by Dayle Gaetz
From: Adele James
Date: July 20, 2005 9:30 PM
To: Chris Walton
Subject: Glenmar
Hi Chris:
Well, here I am in the big city again. I’d forgotten how noisy and congested Calgary is! Already the traffic is driving me crazy, and I just got here this afternoon! I can’t imagine how I lived in Toronto for so long. But I know for sure I could never move back there after returning to the country. What was I thinking?
I have to admit though, I miss my job as a journalist. No matter. When all of this is settled, I’m going to make more time for my freelance writing.
Thanks again for letting Huntley stay with you. I know he’ll be a huge help. I can’t believe how well he has adapted to ranch life in just over a year. It must be in his blood, he’s a real cowboy now!
I meet with the lawyer tomorrow, wish me luck.
Chris, I’m counting on you to keep an eye on Glenmar Development for me. Last night I dreamt that I came home and they had bulldozed the old homestead to put up a big, ugly clubhouse! Talk about a “While You Were Out!” nightmare!
It’s so important to win this battle, I’m really grateful you’re here to help. And Mother Nature thanks you too. Think of the grizzlies!
Love,
Adele
For a half second Sheila wondered what grizzly bears had to do with Glenmar Development, but then she focused on those last two words, “Love, Adele,” and felt like kicking someone. Huntley for starters.
“There’s a reply,” Huntley said. He clicked to open another e-mail.
From: Chris Walton
Date: July 20, 2005 10:05 pm
To: Adele James
Subject: RE: Glenmar
Don’t worry about anything here at home. I’ve got everything under control. And, as I mentioned, I’ve come up with a surefire way of keeping Glenmar off your land, at least for the time being.
We’ll talk about it when you get back. Meanwhile, good luck with the lawyer. I’ll be thinking of you tomorrow.
I’m off now, onto the range. There are some things I need to take care of. I told Huntley I’d be gone for a few hours. If there’s anything he needs, Ben Brown isn’t far away. I also told Ben where I’d be, so I expect he’ll come up to the house and watch tv. He sure does love my big screen! Anyway, don’t worry about Huntley. He’s in good hands here and a pleasure to have around.
Must go,
Chris
Sheila glared at the back of Huntley’s head. So he was a pleasure was he? Isn’t that just too precious for words? Obviously she wasn’t a pleasure to have around or her dad might invite her to visit once in a while. “What gives you the right to snoop in other people’s e-mails?” she asked crossly.
Huntley looked up in surprise, she sounded so angry. Katie and Rusty both stared at her too.
Her cheeks burned. “I mean, you must have read them earlier or you wouldn’t have known they were there. Is that why my dad doesn’t want you in his office, because he can’t trust you?”
Huntley stared down at his hands. “Kind of,” he admitted, “but it’s not like you think!”
“You don’t know what I think!”
“Okay, then, here’s what happened. Before Mom went to Calgary, she and Chris kept talking, you know, about stuff, but they’d stop when I came into the room. I knew something was up, but they wouldn’t tell me anything. I don’t even know why Mom needs to see a lawyer.
“So, anyway, this morning I got up early and checked my e-mails, but there wasn’t one from Mom, even though she promised to send one. Then I came downstairs and Chris wasn’t even up yet, which is weird because he’s always up way early.
“Anyway, the office door was open so I went in. I guess I sort of clicked on his e-mail and saw there was one from Mom last night. That’s when Chris came in, before I even had a chance to read it. He was bursting mad and told me to stay out of his office.”
“So why did you copy the e-mails to CD this afternoon?” Katie asked.
“I just…I want to know what’s going on. I figured if the police come back and take his computer—like they do on TV—I’d never know what those e-mails said.”
“Oh, and I thought you were trying to help!” Sheila said. “But you were just being nosy! Like Katie!”
Sheila felt all jittery inside. She was so angry she couldn’t be nice to anyone right now. Huge questions gnawed into her brain. Where did her dad go late last night? And what was his “surefire” way of stopping Glenmar Development? A terrible, sick feeling lurked deep in her stomach, and right now she needed desperately to be alone. She needed time to think. Sheila turned and walked quietly out of the room.
