A Bride for Dry Creek. Janet Tronstad

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      A rich society woman from Seattle, Mrs. Buckwalter, was underwriting the cost of the trip to Montana, and Francis couldn’t help but notice how excited the older woman was tonight. Mrs. Buckwalter couldn’t have been prouder of the teens if she’d given birth to every one of them.

      And Francis couldn’t blame her. The teenagers sparkled at this dance, the boys in their rented tuxedos and the girls in the old fifties prom dresses they’d borrowed from the women of Dry Creek. It was hard to believe that they were members of various gangs in Seattle. A few dance lessons and a sprinkling of ties and taffeta had transformed them.

      “That’s really the logical explanation,” Francis concluded. If the other gang could only see the youth center kids now. She couldn’t help but think they’d be a little jealous of the good time these kids were having.

      “Maybe.” Jess didn’t look convinced. “Just don’t take any unnecessary risks—your brother will have my hide. He’s worried, you know—”

      “Even if Flint did kidnap me, he’d never hurt me—no matter what Garth worries about.” As Francis listened to herself saying the words, she realized how naive she sounded. She didn’t know what kind of a man Flint might be today. She’d often wondered.

      Jess looked at her. “Still, things happen.”

      “What could happen?” Francis waved her arms around. She might not know about Flint, but she did know about the people of Dry Creek. At least a hundred people were in the barn, some sitting on folding chairs along the two sides, a few standing by the refreshment table and dozens of them on the floor poised ready to dance to the next tune. A lot of muscle rested beneath the suits that had been unearthed for this party. “One little scream and fifty men would come to my rescue. I’m surrounded by Dry Creek. There isn’t a safer place in all the world for me.”

      Jess grunted. “I guess you’re right. Maybe you should go visit with Mrs. Hargrove a bit. Talk to those two little boys that belong to Matthew Curtis. Find out how they like the idea of having a new mama.”

      Francis smiled. She was fond of the four-year-old twins and liked to see them so happy. “Everyone knows how they feel about that. She’s their angel.

      If their dad wasn’t going to marry Glory, I think they’d wait and marry her themselves.”

      Meanwhile, outside in the dark…

      Flint watched a fly buzz up to the headlight of the old cattle truck. Now, what was a fly doing in the middle of a Montana winter night so cold a man’s nose hairs were likely to freeze?

      Flint slid into the niche between two cars and hunched down in his black leather jacket. The worthless jacket was nearly stiff. That fly didn’t belong here any more than Flint and his jacket did. He would bet the fly had made the mistake of crawling into that cattle truck when it’d been parked someplace a lot warmer. Say Seattle. Or San Francisco.

      Even a rookie FBI agent would make the connection that the truck didn’t belong to anyone local. And Flint had been with the Bureau for twenty years. No, the truck had to belong to the three men he’d identified as cattle thieves. He’d call in their location just as soon as he had something more concrete to tell the inspector than that he’d listened to them talk enough to know they were brothers.

      The last time he’d made his daily check-in call, one of the guys had said the inspector was grumbling about him being out here on this assignment without a partner. Flint told him he had a partner—an ornery horse named Honey.

      The fly made another pass close to Flint’s face, seeking the warmth of his breath.

      Flint half-cursed as he waved the fly away. He didn’t need the fly to distract him from the mumbled conversation of the three men. They’d been standing in front of the cattle truck arguing for several minutes about some orders their boss had given to deliver a package.

      Flint sure hoped they were talking about which cattle to steal next.

      If not, that probably meant his tip was accurate and they were planning to kidnap Francis Elkton. He hoped Garth had taken the phone call he had made seriously and was keeping Francis inside, in some controlled area with no one but the good ladies of Dry Creek around her.

      Flint envied all of the people of Dry Creek the heat inside the barn. The warmest he was likely to get anytime soon was when he went to feed Honey some oats.

      It hadn’t taken him more than a half hour on Honey’s back to realize that her owner must have had a chuckle or two when he named her. She was more sour than sweet. Still, Flint rubbed his gloved hands over his arms and shivered. Honey might be a pain, but he missed her all the same. She was the only breathing thing he’d talked to since he came to Montana.

      By now Honey would be wondering when they’d go home. When he’d ridden her to town tonight, he’d tied her reins to a metal clothesline pole in a vacant lot behind Mr. Gossett’s house. The pole was out of the wind, but Honey would still be anxious for warmer quarters. Last night, he’d bedded her down in an abandoned chicken coop that still stood on the farm he’d inherited from his grandmother when she died fifteen years ago. As far as he knew, no one but gophers ever visited the place anymore.

      He was half-surprised the men hiding by that cattle truck didn’t use horses. The terrain on the south slopes of the Big Sheep Mountain Range wasn’t steep, but it also wasn’t paved. There were more fences than roads. The long, winding strings of barbed wire and aging posts did little in winter except collect snowdrifts. Flint had followed a dozen of those fences to reacquaint himself with the area last night and didn’t see anything more than a thick-coated coyote or two.

      But then these men probably didn’t know how to ride a horse. Which meant they weren’t professionals. If they had been pros, they would have learned before heading out here on a job like this. A pro would realize a horse would be a good escape option if the roads were blocked. Yes, a pro would learn to ride. Even if he needed to learn on a bad-tempered horse like Honey.

      Flint’s observations of the men had already made him suspect that they were not career kidnappers. They were too careless and disorganized to have lived long if they made a habit of breaking the law. But Flint knew that the crime syndicates liked to use amateurs for some jobs—they made good fall guys when things went sour.

      Granted, the Boss—and the Bureau didn’t know who he was yet—had other reasons to use amateurs here. A pro would look so out of place in this rural community he might as well wear a red neon sticker that said Hired Killer—Arrest Me Now.

      The fact that the men were too tender to ride horses made Flint hope that they would give it up for tonight and go home. The night was clear—there was enough moonlight so that Flint could see the low mountains that made up the Big Sheep Mountain Range. But it was ice-cracking cold and not getting any warmer.

      The little town of Dry Creek stood a few miles off Interstate 94, which ran along the southern third of Montana from Billings on through Miles City. The town was nothing more than a few wood frame houses, an old square church, a café called Jazz and Pasta that was run by a young engaged couple, and a hardware store with a stovepipe sticking up through the roof. The pipe promised some kind of heat inside. Flint had not gone in to find out if the old Franklin stove he remembered was still being used. He hadn’t even tried to find an opening in the frost so he could look in the window.

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