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swirled as the sedan reversed away from the store and swung toward the highway. The minute it turned onto the road, Holly Sykes pushed out of his squeaky chair and walked over to the bulletin board, removed the notice, and retreated again to his desk. He dropped the handwritten message on the desktop and picked up the phone, punched a series of numbers from memory, and lifted the receiver to his ear.
    "Yeah, it's Holly Sykes down at the teed store. I need to talk to Mr. Rutledge again." After receiving an obviously negative response, he said, "That's all right. Just give him a message for me. Tell him the cowboy came back in, wanting to know where he could buy some hay."
    The receiver rattled back onto its cradle as Dallas turned from the counter. Holly Sykes wadded the notice into a ball and tossed it into the wastepaper basket next to his desk. With a self-satisfied smile, he lowered himself into his chair and clasped his hands behind his head.
    "It'll be a cold day in hell when he finds any hay for sale around here. And I'd bet money on that," he declared and rocked his chair back.
    A little nudge was all it would take to overbalance the chair and send him flying ass over teakettle. Dallas had to remind herself how much she needed this paycheck. She suddenly had Page 15

    the uncomfortable feeling she wasn't any different from anyone else in this town. The discovery didn't set well.
    Paper sacks stuffed with groceries in the rear seat sat atop the bags of grain that Quint hadn't been able to fit in the sedan's trunk. More sacks occupied the front passenger seat.
    When he slowed the car to make the turn onto the lane, his glance skipped to the ranch sign, hanging perpendicular to the ground. But it was one of many signs of neglect that he'd noticed about the place. He couldn't help wondering how much more he would find when he finally ventured farther than the ranch yard and lane.
    Idly, Quint scanned the gentle slope of hills on either side of the winding lane on the off chance he might spot some of the cattle, but there were none to be seen. Considering there was little in the way of graze, other than scrub grass, Quint wasn't surprised. Years of abuse from overstocking and overgrazing had taken their toll. The land was certainly nothing like the rich grassland of the Calder ranch in Montana with its thick mat of buffalo grass of blue joint. It would require some aggressive land management to turn the Cee Bar into productive rangeland again.
    He rounded a curve in the driveway and the ranch yard opened before him. Automatically Quint pointed the car toward the house intending to unload the groceries first. But there was somethmy amiss he sensed it at once and slowed the car.
    The horses weren't in the corral.
    With a quick whip of the steering wheel, Quint swung the car toward the barn. He braked to a stop in front of it, threw the
    gearshift into park, and climbed out of the car.
    The instant he took his first stride in the direction of the corral, a male voice barked, "Hold it right there, mister."
    The voice seemed to be coming from the barn area. Quint made a half turn, and the voice barked again with new harshness, " Damm it, I said hold it right there!"
    In his side vision, Quint could see the double barrels of a shotgun protruding from the opened barn door. But the man holding it was little more than a hatted figure cloaked in the barn's interior shadows. For the first time in months Quint missed the weight of the Gock he had once carried in a shoulder holster.
    But even if he had been carrying the Glock, he was in no position to argue with a shotgun and Quint knew it.
    "Who are you?" he demanded instead, careful to hold himself motionless.
    "I'm the one holding this shotgun on you, and that's all you nerd to know," the man countered in a cold, hard voice. "Now you just climb back in that car and go tell Rutledge that whatever mischief he was wanting you to do here will have to wait for another time."
    The man