to interview him about the foreman’s job—two hours from now. Nowadays people called it ranch manager, but she figured if foreman was a good enough title for Monte, her dad’s old friend, it was good enough for whomever she hired.
“Sorry to be so early,” he said. “I drove from Amarillo and made better time than I expected.”
“You must have left in the dead of night to get here by sunrise.”
He offered no explanation. Maybe he awoke hours before daylight the way she did, worming over the things she could change and the ones she couldn’t.
“There was nobody around down there,” he said, gesturing toward the cluster of ranch buildings at the foot of the ridge, “so when I saw the truck up here I figured it must be you.”
She glanced at the eagle again. “Early would be a good trait for a ranch hand, any morning but this one.”
“At least the eagle’s a young one, probably not half of a breeding pair,” he offered.
She blew out a breath, looking across the fields to the west where the Gurdmans’ farm abutted her land. “My neighbors won’t care how old the bird is when they try to block construction on the other windmills.”
“Your neighbors object to the wind farm?”
“Those do.”
He followed her gaze toward a distant clump of trees where the glint of a white farmhouse reflected the early sun. “What for? It’s pollution-free energy and it’s quiet. Cattle can graze right under the turbines.”
“Exactly. But the windmills might emit harmful rays that cause cancer and birth defects.”
“Good grief.”
“Not to mention that the Gurdmans missed out on the lease money from Great Plains Power & Light. The company wanted only this high ground that’s not sheltered from the wind.”
“Ah,” he said. “So it’s about money.”
“That’s what I think, but they won’t admit it. All the farms and ranches out here are struggling financially. The wind farm bailed me out, and the Gurdmans resent me for it. And now, of course, they can say the windmills kill eagles.”
“Maybe. Maybe not.” His attention was on the eagle again. “You need to take the carcass to the state wildlife office in Pacheeta. I’ll load it in the truck for you.”
“Thanks,” she said without enthusiasm. Pacheeta was the county seat and fifty miles away. “But I thought I’d just call the local law to come pick it up.”
He shook his head. “I wouldn’t. No telling what might happen to it before a wildlife ranger got to see it.”
For a man who’d just arrived on the scene, he had plenty of opinions. She wondered if Rainwater was an Indian name. He didn’t look any more Indian than she did, with her light brown hair and blue eyes. But half the folks in Oklahoma had some Indian heritage if you traced their lineage back far enough.
He pulled a pair of gloves from his pocket and lifted the eagle by its feet, staying clear of the talons. And then he leaned in to smell the bird.
“What are you, the animal CSI? Don’t tell me you can tell how long it’s been dead by sniffing.”
“No. But I think this bird’s come in contact with Diazinon. That might have something to do with why it died.”
“Diazinon—the stuff you spray to kill ticks and fleas?”
“Right. It was outlawed a few years ago, like DDT before it, but lots of people still have some sitting in their storage sheds.”
“How would an eagle get hold of that?”
“Good question. Maybe by accident, but it would take an awful lot of it to be lethal for a bird that size. Even DDT usage didn’t kill the adult birds, just weakened their eggshells so the babies didn’t hatch.”
A crawly feeling rose up her back. “You think somebody poisoned it on purpose?”
“Look, the smell might be something else,” he said. “I’m just guessing. You need to have a wildlife official examine it.”
She followed him up the rise to where they’d parked, and he laid the eagle carefully on the stained bed of her truck. “You don’t happen to have a garbage bag, I guess.”
“The whole truck’s pretty much a garbage bag.”
He didn’t dispute it. “Wait a minute. I might have something.” He rummaged in a storage box mounted behind the cab of his truck and came out with a lightweight tarp. He opened it in her truck bed, laid the bird in the center and wrapped it up.
“Good idea,” she said. “I don’t need everybody in town to see my illegal cargo.”
“Not just that. We want to keep it in the same shape you found it, without damage in transit.”
“We?”
“I’ll ride with you if you want,” he said. “I know some guys in the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service. Maybe I can help smooth any ruffled feathers.”
She made a face but he didn’t seem to notice the pun.
“It couldn’t hurt,” she said. “We can talk about the foreman’s job on the drive. Follow me down to the house and you can park your truck there.”
He touched two fingers to the brim of his hat, like John Wayne in an old cowboy movie, and walked back to his vehicle.
For the space of time it took to open Red Ryder’s mulish door, she watched him go. She’d read the résumé he’d e-mailed. He had good credentials and a background in conservation that was a plus in her view. But a résumé didn’t tell much about a man’s temperament or his character. Could she trust this guy to live within a stone’s throw of her house, with no one else around for miles?
Then she thought of the eagle again. If Rainwater was right about the Diazinon and the bird was intentionally poisoned and dumped beneath the windmills, there was no doubt in her mind who’d done it.
Chapter Two
Red Ryder burped smoke and lurched into gear. With Rainwater following, Marik zigzagged down the ridge toward the two-lane blacktop road that people around here called a highway. This time she closed the gate behind them.
The ranch buildings—her house, the foreman’s cottage and two barns—sat at the base of Killdeer Ridge half a mile from the windmills as the crow flew, a mile and a half by road. From the paved road she turned beneath a cedar-log archway with Killdeer Ridge Ranch branded into the wood. The gravel on the quarter-mile driveway was nearly worn away, the one-lane road in need of grading.
They passed the foreman’s quarters first, where Jace Rainwater would live if she hired him. The two-bedroom cottage sat vacant, its windows dark and lonesome. For months she’d resisted hiring anybody to replace Monte. After J.B.’s accident, Monte had deflated like a wrinkled balloon, his seventy years coming upon him all at once. He’d decided to retire but agreed to stay on a few months to help her get a handle on running the ranch. The few months turned into a year. Monte was her surrogate grandfather when she was growing up, a fixture at the ranch since before she was born. Without him the place didn’t feel right. Marik still held a mean little resentment toward his daughter, who’d finally come down from Oklahoma City with a U-Haul and taken Monte and his things back with her.
She parked Red Ryder in the graveled space in front of the cobblestone ranch house originally built by Stone Youngblood, a grandfather she never knew. The original structure was two-storeys and square as a shoe box. Marik’s mother had supervised several additions, including a southern-style front porch, a carport and a master-bedroom suite on the ground floor at the back. If it wasn’t architecturally harmonious, the big house was comfortable inside and definitely unique. It might have grown even larger if Julianna