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Hunter's shop toward
Merrick's office, but she had a big smile on her face. Watching her
new friend torment the normally kind and even-tempered constable
with her meddling had become a great source of amusement for Betty.
She was not a natural meddler herself, but she had no problem
watching Julia get involved where she shouldn't.
    "I'm not interfering," Julia countered,
though she knew full-well this wasn't true. "I'm helping."
    But Merrick wasn’t in his office. The door
was closed and when Julia marched in anyway the room was quiet and
the stove cold.
    So the two friends carried on down the street
and when Betty returned to her store, she winked at Julia and said,
"Promise me you'll tell me what expletive Merrick uses when he sees
you."
    "Oh, pffft," was the only retort Julia could
come up with at the time.
    The rhythmic clang-clang of Walter Sheehan's
hammer meeting its target found Julia's ears long before she
reached the blacksmith shop. She wondered briefly what it was like
for Walt knowing that everyone in town knew where he was by
following that noise. He was a quiet man, only given to speaking
when he had something to say. And like most quiet people, he was
keenly observant. Though Julia had only known him a few weeks, she
could already tell that very little slipped past Walt. In this way,
he was invaluable to his friend, Constable Jack Merrick.
    Julia walked past the sleeping forms of the
three dogs that were never far from Walt's side. The blacksmith
nodded to Julia when she entered the shop but kept hammering for a
moment. The nail he was forming was still red from the fire. Julia
glanced around but Merrick was not in the blacksmith shop.
    "One moment, lass," he said.
    Originally and recently from Ireland, Walt
was the only man in town who topped Merrick's height. The two men
looked like Grecian pillars when they stood beside one another. But
unlike his friend, Walt had the fair skin and fine, light brown
hair of the Celts. His hands were always dirty; his profession did
not allow him to ever be clean for long. His expression was usually
serious, but when he looked at Julia, a long dormant warmth formed
in his eyes. His nose was slightly too big for his face, but he was
handsome in his own rugged way. There were small lines beside his
clear blue eyes that Julia found charming. Though he rarely
referred to his past, Julia got the impression he'd left Ireland
under some sort of cloud. Twice since she'd arrived in August,
Julia had had a chance to observe this natural observer when he
didn't realize he was being watched. Both times, she'd seen a
sorrow in his expression that nearly took her breath away.
    Today though, the big Irishman was all
smiles. Julia waited while Walt put the finishing touches on the
nail, dunked it into the bucket of water beside him, and then
tossed it onto a pile of nearly identical nails in a basket at his
feet. He came around the anvil, hammer still in hand.
    "What've you got there?" He nodded his head
toward the glove. It would have taken much more time for any other
man to notice she was carrying it. Walt the Observer.
    "I found it at James Hunter's shop."
    "Aye?" Walt reached for it, "May I?"
    "Of course."
    He set his hammer down on the chair by the
front door and took the glove in his own hands, his blackened
fingers holding it gently despite their size and strength. After
running his eyes and fingers over it, and turning it over twice he
handed it back to Julia.
    "What are you thinking?" he asked.
    "We found it by itself."
    "Who's 'we'?"
    "Betty Mitchell and I."
    Walt nodded. "Go on."
    "We found it by itself in Hunter's shop and
I'm convinced it's not his."
    "You'd be right about that. Look at the size
of it. Hunter is a wee little thing. I could snap him in half and
cook him for breakfast." He grinned at Julia. "And I'd still be
hungry."
    She smiled. No doubt Walt was right. "It
looks like a ranch hand’s glove to me. What do you think? See
there, where it's been worn in a line?"