CHAPTER NINE

      BLADE HAMILTON DIDN’T KNOW a thing about farming or ranching or barn fires. All the way out to the Collins ranch, the sheriff talked about how he needed an expert fire investigator to have a look at it and it would be a week, maybe more, before he could get a fire marshal to this part of Texas.

      Blade hated to bust the sheriff’s bubble, but Sheriff Brigman still didn’t have an expert on the kind of fire he was dealing with. He had studied arson fires and even worked a few bomb sites in the army. So, Blade kept quiet while the sheriff drove and hoped he had enough experience to fake it.

      For the past five years he had worked fires set in wooded areas. That was different from this, and the only tool of his trade he had with him was his camera. But he’d known his enemy in the woods of northern Washington and the hills of California. The opponent hadn’t changed, just the location had. Blade began to collect facts about the land, and mentally started a list of questions.

      When they turned off under a ten-foot gate with a Bar W brand, Blade had stopped listening to the sheriff and started trying to remember what he’d learned over the past five years. The same rules should apply—well a few of them, anyway. He could help. If the sheriff wanted a special agent helping out, he had one.

      The soaked ground had probably kept the whole ranch from being a disaster. Winter grass, if it had been dry, would burn fast and hot. There wouldn’t be much chance of stopping it except at roads or creeks. Barbed wire wouldn’t slow it down. And there probably weren’t enough men in the county to fight it on a dry night.

      Last night the rain had given him hell, but it had stopped the fire on the Bar W from spreading.

      “Who am I kidding?” Sheriff Brigman asked, pulling Blade back into the conversation. “No one will come out this far because a few barns burned down. I’d never get a fire marshal or the ATF agent here. Not unless we find a body in the ashes. If I hadn’t remembered meeting you, I’d be on my own. It’s lucky you’re here, Hamilton.”

      “You might want to ask the Davis women about that.” Blade wished he’d been awake enough last night to remember one thing, but he was dead on his feet when he got to the barn and found Dakota sleeping in that old chair. “They mentioned Hamiltons tend to kill Davises, so they weren’t too happy when I showed up. Every now and then the youngest one looks at me like she’s checking to see if there’s a weapon in my hand.”

      The sheriff laughed. “From what I heard, bullets flew in both directions back during the feud. Like most good Western stories, it started with stolen cattle and ended with a woman. Legend goes that the last man to die in the bloody battle that night killed himself. Walked right straight into Indigo Lake until the water covered his head. Only I’ve heard whispers of an even darker ending. No one really knows. There was not one man named Davis or Hamilton left alive to tell the story, and the women told them more to frighten the next generation than to be passing along history.”

      Blade swore he felt his blood chill. What could be darker? One of his relatives, maybe even one on the staircase wall, had committed suicide? Blade decided he didn’t want to know the darker ending if suicide was the good choice.

      He took a deep breath and thought of Dakota. She was the other half of the feud. Maybe, if she was still speaking to him later, he’d ask her about her family stories. Even in her very proper, very boring clothes, he saw the flash of a fighter in those dark eyes of hers and in the crimson glints in her hair. Maria had mentioned they’d come from strong warriors on both their Irish and Apache sides. Stubborn. Independent. Deadly.

      Her hair, he almost said aloud. He remembered the smell of her hair when her head had rolled against his jaw as he carried her. It smelled of soap and rain and something else. She must have braided it as she studied. A loose braid, thick and dark with no clip or string tying off the end. The opposite of the tight bun she was wearing at breakfast.

      Blade forced his mind back to the problem at hand. “You’re right. A fire marshal is not likely to come out, but I’m happy to help if I can. Why not? A good mystery while I’m on vacation will hold my interest.”

      The sheriff was silent for a moment. “Thanks. I’ve got a few of the volunteer fire department standing guard at each barn. I told them to keep an eye out for any embers starting up again, but what I wanted them there for, in truth, was to make sure no one steps near. Maybe we’ll get lucky and find a clue.”

      “I’ll help if I can, but not as an official. Just doing you a favor.”

      “That mean you’re not charging and I don’t have to fill out paperwork?”

      “Right.”

      “Good. The county doesn’t have any money to pay you, anyway.”

      They drove a few miles before the sheriff asked, “You sleep last night in that old house on your land?”

      “Nope.” Blade smiled, thinking of adding that he’d slept with Dakota, but in a small town, that might not go over well. “I slept in the Davis barn. They loaned me their pickup so I could get my bike out of the mud. After I take a look at the burn site, I thought I’d ask you for a favor. You know where I can rent a truck? If you’d give me a ride there, I’d have wheels again.”

      “You’re staying around?” The sheriff sounded surprised.

      “Yeah.” He shrugged. “For a few weeks, anyway.”

      “I would have guessed you’d be out of here as fast as possible. The only way you’ll make money on that haunted house is to charge for tours on Halloween.”

      Blade didn’t argue. “If I run now, the locals will think I’m afraid of an old curse on that land.”

      “Some folks think ghosts haunt your land. You might want to keep an eye out. A few people around here think the accident that caused Maria’s blindness and killed her mother was linked to the curse. It happened where cars turn off the highway toward your place. Her car rolled to within a few feet of where your land starts. Indigo Lake holds the bones of many a story.” The sheriff pulled up to the first barn and the conversation turned to fire.

      Blade was surprised how informed the sheriff was about burn sites, and within a few minutes they were agreeing on possibilities as they approached the first barn. The frame was still standing against the cloudy sky like a smoldering border around a disaster.

      “We’re lucky both barns that burned were hay barns. The other ones on the property have expensive equipment in them.”

      After they’d circled several times, Blade said, “If I was guessing, I’d say, from the burn patterns, that the fire started in the dead center of the barn and spread out.”

      Brigman didn’t argue. He simply nodded.

      Finding the cause would be a process of elimination like any crime scene. They’d rule out one reason after another for the burn until only one scenario made sense. Lightning might be a possibility, but lightning hitting two barns on a ranch that hadn’t had a lightning strike do damage in ten years was not likely.

      Blade walked the perimeter of both barns, reading the story of how the fire happened. He talked with the tired firemen standing guard. What did they see? Any people around when they arrived? Any cars or trucks leaving the place that might have passed them when they were heading to the fire? What did the fire look like, smell like? What color was the smoke? How did the blaze react to water?

      He asked the same questions of each man at the scene while he took pictures of tire tracks in the mud. There were too many footprints to tell which had come first. Plus whoever set the fires probably did so before the heavy rain started. Their tracks would have been washed away.

      Over and over the cowboys mentioned that he should talk