LITMIR.BIZ

       Chapter One

      The wind howled down the ravine as Deputy Sheriff McCall Winchester poked what appeared to be a mud clod with the toe of her cowboy boot.

      The thunderstorm last night had been a gully-washer. As her boot toe dislodged some of the mud, she saw that the pile of objects in the bottom of the gully was neither mud nor rock.

      “Didn’t I tell you?”

      McCall looked up at the man standing a few feet away. Rocky Harrison was a local who collected, what else? Rocks.

      “It’s always better after a rainstorm,” he’d told her when he’d called the sheriff’s department and caught her just about to go off duty after working the night shift.

      “Washes away the dirt, leaves the larger stones on top,” Rocky had said. “I’ve found arrowheads sitting on little columns of dirt, just as pretty as you please and agates large as your fist where they’ve been unearthed by a good rainstorm.”

      Only on this bright, clear, cold spring morning, Rocky had found more than he’d bargained for.

      “Human, ain’t they,” Rocky said, nodding to what he’d dug out of the mud and left lying on a flat rock.

      “You’ve got a good eye,” McCall said as she pulled out her camera, took a couple of shots of the bones he’d found. They lay in the mud at the bottom of the ravine where the downpour had left them.

      With her camera, McCall shot the path the mud slide had taken down from the top of the high ridge. Then she started making the steep muddy climb up the ravine.

      As she topped the ridge, she stopped to catch her breath. The wind was stronger up here. She pushed her cowboy hat down hard, but the wind still whipped her long dark hair as she stared at the spot where the rain had dislodged the earth at the edge. In this shallow grave was where the bones had once been buried.

      Squinting at the sun, she looked to the east. A deep, rugged ravine separated this high ridge from the next. Across that ravine, she could make out a cluster of log buildings that almost resembled an old fort. The Winchester Ranch. The sprawling place sat nestled against the foothills, flanked by tall cottonwood trees and appearing like an oasis in the middle of the desert. She’d only seen the place from a distance from the time she was a child. She’d never seen it from this angle before.

      “You thinking what I am?” Rocky asked, joining her on the ridge.

      She doubted that.

      “Somebody was buried up here,” Rocky said. “Probably a homesteader. They buried their dead in the backyard, and since there is little wood around these parts, they didn’t even mark the graves with crosses, usually just a few rocks laid on top.”

      McCall had heard stories of grave sites being disturbed all over the county when a road was cut through or even a basement was dug. The land they now stood on was owned by the Bureau of Land Management, but it could have been private years ago.

      Just like the Winchester land beyond the ravine which was heavily posted with orange paint and signs warning that trespassers would be prosecuted.

      “There’s a bunch of outlaws that got themselves buried in these parts. Could be one of them,” Rocky said, his imagination working overtime.

      This less-civilized part of Montana had been a hideout for outlaws back in the late 1890s or even early 1900s. But these remains hadn’t been in the ground that long.

      She took a photograph of where the body had been buried, then found herself looking again toward the Winchester Ranch. The sun caught on one of the large windows on the second floor of the massive lodge-style structure.

      “The old gal?” Rocky said, following her gaze. “She’s your grandmother, right?”

      McCall

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