Chapter Two
William McGraw had spent another sleepless night patrolling the perimeter fencing that corralled the borders of his ranch. Not only had he expanded the acreage of the property after his pa died, but he’d gone and built a new ranch house on it too.
His pa had let the old house slide after his ma died, so he’d figured it was best to start over again with a new home.
The rising sun found him in the kitchen and grumbling to the only person on the property who would tolerate it.
“I’ve worked too hard for my new spread to tolerate thievery, Dotty.”
The ranch house was working out fine and dandy thanks to Dorothy “Dotty” Thompson, the McGraw family’s housekeeper for the last thirty-odd years.
But outside was a different story. It had started when one of the ranch hands came into his study a couple of months back at the start of winter to ask if he could order some more cracked corn chicken feed.
He’d told the ranch hand it was on order and that he’d send Ben to pick it up tomorrow.
According to his calculations, there should still have been two bags left in the barn. However, the ranch hand had informed him that there was only one left.
The following month brought the same story—one bag of cracked corn remained after a one-hundred-bag order, but the chickens had only been given two bags a day. He’d counted the order himself… twice. One hundred bags had definitely come off the wagon.
As a man dedicated to his land and all the livestock on it, that cup wouldn’t hold water.
One stolen sack always led to two and then three, until they woke up one morning to find the barn empty.
Which brought him to the place he was now, complaining to Dorothy about it after another unsuccessful night.
“That doggone thief is sneakier than a fox. How are they getting in? D’you think the patrols are helping?”
Dorothy was a practical woman and probably knew better than to get his hopes up.
“I think you should wave that sack of chickenfeed farewell and be done with it, Will. Maybe the rats took it. I’ve seen rodents the size of a grown man’s foot skittering around in that darn barn. I wouldn’t put it past them to eat away an entire bag in one night.”
He didn’t like to be a perfectionist, but he wasn’t raised to let such a thing slide.
“I can feel it in my bones that someone is to blame. It started as soon as the colder weather set in. The rats have plenty of stray seeds to chew on without them resorting to stealing sacks.”
Dorothy sighed as she placed the plate of ham and eggs in front of him.
“I don’t understand why you have to go making a big hullabaloo over it, Will. Let it go, why don’t you?”
He didn’t answer straightaway. He liked his life to be well-ordered with no surprises hiding around corners. There was only one key for the lock on the barn, and he had it.
They kept all their equipment in that barn—plow furrows, wheelbarrows, razor-sharp shears—costly parts that would be a hassle to replace.
The reason he had to leave the barn unlocked during the night was because it housed the fire hose---and the pump that worked the hose.
He’d spent a fortune on that darn pump only to have it take one look at the damp and start rusting.
So, he kept it in the barn with the hose where it was safe and dry.
His old hound dog used to guard the barn at night, but since the old fella passed away, he couldn’t find it in himself to get another dog.
The ranch hands didn’t want to be banging on the door to ask for the key when there was a fire burning, so there was nothing for it but to leave the barn unlocked for the time being.
“You want to know what it sounds like to me? Sounds like life is slipping away from you one day at a time, and you’re just too busy to realize it.” Dotty wasn’t backward when it came to stepping forward with an opinion, and that’s what he liked about her.
“It’s a matter of trust, Dotty. Maybe I should ask Pastor Bale to preach a sermon about honesty and integrity and… just plain old respect!”
The housekeeper poured him his second mug of coffee. She knew better than to offer him sugar and cream. She leaned against the back of the chair opposite him and frowned.
“Listen to yourself! Do you seriously believe that a poor soul reduced to stealing one meager sack of corn once a month has the wherewithal to dress fancy for church?”
He was quick to seize his advantage. Grinning, he slapped a hand on his leg. “Ha! You just admitted that there is a thief.”
Dorothy recovered quickly. She had never taken his sass, not even when he was a baby.
“What I mean to say, Will, is that you shouldn’t begrudge a soul in need. And anyway, I don’t think Pastor Bale would take kindly to you telling him what to preach, not when he has your past dalliances to throw in your face.”
He made no excuse for the company he chose to keep. “Dalliances are all a man has when a woman has yet to touch his heart.”
Dorothy could be relentless sometimes, and she sure was on a roll this morning. “Every foot has a shoe to fit.”
She had a way of shutting the argument in a way that ended it without a grudge on either side, and that’s what he liked about the housekeeper.
“Well, I’m off. I got less than four hours of sleep last night.
Don’t know how long I can keep this up.” He reached for the hat hanging from the post at the back of his chair and pulled it low over his brow.
The housekeeper muttered under her breath. He caught a few words. “...mountain folk know the way.”
That got his attention. “What mountain folk?”
Dorothy waved him away as she got on with the washing up. “Oh, never mind me. I was just thinking about what the land surveyor told you before you expanded the ranch boundary.”
He cast his mind back. “The new ordinance was documented and legally binding. I’m not stepping on anyone’s toes by living here.”
“It’s not that…but I seem to recall…” Dorothy wiped her hands on her pinafore and turned to face him. She was born and raised in Prescott, local through and through.
Her folks had been scraping a living from mining the Granite Mountains back when Prescott didn’t even have a storefront to boast about.
She was already a wife and mother in 1863, when all the farmers and miners gathered to celebrate “Prescott’s first Christmas”; that’s what they called Mr. Manuel Yrissari’s arrival when he brought the first load of supplies with him.
Mr. Yrissari was a merchant from New Mexico who came to settle in Arizona to establish the first storefront. He’d needed a spot to live and do business, so he’d built a modest log cabin with two rooms, hastily constructed out of pine logs out on Goose Flats.
