Lone Rider

by Lindsay McKenna

  Lifting her chin, she stared unseeingly at her staff. Her office was glass-enclosed on three sides, with a red-brick wall behind her squeaky desk chair. Outside, the deputies for Lincoln County were getting ready for a shift change at four p.m.

  It was Saturday, and that was always a brutal day for drunks on the roadways. Every Saturday she had assigned a small task force during the summer months to pull over suspected drinkers and give them Breathalyzer tests. The Wind River Valley stretched a hundred miles long, hugging the western border of the state with Idaho and Utah. It was a fifty-mile-wide valley, bracketed by the Wilson Range on the west and the Salt River Mountains on the eastern border.

  What to do? What to do? Her red eyebrows bunched as she studied the computer screen. WANTED: Wrangler with skill-set in wrangling and with a medical background. Duties include assisting an older woman with age-related tasks. Send résumé.

  Was that enough of a description? Wrangler and caregiver? Actually, she had little hope that any man who applied for the position would have both criteria. Sarah desperately needed a male wrangler to fill in and help her spry seventy-five-year-old grandmother, Gertie Carter. She was her father, David’s, mother. And the word spry was actually less than what she would use: rocket was more like it. Type A, unbound. A go-getter. Or, as Gertie would say, no moss ever grew under her feet. No siree bob!

  Her lips twitched. She dearly loved both her grandmothers, Gertie and Nell. Both were intelligent, accomplished businesswomen but in completely different realms. Nell sold grass leases to cattlemen from other western states every spring and summer, so they could fatten their cattle on some of the greenest, richest grass in the US. Gertie Carson’s husband, Isaac, had died a year ago. They’d been married at eighteen, started the Loosey Goosey Ranch and the rest was history. Together, they’d built an organic egg empire with free-range chickens. Today, they were the largest company in the country, providing organic eggs and fryers to all the major grocery chains. Gertie’s egg empire was $300 million.

  Now, Gertie needed some male help. Isaac had always taken care of the chicken and egg business while she tended the finances, the contacts with the grocery stores, orders and such. Without Isaac, and having arthritis in both her wrists, Gertie couldn’t possibly fill Isaac’s missing shoes. No, she needed a wrangler. But she also needed a man who had a medical background because Gertie would get sudden, unexpected dizzy spells and lose her balance. She’d fallen many times. And each time, she called Sarah on the cell phone, asking for help instead of dialing 911.

  The problem was, Sarah was often involved in law enforcement situations as the sheriff of the county, and she couldn’t just pack up and drive back to the ranch to help out her grandmother. Gertie needed help. Desperately. Right now, her father was filling in, but he couldn’t do it forever. No, they had to hire someone much younger.

  But who? Who would want to be known as the chicken wrangler of Wind River Valley? Maybe she should tell the prospective applicant he’d be an egg wrangler. Clearly, there was no pride in telling folks he was a chicken wrangler. With a sigh, Sarah put down her private phone number, hit the Send key and prayed for the best, not really expecting anyone to answer the help-wanted ad.

  *

  Dawson Callaway was sitting at a café in Jackson Hole, having just driven to the cow town an hour earlier. He’d come from his parents’ Amarillo, Texas, ranch. They’d tried to dissuade him, but he’d always wanted to find out what it would be like to live in Wyoming. No, it didn’t have the Alamo. No, it didn’t have the history of being the largest state in the Union. All those reasons from his father, Henry, fell on his deaf ears.

  He’d managed to survive as a Navy combat corpsman assigned to a U.S. Marine Corps company, from age eighteen through twenty-nine. When his enlistment was up? He went home to Texas, back to being a wrangler on his father’s small ranch, where they raised cattle. But it didn’t fulfill him. He was restless and wanted to strike out on his own. How many times had he dreamed of coming to Wyoming? Too many. Well, this was his chance. And as he read the help-wanted ads, one caught his eye: for a wrangler with a medical background. That was him. And because his Grandma Lorena had helped raise him while both his parents worked, Dawson had a soft spot for older men and women, seeing his own grams in all of them. Okay, he’d answer the ad as soon as he got a big breakfast at this café. He’d find a local motel, use their business computer, fill out his résumé and see if he could get hired.

