I come this way again, I’ll do that,” she said, slipping off the stool. “You know Wolf Lake very well?”
He chuckled. “Heck, yeah, born and bred on the Rez, then slipped on down into town when I was, oh, around twelve. Been there ever since, except when I’m down here running this place. If you need a place to stay, my niece runs a bed-and-breakfast in town. Nice place, too, and reasonable.”
“Thanks, but I have a place,” she said, hoping the house was livable.
“Where’s that?” he asked, reaching for the white rag and starting to clean the counter.
“On a ranch on the other side of town, from what I was told.”
“What ranch?”
“Wolf Ranch.”
His hand stilled and his dark eyes looked right at her. “Wolf Ranch,” he echoed. “You sure you have that right?”
“Yes, sir, I do,” she said.
“You’re a friend or something with the new owner?”
She had a feeling the man was upset for some reason, but his voice stayed even. “I am the new owner,” she said, and loved the words as they came out of her. The new owner. That sounded so great, but the cook didn’t look pleased at all.
“I knew that whole mess with the Carsons was crazy, but sure never expected old Jackson Wolf’s property to be bought by a tiny thing like you.”
She’d been called a lot of sexist things by men over the years, and she hated it, but she barely reacted anymore. Now this man was calling her a “tiny thing,” and she knew it wasn’t a sexist thing to him. He just couldn’t believe she had the land—a woman, on her own, coming in to take it over. “I didn’t buy it,” she said by way of clarification. “But it’s mine.”
“Yeah, I heard,” he said in a low voice, “I guess you didn’t buy it.”
“Sir, I need to get going,” she said.
He came around the counter toward her. “First of all, I’m Willie G., not ‘sir’ to anyone, and secondly, I was a friend of Jackson Wolf, the original owner. Old man used to head the council for years on the Rez. Town’s named after his people. Great man,” he said. “And that was his place, a Wolf place.”
She had decided from the start that she liked the idea of the land having a history, but obviously this man didn’t think she had any right to be there. She tried to divert the conversation. “What’s it like there?”
“Fallow. Empty,” Willie G. said, “for maybe four or so years, since the old man passed. Age ninety-two, I think, and still on that land until the day he died.”
“I’m here to check it out,” she said, sticking to the bare facts and not letting his attitude make her defensive. She had nothing to be defensive about.”
He shook his head. “So, it’s come to this?” he asked softly, as if talking to himself. “Stupid man,” he muttered, then must have realized he’d been speaking out loud. “Sorry, Ma’am, but life gets crazy sometimes around here.”
“It does everywhere,” Grace said and started for the door.
“Miss?” he called after her.
She turned just before reaching for the handle. “Yes?”
“Who have I been talking to?”
“Grace, my name’s Grace.”
“Okay, Grace. I know this will sound strange, but if you decide by any chance that that hunk of land isn’t for you, would you let me know? I’ve been looking for a bit of land around that area.”
She was as shocked by his question as he’d seemed to be when she’d told him she owned the land. “I won’t be selling it, I don’t think.”
“Just let me know, one way or the other, okay?” He reached for the order pad lying on the counter and quickly wrote something on it before tearing the page off. “Just let Willie G. know, okay?”
“Okay,” she said, and started to shift her load so she could take it from him, but he simply reached over and dropped it in her bag.
He opened the door for her, calling after her, “Safe trip, Grace.”
His interest in the property had taken her back, but once she saw what condition it was in, she might hunt the man down and see how much she could get out of it. She slipped inside the sweltering interior of her car, put her purse and the food bag on the seat, then started the engine and flipped the air conditioner on. She put her drink in the holder in the console, then reached into the white bag to get a French fry.
Cool air flowed into the space and she put the car in gear. Glancing up at the restaurant, she was a bit surprised to see Willie G. still standing there in the doorway watching her. He lifted a hand in her direction, that smile back in place, before ducking inside. She felt odd for a moment, then pushed the feeling away and drove back toward the highway.
GRACE REMEMBERED THE crumpled paper Willie G. had pushed in the food bag. She took it out, saw a phone number with his name under it, then folded the note and dropped it into her purse. She glanced at the directions the attorney had given her, then kept her eyes open for the turnoff to Wolf Creek.
After just a few more miles, she finally saw two signs. One was a billboard, announcing the way to the reservation, and the other, much smaller, informed travelers that they had twenty miles to go to arrive at Wolf Lake, population 3,201, altitude 5,106 feet.
She’d been surprised at the altitude and the heat, but one seemed to go with the other. The off-ramp curled back under the overpass, and Grace found herself driving north on a two lane, paved county road that cut through hauntingly beautiful land. Not much green, and the few trees seemed twisted and stunted by the heat. But the colors were stunning.
The sky was starting to be invaded by the suggestion of purple, gold and orange from the west. The shadows of majestic buttes and mesas that rose from the high desert floor were lengthening. Small dust devils skipped over the packed earth, leaving puffs of cloud in their wake. The land made her feel very small and insignificant.
A few cars passed her in the opposite lane, but she hadn’t seen anyone in her rearview mirror since she turned onto the highway. Gradually, she started to notice patches of green off to the west, along with trees here and there that looked tall and ancient. Over the next few miles, the green patches grew in proportion to the parched earth. Finally, a sign for Wolf Lake appeared, overshadowed by a more elaborate one for the Reservation ten miles beyond the town. At a rise in the road, she could see Wolf Creek, maybe three miles to the northwest. It was a simple layout, a long main street, with streets branching out from it. The first buildings were clustered together, as others then fanned out in the colors and shadows of the low sun. Beyond those were large chunks of land, with greenness and distinguishable pastures.
When she finally drove onto the main street after passing through a section of construction, she realized the place had been fine-tuned for tourists. The buildings that lined the street were separated from the road by an old-fashioned raised wooden walkway that used to protect people from snakes and mud. Now they added a quaint charm.
Some of the businesses had been determinedly fashioned after frontier structures, with a mix of aged wood and stone and brick. Others were designed like Willie G’s, with adobe and chipped stucco shouting “Southwest.” When she had time, she’d come back and walk the wooden sidewalks, but for now the elaborate window displays in the businesses were a blur of color and glitter. The only thing she noticed was the bed-and-breakfast Willie G. had told her about, then she was heading out of the town.
She looked at her odometer, made a note of the miles, and was about to reach for another French fry when the roar