him through more low hills a quarter mile beyond the new bridge. The long grass—waving in the hot breeze—covered almost the entire area.

Beyond the far end of the valley, far to the west, dark storm clouds were gathering over a series of high, snow-topped mountain peaks—the Wind Dance Mountains, Max had learned—but overhead, above the dedication, the August sky was blue, the sun bright.

Tipping the cowboy hat given him by the mayor a bit lower over his brow against the bright light, he took a step with the others down the trail toward the bridge, the sun hot on his back.

Up ahead, on the fringe of the crowd, a pretty young woman in a modern-day flowered dress stood in their path, seeming to be waiting for them.

Max gave her a brilliant smile, then he realized Deputy Henderson was frowning at him. Frowning deeply.

Perhaps menacingly.

“Howdy, Melody,” Sheriff Larson said when they reached her.

“Hi, Uncle Bob,” she said, straps of a backpack slung over the shoulders of her knee-length, sleeveless dress. “The historical society wanted Prince Maximilian to have this.” She held out an old, battered, cloth-bound book to the sheriff, then smiled at Max, and he realized, now that he was beside her, that what he’d thought was a backpack held instead a small child—a baby, really. “Hi,” she said, extending her hand. “I’m Zeb’s wife, Melody Henderson.”

“How do you do, Mrs. Henderson?” Max said with propriety. Dimming his smile against Deputy Henderson’s frown, he shook her hand, though it was against protocol. His family had enough to answer for here, to add rudeness to the list.

“They’re stories from the 1890s,” Mrs. Henderson said as the sheriff rifled through the book.

And there was that foreboding again, moving around from Max’s back and tightening in his chest.

What the…?

“Stories about your ancestor,” she told Max.

Stories about Evil Prince Hugo.

Max had grown up on such tales, of his family’s ranch, the Crown of the West, which Hugo had brought into the family. Tales of adventure and derring-do in the Wild Wild West, which had captured Max’s imagination since he was a child, his ancestor’s depredations against the local populace carefully omitted in the telling.

Tales Max had believed, until six months ago, when his father had received a letter requesting the return of the silver cup that Nelson now held, ‘seeing as how it was stolen from the young woman your ancestor killed.’

Max had already been in the process of negotiations with the Mule Stop County Commissioners to arrange for the wildlife sanctuary. The holdings of the Crown of the West Ranch were vast, and even with the gift of the sanctuary, there were still a great many acres to tend to, acres that Max planned to return to their natural state.

He suspected the negotiations had led to the letter.

The letter had shocked him, despite Hugo’s terrible reputation in other parts of the world, including in Zalgravia— Hugo had earned his nickname of the Evil Prince many times over. Max had known his ancestor had left Wyoming in a bit of a hurry, but he’d never known why.

Max’s father the king had tossed the letter aside. ‘These cranks,’ he’d said, ‘trying always to call an accidental death a murder.’

But the letter had been respectful. Not a raving crank, but a calm missive.

Max had hoped, in light of the gift of the sanctuary to Mule Stop, even naming it the Sam Creede Wildlife Sanctuary in honor of their most famous historical citizen, that if there wasn’t an arms-wide welcome extended to him and his family, perhaps there would be, at the least, tolerance. But the sensational stories in all the gossip magazines, print and online, in the last month, speculating on his ancestor, had put an end to that.

The worst had been the Royalty Watch blog, which, from the moment Max’s upcoming visit to Wyoming had been announced, had done an entire series on the Evil Prince.

A series based on rumors from the long-ago past. Rumors of murder, of a young Wyoming woman who’d spurned Max’s ancestor’s advances and had gotten in his way.

Just an old story, Max’s father had said. No charges had been filed. No justice required, an accidental death the locals had sought to profit from by blaming nineteenth-century Prince Hugo.

But here, in the glaring sunlight in the mountains outside present-day Mule Stop, Max had to wonder. Would the people of this century still hold a grudge from as far back as the 1890s for anything less than a murder?

A hot breeze picked up, stirring bits of dust and grass in the air.

The sheriff handed the old, battered book to Max.

Skirting the crowd, their small group, including Mrs. Henderson, continued on down the slope, past the stage, stopping at the foot of the bridge—a bridge between two countries, as Max saw it.

A bridge, he hoped, between two centuries, past and present, putting to bed the ugly history in favor of a new beginning, on the very spot his ancestor had built a dam and had started all the trouble.

Not only was it the right thing to do, but Max would marry someday, once he found a suitable wife, and he wanted to start that married life with no blemishes on his family, no burdens or shame his children would have to bear, other than his own youthful—and not egregious—indiscretions.

Even so, another foreboding hit his spine, this one crawling over the back of his neck, sending a shiver through him. Pushing the foreboding aside, Max exchanged the book and posy for the silver trophy cup Nelson held, a small dent in the trophy clear in the bright sun, right above the engraved year ‘1897.’

Thunder rumbled to the west.

Deputy Henderson and his wife seemed to freeze for a moment, then they each sent a sharp glance toward the sound.

Setting the trophy cup on the bridge’s wide, sturdy railing, Max followed their gazes and realized with a start that the dark storm clouds that had been gathering over the Wind Dance Mountains were now moving swiftly in his direction, traveling fast across the blue sky.