  June 2

  Sarah’s eyes widened. There on her personal computer the next morning was a résumé for the ad she’d placed! She quickly scanned the email.

  My name is Dawson Callaway. Enclosed is my résumé for the position you advertised.

  She sat at her office chair in her own small home, a block from the courthouse building where the sheriff’s department was located. It was seven a.m. and she was due to go to work at eight a.m. The only thing good about being the sheriff was that she wasn’t on a shift schedule, which she hated but had done for too many years earlier. Trying to quell her excitement, she opened the file that was labeled “Résumé.”

  Leaning down, looking at her Apple Macintosh laptop screen, she watched the file open. As she rapidly scanned the résumé, her heart beat a little harder in her chest. This man was a Texas-born ranch wrangler, thirty years old, single and had been in the US Navy as a combat corpsman for over ten years before his enlistment was up.

  What were the chances? Sarah let a soft sigh escape from between her lips, staring at the résumé, reading it again to make sure she hadn’t missed anything. This sounded too good to be true. Was it?

  In her business as sheriff, she saw the dregs and the worst of society, not the best. Without thinking, she touched the screen with her fingertips. Dawson Callaway sounded perfect for the job, but she cautioned herself. First, when she got to work she’d run a thorough search on him via law enforcement channels. There was no way she wanted a felon or someone with a bad teen background working with her beloved grandmother. No way. That was first. Next, after ruthlessly researching his background for criminal issues, Sarah would contact a friend she had at the Pentagon. He would get her the man’s DD Form 214, and that would fill in another huge blank about his entire military service, what kind of discharge he got and if he had any problems within that time frame. People lied all the time. Or they told half-truths or half lies, thinking it was all right. And it wasn’t. She wanted to know everything about this Texan—if indeed he had been born in Amarillo, Texas—before setting up a meeting with him to pursue the possibility of being hired as Gertie’s assistant.

  She wished she had a photo of him. So, she ran a Google search on him and came up with nothing. That was strange. Most people nowadays had social media accounts, and he had no Facebook page, no Twitter account … no … nothing.

  That raised a red flag up to a point. He was a US Navy medic, a combat-trained one, assigned to a Marine Corps company. She was intimately familiar with the Corps because she’d joined at age eighteen and left at age twenty-two, but not before serving over in Afghanistan in Helmand Province, one of the most dangerous areas to have a deployment. Yes, every squad in a company had a Navy combat corpsman assigned to them. So that part fit and was likely accurate.

  Sitting back, she wiped her face with her hands, feeling the weight and stress on her shoulders. Funny how she could let the stress in her sheriff’s role slide off and was much less troublesome than family stress. Family was as personal as it got, and Sarah understood why it was taking a toll on her. She dearly loved Gertie. And she wanted to protect her and find someone to help her who was damn near an angel in quality and mentality and very compassionate. And she knew just how long the odds were of finding a man like that.

  Her mind canted to the past, to the Navy corpsman in their squad. He was kind, quiet and listened a lot but didn’t say much. Most of the ones she’d met in those years in the Corps were like that. They were someone you’d want at your side if you were bleedi
ng out, knowing you were going to die. There was a streak of compassion in them, a humanity that Sarah rarely found in anyone but the medical first-responder world, whether an EMT, paramedic or combat corpsman. There was no question that those in the medical-service field were a certain personality type. She hoped with all her heart that Callaway possessed that same kind of demeanor, but she’d only find out if he passed the first series of rigorous searches. What did he look like? She was dying to find out because she had a knack for reading faces.

  June 3

  Dawson looked at his cell phone that morning when he got up at six a.m. The motel where he was staying was the cheapest he could find, on the outskirts of the wealthy corporate community. Jackson Hole, he’d found out real quick, wasn’t for the poor, the disenfranchised or even the struggling middle class. When he looked at house sales, he realized very quickly that Palm Springs, a very rich community, had been transplanted to Jackson Hole. No one without a lot of money could afford to live in this western town. Him included.