The storefront had been expanded into three rooms now, and the inventory had grown too. Dotty’s kids lived in town and knew all the news that was fit to print about who bought the most whiskey and which housewife couldn’t be bothered to can her own jelly.
Will wasn’t one for gossip, but he sure appreciated the words of wisdom the housekeeper sometimes let drop. Needless to say, when Dotty took the time to explain something, he made sure to listen.
“I seem to remember my husband saying something about this land being part of the aquifer system.” She beckoned him over and pointed out of the window.
“Mount Lien mine is up there, just past the crest of Granite Mountain. It’s abandoned now, but it yielded quite a bit of copper before the seam ran out. ”
It always amazed Will how a man could stick a stake in the ground and claim the land as his own in order to mine it for ore. What was even crazier was that the miners would move on once the seam was gone, leaving the land as if it were worthless and had yielded all its secrets.
He loved the view he got from the ranch house windows.
The jagged mountain rocks soared into the sky, decorated with needle pines, undergrowth, and snow.
Some men might look out there and see minerals, but he saw the possibility of goats climbing the rocks, sheep nibbling the bushes, and cattle grazing around the base.
“The ranch boundary goes all the way to the base of the mountain, but not beyond it. If folks are living up there, they’re not trespassing. It’s free range on Mount Lien.”
She corrected him. “The mountain isn’t called Mount Lien, only the mine. And there’s a reason why they won’t let you extend the boundary further than that. It’s all placer ground beyond.”
He knew that placer ground was land set aside for future stakes and claims by prospectors.
“It can’t be miners sneaking in here for the corn, Dotty. They’re all boarding in town for the winter, waiting for the thaw—ground’s too hard.”
She chuckled. “I said mountain folk, not miners. They know those hills better than the backs of their hands. Stop thinking you’ll find your thief with patrols and guns, Will.
What you need to do is look for any underground springs or subterranean water.
They’ll be frozen solid right about now…
that’s the perfect route for someone to creep under the fences to get closer to the barn. ”
Mountain folk. Of course. He’d heard rumors about the destitute and homeless using the old mines as temporary housing. He didn’t envy them living there during winter though.
“Why would they need corn feed? It’s not like they have chickens.” He was enjoying this conversation with his old nanny. She was a fountain of knowledge when it came to home cures, scandals, and gossip.
Dorothy clucked her tongue. “You can be real callous sometimes, Will. They’re probably keeping the corn for themselves. Boil it up with a whole lot of water and some salt and you got yourself a tasty meal.”
His mind must work differently from the housekeeper’s. Dotty might see a vision of poor folks humbly eating boiled corn mush around a meager fire, but all he could see were layabouts too lazy to work and guzzling his hard-earned chickenfeed.
That got him fuming mad. “My pa always used to say I should never let the fox in the henhouse, Dotty, because that’s what this feels like.”
She gave him a shrewd assessment. “Since when did you live by what Daniel McGraw said and did? Your pa was a mean-spirited old boot, too fond of pulling a cork and using his belt. If you have an inclination to take after him, Will, let me know now so that I can go start packing.”
That got his attention, and he back-peddled. “No, no, not at all. Tell me more about the aquifer.”
But Dotty was done talking. “If you want that thief, I suggest you guard the barn and not bother with the rest of the ranch. Ain’t nothing missing from there. Go on now, shoo! I have work to do.” She flicked the dishcloth at him.
She was the only person bold enough to shoo him away. And while he wouldn’t go so far as to characterize himself as a formidable man, his bulky muscles and fierce brow told their own story.
For the rest of the day, he thought long and hard about what Dotty had told him, and when evening set in, he decided to follow her advice.
“Get an early night, fellas,” he said to his hands. “No more patrols. I’m taking our stakeout in a different direction.”
After supper and a whole lot more coffee, he headed out to the barn. It was icy cold in there, enough to freeze his breath, but there was no way he could light a fire or brew a hot beverage. He was determined to spend every night in the barn until he found out who was responsible.
He honestly didn’t expect to catch the thief on the first night he sat up in the barn, but the sound of the chain clinking against the door made his tired eyes open the moment he heard it.
Even though he made a strong adversary, there was something unnerving about facing down a stranger in the middle of the night, but he had his Colt pistol ready and loaded.
The strong scent of… lavender, herbs, and wildflowers permeated the air. What sort of robber wore such delicious fragrances? Without thinking, he left the Colt on the ground as he stood up.
The light tread and gentle breath told him there was nothing to fear.
The soft breathing came closer. He held back and pressed himself against the roof strut. He’d been inside the darkness long enough to be able to see clearly.
The intruder was of medium height and wearing a large overcoat with a woolen hat covering their head.
He stepped behind the person and grabbed them, pinning their arms to their sides. They weighed nothing. Well, not quite nothing, but then again, he hefted around enormous hay bales for a large part of the day.
The soft curves under the bulky overcoat told him why he could pick her up so easily, but not before his midnight visitor began to struggle like a wild cat. Her boot heels kicked at his shins, and her teeth snapped as she tried to bite his hand.
“Whoa. Steady on there.”
The woolen hat fell off to reveal a cascade of chestnut-brown hair falling in waves over her shoulders. The scent of mountain flowers increased. He swung her around, not only to stop her from trying to bite him, but because he was downright fascinated.
“You’re a woman.”
A beautiful one. In his barn. Stealing his corn. And now glaring at him with fury showing in her glowing, almond-shaped eyes.