Chapter Fourteen
Sheriff’s Office
A couple of days later
“Another ranch was attacked!” The young ginger-haired man storming into the sheriff’s office waved wildly, pointing back out the way he’d just come in. He was clearly upset.
It was early in the afternoon. Luke and Caleb were bent over the paper-laden desk, discussing several possibilities about the murder case they were still working on.
“What? When?” Luke enquired, stepping away from the desk, immediately walking over to the gun cabinet to grab his rifle and an extra box of ammunition. Caleb followed and took his shotgun, which he had propped up against the side of that same cabinet hours earlier.
“Sometime around sunrise,” the young man said. “I went to check on my brother because he didn’t show up for work this morning. When I got there, part of his house was burned. His wife said that he was so livid he went to follow them…”
Caleb groaned at that, and Luke silently cussed in his mind. This just made the whole situation ten times worse. Local residents should never put themselves in danger like that.
“She told me that they were still in bed when masked men started circling the house, yelling and shooting everywhere…”
“How many?” Luke asked, mentally taking note of all the details the young man provided.
“I don’t know!” the young man exclaimed. Luke could tell that he was extremely upset. “It must have been a whole lot of them because some were busy stealing all the horses while the rest of them tried to set fire to the house…”
Luke gritted his teeth when he heard the similarities to his own murder case.
“Is anybody injured?” he asked as he walked past the man, toward the front door, grabbing his winter coat. Caleb was right behind him.
“I don’t think so. I’ve brought my sister-in-law and her children over to my family’s ranch to keep them safe, but I have no idea where my brother is right now! When I took them, we heard more shooting in the distance, but I have no idea…” He broke off, visibly upset.
Caleb put his hand on the young man’s shoulder. “You did good coming here,” he said reassuringly.
“Can you lead us back to the ranch to show us where it happened?” Luke asked.
“Follow me!” The young man spun around and ran out the front door, closely followed by Luke and Caleb.
On their ride toward the southern part of the valley, Luke couldn’t help the fury rushing through him.
All the details pertaining to this incident sounded too close to his own and several other cases, all involving the same patterns—masked men attacking ranches, stealing horses, and setting fire to homes. It was infuriating.
“There it is!” the young man yelled after they’d rushed their horses in a wild race against time for almost fifteen minutes.
They were roughly six miles outside of Stevensville when the tall barn roof became visible.
Shortly after, they arrived at the ranch house.
Luke could immediately see the charred part of the roof and side wall where the fire had started.
They all jumped off their horses at the same time.
“Stay back, please,” Luke said to the young man with a stern tone. He nodded obediently as he took the reins of both their horses.
Luke immediately rushed to the burned part while Caleb walked around the other side of the house.
It was disheartening when Luke noticed all the footsteps where people had obviously tried to douse the fire. Since the temperatures were on the milder side, the snow was now mixed in with wet mud, and they had probably trampled most of the evidence into the ground.
Searching the roofline for possible fire starters, Luke didn’t find any evidence there either.
Then his eye caught an oddly shaped, charred piece of something sticking out of the snow several feet away from the house.
When he picked it up, it was the broken-off neck of a small bottle.
On closer inspection, Luke noticed the distinct smell of kerosene, and he saw the remnants of a burned piece of cloth inside the bottle neck.
Spinning around, he searched the ground for similar pieces and found two others.
All three exhibited the same distinct smell of kerosene or some kind of strong alcohol.
It could have been a combination of both.
“Caleb! Have a look at this!” he called to his deputy, who came around the other side within seconds.
The fact that they were lying around like this near the burned part of the house could only mean one thing. The criminals had used these to start the fire.
“Have you ever seen this before?” Luke asked, but Caleb shook his head. Luke had heard of this method only once before.
“They stole all the horses…” the young man said from a little distance away.
“Thank you. We’ll take it from here,” Luke said with some urgency as he took the reins from both horses. He didn’t want to waste more time. “I’ll file a report, and hopefully I can update you and your family with some information.”
“Thank you, Sheriff! You can find us on the Fallon Ranch, next door.”
Luke nodded, and the young man raced off toward his family’s home as he and Caleb climbed back into the saddle and began following the many hoof prints in the snow.
They didn’t speak much as they listened closely for possible unnatural noises. Maybe these criminals would shoot randomly at something, giving away their location. Anything was possible, since sound travelled far in these mountains, especially during winter, when all the trees were bare.
It was impossible to tell how many animals had ridden this way because it was all a big mess, but after a long ride which led them all the way into the thick woods on the outskirts of the valley, they came across an old, decrepit house.