  Rising to his six-foot, two-inch frame, feet bare on the oak floor, he stretched fitfully. The bed was lumpy and not supportive, leaving him with a backache that would probably sort itself out by noon. He ambled over to the desk, where there was a coffeemaker, and made a cup. Turning, he walked to the window, seeing the sky was a pale blue, the sun tipping the horizon, the town just beginning to wake up like him. He’d left the phone number of his hotel when he’d sent the résumé. Wanting to hear, he opened his cell-phone email. The note was cryptic:

  I’ve received your résumé, Mr. Callaway. I will contact you in two days. Thank you. SC.

  Well, he wasn’t black ops for nothing. He’d been ordered to Recon Marines, their stealthy branch, and served in that capacity for ten years. More than likely, this SC, whoever that was, was checking and vetting him about now.

  He grinned a little and sipped his coffee, heading to the bathroom to take a hot shower. It didn’t bother him that SC was giving him a thorough background check because he had a grandmother, too, and he’d want to protect her from any man who wasn’t on the up-and-up. Nowadays, people lied too easily. And fake news was believed, unfortunately. In the world he came from, you didn’t lie at all. Or if you did, you were tossed out with a bad reputation and no one wanted you around them, a pariah.

  His curiosity rose as he wondered if SC was the individual who’d placed the ad. Man or woman? He didn’t know. Finishing off his coffee, he pulled open the plastic shower-stall door.

  June 5

  Deciding to take in the scope of Wind River Valley this morning, Dawson had spent the last couple of days nosing around about potential work in the Jackson Hole area. Now, it was time to explore this valley south of the big town.

  The small burg of Wind River had 965 inhabitants, or so the sign said. It was built up on both sides of Route 89 and looked more turn-of-the-century—the twentieth one—to Dawson. He’d gone to the Tucson wild west show and the OK Corral staging of that historical shoot-out. This town’s footprint building-wise reminded him of that time. The only impressive place in town was a three-story red-brick building midway down on the right, the courthouse. He saw a number of deputy cruisers on the left side of the large, 1910-style building. The jail was also part of the sprawling complex. It had Victorian touches, with white wooden decorations, black, freshly painted wrought-iron fencing around the entire area, plus lots of nicely trimmed bushes and colorful foliage, with a rich green lawn in front of it.

  It was clear to Dawson that this was a ranching town. Coming into the city limits, he’d seen at least four different three-quarter-ton pickup trucks, with four different ranch names painted on their side doors. There was Charlie Becker’s Hay and Feed store, and he swung in and parked because the lot was full and busy with ranchers. He saw a number of men who seemed to be employed either by the ranchers or by the store hefting hundred-pound sacks of grain or using hay hooks to place alfalfa or timothy hay into the backs of the waiting trucks in line at the two busy docks. This would be a good place to find out if there were any jobs for wranglers in this lush, verdant valley. Climbing out, he saw a sheriff’s black Tahoe parked with the other trucks, with gold on the sides: Lincoln County Sheriff.

  Dressed in a pair of clean Levi’s, a plaid gold, orange and white shirt, the sleeves rolled up, he wore his comfortable, beat-up cowboy boots and settled the tan Stetson on his head as he mounted the long, wide wooden steps up to the double doors. Men and women were coming and going. They all looked like outdoor types, the men darkly tanned thanks to the coming summer, the women looking fit, firm and confident. Most of them wore their hair in pigtails or a ponytail, all sporting either a straw hat or a Stetson. Working ranch women, just like his mother was, along with her many other duties.

  As he entered, he saw a gent in his sixties behind the counter, silver hair, a pair of bifocals perched on his nose and a canvas apron over his white cotton cowboy shirt and dungarees. He was sitting on a four-legged stool and punching an old-time calculator. But what got his attention was the tall, statuesque woman standing nearby in a sheriff’s uniform. Her ginger-colored hair was caught up in a ponytail and she wore a black baseball cap on her head. He liked the strength of her body purely from a combat standpoint: medium boned, about five-foot-eight or nine inches tall, shoulders thrown back. An easy confidence radiated from her. Dawson swore she’d been in the military. He could only see her profile, but he would bet anything she had a heart-shaped face. From a male point of view, she was the whole package. Long, long legs encased in those tan trousers that were pressed to perfection. The huge black leather belt around her waist sported a pistol, and several other leather pockets, plus a flashlight, and other things such as pepper spray and a pair of handcuffs, on it as well. It blocked his view of her waist and hips. The long-sleeved tan blouse she wore couldn’t stop anyone from realizing she was a woman, however.