Before she reached her own room, at the back of the house, she heard Katie ask, “I wonder what happened to the rifle.”
She closed the door behind her. It felt weird to be in this bedroom again. It hadn’t changed much. She and Katie brought some of their stuff in earlier, but this was the first time she had been in here alone. She didn’t switch on the light, but stood looking around the room, lit only by soft moonlight that filtered through the window.
Her bed still had the same bedspread, blue with horses galloping all over it. A small bedside table held a lamp and plain white shade, not the frilly one her mother wanted to buy. Her bookcase was strangely empty, except for a couple of cowboy books that belonged to Huntley. She could see them lying there now, and even though she could not see their front covers clearly, she glowered at them. Huntley had been using her room until she arrived. How dare her father give her room to that boy?
She walked over to the tall, rectangular window that looked out toward the foothills. A round moon hung high in the southern sky and lit up a ragged line of snow on the mountain peaks to the west. A shiver ran through her.
Her dad would never hurt anyone, she knew that. But the questions wouldn’t leave her alone. Where was the rifle? What was Dad’s surefire plan? Where did he go late last night?
8
When Sheila opened her eyes the next morning, weak sunlight was just beginning to creep through her window. She hadn’t slept much during the night; too many worries made her toss and turn. For hours she lay awake, wishing her room weren’t so hot and stuffy, wishing she knew how to help her dad.
Sheila turned her pillow over, squeezed her eyes shut and tried to go back to sleep. She tried to stop thinking, but the worries wouldn’t go away, so she tried to form a plan instead. Maybe she should call Mom and ask for help. But Mom would tell her to stay out of it. Or worse. She might insist Sheila come home. No, she wouldn’t phone Mom, not yet at least.
Katie would be eager to help, Sheila knew that.
And Katie was good at stuff like that, at finding clues and figuring out who the bad guys were. Trouble was, Katie didn’t know when to quit, even if it meant she got herself into a ton of trouble. Now Sheila couldn’t decide whether to ask Katie for help or tell her to mind her own business.
Dad couldn’t possibly be guilty. Could he? She had not seen much of him in the past two years and, as her mom always said, “People change.” Had her dad changed? Was he capable of hurting someone to get what he wanted?
She didn’t think so, but how could she be certain? Sheila knew the ranch wasn’t doing as well as it used to. Her dad was worried because the price of cattle was way low. Not only that, but the weather seemed to be against ranchers these days. One year it was so hot and dry the grasses on the range and hay in the fields withered and died. The next year it rained so hard everything rotted where it stood. How was he supposed to feed his cattle? How could he keep the horses healthy?
If Dad was afraid of losing the ranch, would that make him do something drastic?
Suddenly Sheila sat up in bed. She could not lie here any longer, worrying until she felt sick to her stomach. Careful not to disturb Katie, she dressed quietly in a purple T-shirt and blue jeans, picked up her shoes and tiptoed from the room.
She padded softly downstairs and
left her shoes by the front door. She wanted to go out to the barn and see Silver, maybe even take a ride before anyone else got up, but first she would grab an apple for Silver and one of those fresh, juicy Okanagan peaches for herself.
Her hand was on the fridge door when she heard a noise. She froze, listening. It sounded like a creaky floorboard in the front hall. Good, Dad must be up, maybe they could ride out together. She waited, but no one walked down the hall to the kitchen. Was she imagining things, or did her dad come downstairs and head straight outside?
She grabbed an apple and a peach and closed the fridge door. Retrieving her shoes from the front hall, she pulled the front door open, surprised to see it was not quite latched.
Sheila shivered in the early morning air. The sky shimmered gold over the grasslands to the east, but the sun had not yet risen above the horizon. She shivered again and tried to remember where she left her blue sweatshirt. Was it in the trailer or up in her bedroom?
She hadn’t needed it yesterday because the afternoon and evening were so hot. She didn’t remember stuffing it into her bag, so it must be in the trailer. Instead of entering the barn, Sheila walked to the trailer and tried the door. It wasn’t locked and she stepped inside. At the back were two bunks, one above the other. Sheila’s was the top one. She climbed up to look for her sweatshirt.
