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thought that he didn’t hear them at first. He stopped just inside the door at the sound of his name being brandished about.
    “Well, you know darned well that he had some kind of pull to get this job, even temporarily.” Hud recognized Franklin Morgan’s voice. Franklin was the nephew of former marshal Scott “Scrappy” Morgan. Franklin was a sheriff’s deputy in Bozeman, some forty miles away.
    Hud had been warnedthat Franklin wasn’t happy about not getting the interim marshal job after his uncle left and that there might be some hard feelings. Hud smiled at that understatement as he heard Franklin continue.
    “At first I thought he must have bought the job, but hell, the Savages haven’t ever had any money.” This from Shirley Morgan, the dispatcher, and Franklin’s sister. Nepotism was alive and well in the canyon.
    “Didn’t his mother’s family have money?” Franklin asked.
    “Well, if they did, they didn’t leave it to their daughter after she married Brick Savage,” Shirley said. “But then, can you blame them?”
    “Hud seems like he knows what he’s doing,” countered Deputy Norm Turner. Norm was a tall, skinny, shy kid with little to no experience at life or law enforcement from what Hud could tell.
    “Maybe Brick pulled some strings to get Hud the job,” Franklin said.
    Hud scoffed. Brick wouldn’t pull on the end of a rope if his son was hanging off it from a cliff on the other end.
    “Not a chance,” Shirley said with a scornful laugh. “It was that damned Dana Cardwell.”
    Hud felt a jolt. Dana?
    “Everyone in the canyon does what she wants just like they did when her mother was alive. Hell, those Cardwell women have been running things in this canyon for years. Them and Kitty Randolph. You can bet Dana Cardwell got him the job.”
    Hud couldn’t help butsmile just thinking how Dana would love to hear that she was responsible for getting him back to town.
    Franklin took a drink of his coffee and happened to look up and see Hud standing just inside the doorway. The deputy’s eyes went wide, coffee spewing from his mouth. Hud could see the wheels turning. Franklin was wondering how long Hud had been there and just what he’d overheard.
    Norm swung around and about choked on the doughnut he’d just shoved into his mouth.
    Shirley, who’d been caught before, didn’t even bother to look innocent. She just scooted her chair through the open doorway to the room that housed the switchboard, closing the door behind her.
    Hud watched with no small amount of amusement as the two deputies tried to regain their composure. “Any word from the crime lab?” Hud asked as he proceeded to his office.
    Both men answered at the same time.
    “Haven’t heard a word.”
    “Nothing from our end.” Franklin tossed his foam coffee cup in the trash as if he suddenly remembered something urgent he needed to do. He hightailed it out of the office.
    Deputy Turner didn’t have that luxury. “Marshal, about what was being said…”
    Hud could have bailed him out, could have pretended he hadn’t heard a word, but he didn’t. He’d been young once himself. He liked to think he’d learned from his mistakes, but coming back here might prove him wrong.
    “It’s justthat I—I…wanted to say…” The young deputy looked as if he might break down.
    “Deputy Turner, don’t you think I know that everyone in the canyon is wondering how I got this job, even temporarily, after what happened five years ago? I’m as surprised as anyone that I’m the marshal for the time being. All I can do is prove that I deserve it. How about you?”
    “Yes, sir, that’s exactly how I feel,” he said, his face turning scarlet.
    “That’s what I thought,” Hud said, and continued on to his office.
    He was anxious to go through the missing person’s file from around fifteen years back. But he quickly saw that all but the last ten years of files had been moved to the Bozeman office.
    “We don’t have any