  “Ha ha!” a woman called as she came in the rear door of the large store. “Here they are, Charlie! Brownies with walnuts! Come and get ’em!” and she took a huge cookie pan covered with foil and placed it on the coffee table in the rear.

  Charlie grinned and looked up at the sheriff. “There you go, Sarah. I think Pixie made enough for your shift-change people. Grab a box below the table where they’re sitting and put one in for each deputy coming on duty, eh?”

  Sarah grinned. “You know that’s why I dropped by, Charlie,” and she laughed huskily, lifted her hand in thanks and swung around the end of the long L-shaped counter, heading for where Pixie was.

  Craning his neck, Dawson saw the huge amount of brownies being uncovered by Pixie. His gaze drifted back to the gentle sway of Sarah’s hips. He liked her more than he should have. Walking up to the empty counter, Dawson said, “Brownies?”

  Charlie grinned. “Hello, stranger. Saw you come in the door. I’m Charlie Becker. Who might you be?” and he thrust his hand across the counter toward him.

  “Dawson Callaway, sir. Nice to meet you.”

  “What can we do for you, son? Or did you hear that my wife always brings baked goods here around this time every day and you’d like to eat some of them?” He grinned and waggled his silver eyebrows.

  Releasing the man’s paper-thin hand, Dawson said, “No, sir. I’m checking out if there are any wrangling jobs in the valley. I figured a feed store would know about such things.” And then he added with a sliver of a grin, “But those brownies do smell good.”

  Nodding, Charlie finished adding all the items on his calculator, then ran the tape. Looking up, he said, “Well, Sarah Carter, our sheriff, is lookin’ for someone who has a wrangler and medical background. That’s the only job I know about right now.” He waved his hand toward the rear, where Sarah and Pixie were filling a large cardboard container with enough brownies for the oncoming shift at the sheriff’s department. “Might go over and introduce yourself, son. Sarah doesn’t bite,” he added, his smile increasing. “And grab one of Pixie’s brownies before the horde comes thro
ugh the door after seeing my wife slip in the back door bringing all those goodies.”

  Lips twitching, Dawson said, “I’ll do that. Thanks.”

  So, Sarah Carter was the one who’d put the ad in the paper. The SC he’d seen signed on the email clicked. His mind worked at the speed of light—back into combat mode, he supposed—as he slowly approached the two women who were gabbing and laughing with each other. Because of his combat duties, Dawson rarely missed anything. He liked the slender length of Sarah’s hand as she daintily chose brownies from the cookie sheet to place in the cardboard box she held in her other hand. Pixie, who was very short and in her sixties, was giggling about something the sheriff had whispered to her, helping her pile the gooey, frosted brownies into the container.

  It was impossible, even in so-called male clothing and wearing a baseball cap, that he’d call Sarah mannish. That just wasn’t gonna happen. Sarah wore loose clothing, but not too loose. Nothing was tight or body-fitting. But she sure filled out those pants and shirt nicely. Tucking away his purely sexual reaction to the woman, he saw her briefly glance in his direction, as if sensing him approaching her from the rear.

  “Coming back for some brownies?” she asked him, amusement dancing in her green eyes.

  Dawson halted and met her teasing grin with one of his own. “Yes, ma’am.”

  Sarah stepped aside, placing the lid on the box and setting it on the table. “Help yourself. And drop the ma’am, okay?”

  He liked her style and her low, husky voice. Turning to Pixie, he said, “Ma’am? May I take one?”

  “Of course you can!” she said, pointing a finger at them. “Are you new? I don’t recognize you. I’m Pixie, Charlie’s wife,” and she grabbed his hand, shaking it warmly.

  Pixie’s friendliness was engaging, and he gently held her small hand in his. “Nice to meet you, ma’am. I’m Dawson Callaway.”