By now, it was much later in the afternoon, and the sun had already begun its descent. Luke and Caleb dismounted at a distance and crept in a crouched position closer to the building. They didn’t see or hear anything, and it became obvious that the thieves had abandoned the house a while ago.
They searched separately around the building, but aside from relatively fresh horse droppings in various places, they came up short.
Looking up at the house, some of the windows were broken, and the front door was in dire need of repair.
Both men carefully ventured inside to have a look around.
It was very bare, scarcely furnished—just some random chairs and one table in the middle of the main room.
“They were definitely here,” Caleb said quietly as Luke looked around. “They dragged in snow, and those footprints haven’t fully dried up yet.” Caleb pulled one hand out of its glove and held it over the fireplace. There were no embers visible, but the ashes still radiated a little heat.
“They even had lunch,” Luke said disparagingly, pointing at leftover bones all in and around the fireplace.
“Look!” Caleb exclaimed. Luke spun around and saw his deputy briskly walking over to the table, where he picked something up, shaking off a little dirt. “Look at this!” he said, as he held up a piece of paper. “They must have left this behind…”
“Well, what is it?” Luke asked impatiently. Caleb handed him the paper.
“It’s an advertisement,” Luke said aloud as his eyes scanned the printed pamphlet. “For a horse chow… at the Christmas Fair… in Stevensville…” Then his eyes widened at the last part. “This is for the Christmas Fair this year!” he exclaimed. “So, this isn’t an old pamphlet! This is new!”
“There’s a horse auction at that fair,” Caleb mused. “It could be possible that they want to sell the stolen horses there… Why else would they carry this around?”
Luke nodded in agreement.
“At these auctions, the sellers sometimes take a whole week in advance to get the temporary stables ready for their horses,” he said.
“Just to get it all set up and ready for the show.” Luke stroked his beard, reading over the pamphlet again.
“If that’s the case, this could be our chance to track down the thieves, maybe even their gang leader, if they are down there to sell. ”
Luke didn’t want to sound too hopeful, but this pamphlet was the best news in years, and it was hard to contain his excitement at having found such a crucial piece of information.
He carefully folded the pamphlet in half before he hid it in the pocket of his vest, right below the sheriff’s star.
They left the house and walked back to their horses.
It was time to head back—the first snowflakes were beginning to fall.
A short while later, when they’d left the woods behind, heading back toward Stevensville, Luke praised Caleb. “This could be the breakthrough we’ve been looking for so long,” he said. “Well done, Caleb!”
“Thank you. But this was clearly God’s doing,” Caleb replied, which elicited an eyeroll from Luke. “He put it there. I am certain of it!”
Luke grunted.
“We should thank Him!” Caleb added then. “You should go to church with me and thank the Lord! He provided us with something we so desperately needed!”
“The gang did,” Luke replied with a flat look. “Not God.”
“It will bring you peace to speak to God. After a long, hard day such as today, I like to go to church because it’s quiet, and I can speak to the Lord in peace. We’ll ride right by the church on our way home…”
“I am not going!” Luke finally yelled. “You can go and speak to your God! I will go home. To my wife!”
Caleb raised his eyebrows at that last bit, and Luke himself was surprised that he had said it. Madelaine’s face popped up in his mind. Where did that come from?
He tried to fight it, but he had to admit that she’d looked very beautiful at their wedding yesterday. He had to admit that he wanted to know more about her.
So far, they hadn’t spent a lot of time together, but those few moments had been enticing.
As he’d expected, given the circumstances involved with their sudden wedding, they had spent last night in their separate rooms. Luke had spent most of the night thinking about their kiss.
He hadn’t felt a woman’s body that close for a long time, and it had stirred up all kinds of emotions in him when his lips had touched hers.
He definitely couldn’t deny the physical attraction to her. He was a man after all. And now, this gorgeous young lady was his wife.
Luke was overcome with a strange combination of new and old feelings, all warring inside of him—curiosity about this new marriage, slight guilt for taking a new wife, excitement about a better future with a new family, and a little discomfort, because those children would take the place of his.
He hadn’t allowed himself to actually feel any of those things, but now everything had changed, and Madelaine had opened a lock he’d previously deemed closed up forever.
By the time they rode into Stevensville, night had fallen. There were only a few lights illuminating Main Street, and when Caleb turned toward the church at the end of the road, Luke didn’t feel the usual resentment.
In fact, he hadn’t forgotten his own devotion to God. Before everything had happened, he’d felt nothing but love and respect for Him. As he left Caleb to visit the church, a small crack appeared in Luke’s heart, and he began to question his decision not to go.