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Phil’s family, but Beth didn’t know the details of it. She heard from the vet that Marigold had lost her eye. She didn’t call Phil, and Phil didn’t call her. She had no idea what became of the stolen saddle.
    The day after having been served with legal paperwork, Beth rose at her usual hour to dress and help her mother prepare breakfast. She had been awake most of the night formulating a plan to stand between Mr. Darling and her family’s future, and she hoped they would be agreeable to it.
    She scratched at the triple track of healing scabs across her collarbone where the wolf had clawed her. The doctor thought the cuts were inflicted by a shrub, and Beth hadn’t contradicted him. She rubbed antibiotic ointment into the six-inch trails before pulling on her shirt.
    Her dog, Herriot, seemed to sense that Beth’s life had been disrupted, and was underfoot most days. Herriot was an Appenzell Mountain Dog, a European breed cut out for high-altitude and harsh-weather herding, even higher and harsher than Colorado’s mountains. She was a solid, stocky girl about the same weight as the average coyote, but thicker in the chest and not as tall.
    The dog’s short-haired coat was the glossy color of melted chocolate. Rich white cream splashed across her chest and muzzle, cresting between her eyes. Streaks of caramel ran up all four of Herriot’s legs and also framed her happy smile with the mischievous look of a sweet-toothed troublemaker. Twin caramel dots on the inside of her brows made her seem extra intelligent to Beth, and perhaps slightly fierce from a cow’s point of view.
    With the exception of Beth’s father, the dog was the only living creature at the ranch who didn’t seem to be judging Beth’s fool actions. She pressed into Beth’s legs as they went downstairs to the kitchen, bumping her haunches along the wall.
    Rose Borzoi was already at the stove. Beth’s mother was a striking woman made even more beautiful than she was in youth by a quarter century of admiration poured over her by her husband. No one took more pride in Rose’s physical and intellectual strength than Abel Borzoi. His wife was nearly six feet tall barefoot, and she always went barefoot in the house, summer and winter. Her one vanity was her feet.
    Her coarse brown hair was still as long and as thick as it appeared in her wedding picture, though it had started to gray. Rose bound it daily in a braid, then threw it back over the wide shoulders of her husband’s work shirts, which were too big for her at the shoulders and yet also seemed to fit like a good trademark, rolled up to the elbows and billowing out over hips widened by childbirth and horse riding.
    Beth’s father was at the table, drinking his coffee.
    “Hi, baby girl.” He beckoned her into a snug embrace while he stayed seated. Abel Borzoi was an overweight, grizzly bear man with a wide jaw and clean-shaven face and an open spirit that smiled on sinners and saints alike.
    “Sorry I’m late,” she said, though the truth was her parents had risen early.
    Rose acknowledged Beth by saying, “Dog goes out.”
    Beth put Herriot out every morning. Her mother didn’t need to make a point of ordering it. Nevertheless, Beth sent Herriot out the back door without comment. The Blazing B had four dogs, and though Herriot was the only one who slept with the humans, she was not allowed to dine with them. Her food would have been already set out with the horses’ near the barn.
    Beth washed her hands at the sink and then fetched the pot, the water, and the steel-cut oats she’d need to make the oatmeal. There were fresh berries in a strainer in the sink, and her mother tossed slabs of ham onto a hot griddle. Her brothers, Levi and Danny, would come in at six to eat. Rose and a hired cook made the big hot midday meal for everyone down at the Hub. When it came to supper, usually cold sandwiches and leftovers, it was every man for himself.
    Whatever her parents had been speaking