Dead Man’s Fancy by Keith McCafferty Page B

but hay.
    â€œBucky’s a bow hunter,” Ettinger said. She examined the arrows on the quiver mounted to a recurve bow that was hanging from a nail. They heard the staccato roar of an ATV coming up from the manor.
    As they shut the barn door and walked back to the house, Ettinger spoke out of the side of her mouth. “Wasn’t all that long ago cowboys rode horses.”
    In the ringing silence after he’d shut off the quad, Bucky Anderson helloed and strode toward them, listing slightly to the side and rubbing at his stomach. He tilted his straw Stetson back in a form of salute. He was a big man with a very broad face, clean shaven. His Carhartt jacket was barely soiled. Stranahan noticed a C-shaped scar on his right cheek.
    Despite meaty hands burned to a deep ochre color, Anderson’s initial grip was tentative. Then, as Stranahan began to withdraw his hand, the bone crusher.
So, one of those.
It told him more about the man than he would have gleaned rifling his medicine cabinet.
    â€œI was just telling Sean,” Ettinger said, “the irony of the new Montana, where the only hay-eating horses are on dude ranches. You go to a ranch that runs cattle, all the horses are under the hood.”
    â€œIsn’t that a fact?” Anderson said. He had a high-pitched voice that seemed incongruous with the brute strength his body betrayed.
    â€œBucky’s ranch manager here,” Martha said unnecessarily. “Going to marry the widow Culpepper, have his initials on the branding iron next summer.”
    â€œWe tie the knot June twenty-one. I’ll admit I’m a little nervous.” He had a smile. Stranahan guessed he was one of those men who always had a smile. He recognized something else he couldn’t put his finger on, but made the muscles tighten in his abdomen.
    â€œIf the little woman will still have me after what happened Tuesday,” Anderson said.
    Ettinger turned to Stranahan. “She’s out on the coast, whiling away the ‘R’ months with Pilates and Pinot Gris.” It seemed a harsh assessment. Stranahan wondered if she was trying to provoke Anderson.
    His expression didn’t change. “Now Martha, that’s not fair. But you’re right. Much as I’d like to have her here, I’m glad she missed out on our high-country drama.” There was the smile again.
    â€œWhere are you going to get married?” Stranahan continued the string of pleasantries, feeling a little absurd.
    Anderson spread his hands like a preacher. “You’re looking at it.”
    Below them, the aspens gave ground to grasslands that rolled away toward the ribbon of the Madison River. Stranahan could see the West Fork bridge, but the island downstream, where two years earlier a drowning victim had caught up under a pile of driftwood and one of Sam’s clients had accidentally hooked the body with a trout fly, was obscured by bankside pines. For a moment Stranahan thought about the arc his life had taken since then.
I’m right where I should be
, he thought. Maybe the lost years really were over.
    He looked at Ettinger, who had her hands on her hips and was bringing Anderson up to date on the search or, rather, what was left of it. They were eighty-six hours in, down from a hundred ground pounders on day two to less than half that number, hopes beginning to die. They’d keep the plane in the air another day or two, go through the motions while the cadaver dogs worked their noses. But the fact was at this point in the search, the most prominent member of SAR was no longer the incident commander. It was the Reverend Marcus Miles, the county chaplain, whose job was to act as a liaison between the grieving family and the sheriff’s department. He was the one who would gain the family’s trust simply by being there, by listening to all the words and saying the right ones himself, who was the shoulder for women and strong men alike to cry on.