Forsaken. B.J. Daniels

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СКАЧАТЬ deputy was watching the boy closely. She felt her chest tighten at the thought of what kind of trouble Dewey might be in. “Dewey—”

      Jamison cut her off. “That cake looks awfully good, Mrs. Conner. Mind if I have a piece?”

      Maddie tried to still her impatience as she sliced the deputy a large portion and topped off his coffee even though he hadn’t touched it. She desperately needed to know what had happened and what she was going to have to do about it.

      “Mrs. Conner here was just telling me—”

      “Maddie,” she interrupted.

      Jamison shot her an annoyed look before turning back to the boy again. “Maddie was just telling me you were hired on as the sheepherder’s tender.”

      Dewey nodded but kept his eyes on the cake he was in the process of devouring. He acted as if he hadn’t eaten in days. She realized with a start that Branch wouldn’t have let the boy go hungry—that was, if he’d been able to take care of the two of them.

      Did that mean something had happened to Branch? Her stomach dropped at the thought. What of her sheep? She’d been hanging on to the ranch by a thread for so long...

      “Son, can you tell me what happened?” the deputy asked.

      The fork froze in Dewey’s hand, and then slowly he began to scrape the crumbs from the plate, never taking his eyes off the table, before dropping his fork and washing the cake down with the rest of his coffee.

      “How about we start at the beginning?” Jamison said. “For the past four days, you’ve been up in the mountains with the sheepherder, is that right?”

      Dewey nodded.

      “Where is Branch now?” Maddie asked, ignoring the warning look the deputy shot her.

      “I don’t know,” the boy said, dropping his voice and his head.

      The deputy cleared his throat. “When did you last see him?”

      “Just before bed last night. He said he’d been having trouble sleeping. The noises were keeping him up.”

      “The noises? You mean the sheep?” the deputy asked.

      Dewey lifted his head and frowned at the silly question. “Branch was used to the sheep. He said he could tell if they were happy or scared just by the sounds they made at night.”

      “Then what was keeping him up at night?” the deputy asked.

      “The strange sounds...” Dewey glanced back down at the table “...the...crying.”

      Maddie couldn’t help herself. “Crying?”

      “I’m not making it up,” the boy said, lifting his head to plead his case with her. Tears filled his eyes, and he began to tremble again. “I swear. We heard awful...crying on the wind.”

      “You have heard the sound of wind or a coyote calling at night, haven’t you?” Maddie asked in exasperation.

      “It weren’t no coyote,” the boy snapped. “It weren’t just the wind, either. It was...something else. Even old Branch was spooked by it.”

      “Are you sure Branch didn’t just wander off?” the deputy asked.

      “Maybe. His horse was missing this morning. I called for him and looked all over.”

      Maddie doubted Dewey had done much searching for the sheepherder given how scared he was.

      “How did you get the blood on you?” the deputy asked.

      The boy wagged his head without looking up. “One of the lambs. She was hurt. I tried to help her.” He was close to tears again. Maddie remembered her son at that age, so tough and yet so tender, a boy on the edge of manhood doing his best to measure up. If only Matthew was here now, she thought with that unbearable grip at her heart.

      “How did you and Branch get along?” Jamison asked.

      “Fine,” he said to his empty plate.

      Maddie took the plate and cut him another slice of cake. She could feel the deputy’s irritation with her, not that she gave a damn as she slid the second slice of cake in front of Dewey and refilled his mug. She noticed the deputy had hardly touched his cake or his coffee.

      “I would imagine with only the two of you up there all alone, you might have had disagreements on occasion,” the deputy asked.

      Dewey said nothing as he dived into the cake and coffee she’d set before him. She felt torn between wanting to shake the truth out of Dewey and wanting to protect him. All her instincts told her that the boy needed protecting.

      “Branch hard to get along with, was he?” Jamison asked.

      “Meaner than a rabid dog when he drank.” The kid, realizing he’d just spilled the beans, shot Maddie an alarmed look and quickly gulped out, “Not that he drank usually.”

      Maddie groaned.

      “If you had something to do with Branch going missing up there—”

      “I didn’t!” he cried. “I swear. I don’t know what happened to him.”

      She felt her stomach go tight with fear as a thought hit her. “Where’s Branch’s dog, Lucy? That dog would never have let him out of her sight.”

      Dewey shook his head and began to cry.

      “Son,” the deputy pressed. “If you know something, you have to tell me.”

      “I don’t know. I’m telling you. I...I don’t know anything.”

      “I’ve had enough of this,” Maddie said as she shoved off the kitchen counter.

      Dewey looked up, startled, as if he thought she planned to beat it out of him.

      “I have two thousand sheep up in those mountains, and I can’t be sure anyone is watching them,” she said to Jamison.

      “Right now, I have bigger concerns than your sheep,” he said, getting to his feet. “I’m going to have to hold the boy until I know what happened up there. I’m afraid this warrants investigating.”

      “Then you see to your investigation, Deputy. I’m going to check on my sheep.” What she couldn’t bring herself to say, let alone admit to this Easterner, was that the future of her ranch was riding on this year’s sheep production.

      Not that she wasn’t even more scared out of her wits that something bad had happened to Branch. He wasn’t just her sheepherder. He was as close to a grandfather as she’d ever had. He was also her closest friend.

      But if she had tried to explain it to the deputy she would have been fighting tears. And she never cried. She’d done all her crying a long time ago.

      As she started down the hallway toward her bedroom, she heard him coming after her. “Mrs. Conner—”

      “Maddie,” СКАЧАТЬ