She found a couple of crumpled T-shirts and a pair of shorts stuffed inside her sleeping bag. Under her pillow was her bathing suit. No sweatshirt. She was about to climb down when she heard a door close. Peeking out through the narrow window beside the bunk, she saw her dad walking down the steps from the house. As she slid from the bunk she noticed Katie’s red sweatshirt on the bottom bunk. Something blue stuck out from beneath it. She grabbed her shirt, yanked it over her head and ran outside.
By then Dad was halfway across the yard, heading for the barn. He almost jumped out of his cowboy boots when he saw her. “Sheila! I thought you were asleep upstairs.”
“I couldn’t sleep. Did you go back inside the house?”
He frowned. “What are you talking about?”
“I heard you go out a few minutes ago. Then I looked out from the trailer and saw you on the steps.”
“You’re imagining things, girl. A few minutes ago I was in the shower.”
His hair was wet and plastered to his head. He smelled lemony, like the shaving cream he always used. Sheila decided the sound she heard must have come from upstairs, not from the front hall as she had thought. “Are you going riding?” she asked.
“Not now. I was coming down to mix up a batch of hotcakes for you kids. But from the bottom step I thought I saw something move out here near the barn, just a glimpse of blue. Anyway, I came out to investigate.” He looked at her blue shirt. “Obviously it was you.”
“But…”
Her dad slipped an arm around her shoulders. “C’mon, Sheila, let’s go make some hotcakes before the hordes descend upon us.”
They walked together back toward the house. “Ben and Ryan will be over for breakfast in half an hour. We’ve got loads of work to do today.”
“Ryan’s here?”
Dad nodded. “He’s in university now, but he’s back to help us out for the summer, just like he used to in the old days.”
Sheila remembered Ryan well. From the time he was ten, he used to spend his summers on the ranch. He stayed with his father, Ben, in the cottage by a little copse of pines beyond the main house. She never liked the way Ryan teased her, but he often went riding or swimming with her too, kind of like a much older brother.
There was a stack of hotcakes keeping warm in the oven, coffee waiting to be poured and bacon sizzling on the griddle when Ben walked into the kitchen.
“Hey, Sheila!” he greeted her warmly and wrapped her in a big hug. “Sorry I missed you yesterday. I had a load of horseshoeing jobs on some of the ranches down south and didn’t get home until late.” He stood back. “Let me look at you! You’ve grown so much, I hardly recognize you, Cowgirl!”
Sheila grinned. For as long as she could remember, Ben had called her Cowgirl and she was glad he hadn’t forgotten. Ben had been the Walton’s foreman since long before she was born and was almost like an uncle to her. He had a bushy brown-and-gray beard, thin brown hair and, just as she remembered, wore a blue shirt. She wondered if he always wore the very same shirt, or did he have a dozen identical ones?
“You don’t look any different,” she said.
Then Ryan walked in. “Hi, kiddo!” he winked, grinning. He didn’t look like a boy anymore. He was kind of old now, at least twenty, and he was as tall and broad-shouldered as the two older men. Ryan had soft brown hair that lay flat, and his eyes were gray, like his dad’s.
“Hi, kiddo, yourself,” she said and poured coffee into three mugs.
The men had been gone for hours by the time Katie and the others finally wandered, bleary-eyed, down the stairs. As usual, Katie carried her notebook tucked under her arm, but for once Rusty didn’t have his sketchbook.
“It’s about time you got up,” Sheila said. “I’ve already had a ride on Silver, and I saddled two quarter horses for you.”
“Why?” Rusty’s voice held an edge of panic. As if to cover his fear, he babbled on. “What’s a quarter horse anyway? If I was going to ride anything—and I’m not saying I will—I’d want the whole horse.”
Sheila laughed. So did Huntley, which made her angry, so she stopped abruptly. Katie paid no attention to any of them. She settled at the table, opened her notebook and began to read, one finger following along her lines of notes.