Deputy Henderson looked at the silver cup on the railing, then again at the storm, which paused abruptly a mile or so beyond the far end of the valley among a series of high ridges, as if it were stuck there. “Her name was Cally James,” he said in a low tone to Max, his face like stone behind his mirrored sunglasses. “The young woman your ancestor killed.” Then with a pointed look at the sheriff, and another at the storm, he grasped his wife’s hand and strode fast with her and their baby up the hill toward the parking lot.

Max’s security detail moved in closer at Deputy Henderson’s departure, four strong men and women in dark plain-clothes ‘yes we are the security detail’ suits and wireless communications systems tucked in their ears. Another three mingled among the crowd, dressed in casual summer clothes like many of the Americans, another two up at the parking lot keeping an eye on the chanting protesters.

Max glanced at the departing Hendersons, then at the storm that seemed to have so rattled them. “What was that all about?” he asked the sheriff, the hot breeze turning cooler, its gusts blowing harder, bringing the scent of pending rain. Beyond the far end of the valley, great slashes of gray from the seemingly immobile storm clouds drove down to the ground—great slashes of heavy rain, Max knew from his own mountainous country.

“Zeb knows the family of the young woman,” the sheriff said.

Then Deputy Henderson’s words struck hard. ‘Her name was Cally James.’

The James family? The family who’d refused to negotiate with Max for the water rights to this very river, water he needed to put his restoration plans for the rest of the Crown of the West into effect? “But it wasn’t murder,” Max said, understanding now why his overtures to the present-day James family had hit a brick wall. Damn it, with an army of attorneys and advisors, someone should have uncovered this connection before Max had approached the family. “It was an accidental?—”

Sheriff Larson shook his head. “It was murder all right. All the unofficial accounts say so.” He took the historical society’s book from Nelson and opened it, the pages flapping in the growing wind. “Eyewitness accounts, right here.” His index finger pinned one flapping page down hard against the rest of the book, and Max realized the sheriff held as harsh views about Max’s ancestor as Deputy Henderson did. “Three of them. Your ancestor got away with it because he was royalty. Cally James’s family and friends went all the way to Zalgravia to get him and bring him back for justice, but he’d disappeared by then.”

A strong gust buffeted Max from the side. Thunder rumbled, louder this time, the storm seeming to be on the move again, only more slowly than before.

Max grabbed the trophy cup from the bridge railing before the wind could knock it off, the heavy gold signet ring he’d worn to Wyoming—the royal seal, to formalize the water rights deal he’d hoped to make—hitting the silver with a resounding clang .

“That old racing cup you’re holding right there belonged to her,” the sheriff said, affirming what the letter requesting its return had said. “Your ancestor stole it before he left town.” Sheriff Larson shook his head. “Sure goes a long way to making amends, bringing it back the way you have.”

Max stared at the silver cup, the cup seeming to burn in his hands. He’d known it had been stolen, but murder ? Hugo had in truth murdered the young woman?

The storm moved closer, rain driving hard, the scent of it deepening in the air. The air around Max turned colder, gusting harder, sending goosebumps over his bare arms.

Nelson, standing beside Max, gave him an ‘I told you we shouldn’t have come’ frown.

Sheriff Larson watched the dark clouds with narrowed, assessing eyes. “Hold on tight to that cup, now,” he told Max, the storm seeming stuck again, this time on a high hill two miles away at the far end of the valley, the clouds dropping lower, churning and roiling, the sheets of rain unrelenting. The bright sunlight still shining over the festivities glinted off the cup’s surface. “There aren’t many like it, made from silver mined in this area. You wouldn’t want to lose it in the river.”

A microphone crackled and whined from the low stage in front of the grandstand. The short man in the summer suit called the audience to order. “Let’s get this done fast, folks,” he said over the microphone, standing beside the mayor, his lightweight suit beating against his body in the wind, “before the storm hits. Reverend Thompson, a prayer to bless the new bridge?”

That was Max’s cue. Nodding at the sheriff, he strode onto the wind-struck bridge, another foreboding rushing through him, this one almost knocking him to his knees as the Reverend Thompson, dressed in black with a white clerical collar, strode to the microphone. Facing the crowd, the Reverend cleared his throat.

The mayor turned and gave Max a brilliant smile in full view of the television cameras before she bowed her head, holding her hat on with one hand, ready to join him on the bridge when the prayer was over, bringing with her the microphone for his speech.

The foot-wide red ribbon strung across the center of the bridge whipped around in a new cold gust. Keeping an eye on the storm, Max braced his legs wide on the wood planks, fighting to keep his balance, the wind around him beginning to swirl, faster and faster, moving to encompass him, more bits of dirt and grass pelting his body. In the distance, the rain seemed to fall even harder.

“Our Heavenly Father,” the Reverend began, then thunder boomed overhead in the clear sky. Crazily, electricity built around Max in the sunlit air.

Max lunged for the riverbank the same moment someone at the top of the grandstand yelled, “ Flash flood .”

But Max didn’t move fast enough. Lightning cracked out of nowhere, striking the silver cup, jittering through him.

A wall of water—cold, freezing water—hit him an instant later like a semitruck.

Feeling himself blacking out, Max gasped for a breath of air as the water swept him away.