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rock. She dried herself with her sweatshirt.
    Putting on her clothes once more, she sat on the rock and gathered her knees against her chest. Then, because it consoled as much as it grieved her, she let the memory of her one night with Joe Tally come into her mind....
     

Chapter Three
    The moon had been on the wane that night. It provided little more than a sliver of light. The stars had seemed so far away, scattered across the heavens above the tall, dark trees.
    Claire had wanted to hurry, but she’d forced herself to drive slowly on the twisting dirt roads, to watch carefully for each of the turns that would take her to the Tally Ranch. If she missed one, she knew, it could take hours to get back on the track.
    Going slowly paid off. She found the entrance to the ranch with ease, though it was nothing more than a break in a barbed-wire fence with a rutted dirt driveway running through it.
    Claire turned into the driveway, which made a loop in front of the weathered house. She drove into a yard of dust and weeds. Parked among the weeds were a tractor that had seen better days and two beat-up pickup trucks.
    Behind the house, where the pasture land flowed away to timbered hills, the wild grass was still green that early in the year. It appeared silver, though, by moonlight. One lone horse grazed there, a swaybacked fellow, even to Claire’s untrained eye.
    It all looked so lonely. Claire knew a creeping apprehension. Under the mantle of darkness, the ranch seemed abandoned, a place where only ghosts might walk. She almost wished she hadn’t come. Still, she didn’t drive away.
    She was worried about Joe. The word around town was that he was hiding out drunk here, only emerging long enough to buy more booze. She had tried to call him, but he wasn’t answering his phone. Finally, she’d admitted to herself that she wouldn’t rest until she found out for sure if he was all right.
    So she’d called Verna and asked her to watch the desk. Verna had come right over, and Claire had set out to see if Joe was all right.
    Claire pulled the van up in front of the house and turned the engine off. Then she opened her door, got down and peered into the shadows of the big front porch.
    It was after she’d already closed the door of the van behind her that she heard the growling. She squinted harder at the shadows on the porch, trying to see who—or what—was snarling at her. Right then, as if in answer to a question she hadn’t asked aloud, two big German shepherds materialized from the shadows by the front door.
    Claire stood absolutely still. Her father, who’d loved big dogs, had once told her that sometimes stillness and lack of perceptible fear could give a person an edge with even the most attack-prone of animals.
    The dogs approached her, sniffing, growling a little, but looking more wary than ready to attack. She let them smell her.
    Then she said, firmly, “Sit.” They both looked at her, measuring her. She snapped her fingers once, sharply, and pointed at the ground. “Sit. Now.”
    Both dogs dropped their hind ends to the ground and looked up at her with expectant, trusting interest.
    She tried not to let them see her long sigh of relief. “Stay,” she instructed with great gravity.
    She calmly walked past them, and though she heard one of them whine hopefully, they stayed where they were. She went up to the porch, and when she got there she strode right up to the door and pounded on it decisively.
    No one answered.
    “ Joe?” she called, her voice sounding eerie and strained in the silence. “Joe!”
    Except for more whining from one of the dogs, no answer came. She tried the doorknob. It wouldn’t turn.
    About five feet to either side of the door were long double-hung windows, similar to the ones in her cottage at the motel. Claire inspected the one on the right, and saw that it was firmly latched from the inside. Curtains of some dark material were drawn across it, so she couldn’t see in.
    She