“A quarter horse is a breed of small but really strong and fast horses that know how to outsmart cattle. They’re perfect working horses for a ranch.”
Rusty looked even more nervous. “They chase your cows?”
“Only when we tell them to,” Sheila said. “They’re very gentle.”
Rusty’s eyes appealed to Katie for help, but she was lost in her notes.
“You rode one last night,” Huntley said. “You did great.”
“I’ll take you out on the range today,” Sheila suggested. “You’ll like it, things haven’t changed much in over a hundred years.”
A gleam of interest sparked in Rusty’s eyes but quickly died. “You mean we’ll walk out on the range?”
Sheila nodded. “Walk, trot, canter, whatever works.”
Rusty turned to his cousin. “Katie? Are you listening to this? They’re trying to get us killed! They’re putting us on fast, cow-chasing horses and riding out to the range where there’s—surprise—cows!”
Sheila noticed that Rusty said they instead of she, as if he automatically assumed Huntley would come too. She glared at Huntley.
Katie placed her finger under a line in her notebook and looked up slowly. “We need to visit the scene of the crime,” she said.
Rusty groaned.
9
As much as she longed to tap Silver with her heels and take off at a gallop across the rolling, grass-covered hills, Sheila knew she couldn’t. Silver tossed his head and snorted impatiently, so bursting with energy Sheila could scarcely hold him back. But she remembered what her father said about her friends getting hurt and reminded herself how accident-prone Rusty really was, and she tightened the reins.
Sheila had not spoken one word to Huntley today, but he didn’t appear to mind, or even notice for that matter, which was a bit depressing. However, he did seem to understand the need to hold the horses back—maybe he had seen Rusty in action already.
She studied Huntley. He seemed comfortable in the saddle, riding his black-as-midnight horse, but she didn’t know why he had to wear a black cowboy hat, same as her dad’s. At least it didn’t have a white, braided-leather band and white feather. Sheila remembered braiding those three long leather strips and placing the band on Dad’s black hat for a Father’s Day surprise.
She had found the white wing feather later that summer, during the molting season of the trumpeter swans. Shei
la used to sit by Swan Pond and watch them for hours, a beautiful pair that raised their little brood here on the ranch every year. Again she wondered if they had returned this spring. Without Swan Pond, where would they go? Maybe Huntley knew. Too bad she wasn’t speaking to him.
It took forever to reach the hill above the development, but at last they reined in the horses. “This is where my dad figures a sniper would have stood,” Sheila said.
“How do I get down?” Katie asked. She stared at the ground near her horse’s feet as if she were perched high on a rooftop.
Sheila made an effort not to roll her eyes. She glanced at Huntley; he better not be smirking!
He wasn’t. “Wait there, I’ll help you,” he said and slid down from his horse before Sheila could say a word. That boy was so pushy she felt like screaming. Katie was her friend, not his. Wasn’t he content to take her dad away? Did he want her friends too? She swung down from Silver and marched over to help Rusty before he fell. Or before Huntley got there to help him first.
She held Rusty’s horse. “Keep your left leg in the stirrup,” she told him. “Hang onto the saddle horn and swing your right leg over the horse. Good, now slip your left foot out of the stirrup before you…”
Rusty crashed to the ground and the horse twitched uneasily, but Sheila held on fast. Rusty gazed up at her, his head and shoulders lying in the long grass, his left leg in the air, foot stuck in the stirrup. Sheila was about to ask if he was hurt when he grinned.
“That’s why you take your foot out first,” she said, “before you slide to the ground.”
“Now you tell me!” Rusty said.
To Sheila’s annoyance, Huntley rushed over and freed Rusty’s foot. “Thanks,” Rusty said. He picked up his baseball cap and scrambled to his feet, brushing dry dirt and bits of brown grass from his shirt.
Sheila grinned to herself, watching Rusty and Huntley walk to the edge of the rise. Rusty walked weird, his legs stiff and his knees stuck out sideways as if he still sat astride his horse. Horseback riding used muscles Rusty probably didn’t even know that he had.