CHAPTER SEVEN

      MADDIE’S HEART SANK at the mournful cry of the dog—let alone whatever was lying at the dog’s feet just over the rocky ledge. She braced herself for what she would find and yet she was already fighting tears before she reached the animal.

      She’d been so sure she was going to find Branch Murdock’s body just below the dog on the mountainside that she was startled when the familiar red-and-black-plaid fabric just over the edge of the ridge was only that—the red-and-black plaid of the sheepherder’s coat.

      Maddie slid off her horse, still stunned and even more confused when she saw that the coat had been spread out like a bed for the dog.

      It was what a hunter did when he lost one of his bird dogs and couldn’t find the animal before dark set in. He would leave his coat with his scent on it. The dog would hopefully find it and stay there until he returned. With luck, the hunter would find the dog lying on the coat, waiting for him, the next morning.

      How long had Lucy been waiting for Branch? And why would he leave his coat here for the dog? Branch and Lucy were inseparable.

      As Maddie approached the dog, Lucy quit howling for a moment, but started up again. It was the most heartbreaking sound Maddie had ever heard on that lonesome mountain ridge so far from everything.

      “Where’s Branch?” she whispered as she squatted down next to the dog. She remembered when Branch had adopted the puppy. Just the thought of the two of them crossing the ranch yard, Lucy still a puppy, running hard on her short legs to keep up with Branch’s long stride, broke her heart.

      As she put her arm around Lucy, she heard the deputy dismount and come toward them, his boots crunching on the rocky ground. Not his boots, she reminded herself. Her husband’s. That thought shot like an arrow through her heart.

      Her husband.

      The loss often hit her out of the blue as if until that moment, she hadn’t realized Hank was gone and never coming back.

      She blinked back tears as she knelt by the dog. “It’s all right,” she whispered to Lucy, even though she suspected it was far from it.

      Picking up Branch’s coat from the ground, she held it close. The coarse wool smelled of a strong mixture of tobacco, campfire smoke, sheep and dog. She breathed in the familiar scents that would always remind her of Branch as she looked out across the mountain—just as Lucy was doing. There was no sign of her sheepherder—or her sheep.

      “May I see that?” Jamison asked and held out his hand for the coat.

      She hesitated, feeling protective and afraid, but grudgingly she handed it over to him and watched as he went through the pockets then checked the fabric. For bloodstains? Bullet holes?

      He didn’t seem to find anything of interest, she saw with relief. She watched him sniff one of the pockets, then the other one.

      “He took his tobacco with him and whatever tool he carried in his other pocket,” the deputy said.

      “A knife. He always carried a pocketknife.” She watched as he shook out several flakes of loose tobacco from the one pocket. The wind caught the stray tobacco leaves and sent them whirling off over the side of the mountain on a downdraft.

      Jamison turned the other pocket inside out to show her where the pocketknife had worn a hole in the fabric. “Why would your sheepherder leave his coat here and take everything else with him?” he asked as he eyed the dog.